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Beyond a Steel Sky

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 09/29/2020
Posted in: iOS, Mac, Mobile Reviews, PC Reviews. Leave a comment

Published: Revolution Software

Developer: Revolution Software

Release Date: 06/25/2020

Rating: N/A

MSRP: $27.99

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Adventure games are always hit or miss. The fundamental thing that needs to be focused on is characters and story as that’s the main reason why people play these games. It takes away the action and gameplay so you can enjoy an interactive story. This has been done really well and, sadly, really badly more times than anyone can count. Beyond a Steel Sky is the long-awaited sequel to Beneath a Steel Sky which released in 1994. It wasn’t very well known and most people know it today as “that free game that GOG.com gave away when you opened an account” for the longest time. Beyond a Steel Sky has the potential for greatness, but it falls flat in many ways and I’ll explain.

You play as Robert Foster who was the main protagonist in the first game. You are living your life in the Gap, which is a Nomad town basically, and someone’s kid named Milo gets kidnapped by a walking mechanical dog thing. Yeah, there’s no context here and you are literally told to care about someone and risk your life who has zero backstory. A chapter or two inside the Gap where Foster was living would have built that up, but instead, we jump right into heading into Union City which is the dystopian town from the first game. Here you are introduced to controls and game mechanics which aren’t any different from other adventure games. You find objects that go into other objects and click on stuff. The only difference is a cool gadget which is a hack tool, but even that isn’t lived up to its potential like I thought it would. It shows various devices with a puzzle-like grid and you can swap stuff around to make these devices do different things. Of course, one puzzle piece from action for that device must fit, but the issue here is that each device has a different type of puzzle piece and if you are in proximity to multiple devices the game purposefully makes those pieces different so you can’t swap whatever you want around. Instead, this is mostly reserved for main mission puzzles.

As you progress through the story there’s always a sense of why? Why am I doing this? The characters are one-dimensional and just don’t have good writing. The dialog is very dry and unimportant and there’s no reason to explore the world. I even wound up finishing the game with items in my inventory I never even used so what’s the purpose? The writing is just awful or passable at best and the voice acting is so spotty. Even Foster sometimes sounds like he’s reading from a high-school play and sometimes he nails the line. It’s so inconsistent it drove me insane. Once you eventually team up with the cities’ AI, Joey from the first game, the story then turns from saving kidnapped children to taking down the entire city council? I don’t understand why the narrative has this tug-of-war and that’s not even mentioning the fact that this beautifully created world is never explored. This game could have been something like Beyond Good & Evil with a great city to explore, but instead, we only see a few mundane and boring areas with this huge beautiful backdrop that I wanted to explore more of. Beyond a Steel Sky does a great job of creating an atmospheric and lived-in world, but this isn’t how you explore that world.

The most entertaining part of the game was exploring the MINOS cyber world which had a Vaporwave/Cyberpunk aesthetic and collecting the various programs to progress was fun, but again, the puzzles had zero challenge. The entire game just has you matching items to others and it’s very obvious and there’s zero challenge throughout the entire game. There’s even a hint system that basically tells you where to go, and while that’s a good thing, it doesn’t make you work for the hints either. I also think this game would have done better as a multi-part series or just something that isn’t an adventure game as there’s so much missed potential around every corner.

Overall, Beyond a Steel Sky builds a great atmosphere and a wonderful city to explore, but you can’t explore it. The story doesn’t know what it wants to do and the characters are one-dimensional with dry dialog and humor that lands wrong. The puzzles aren’t challenging and even just simply exploring the game is boring. I wanted to care about everything in the game, but it’s hard to when the developers only pushed their world a little bit instead of shaking it and letting the fruit fall.

Inmost

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 09/06/2020
Posted in: iOS, Mac, Mobile Reviews, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, Switch. Leave a comment

Publisher: Chucklefish

Developer: Hidden Layer Games

Release Date: 08/21/2020

Rating: N/A

MSRP: $14.99

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I know pixelated 2D games have been done to death these days, but sometimes they really stand out. Inmost has detailed visuals, great animations, and an interesting and engaging horror theme and atmosphere that kept me sitting through until the end. While the story isn’t all that great, the message at the end of the game makes it all worthwhile.

You play as a few characters in this game. One is a middle-aged man, another is a knight, and the third is a little girl. You jump between the three as the story unfolds and each has a unique control scheme. The man can jump around and find objects to progress, the knight can engage in combat, and the little girl can’t jump, but must crawl her way around a house lifting objects to create steps and unlock the secret of this house. It keeps the game fresh and moving, but most of the game is played as the man.

The entire area is quite large that you explore and backtrack through. Climbing around the levels also requires dodging black matter that can attack you and there are even some intense chase scenes. You are solving puzzles, pulling levers, and switching, and like Metroid, you are also finding new objects to progress through the level. A crowbar, pulley, knife, pickaxe, and more are needed to progress along with the occasional key. The game was never too touch and I enjoyed how the game made me think a little bit. There is some clever level design here as I actually remembered where doors and entrances were as I progressed. By the end of this entire area, I actually memorized the entire thing and could backtrack anywhere with no issue or a map. That takes skill and I commend the developers for creating such a great map with memorable landmarks.

Playing as the knight, you can swing your sword and use a hook shot to get around, but you can’t jump. The enemies vary with numerous hits needed to defeat them, but overall these are easy areas. If you die you literally just respawn in the same spot so the game is very forgiving. As the little girl, you must walk around the house moving chairs, opening cupboards, and finding secret entrances in the house and I found it quite entertaining. Without giving too much of the story away there’s really not much here and it mostly makes zero sense. I know there’s something about a Soul Flower and the knight is trying to take them for himself and stealing other Soul Flowers is required to give to the Keeper which is a giant guardian type thing. It makes no sense honestly. Even at the final 15-minute cut scene I couldn’t really figure out what was going on, but without spoiling the very end the message is what counts the most and it was rather touching.

The visuals are great with lots of dark colors, great pixel art, smooth animations, and tons of atmosphere. The game is a treat to look at, and the music is amazing. There’s quite a bit of emotion in this game, and I just wish the story was a bit more comprehensive to make the whole package feel a little more complete. As it stands, Inmost is a great 2D platformer that takes around 4 hours to complete. It’s a small investment for a great ending and some fun and challenging puzzles and platforming. If you don’t like modern 2D pixel art games, this won’t change your mind, but for fans of Metroid and Castlevania, there’s not much to lose here.

Gris

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 09/03/2020
Posted in: Android, iOS, Mac, Mobile Reviews, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, Sony Consoles, Switch. Leave a comment

Publisher: Devolver Digital

Developer: Nomada Studio

Release Date: 12/13/2018

Rating: Everyone

MSRP: $14.99

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I love artsy games. Some times it’s nice just to sit back and play a casual game that is a visual treat. Gris is one of these games. Like many other games before it, it offers tight gameplay, but short and sweet experience. There’s really no story here, and you have to make what you can of the story based on context only. You play as a woman who loses her voice to a dark force that seems to swallow up all the color in the world. It’s your job to get that color back and your voice. That’s the only thing I got out of this entire game story-wise. I wanted something more, there are games that have told breathtaking stories on just context alone such as Journey, but what’s here is fine.

The game is broken up into three levels based on colors. In the color Red, you gain the ability to weigh things down. You jump around platforms and have to figure out various platforming puzzles. Using your abilities you must navigate the area to acquire stars to unlock the next section and finish the level. These are rather clever and I never got stuck, but I was challenged. I had to think and it quickly clicked after a few tries throughout the game on most puzzles. The controls are great and not floaty or slippery. The girl has a nice momentum with the ability to glide, double jump, and swim which is all acquired throughout the game.

The second level, Green, is probably the easiest and most laid back level. There aren’t many platforming puzzles, but there are challenges instead that require good timing. You find a woodland creature companion part way through and you use him for a few challenges, but this level was not difficult. I acquired the double jump ability here and this opened up more challenges.

The final level, Blue, is a mixed underwater and upside down platforming and the levels are labyrinthine and challenging. I didn’t get too lost in this level, but I did wander around a little more than I wanted to. You have to use everything you learned to beat this level and that includes platforming challenges that combine all of your abilities and precise timing. This game isn’t quite a breeze as it did work my brain a bit which is nice. Throughout the game, there are a couple of scripted chase scenes with the dark void that took your voice which changes the pace up a bit, but overall it’s very nicely paced and I was able to play all 3 hours in one sitting and was sucked in.

While the game lacks in story it makes up for in gameplay with challenging platforming, some puzzles, and a gorgeous watercolor art style that is just a joy to look at every second you are in the game. This is Gris‘ main draw is the eye-catching art style. I wanted to know more about this mysterious girl, but we just got platforming instead. Oh well, as it stands it’s a must-play for fans of games like Journey or The Unfinished Swan. I had a blast, and while the game itself wasn’t memorable, the art style is striking enough to remember.

Dreamfall Chapters

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 09/01/2020
Posted in: Mac, Microsoft Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, Sony Consoles, Xbox One. Leave a comment

Publisher: Red Thread Games

Developer: Red Thread Games

Release Date: 10/21/2014

Rating: Mature

MSRP: $24.99

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The Longest Journey is actually one of my favorite games of all time. It was one of the first PC games I played as well and what pushed me to get into PC gaming. Adventure games were something that console players couldn’t really get. The rich stories, great voice acting, and detailed characters were something only a PC could really do. The Longest Journey impressed me with all of this and I remember it to this day. It was followed up by Dreamfall that pushed the game into a new generation with 3D models and backgrounds and brought the game to consoles for the first time as well and it was also just as memorable. We now get the final chapters of this story and I have to say I walked away quite satisfied.

You play once again as Zoe Castillo. A woman who is a Dreamer and able to go between the dream world Arcadia and the real world, Stark. You also play as Kian who is in Arcadia. The ex-leader of a racist and fascist human country trying to exterminate all magical creatures. Both characters are strong, likable, and I really got attached to them through their journey. The many characters throughout Dreamfall are great actually and it was a joy to listen to their great voice acting and find out more about them. However, the game does have some pacing issues and I’ll get into that later. There is a lot of politics in the game that reflects real-world issues (more so now more than ever) and the subjects get a bit touchy and might rub some people the wrong way, but I’m glad a game story is actually challenging these issues.

The biggest draw to Dreamfall is the choices you make during key events in each book. These will pause time and you get a limited amount of time to choose a path. The consequences will occur usually later on somewhere and these events are shown with a logo in the top right corner of the screen. This symbol means that current action or event is from a choice you made earlier, but it’s never clear what choices lead to which events, and this is where I will state the choice system is flawed. Later on in the game, the choices kind of a blur and become unclear and seem less impactful. The first two books do a great job of making sure your choices are felt but later on I couldn’t tell anymore.

When it comes to actually playing the game, well, there isn’t much of one. You run around various areas finding objects to use on other objects and talking to people. That’s literally it with very few puzzles. The puzzles are stupidly easy or frustratingly obtuse. My biggest complaint about the entire game would be the areas you explore are static and lifeless. Sure, they seem like they’re full of life the first couple of time you walk through them, but I spent so much time looking at maps to find the next area to go to just wandering by the same group of people, the same icon that lets you hear the character’s inner thoughts about that item and nothing ever changes. I spent the first two books inside the same hub areas for each character it became a drag just to get to the next scene. I would have liked to see more organic changes, more things to looks at and more inner dialog written as you spend a third of the game in these hub areas.

Most of the game is talking and cut scenes, however, and that’s what adventure games are all about. The voice acting is superb, the characters are fun to listen to and learn about, and I felt sucked into this magical world, especially being a fan of the series. However, that’s what this game is made for: fans of the series. If you haven’t played previous games you will most likely be lost and the story won’t mean as much to you. There are constant references to characters meeting in previous games and previous events and they are never explained. The backstory from the main menu is pretty much pointless as well. The world just feels magical and wonderful and it was a good time while I was in it.

The visuals are also pretty good of an adventure game, clearly last-gen, but this did come out in 2014. The facial animations are stiff, but overall it looks nice with great lighting effects and lots of detail everywhere. The game doesn’t seem well optimized though as certain lights will tank the FPS even on high-end hardware, so the engine needs a lot of work. The ending was also not as expected. It was good as in it made sense, but there was no crazy plot twist or anything like that. It came to a slow stop instead of full-speed and making your head spin as a good ending would. But, overall, Dreamfall Chapters is satisfying enough and completes a long-beloved series that will probably never get another game again.

Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 04/20/2020
Posted in: Mac, Microsoft Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 2, Sony Consoles, Xbox. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: Rockstar Games

Developer: Remedy Entertainment

Release Date: 10/14/2003 (PC), 11/25/2003 (Xbox), 12/02/2003 (PS2)

MSRP: $49.99

Rating: Mature

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Max Payne 2 was released a little over a year from the original and a surprising amount of fat was cut from the original. It’s the same game, but more refined and updated and feels more tightly woven than its predecessor. A lot of problems were fixed, but new ones arose as well. The narrative continues right after the first game with Max still trying to avenge the death of his wife and child, still trying to get to the bottom of The Inner Circle, and a new love blooms: Mona Sax.

The game starts off similarly to the first game, we get some weird trippy dream sequences, but they aren’t nearly as awful with zero platforming this time. Once you are in control of Max you can instantly feel the difference. He has more weight, his animations are smoother, and gunplay overall just feels punchier and sharper. More weapons were introduced with many old ones coming back. The new M4 and Kolishnokov weapons are a great addition, but unnecessary. One assault rifle is good enough as well as the addition of the HP5, but the Ingrams do just fine for a sub-machine gun. While the older weapons pack more of a punch the new weapons just feel like they were added just to add to the weapon count, less would have been fine. A new dedicated projectile button has been added so you can throw grenades and molotovs without equipping them.

Bullet Time has been refined and fixed as well. Max can now spin around in a 360-degree motion while dodging and the bullets impact harder and there’s less of a delay when you shoot. There is also better feedback on enemies when hit as they stumble more and drop their weapons so you know they’re dead in bullet time. Max can also stay lying down while continuing to empty a clip so the delay in getting up doesn’t make you completely vulnerable as the first game did. The difficulty has been dialed way back and I died a lot less than in the first game. All these great fixes and additions make Max Payne 2 the better of the two games already.

When it comes to level design, Max Payne 2 has more interesting levels like a creepy funhouse, a sprawling mansion, a construction site, and some apartment slums, but there’s a lot of backtracking and I feel the overall scope of the game feels claustrophobic. The variety is better, but you explore those few areas longer and I just feel I wanted to see more of New York inside this noire world Max lives in. Also, gone are the boss fights so the game feels better paced and I felt a tempo of gameplay going that the first didn’t have. However, the game is much shorter clocking in at 4-5 hours. There aren’t any collectibles or anything like that so once you fly through the game it’s over and there’s no reason to ever go back honestly.

Max Payne 2 is a memorable ride. The story is still told in those awesome comic strips, and I feel at the end of the game we get to know Max and Mona well enough to understand their characters and want them on screen more. Their love story is a great centerpiece for this Mafia revenge tale and it makes Max and Mona feel more human. There’s still a cliffhanger at the end of the story, and a third Max Payne game didn’t come until a decade later, but what we get is one of the best single-player shooters of the PS2/Xbox era. It’s tightly compacted and solid and while its short, sometimes that means quality and that is rare even to this day.

Max Payne

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 04/18/2020
Posted in: Android, GameBoy Advance, iOS, Mac, Microsoft Consoles, Mobile Reviews, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 2, Sony Consoles, Xbox. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: Gathering of Developers

Developer: Remedy Entertainment

Release Date: 07/23/2001 (PC), 12/06/2001 (PS2), 12/12/2001 (Xbox), 07/16/2002 (Mac), 12/16/2003 (GBA), 04/12/2012 (iOS), 06/14/2012 (AND)

Rating: Mature

MSRP: $49.99

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Bullet time. While The Matrix made it popular amid pop culture, Max Payne started it all in the video game realm. You play as a cop, Max Payne, who is framed for murder of another NYPD cop. Your wife and newborn child are also murdered and you are trying to get revenge on the people who did it. The story isn’t anything amazing, but Max Payne’s voice actor, and the well done writing, keep you hooked long enough to find out what happened behind the scenes. The game is told in a comic noir graphic-novel style and it suits the game well. The cut scenes are imaginative and different, and don’t look cheap or like the developers were trying to take short cuts.

Outside of the story, the gameplay is all about shooting because that’s literally it. Max runs around with various weapons such as Barrettas, Ingrams, shotguns, grenade launchers, Molotov cocktails, grenades, and assault rifles to mow down the Mafia and corrupt cops. Bullet time is the main gameplay element here and when activated Max does a jump dodge in the direction you move and you can see him dodging bullets in real-time. This is actually a mechanic you must master as most situations require you to use it to stay alive. You can’t stand in one spot or you will be dead in a few hits and there’s no cover system. I had to quicksave every 2-3 minutes as well because the game is so difficult. It’s cool to jump dodge around a corner, but once Max lands there’s a delay in him getting up and you are completely vulnerable to gunfire. I had to make sure I jump dodged behind cover or across a hallway so I wouldn’t die the second the bullet time finished. You can also activate bullet time and just run your meter down so you can run and gun with it too.

There are very few scenarios in which you do more than press buttons. One scene has Max driving a crate crane around an area, but it’s nothing special, and there are some interactive objects that trigger comic cut scenes, but 95% of the game is just shooting. The weapons themselves feel good and I felt I had to switch up weapons depending on the situation to make my life easier. The locales are varied, but they are a bit too stale and boring for my taste. They don’t quite capture the noir feeling of the comic cut scenes, but there is one level early on called Ragna Rock that was a gothic cult house that reminded me a lot of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, so that’s a good thing. The game really does feel like a first-generation PS2/Xbox game, but it’s very polished. The game flows nicely, but the difficulty is all over the place, you will die dozens and dozens of times in this game.

The visuals are clean and look nice even 20 years later. I installed a texture upgrade patch and some other things to make the game upscale to 4K nicely and play on modern hardware, and it looks pretty good. Even in the original, the facial textures are nice and very realistic, and the over aesthetic of the game stands out over most shooters of its time. The voice acting is great, and I finished the game in about 7 hours. After you finish it there’s literally nothing else to do as the multiplayer mode was scrapped. It’s a fantastic single-player game that holds up well even today despite its insane difficulty and unbalanced gameplay. The story isn’t anything special, but Max is a great character to dive into and it makes for a fun evening.

Life is Strange 2

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 12/31/2019
Posted in: Editor's Choice, Mac, Microsoft Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, Sony Consoles, Xbox One. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: Square Enix

Developer: Dontnod Entertainment

Release Date: 09/26/2018

Rating: Mature

MSRP: $39.99

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 Life is Strange is one of my favorite games of all time. Dontnod are masterminds at storytelling and character development. They can somehow create a world that you can either relate and get sucked into or both, and yet add an element of fantasy in there. Life is Strange’s title is fitting for these games as you play as characters living and ordinary life and then all of a sudden one of those strange twists of fate change their entire lives.

Life is Strange 2 cranks this to the max with a story that had me hooked until the very end and is on par with the first game. You play as Sean and Daniel Diaz who get ripped from their home in Seattle, Washington and must escape the US and find their way to the Mexico border. I do have to warn that there will be some spoilers in here as I couldn’t properly review the game without talking about certain points in the story as this is the main part of the entire game.

What I love so much about this game is how average it starts out. Just a little boy and a teenager trying to live their regular lives with their father when suddenly life turns for the worst. This telekinetic power that Daniel discovers comes out when he gets into a fight with the next-door neighbor and when Sean intervenes it all turns for the worse. A cop dies, their father dies, and Sean panics and runs. Now pause right there. Most people would just hide or wait through the trail and tribulations of being proven innocent. That’s part of what makes this series so great is the opposite of what should happen happens and turns it into a strange twist of your own beliefs and choices and what the characters are doing.

As the Diaz brothers set off down towards Mt. Rainier in the first episode they encounter a kidnapper and cope with Daniel’s powers, but this is where you will start getting into a gameplay loop if you can call it that. You get plopped into a large starting area that allows you to look around at a bunch of objects and listen to Sean’s inner dialogue comment on it all to learn more about what’s around you and some times discover hidden objects. You can also push on to the main objectives and during these long cut scenes you will get dialog options that don’t seem to mean much at first, but the entire game is a balancing act of influencing your younger brother on how he ends up. Is he destructive and careless, is he too careful and caring, does he hate Sean or love him in the end? A lot of options slightly sway this and then there are larger game changers that allow two options and each one will sway the story in another direction.

Some of these options consequences are usually seen right away and some are seen in the next episode. Once you get through a tense scene that makes you choose something big it settles back down to more minor plot development and this is where the game falters some. For example, episodes 2 and three 3 are very slow and feature too much slice of life stuff such as the brothers living in a homeless camp in the redwood forest in California, and living with their grandparents and doing daily life stuff. You do day to day stuff like chores and talk to everyone, but the integration of these brand new people feel like a slog as you must endure tons of dialog to get to know them, and in the end, it doesn’t really matter as they are unique to this episode. Episode 4 is much shorter and features all of the above but in shorter integrals and I felt was the best-paced episode. Episode 5 feels like a lot of filler in the beginning and takes to long to get to the end as the only “action” is maybe the last 30 minutes when the brothers are finally at the border.

Despite these complaints about pacing and story, it’s still fantastic and memorable. There are a few minor gameplay elements tossed in like quick-time events and aiming to throw a knife or something, but there is very little gameplay. The majority consists of Sean walking around looking at stuff. I honestly could see this as just a mini-series TV show rather than a game. Many times I set the controller down and only picked it up for dozens of minutes at a time to pick a dialog option. I personally love deep stories in games, but I don’t want to sacrifice gameplay. There are literally zero other elements besides walking around, examining, and dialog choices.

With all that said, the story is just amazing and very emotional. I related a lot of the first game as I personally grew up in a small town, but I also relate to this game as I live in the Seattle area have also lived in California a good part of my life. I grew up in small towns and had crazy events that change my life growing up in the blink of an eye. While I wasn’t a fugitive running from the law there is always a strange thing that happens in our lives that changes it forever and can happen so fast we never saw it coming and that’s what makes Life is Strange 2 so incredibly rich and realistic. The events are happening right now and could really happen in real life, but there’s that element of fantasy that makes it a great game rather than a life simulator.

I also have to comment on the visuals, the switch to Unreal Engine 4 makes the game look much better, but far from not looking dated. There are muddy textures, some wonky animations, and low poly models. This is just something most adventure games suffer from. The voice acting is pretty good though, while not amazing, it does the job to deliver emotion and you really feel it. Overall, Life is Strange 2 is for the story lovers out there and less the gamers.

Batman: The Telltale Series

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 12/04/2019
Posted in: Android, iOS, Mac, Microsoft Consoles, Mobile Reviews, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Sony Consoles, Switch, Uncategorized, Xbox One. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment
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Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment

Developer: Telltale Games

Release Date: 08/02/2016

Rating: Mature

MSRP: $29.99

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Batman has seen a great run over the last decade or so with Christopher Nolan’s film trilogy, the Arkham game trilogy, and now a story-driven adventure game. Batman tells a story I have personally never heard with the game digging into Bruce Wayne’s darker past and finally revealing the truth about his parents and discovering their past. The game isn’t’ afraid to kill off characters and actually become quite violent, and I was hooked every last minute, but it’s not the story or characters that have issues, but Telltale’s tired way of telling these stories.

I’ll have to give them credit, they cleaned up the graphics engine a bit and the button prompts and commands look sleeker, especially during action sequences, but the game is still an interactive movie, probably more so than any other Telltale adventure game. Rarely do you get to actually control Batman or Bruce and only during investigative scenes to link clues together. This is one gameplay element that’s used multiple times and I like it, but it’s not really a puzzle either. You walk around examining clues and can link two of them together to figure out what happened at a crime scene. It’s easy and obvious which clues go together, so some better puzzle solving would have been nice.

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The second gameplay segment is dialog choices and most are timed just like previous Telltale games, but I feel the smaller dialog choices have less of an impact. The game will tell you when someone will notice or remember what you said, but unlike The Walking Dead, I don’t know when that comes into play. The Walking Dead is done so well I can recall what I said in a previous decision that made that character act the way they do, now either the writing is so good it’s that seamless or it was an afterthought. I want to know when my choices change things, even the little ones. There are times when you have to make two large choices that obviously will affect the story, but these are immediate changes that you see in front of you.

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The third gameplay segment is quick-time events, but they’re sleek and feel part of the action. Of course, these are incredibly easy and I never once messed up as the game gives you plenty of time to hit the button prompts to see the well-choreographed fight scenes play out that are actually quite cool. Outside of those three gameplay segments, there’s no other gameplay present. Puzzles are seriously lacking as they gave the Arkham games some brainpower behind all that fighting and I feel the game could have been better enjoyed more as a game with these put in.

Thankfully, you’ll just mow through the 5 episodes that take less than an hour each to complete because the story is so good. Seeing the origins of Harvey Dent become Two-Face, The Joker, Catwoman, Gordan, and seeing Bruce face his own dark past is just cool especially for a Batman fan such as myself. It tells a story that no other medium has told and that’s what got me hooked. I don’t want another origin story as to how Bruce became Batman, I don’t want to see him fight more villains and fight his inner demons. The dredging up the past and seeing Bruce and Batman actually fail and become nothing is fantastic and makes Batman seem vulnerable and adds depth to the story arc.

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Overall, Batman: The Telltale Series is a must-play for any Batman fan. I don’t think non Batman fans will care for this game, especially when knowing more about the lore and arc of the series makes the game that much more interesting.  The visuals are decent, but I’m tired of seeing Telltales comic looking graphics and they are dated and full of bugs and problems still. I ran into graphical glitches, crashes, and at one point my Xbox shut down mid-game for no reason. The voice acting is top-notch and the overall production values are good, but I’m tired of Telltale’s way of telling stories in the same manner for every game. Smaller dialog options are lost in the seamless transition between scenes and only the larger choices stand out which is a shame. Towards the end of the game, I stopped caring about which choices I made outside of the large ones because I wasn’t seeing any differences. Even at the last dialog scene with Alfred in episode 5, the game said “Alfred will remember that” but why? It’s the last scene with him and it won’t make a difference if he remembers it or not. With that said, this is a great story and not much else.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 07/02/2019
Posted in: Mac, Microsoft Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, Sony Consoles, Xbox One. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment
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Publisher: Square EnixDeveloper: Nixxes Software/Eidos Montreal

Release Date: 08/23/2016

Rating: Mature

MSRP: $59.99

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Deus Ex is an old well-loved franchise and the reboot with Human Revolution was well received despite its many flaws. Mankind Divided is a direct sequel taking place right after the terrorist bombing from the end of the last game, and Adam Jensen is at it again trying to solve murder mysteries, stop more terrorists, and put an end to the hatred against augmented humans. Dealing with racism, discrimination, classism, and many other dystopian issues, Mankind Divided delivers an atmospheric world to explore with great characters.

The gameplay elements from Human Revolution carry over and feel more polished and nuanced, but this game has its own set of issues. Starting with exploration, Mankind Divided has small areas in Prague you can explore and complete side missions and sadly that’s all. You can’t talk to 90% of the characters, and there are only a dozen side missions in the whole game. Prague just feels very cramped and small in scope and the Deus Ex franchise has enough lore and interesting things going on that it could be an open world game. Despite the areas being full of NPCs, open buildings, police walking about, etc., it just feels so empty and lonely. The amount of interaction is so little and there’s no real point exploring anything expect to hack computers to read emails and find ebooks, but even these don’t really give a lot of insight to the surrounding world.

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Once you get into a mission the combat is actually rather versatile. You can go completely stealth using silenced weapons and takedowns, or augment yourself for combat with powerful melee moves, more health, shields, and more. I went the hacker/stealth route upgrading all my hacking augs and bio cell meter for stealth shields and extra takedowns. Every area has multiple routes to get to the goal by either shooting through all the enemies, hacking your way around turrets, cameras, and security, or just taking everyone down one by one and sneaking through vents. It’s rather satisfying to find your own path and I rarely had issues in which I didn’t know how to get to a particular area. The shooting is rather satisfying as well, but sadly the game is designed to use very little of it. I never used anything outside of my silenced pistol despite holding on to 4 different weapons through the entire game. You can pick up grenades, software to help hacking, and various healing items, but I never really needed most of it.

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Outside of shooting, cover mechanics, and various combat abilities, there’s nothing else to the game. The story and characters are interesting enough to keep you going, but it’s mostly forgettable. The overall terrorist plotline is done to death in other games, and I’d rather know more about the surrounding world and how the people live day to day in this dystopian police-state world. That interested me more than anything Adam and his cohorts were working on. I honestly enjoyed the side missions more than the main storyline which is odd for a video game in general. There are some persuasion dialog mini-games where you must sway a character in your favor, but it’s easy and the outcomes don’t really affect the overall story.

Thankfully, Mankind Divided is for both action fans and stealth fans despite the game being built for stealth gameplay. There are no bosses this time around and the game has a lot of technical issues. At launch, the game was nearly unplayable for most people, and now after many patches, the engine is incredibly unoptimized with even two video card generations later, the engine struggles to stay at 60FPS with load times for menus even! MSAA is nearly impossible to enable with frames dipping into single digits, there’s a lot of chugging when turning the camera as well. On anything but the latest GPUs you’re not going to enjoy this game at all and it will murder your system. The game looks really good though with good lighting, high-res textures, and great character models.

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Overall, Mankind Divided expands on its predecessor, but not on the overall series. More interactive areas would have been great, bigger areas to explore and more side missions, and even more insight to the day to day lives of the citizens in Prague. With a terribly optimized engine, and the fun factor of combat and stealth varying from satisfying to incredibly frustrating within minutes of each other, Deus Ex just needs a reboot before coming back. The story is enough to keep you moving along, but it’s nothing memorable.

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Medal of Honor Games Ranked Worst to Best

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 11/17/2018
Posted in: Blogs, GameBoy Advance, Gamecube, Mac, Microsoft Consoles, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation (PS1), PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PSP, Sony Consoles, Wii, Xbox, Xbox360. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

220px-Medal_of_Honor_2010_Box_art13. Medal of Honor – 2010

Reboots are usually good for a game franchise as it allows new ideas and advances the series to new heights, but sometimes it’s not successful. Medal of Honor was a hyped up generic military shooter where you play as Tier 1 specialists in the Afghani war, and it was a bug-ridden mess. The game was also ugly, stale, and just felt like a total Call of Duty rip-off. This was easily the worst game in the entire series.

Best Version: PC

MOHRSbox12. Medal of Honor: Rising Sun – 2003

Rising Sun was riding on the success of Frontline and it’s new found glory with console gamers, but what we got was an ugly rushed mess of a game. Rising Sun tried to show us the frontline in Japan, but what we had was just some dated gameplay and some of the worst level design the series has ever seen. I don’t know what happened within a year, but the development rush is obvious here.

Best Version: Xbox

MV5BYjM3OTNkMzItMzRmMS00N2Y5LTk4MzUtYTU4OWUzYzlmNDJmXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNzg5OTk2OA@@._V1_11. Medal of Honor: Airborne – 2007

The first game in the series to try and reboot it with little success. Using next-generation hardware, the game looked impressive but used a weird multiplayer map style layout and open-ended objectives that just led to the generic level design and frustrating gameplay. The guns were highly inaccurate, and it was ridiculously difficult and plain boring. It’s clear that this series just can’t hit the reboot stride correctly.

Best Version: PC

220px-Warfighter10. Medal of Honor: Warfighter – 2012

Warfighter was a slightly more successful game with the new modern warfare formula with a much more entertaining campaign and better visuals, but overall it still felt generic and pointless in a bloated military shooter scene.

 

Best Version: PC

Medal_of_Honor_Vanguard9. Medal of Honor: Vanguard – 2007

Vanguard is a much-forgotten game in the series as by the time this came around Modern Warfare was already out and the next-generation of consoles was in full swing and no one cared. Using an old engine and gameplay, Vanguard was the last in the series to use the typical Medal of Honor WWII formula. The game wasn’t awful just super generic, boring, and just standard affair that we have seen before.

Best Version: Wii

220px-MOHFbox8. Medal of Honor: Frontline – 2002

Frontline was the first game in the series on consoles, and this game is one I have fond memories of. I remember the opening scene just blew my mind and was incredibly cinematic for the time. Sadly, there was no multiplayer, but at the time I didn’t care. It still wasn’t the best game in the series, and it was clear the less powerful consoles held the series back some, but it was a good start.

Best Version: Xbox

Medalofhonorsheroes7. Medal of Honor: Heroes – 2006

A strange game stuck in a weird time. The next-generation consoles were already here and Heroes stuck to a gameplay style designed for handhelds and the Wii. It was a decent game and felt good on each console it was on, but this was a generic as WWII shooters come. Even the production values were lacking on a dated engine and gameplay.

Best Version: Wii

220px-Medal_of_Honor_-_European_Assault_Coverart6. Medal of Honor: European Assault – 2005

European Assault was not so much overlooked but overstepped. Everyone was starting to wane with the WWII shooters and European Assault was a mildly generic form of the genre that played well but didn’t add anything terribly new to wow anyone.

 

Best Version: Xbox

220px-MoHH2BoxArt5. Medal of Honor: Heroes 2 – 2007

Heroes 2 was a rushed sequel, but somehow improved upon the first game and continued to use the dated engine and gameplay style of its predecessor. This and Vanguard were the last of its kind and were washed away with the new generation of consoles and graphics that just made everyone forget about these games.

Best Version: Wii

download4. Medal of Honor – 1999

The original isn’t always the best, but it was really impressive on the PS1 back in the day and helped pave the way for modern FPS games to this day. It was a little clunky and basic, but did its job well and is still fun to play to this day.

 

220px-Medal_of_Honor_-_Underground_Coverart3. Medal of Honor: Underground – 2000

A much-improved game over the first one, but was released right when the next-generation of consoles was out and was kind of overlooked by the PS2, Dreamcast, and GameCube. It looked amazing on the PS1 and added a totally new campaign, but everyone was mostly over this generation of consoles by now.

Best Version: PS1

Medal_of_Honor_-_Allied_Assault_Coverart2. Medal of Honor: Allied Assault – 2002

The game that made Medal of Honor was it was and released just before its console debut. It looked fantastic on the PC and was followed by two expansion packs. AA remains many players favorite game in the series for its PC specific greatness such as solid controls, visuals, and scope.

 

PacificAssaultBox1. Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault – 2004

My personal favorite game in the series due to the sheer cinematic quality and visual flair of the game. It was the last PC exclusive game in the series but felt and played amazingly well with a fantastic campaign and fun multiplayer. Medal of Honor, sadly, reached its peak early on, but it did it well and with a bang.