Raiden is one of the original popular shmups that delved away from fantasy settings and more towards a realistic military setting. Raiden is fast-paced, controls smoothly, and has some great enemy layout and level design. To top this all off, Raiden Legacy has four Raiden games that are all a complete blast to play.
The first game is the original Raiden. Using 16-bit graphics and sound, it may look dated, but it plays wonderfully. The sprites are crisp and clear, and the sound is great. It starts off slower than the newer games, with power-ups and faster-paced enemies taking a while to appear. This may seem familiar with some of the recent free-to-play or freemium bullet hell games today. The bosses are fun, there are plenty of jets to choose from, and I found it had a personality over the newer Raidens that made it stand out and unique.
Next up is Raiden Fighters. This is a more updated, newer-looking Raiden that you would see in arcades. The game looks crisp and clean, and there are plenty of power-ups to go after. It is definitely different than the first Raiden and feels different as well. Just like all the other games in this collection, there are plenty of control options, and each game has arcade, mission, and practice modes. It’s always a good idea to get a handle on each level, enemy placement, and power-up management before mastering a level.
The third game in the collection is Raiden Fighters 2. It feels quite similar to the first Fighters game and honestly could have been excluded, and the package would have been fine. The graphics and sound are nearly the same, but there are different jets to use, enemies, and levels, so it is kind of a new game. Still just as solid as the other two and worth a playthrough.
The last game is Raiden Fighter Jet. Fighter Jet is more, well, jets, I guess. You fight a lot more air enemies than ground enemies, and it looks and sounds the best out of the four. After you get to the fourth game, it will start to feel a bit the same, and it will start to become a blur in the end. However, these are fun shmup experiences, and they work great on mobile phones. The control settings are customizable (I preferred Touch 200), and the game just looks awesome in portrait mode on high-res screens.
Overall, if you’re a shmup fan, this is a must-have. Keep in mind that this is a more realistic military-style shooter and less fantasy, but still a great game.
Master Chief is one of the most iconic characters around, and despite being on a Western-heavy console brand, everyone knows who he is. The green Spartan made waves back in November of 2004 with Halo 2. Halo 2 pretty much defined online console multiplayer and was the driving force for Xbox LIVE throughout the Xbox 1’s lifecycle. I still remember Peter Moore lifting up his sleeve and revealing Halo 2’s release date as a tattoo on his arm; it was unique and cool, and probably something he regretted later on. Halo 2 also received more hate than any other game I can think of, and sadly, I’m one of those people. See, I was a hardcore Sony fanboy at the time and loved my PS2. While it was a superior console, it lacked show-stopping online games like Halo 2 and an FPS exclusive (Killzone was not what FPS PS2 owners needed).
Halo has fantastic sci-fi lore, and I didn’t appreciate this until I got much older. If you read the comics and novels, you will realize just how deep and fantastic the Halo universe is. Halo 2 expands on the first game tenfold in nearly every way. The story is more fleshed out, has fantastic pre-rendered cutscenes, and has some incredible voice acting. The campaign was longer than the first game and offered more variety. For starters, dual-wielding was introduced and was one of the first games to make it work right. Each trigger on the Xbox allowed you to fire each gun independently as well as mix and match your favorite guns. More weapons were introduced, as well as the new Brute enemy. From start to finish, Halo 2 is one of the most diverse FPS campaigns I have ever played, from forests to interplanetary ships to jungle ruins and even cities. There’s so much to see in this game, and it’s also quite beautiful.
One thing I could never get past was the continued use of the same covenant over and over in each game. However, this allows you to remember and learn the AI quirks of each enemy so that when you play the next game, you already know their strategy and how to play the game. The Covenant are some of the best enemies ever made in an FPS because they require you to use strategy and everything in your arsenal. Enemies will duck, hide, and run away from you, which was almost unheard of back in 2004. Of course, with the Anniversary update, the AI is improved, and it feels like a fully updated game that could release tomorrow, despite the graphical age the games have aged very well gameplay-wise (Halo 1 is up for debate on that one).
The story behind Halo takes place after the first game, with the first Halo ring destroyed; however, a new protagonist joins us as the Covenant Elite Arbiter, who was tasked with protecting the ring and failed. He’s been made a martyr and must help activate the Halo rings to stop the incoming flood. Sadly, the flood is back and more aggressive than ever. I somehow didn’t mind them so much in this game, as they are not thrown at you for several levels at a time but given to you for a level here and there, and man, are they some of the most annoying enemies in gaming history. The little, tiny “poppy” floods, the big “pregnant” floods, and those ones that rush you. Now the Brutes have turned, so expect these floods to be even harder to take down. At least they are more balanced out and not thrown at you in seemingly endless waves.
Another huge update was the vehicles, as in Halo 1, they handled like crap. Each vehicle now has a boost feature, and they handle so much better and are easier to shoot with and maneuver. They are also given to the player more often and become vital tools at certain levels, just like your guns. I also found the shield was used better in this game as it recharges much faster, and health packs are no longer a concern anymore. Master Chief can take a little bit more of a beating after his shield has been used up.
The visual enhancement in Halo 2 is even better than that in Halo 1. The game looks amazing with completely redone environments, textures, lighting, and sound this time. Switching between classic and new modes was like night and day—I could never go back to the old Halo 2 again. With these new updates come the Halo toys you can find, as well as more skulls and terminals. These unlock achievements are quite tricky to find. The worst thing I can find about this game is the difficulty spikes. Some segments required constant restarts to find the right combo of how to hit the enemy or retry a new strategy. This led to many frustrations, but they weren’t as frequent as in the first game. I also didn’t like how most skulls can’t be acquired on anything but the hardest difficulty.
Overall, Halo 2: Anniversary is a must-play for Xbox One owners or lovers of the FPS genre. Halo defined the series for a reason and isn’t quite as shallow as haters would like to think. There’s a whole universe here that people are missing out on, as well as some of the best FPS action known to man.
The first-person shooter genre hasn’t really advanced over the years. I feel this is one genre that is de-evolving over time. No longer do we have the clever and memorable shooters from the mid- to late-90s and early 2000s. Every shooter these days is all about killing as much stuff as you can as fast as you can, and Hardline is no exception. The game tries to take a more cerebral approach with the addition of stealth. Remember, half the time you are a cop and the other half a criminal. You play a man named Nick Mendoza, who is a good cop who gets framed while taking down a drug cartel in Miami. Your partner is a female cop; there are few plot twists; a lot of unrealistic stuff happens; there’s some cheesy dialog; blah blah, you get the rest. While I was interested in the story enough to keep playing, I forgot about the whole thing once I shut the game off.
Hardline’s stealth gameplay actually isn’t half bad, but it feels pointless in some ways. Sure, you’re rewarded for using stealth and arresting criminals, but I feel this could have been done in a different way. As you sneak around levels, you can make people freeze, up to three, and take them down. This rewards weapon and attachment unlocks, obviously; what else? It’s fun at first, but after the first level, I just wanted to shoot stuff up, but I couldn’t because of the unlocks. Each level pretty much plays out exactly the same: navigate the extremely linear level, get lost a few times, use the annoying scanner to find evidence for more unlocks, and kill more bad guys. Hardline is literally a leapfrog game from stealth to action, and it gets a little tiring after a while. Thankfully, the game only lasts about 5 hours, and then it’s on to multiplayer. On some levels, I was able to take down all the bad guys, and that felt satisfying, but in some areas, you had to enter the right area or take them down in a certain order to not get spotted, and this was so irritating. One level had me trying to sneak out of a prison ground while trying to hide from cops, but for some reason, they constantly spotted me no matter where I hid, and it was all about reloading the game 500 times to exploit the mechanics—not fun.
One thing I do like a lot about Hardline and Battlefield in general is the overall handling and feel of weapons. They have weight, they feel real, and there’s a lot of feedback and skill required to aim the gun, and with this, you will find your favorites. Hardline is more urban cops vs. robbers, so you won’t see the military weapons you’re used to. Most missions I went through with a pistol as my main weapon and then a shotgun or SMG as a backup, that’s it. No grenades, no rocket launchers—nothing like that. It’s an interesting change-up for the series, but it just wasn’t done right.
Multiplayer is interesting, but it still doesn’t top Battlefield 3. Most modes consist of variations of capturing the flag with small maps, but the most interesting is hotwiring. This is a car heist mission where you drive around on maps, but the vehicle handling is some of the worst. Even during the campaign, the car chases felt fake, ridiculous, and completely unbelievable. The janky and over-exaggerated handling doesn’t help either. While multiplayer is a nice change from urban maps over large military fields, it’s not something to write home about. I got bored after getting to around level 15 and just kind of stopped and went on to better games.
The visuals are quite impressive, some of the best out there right now, with fantastic lighting and extremely high-res textures. While the PC version does look the best, the PS4 and Xbox One versions are nothing to scoff at. However, you will need a fairly new system to run this on a PC—nothing over 18 months old.
With that said, Hardline is a nice change of pace for the series, but it just wasn’t executed right. The story is decent, albeit cheesy and fake; the levels are more linear than you can imagine; and the leapfrog from stealth to action is just a little nauseating and causes poor pacing issues. The car chases are terribly done, completely fake, and unbelievable. The multiplayer, while interesting, feels too similar to other shooters and doesn’t top Battlefield 3’s excellent maps and balancing; the visuals are also stunning, but this won’t help the game much. What we have here is a slightly above-average shooter and a below-average Battlefield game. I really felt this was the series’ low point, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want a sequel that’s more fine-tuned.
Horror games that are truly scary are far and few these days. Neverending Nightmares actually helps change that idea with an extremely intense atmosphere, which is what horror games are all about. Neverending Nightmares has you playing as a boy (or man?) named Thomas who roams the pencil-sketched hallways in his checkered pajamas trying to find his sister (or wife?) that had been murdered (or she killed herself?). There’s a lot of open interpretation of the game’s story, but that’s kind of the fun part.
The game’s pace is at a crawl; let me just say that right away. Thomas trods along the hallways with a limited—and I mean limited—sprint button. The slow pace is supposed to add to the tension, but sometimes I wish he moved just a tad faster as the game got repetitive towards the end. The point of the game is to continue moving left (or right) through the hallways, opening doors, and interacting with anything that’s colored and stands out from the black and white background. These give hints at what may have happened to the girl that Thomas is looking for. While there’s no inventory system or even a combat system, there’s really no other goal than to head downward. Sure, there are enemies in the game, but your goal is to avoid them or hide from them. The toughest of them all are the big ogre-like monsters that require you to hide in closets, or worse, run from them. I found these segments frustrating as Thomas’ sprint is limited to about three seconds, and I had to exploit this to escape from these ogres and make it to the next door. I had to tap rapidly to stretch out the sprint or time when I started perfectly. This isn’t fun, and it doesn’t add anything but frustration.
The game has three possible endings, but there are no clues as to how to get them. At the end of each level, you are approached by this girl in different ways, but it all kind of blurs together. When you die, you start off in bed again, leading to the fact that Thomas might be asleep and can’t wake up. Is he insane? Is he a ghost? Who knows, but the endless hallways are probably the worst part of the game. Sometimes I thought the game was glitching because I would go through 5–6 hallways that I swore I went through earlier, but somehow I was progressing.
Thankfully, the game is actually scary; use headphones, and you will be in for a scary night. The music is haunting, and so are the sound effects. I applaud the game for the atmosphere, but the gameplay is really something that’s lacking and needs more polish. I’m fine with just wandering around places, but give me something to do while I’m doing that.
As it stands, Neverending Nightmares is a great horror experience, but as an actual game, it’s lacking mechanics, and the story and progression need work. I shouldn’t be playing a game thinking I’m not going anywhere or giving clues as to how to get a different ending.
Oh, Halo, I have a love-hate relationship with you. Back when Halo was released, I didn’t really think much of it. I saw the box in game stores, but I never actually heard much about it. It wasn’t until Halo 2 that the series really took off and was talked about by everyone who loved it and hated it. I just so happened to be someone who hated it, even though I didn’t play it. It looked like a generic sci-fi shooter with boring guns and boring enemies. For years, I refused to even accept Halo as a good game series. I finally sat down with the first game on PC back in 2007 and felt it was like a chore. The game was overly difficult and ugly, and I didn’t get the game at all. I washed my hands of it and was done.
Later that year, I borrowed an Xbox from a cousin (the original) and rented Halo 2 from the video store (back when that was still a thing) and actually started to like it. The game felt more balanced, more cohesive, and had a more interesting story. However, I still hadn’t even touched the multiplayer, as I didn’t have Xbox LIVE. I wouldn’t experience Halo multiplayer until Halo 3. After playing through every Halo game, I started to feel fatigued by the series. ODST and Reach were extremely boring and didn’t do much outside of the story and presentation. However, I would still go back to playing Halo 2 and 3, but I swore never to touch Halo 1 again. Now, 8 years later, I’ve played through Halo 1 and like it a little more; however, it still feels like a chore.
You play as Master Chief, a Spartan in the Earth Defense Corps who just so happens to get stuck as the savior of Earth. You fight some Covenant, an alien race hellbent on capturing Halo, and then some Flood, a super-weapon species designed to wipe out all life in the galaxy. You spend almost the entire game on the Halo Ring, which is a giant ring-shaped artificial planet that looks like Earth. Later, you run into an AI called The Librarian, whose function is to destroy all life in the galaxy to wipe out The Flood, so they starve to death. Of course, Master Chief and his AI partner Cortana must not have that. The story is quite interesting; however, it doesn’t really explore much of the Halo universe, and I wanted more.
Halo’s famous for its balanced gunplay and enemy AI. While there are only about 10 different enemy types in the game, Halo was one of the only FPS games at the time to force you to change up your tactics, weapons you use, and how you approach each firefight. Despite popular belief, Halo is not a run-and-gun type of game at all. If you run out into the open, you will die almost immediately. Halo is also the father of the regenerating shield, which is a core gameplay element of the game. Without it, the number of enemies you have to kill and scenarios would not be possible, as you would die and never make it through the game. Despite the shield recharging so slowly, it makes you stop and think before you step out again and lose your health.
The guns are also very memorable and iconic in Halo. The needle is a weapon that fires pink shards at the enemy, and they home in. After a few seconds, the shards explode, causing damage. The assault rifle is probably the most iconic weapon, as it’s the standard and most basic weapon in the game. Aside from plasma and standard weapons, you can also drive vehicles. This is actually where I had a huge issue and still do: the vehicles controlling garbage. The Ghost, Banshee, and Warthog are floaty, not very responsive, and counter-intuitive to what the game wants these vehicles to do. I also don’t like how you can’t drive and shoot the Warthog at the same time; it makes you too vulnerable.
The one thing Halo has always had a problem with is the repetitive hallways and the extreme linearity. Nearly every level had you backtrack back to the beginning once you got all the way through, and this got frustrating and tiresome toward the end of the game. The core game is also just repetition, but that’s expected of any shooter. Shooting the same enemies over and over in different variations just gets old, and some people may not be able to tolerate it. Despite this, and like I mentioned earlier, Halo combats this by making you think before you run out into the open.
Outside of the shooting, the game just feels strange as a whole. It feels dated still despite the update; however, it does help tremendously and makes the game more enjoyable. The new graphical update is more than an update. It’s completely redone, and switching from remastered to classic graphics on the fly makes you realize just how old this game is. We’re talking Quake 3/Source Engine graphics here. After playing the updated version, I could never go back. The game just looks way too ugly compared to others, which makes it much less enjoyable. In fact, the updated graphics actually help make the game easier to play with better lighting and more detailed environments. I found the original Halo way too dark in most areas, and it was always hard to see.
When it comes to multiplayer, it also suffers from feeling old. While the maps are remastered, the gameplay just feels a little old and not as fast or deep as the newer games; however, there is a charm to the age. The game is very simple, there’s not much to the multiplayer, and the maps are also not as complicated as newer ones. Fans of the original game will love being able to finally play the original online, like it was intended to be.
Overall, Halo: CE Anniversary is a fantastic update and probably about as good as the original game can get without changing any major gameplay elements. On the Xbox One, the game runs at 1080p and 60 FPS, which looks fantastic, and it also has the menus of The Master Chief Collection’s, which is an upgrade over the Xbox 360 version. If anyone couldn’t stand the original, they may find it more appealing now, but expect the overall gameplay and design of the game to not have changed.
The Batman Arkham games are some of the greatest things to grace the video game industry in the past decade. With the most advanced combat system since God of War, and not to mention the best superhero video game series ever made, Arkham Knight continues this trend. While Origins was a bit of a snag, I don’t count it as part of the Arkham trilogy. Arkham Knight is another masterpiece that any Batman fan will love.
Scarecrow and the new Arkham Knight are the main villains in this game, but don’t worry, there’s plenty of Joker as well, despite being dead. Joker is a manifestation in Bruce’s mind, and he constantly appears everywhere, putting his two senses into everything Batman does. It’s great to hear him again. Arkham Knight is also probably the best-structured Arkham game yet. Instead of a hodgepodge of little repetitive missions everywhere, the game has a Most Wanted mission wheel. Known Batman villains are to be stopped and captured through mission branches that are a blast. Firefly, Penguin, Two-Face, and various other villains have their own little subplot. This brings Arkham Knight to a meaty and well-balanced mission structure that the game desperately needed. The only other side things you can perform are AR missions that include fight and batmobile challenges and Riddler trophies. Oh yeah, I said Batmobile.
It’s finally here! The one and only Batmobile. It plays just like you think, controls like you think, and is as badass as you think. The batmobile can transform into a tank, allowing you to engage in battles with enemy tanks, but the best use of the batmobile is puzzles. Sadly, the tank battles are probably the worst thing in the game. While they work, they are the same thing over and over and over again; nothing changes. Enemy tanks will have a white line go across the screen, showing the trajectory of their shot. This allows you to dodge enemy missiles and shots. That’s great and all, but why does combat have to be this slow? Towards the end, the battles just get bigger with 50+ tanks in one area; that’s not exactly fun in my book. While the tank battles aren’t very frequent, they are happening often enough for you to sigh and wish it was over. As for the puzzle-solving, the Batmobile fits better here. Using the power wrench to crawl the downsides of buildings, using the wrench to power things up, ejecting out of the Batmobile to glide into a tunnel. All of this feels just like in the movies and comics; there is no disappointment there.
Combat has been perfected in Arkham Knight with added moves to make an extremely complex fight system that is so simple to learn. Outside of the counter system that we are all used to, new knock-out moves are introduced. Using your gadgets is much easier, as the button combos for them are easier to remember. LT for Batarang, LT+B for an electric shock to enemies with taser sticks, LT+Y for Batclaw, and RT+RT for Freeze Blast. It is very easy to remember, and the controls pop up on the screen to help you out when the option is available. The same goes for the knock-out moves, as well as fighting heavy enemies. These guys have their own system all to themselves. Do a fast punch combo, parry a guy behind you, a red exclamation pops up at a guy with a taser stick, LT+B, he’s down, continue pummeling the heavy, three more counters, then knock the heavy out. All of this is one big combo, and it’s so fluid and fast and one of my favorite fighting systems I have ever used.
The second combat system in Arkham is the stealth part. This has been expanded exponentially in Arkham Knight. There are more gadgets introduced that allow for more ways to take down opponents. The stealth areas are much larger and allow for multiple ways of taking people down. We’re used to stealth takedowns in various ways, including hanging, grating, and gliding behind people. Multi-level grate combat is introduced, as well as enemies being able to destroy grates so you can no longer use them. Using a voice synthesizer allows you to give commands to enemies and set up traps with your electric gun or disruptor. The disruptor allows you to sabotage weapons and drones to knock out enemies (yeah, I can’t say kill since Batman doesn’t do that). The stealth combat is fantastic and so much fun, and it allows for strategy over beating everyone up.
Outside of these new gameplay elements is the story. Arkham Knight has a long and well-told story that you actually care about. There are some great moments in the game that really get you hooked, and the ending is satisfying. I really felt the strengths and weaknesses of Batman come out through the story several times, as well as the other characters. My favorite part of the game is the ending with Scarecrow, but I can’t give it away except that it’s a first-person shooter sequence. WHAT?! Play it to find out!
Let’s talk about visuals. I know that the entire world knows how terribly optimized the game was for PC; however, if you have a powerful rig, it is very playable. Not perfect, but enough to not be really noticeable. This requires tweaks (there is a tool available on the Steam forums) to the game settings to get it to work. Out of the box, the game won’t run very well at all. There are some nice new effects, like RainWorks, Interactive Smoke and Fog, and various other effects. They look amazing, and Arkham Knight is one of the most detailed and good-looking games in a long time. However, a game should ship working, and this is just unacceptable. Most people don’t know how to tweak a PC game and will get frustrated and demand their money back (which happened and suspended the sales on Steam). The other issue is that you need a very new and powerful system to get the game to run well. I tried a GTX 670, and while I got 60 FPS when I was above the city, it dropped below 30 on the ground. Interactive Smoke and Fog dropped the game to 5 FPS; however, on a GTX 970, there were a few issues. The frame rate will vary constantly. You will jump between 60 and 30 a lot, but the tweaks available make it less noticeable. Anyone running a GPU older than a year will have issues for sure and should play the game on a console for now.
As it stands, Arkham Knight is a fantastic game and the pinnacle of the Batman video game franchise and superhero games in general. Taking all of what made the series great and optimizing and compiling the best of what everyone loves. More villains, more stories, more Batman. That’s what we came to see, and we got what we wanted.
The New Order was a fantastic game. It oozed atmosphere, excellent action, weighty guns, and a decent story. It was the best Wolfenstein since Return to Castle Wolfenstein on PC, which was released over 10 years ago. The Old Blood returns to give us a little extra snack with a nice prequel leading up to the beginning cutscene of The New Order. The Old Blood is all about finding the documents to Death Head’s compound while also fighting one of Nazi Germany’s many paranormal agendas—zombies. Yes, thankfully, they don’t overstay their welcome. They only appear in the final chapter, but it is a nice pace from the broken stealth and gunfights.
While The Old Blood’s story isn’t as fleshed out as The New Order, it’s not bad or awful, at least. The same storytelling mechanics are used here, such as BJ’s narration in his head and some excellent voice acting all around. The game is literally the same outside of a couple of new guns. All the action from the previous game is here, and it just feels great. It shows why Wolfenstein is one of the better shooters in recent times. It’s satisfying to shoot everything, and it’s also extremely challenging, which most shooters don’t offer. You have to use strategy and actually use cover, or you will die quickly.
There are a few boss fights in the game, some of which are the hardest I have fought as a shooter in ages. The challenge alone is enough to bring hardcore shooter fans smiles, even if they don’t like Wolfenstein. Despite the game’s short length (about 4-5 hours), there are a lot of different locales, so things change constantly. My biggest gripe about the game is the stealth. It never really worked in the last game, either. You know you are in a stealth area when the commander’s location shows up on the screen. You are supposed to sneak around to silence them, or waves of enemies will keep coming until you kill them. Most of the time, the areas are set up in a way that you just can’t sneak around. This drove me nuts in The New Order, and I’m saddened to see it return here. I don’t know why stealth would be put into such an action-heavy game; it ruins the flow and pace of the game.
Outside of the gameplay, the graphics are pretty good, except for the textures. Even on PC, with all the bells and whistles of DirectX 11 graphics, the textures look muddy and ugly up close. I don’t know if this was to squeeze them onto consoles, but I don’t like it. This game requires a monster rig to run at full settings, some of which are questionable. 32x anti-aliasing, really? It makes the game run at 8 FPS and under 30 FPS even with a Titan X. Some other settings, such as the 8196 shadow map, just slow things down with no noticeable upgrade. I honestly think this is just crap to make PC gamers feel happy and to shut them up. The game isn’t optimized too well with texture pop-in either. Yes, I know there’s a setting for texture to fade in, but it doesn’t work. Outside of that, the game looks decent, but with all these options available, it should look better.
The Old Blood is well worth the $20 price tag. We get a lot of quality games for that, and hopefully this isn’t the end of Wolfenstein.
I first want to say that Ryse isn’t as bad as critics made the game out to be. However, I can see why it was bashed so much. It was the most anticipated Xbox One launch title. When you throw down $500 on a new console plus $60 for a game, you expect to get your money’s worth. Ryse would have pissed me off if that was the only game I picked up for the console. Is the game awful? No, it is just very repetitive and feels like a typical rushed console launch game.
The story and characters in Ryse are fantastic. You follow a Roman centurion named Marius Titus who is fighting the barbarian tribe known as Britain’s. Marius’ family gets murdered by the barbarians; however, there are quite a few plot twists that left me wanting more of the story. I actually love how the story and characters play out. It felt very authentic to the Roman Empire era; I felt like I was playing a piece of history, and you can’t say that often about games. The architecture and the way the characters dressed just sucked me in. Even the fighting styles are brutal and authentic to Roman culture. The excellent facial animations and voice acting help drive the story even further, but it’s just so sad that the story was taken down by the repetitive and bland gameplay.
The game actually seems really awesome in the first chapter. You get to order soldiers to fire volleys at enemies and control a Scorpio, but you don’t get that much control. You literally pick where your soldiers go to make the scenario easier or harder for you. There are several instances where this happens, and I felt like it wasted potential. Swordplay is just so boring by the end of the game. I actually avoided execution moves because they made me nauseous just looking at them (from repetition, not the gore). When you execute an enemy, the camera sweeps around in a cinematic frenzy. This is just so cool at first, but then you realize the quick-time events don’t do shit. The enemies will glow yellow, blue, red, or green, corresponding to the face buttons on the controller. This quick-time event concept is actually great because it’s non-intrusive, but if you miss the quick-time event, there are zero penalties. The animations don’t stop, the enemy doesn’t get the upper hand, there is no loss of health, nothing. It doesn’t even interrupt your combo, which is pretty much blasphemy in the action/adventure genre. Imagine playing God of War and failing a quick-time event; after that, the kill continues and nothing happens. What’s the point of the QTE, then, right?
There is one interesting mechanic that forces you to do QTE’s, which isn’t too bad. There are four different things you can acquire from these QTEs: health, XP, strength, and focus. I used the health drain and XP the most. I never even used my focus except for a couple of fights in the entire game. That’s not a good sign. To top it all off, the boss fights are just boring and awful. Each boss uses the same two move sets throughout the whole fight, and it becomes just a yawn-inducing repetitive hit-and-dodge game. What makes the combat the worst of all, out of everything, is that the same 10 execution animations are used on top of the same 5 enemy types that are just reskinned. It’s a lazy move that cost the game its legs and character that it got from the story and characters.
Don’t get me wrong, the game is worth a weekend rental, and it’s quite enjoyable thanks to the frequent locale changes and fast-moving story. Thankfully, the game doesn’t overstay its welcome by clocking in at about 4–5 completion times. I was able to get nearly all the upgrades before the end of the game, but this game is not worth a second playthrough, not one bit.
Let’s talk about visuals. Ryse is actually one of the best next-gen console games to be released, looks-wise. On PC, there are some enhancements like AA and SSAA, as well as better shadows and higher-resolution textures. However, this game requires a monster rig (GTX Titan) or SLI 8xx-9xx cards to run at 60 FPS maxed out. My i7 4770 and GTX 670 dropped down to the teens in some areas. Ryse uses the CryEngine 3, which looks freaking amazing, and next-gen consoles finally have the power to use it. If you don’t have a rig that was built in the last 18 months, you should probably play it on Xbox One. There’s even an option to use insane textures for 4GB VRAM GPUs. Ryse is one of the few games out that really pushes new rigs to their limits, so this is a good thing for PC gamers.
The screenshot was taken directly from my game
To top it all off, Ryse isn’t an awful game. It’s a game that has strong legs that are weakened by repetitive combat and awful boss fights. Many of the locales are just awesome, like the Colosseum, but they don’t overstay their welcome, which can balance this out a bit. If the game was pushed back another year, we could have had the best gladiator-type game ever made (Shadow of Rome and Spartan: Total Warrior still remain at the top). It’s a great weekend rental or bargain bin purchase, but nothing more.
When I first heard about Ground Zeroes being released, I thought of one other game: Gran Turismo 5 Prologue. A glorified demo that showcased the tech behind the game. This usually happens when games take way too long to release and the developers need some feedback. So they release a chunk of the game for about $30 and get the world’s reaction. Ground Zeroes is actually a glorified demo of the upcoming Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. If you aren’t a Metal Gear fan, well, what the hell are you reading this for?!
Ground Zeroes is actually taking place after the PSP game Peace Walker, which really surprised me. The game is made up of one giant mission in a large military compound. You must rescue two children, Chico and Paz, who were the main characters in Peace Walker. The first thing I noticed about GZ was how much everything has improved, from visuals to controls and animations. The entire familiar gameplay is streamlined, like it should have been years ago. No longer do you have the radio menu where you dial in and talk to people with long dialogue sequences. Just press a button to get hints on what to do, genius. The aiming is also a lot better this time around, as is inventory swapping and interacting with objects. Again, it’s all very familiar but just more streamlined. My favorite combat feature is that when you alert a guard, the game will slow down and turn towards the guard you alerted. You get about 10 seconds to put the guy down before he raises the alarm. Thanks to the more open environments, it’s much easier to see where everyone is. Climbing up a watchtower and using your binoculars to tag enemies is just what the series has needed for a while.
That’s another thing some MGS fans will not like: the open-endedness of the levels. The compound is huge, with many rooms, areas, and buildings. A new feature in MGSV is to interrogate an enemy while sneaking up on them and grabbing them. They will tell you where something valuable in the area is, like armor, a weapon, or enemy placement. You can choose to kill enemies or knock them out with your tranq pistol (like the good ‘Ol days). Figuring out where to go wasn’t too difficult. My first objective was to get Chico from a prison camp not too far from where I started. The second objective, finding Paz, was a real pain, as I had to use sound clues from a cassette recording to find out where she was. I finally figured out what area, but getting to the right building was tough. Silencers in this game eventually break, so I was stuck with just a tranq dart and couldn’t disable cameras. I had to run around finding armor that had another silenced weapon to continue, and I died many times doing so.
Once I got Paz, I called in a chopper to pick her up. I jumped on an AA gun since her being missing was discovered and the whole base was on alert. Thankfully, no one took the chopper down, and I was able to squirrel away to the starting point to end the one-hour mission. After the final cutscene, the game ended, and I thought that if I had paid for this game, I would have been really pissed off.
With that said, Ground Zeroes shows us just what Phantom Pain will be like, and I also have to mention that Kiefer Sutherland pulls off a better Snake than David Hayter. Yes, I said it; bite me.
Fighting Fantasy novels are some of the best fiction I have ever read. Being translated into a game is even better, thanks to all the perks that come with a game. Not having to keep track of stats, inventory, or where to turn the page. Sorcery is a series created by Steve Jackson and is wonderfully crafted. It’s not so much the characters in the game as the world itself and how it’s portrayed.
When the game starts out, the player comes across a beggar and has complete freedom to kill him, greet him, or just ignore him. In fact, this is a completely open game; every choice matters until the very end. I was just surprised at how much detail went into each choice and each move. Every step of the way, a choice can be made that can kill you, help you, or show consequences later in the game. Just greeting or ignoring someone can be optional, or that is the person you need to talk to to make your path easier. It’s so organic, though, and that’s the magic of this game.
The goal of the game is to find four magic lines that you must recite at the north gate of the city, which has been locked for thousands of years. Of course, you can leave the city and leave it to be burned down by the raiding orcs and goblins; however, this is the cheap way out. If you missed one of the four nobles, you must find them so you can go back to a point in the city and try the area again. Another thing I really loved is that your character remembers going through these areas, so the game is adjusted accordingly. You can avoid traps, being captured, and fights to make going to areas you missed easier. You can also rewind any encounter at any time without any penalties, which is a blessing for these adventure games.
The visuals are rather charming and feel like something that has come right out of a book. The sound design is a little lacking, but when it does kick in, along with the music, it’s fantastic. The other two elements of the game, besides adventuring, are magic and combat. Magic is used throughout the entire game, whether for predicting traps, weakening enemies, creating shields, or making yourself bigger. Magic can be used to help or harm people. Combat is strategic in a way that you must read what’s going on with the enemy and then watch their stamina bar to predict how hard your next attack should be or to defend.
In the end, I had one problem: I couldn’t figure out where the last two nobles were. I almost gave up on the game, but some of the clues finally made sense, and I was able to find both nobles in one try before going back to the north gate. The story flowing organically allowed me to remember where I heard about the nobles and that I had visited those areas, and it finally clicked. Once I opened the game, I finished the ending and couldn’t wait to jump into Sorcery 3. This game is highly recommended for RPG fans and adventure fans.
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