While the main next-gen console version of the game is considered to be an all-time classic and helped revolutionize the online FPS genre, the lower-powered hardware versions were completely different games. While they share the same name, you wouldn’t know these were Call of Duty games if you played them and no one told you.
Modern Warfare for the DS loosely follows the plot of the main game but instead takes liberty with its own unique levels and design choices. Obviously, we are working with barely better-than-PS1-level hardware here. n-Space really had to be creative and make entirely new games, mostly “themed” around the franchise. The game is still in first-person view, and you can switch between two different weapons. By default, you always start out with a pistol and another firearm. You can pick up weapons with the touch screen (a hand icon) and use that as your main weapon will not have any extra ammo available when you run out unless you die. When you die, you start out with your default weapons again and lose whatever you picked up, but your ammo is refilled. Weapons in this game feel decent, but the slowdown from the DS being pushed too hard (especially when enemies pop in) makes aiming a bit sluggish and janky.
Aiming with the touch screen feels fine. Using the D-pad or face buttons to strafe isn’t an issue either, but using the R or L button to fire can give you massive hand cramps even with larger DS systems. Most everything is controlled by the touch screen. Double-tap to bring up the ADS (Aim Down Sights), switch to grenades, and tap the weapon icon to reload. There are a few quality of life things that n-space did think of, such as when you reload, you go back to ADS if you are in that mode already, and spriting pulls you out of ADS mode. My issue with ADS is that while it’s more accurate, there’s a delay in bringing it up on screen, and that delay can cost you your life. When enemies pop in and the slowdown happens, it won’t respond to my double-taps fast enough, and I would constantly bring up the ADS and back out a few times caused by the delay. It’s not game-breaking, but very annoying.
There are two mini-games when setting explosives and defusing bombs. I found the pipe puzzles annoying, and following the wires to defuse bombs isn’t really fun or challenging. These were just thrown in here to make use of the touch screen. Honestly, who wants to solve puzzles while playing Call of Duty? It’s weird and just doesn’t fit. It really breaks the flow of combat. The enemy AI is also pretty dumb. Enemies just stand there and shoot at you; don’t take cover or move out of the way. This is literally an on-rails shooting gallery and is insanely linear. Levels are way too long, and some objectives have unfair checkpoint placements or none at all. Objectives range from collecting something to planting a bomb or just shooting everything in sight. I found the scripted mounted machine gun levels pretty fun, but the AC-130 level (similar to the console version) is awful and boring. You can barely make out any enemies, and you can’t use larger weapons against smaller enemies. There are only a couple of buildings to blow up, and you just mow down dozens of enemies over and over again in almost complete silence. It was a bad level, for sure.
The visuals are decent for what the system can do. They are definitely sterile and boring to look at, with no artistic flair. The game tried capturing the hyper-realism of the consoles, and the DS just can’t quite do this. It’s a very brown and beige-looking game. There’s no personality put into this game. It feels like a copy-and-paste FPS that you could attach any name to. Multiplayer is the same as single-player, but with another person. It’s not very exciting, and your friends will get bored fast. I appreciate n-space for trying to capture the excitement of the console versions on the limited hardware, but it needs something else. Better enemy AI, less linear-feeling levels, more interesting scripted levels, and fewer storyboard-cut scenes. It’s a great first start, but it has a lot of work before it becomes a staple DS shooter.
Horror games from the 1990s to the mid-2000s hold a special place for me. These games were genuinely unique in the sense that they focused so much on the atmosphere that they may have been shunned in critic reviews, sold poorly, and generally ignored during their time, but we have come to love them later on. Horror games have rarely been made the same since. Fatal Frame was a very unique series that took the genre to new heights with interesting gameplay mechanics that steered away from guns and running away from things. Your Camera Obscura was your weapon and puzzle solver, and the first game won gamers over, but it had unfair difficulty and had clunky controls. The second game fixed a lot of this and was later upgraded further for Xbox. This would also, sadly, be the last game in the series on Microsoft’s green beast of burden.
You play as new characters this time around. Twin sisters Mio and Mayu Amakura You are trying to solve the mystery of the “Crimson Sacrifice Ritual” in All God’s Village, a fictional town in Japan. This isn’t a journalistic setting; instead, just two girls are playing in their favorite spot when a dam collapses and Mio falls. The original sacrificee wants revenge and her own twin sister back, and you both are prime candidates. The story is rather interesting and very dark and creepy. I enjoyed it quite a bit, as it surprisingly had more depth than most horror games of the time. Most of the story is told through texts you find (there are a lot) and not so much in cut scenes. There are crystals you can now pick up and listen to on your radio, and these are rather haunting. I enjoyed these quite a bit. The voice acting is surprisingly decent (for the time), and the voices of the dead can really make you feel uneasy.
Of course, the main attraction is the Camera Obscura. Once again, you use this to kill ghosts and see things that aren’t there. It’s more refined this time around, with better controls. You can switch to proper FPS controls, which makes playing much easier. Upgrades are more robust, as are equipped add-ons. You can find add-ons throughout the game, with some being passive and some requiring you to charge your camera. You can equip up to three add-ons and swap between them while in camera mode. These range from Blast, See, Stun, Slow, etc. These can be upgraded along with your basic functions, like in the first game. Finding passive ghosts and taking photos of them (if you’re quick) can give you Spirit Points as well as fighting spirits. You need spirit orbs to slot in to be able to advance to the next upgrade level. Each power has three levels. I highly recommend upgrading your basic stats first. Spirit Points are more plentiful than in the first game, which is a good thing.
Just like in the first game, your goal is to take a photo as close to the spirits’ faces as possible to be able to take a Fatal Frame shot. There is a meter that powers up around the circle in the center, and when it hits red, you need to be quick. There is a red flash at the top that tells you when it’s best to use a power-up. On rare occasions, you can get a two-photo combo for massive damage. There are film types in this game, and thankfully the weakest is unlimited. This means you won’t ruin your game (like in the first one) if you run out of film. The game will just become insanely hard. Higher types are plentiful, and I never ran out, but I recommend saving the Zero film for the final boss. There’s less than 10 in the entire game. I also found healing items incredibly plentiful, and I never ran out.
My biggest complaint is the backtracking and navigation. It’s hard to figure out where to go next. There are obscure objectives, and some things won’t trigger until you enter the correct room. This is a much bigger game than the first. With three large houses and the village itself to explore, I had to use a walkthrough throughout most of the game because I just kept getting lost, but that’s par for the course for survival horror games of this era. I found the visuals to be fantastic, even by today’s standards. Great textures, models, and lighting are amazing. The Xbox really shows off what the series can do here, and it’s a shame the third game never got a port.
Overall, Fatal Frame II is a fantastic upgrade over the first. Just make sure you have a guide handy. The controls are much improved, the camera system is more robust, enemies are actually fun to fight this time around, and bosses are challenging. The story is interesting enough, and the lore is creepy and unsettling. The atmosphere alone is worth playing through this game for. Haunting music, a few jump scares, creepy ghost designs, and insanely unsettling throughout.
Wild West games blew up in the mid-2000s. Games like Read Dead Revolver and Call of Juarez really pushed the genre forward. Gun was a highly anticipated open-world game that was being watched by Grand Theft Auto fans. I remember reading about this game in magazines leading up to its release and being disappointed with how linear and simple it was. You play Colt White, who is just living day-to-day life with his father, Ned White, when he dies, and you get sent on a mission to avenge him, which leads to a road of greed and death. The story is really simple and short. It’s honestly very one-dimensional, but the voice acting is solid, with major actors like Tom Skerret and Ron Perlman.
The majority of the game is made up of shooting. As the title implies, guns are the main focus of the game. You have an array of weapon types, such as six-shooters, lever-action rifles, sniper rifles (bolt-action), melee, throwables, and bows. You slowly unlock these weapons as you play the story, and you can also upgrade them at the shopkeep. You can acquire more gold by finding it in the wild or completing side missions. Side missions are the second bulk of the game, ranging from bounties to poker games and, overall, just shooting up more bad guys. There’s no variation in mission type outside of the names. In the end, you’re either killing someone or rescuing a horse.
Horseback riding is a major gameplay element here, and it’s done surprisingly well for the time. They’re treated kind of like cars in the GTA. They have health meters, which are also tied to stamina. Overwork your horse, and it will die. You can trample enemies with the horse, which is great for clearing out large groups, and they are needed to travel between the two towns. This is one disappointment I have with the game. It’s surprisingly linear, and the open-endedness is an illusion. This is just one large map full of brown dust, canyons, a couple of rivers, and a meadow. The game is very dull and void of any life, unlike GTA, which feels vibrant and constantly moving. There’s just the wind and twanging background music playing. The towns may have three or four people walking around, and there are no interiors to speak of. It’s indeed a very empty world.
I highly recommend just blowing through the story mode in the 4-5 hours it takes and forgoing most upgrades. Despite having this shop system, it is pretty much pointless. Sure, it helps to have more damage or quicker reloads, but the quickdraw allows you to kind of cheat and constantly use it as long as you’re killing enemies to refill it. Empty the meter. Shoot about five enemies and empty it again. I never really saw the need for most of the upgrades. This will alleviate the pain of completing these dull side missions.
The shooting in Gun is mostly stiff and awkward. It’s not amazing. There is a sticky auto-aim, and you can aim down your sights with rifles, but the camera zooms too far in, and you can’t follow anyone up close. Stealth is pretty much pointless outside of a single-story mission because enemies can somehow see and hear you from a mile away. The explosives were surprisingly useless as well. Enemies can stand just in front of or behind an explosion, and they aren’t affected. This is really terrible. There are some missions that have you mount a cannon and hit everything dead on. There is no splash damage for explosions in this game. It makes no sense.
Overall, the game is very linear, ugly, and pretty repetitive. The side missions don’t add any variation, the upgrade system can be skipped entirely, and the open world is void of life. The only redeeming value of this game is its great voice acting, many cut-scenes, and short length. The story isn’t even anything noteworthy either, and the same goes for the characters. With their short length, they have no time to expand or grow on us. We get no backstory. Just the here-and-now, and that means nothing when characters die. I would only recommend this game if you’re itching for a Western game and need to go back in time, but this game really did not live up to the hype upon release.
Many people use video game reviews to determine how to spend their hard-earned dollars. While as an adult I don’t take this as seriously and I now make my own money I am more forgiving of games that aren’t perfect. As kids or teens, we have limited money and are usually picked through gaming magazines to determine if that one game was worth the money because we only got a few a year. For me, it was only during Christmas time that my parents bought games. I mostly rented mine throughout my childhood and teen years. Even for rentals, I was picky as I didn’t want to be stuck on my weekend with a dud of a game. Even a 7/10 or 3.5/5 would be considered a waste of time. This was the last generation in which AAA title after AAA title would be considered fantastic and with so many exclusives it was hard to keep up with. The HD era of gaming would see budgets balloon to insane heights and game releases slowed down as a result.
In my eyes, 7/10 or 3.5/5 games are mostly ignored. These aren’t always considered hidden gems either. Some are, but some are just considered forgettable. Not awful or good, but just passes under everyone’s radar. These aren’t the “so bad it’s good” games either. A few of these games have cult followings; a few I had only heard of while compiling this list and some I played myself growing up. I compiled this list from Metacritic with games between 74-70. I feel that’s the true blue 7 range. 79 and 78-rated games usually only have about 25% of the critics giving it a 7 to bring an otherwise 8 score down some. These games are at least rated by half the critics as 7/10. While I know many people don’t listen to critics and some might feel this game should be rated higher or lower is subjective. Like it or not, critic reviews drive sales and it may be the reason why you might find a few games on this list you’ve never heard of, thought was talked about worse than you remember, or something along those lines
Dead Rising 2: Case West – 2010
An exclusive standalone title bringing back Frank West. It was too little too late as the second game wasn’t a big enough improvement for most people. I personally don’t care for this series but die-hard fans at this one up.
Most Recent Entry: Dead Rising 4 – 2016 (PC, XONE)
Capsized – 2013
This indie title was well-liked for its visuals and atmosphere as well as old-school challenge, but its combat and exploration were a bit one-note and didn’t hold most people’s attention for long
Ridge Racer 6 – 2005
A console launch title that was met with a lot of hype. It was just average. There were better arcade racers at the time and it didn’t advance the series enough to be groundbreaking. For a console launch title, it also didn’t show off the power of the 360 at the time like it did with the PSP.
Most Recent Entry: Ridge Racer: Draw and Drift – 2016 (iOS, AND)
Kinectimals – 2010
One of the most hyped Xbox 360 games to date. This was shown off during the Kinect unveil at E3 and people went nuts. It’s probably the best Kinect game out there and while it was praised for its imagination and whimsy it didn’t have much gameplay or content to keep you coming back.
Comic Jumper: The Adventures of Captain Smiley – 2010
Comic Jumper was praised for innovative gameplay and fun characters, but lacked depth and became very repetitive. It felt like an older Xbox game at best.
Dance Dance Revolution Universe – 2007
A competent yet underwhelming debut on next-gen consoles. The graphics were sub-par and there was no addition of custom soundtracks which many stated was a missed opportunity. It was just more DDR on Xbox 360.
Most Recent Entry: Dance Dance Revolution II – 2011 (WII)
Your Shape: Fitness Evolved – 2010
The short-lived series made its mark at the launch of the Kinect and many praised it for using the device well, but underneath was simply a workout simulator and nothing more.
Most Recent Entry: Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2013 – 2012 (WIIU)
Jetpac Refueled – 2006
A cheap reimagining of the classic Atari game. It worked well enough, but if you aren’t a fan of high-score games then this wasn’t for you. It didn’t do anything to evolve the series enough.
Motocross Madness – 2013
The final game in the long-running series. Its console debut, and reboot, featured cute avatar characters, and looked good, but had very little content outside of multiplayer.
NBA Baller Beats – 2012
Not to be confused with Midway’s NBA Baller series. It was an ambitious title and probably one of the most unique for the Kinect. You used a real-life basketball and dribbled to a rhythm game. It was great for practicing and a good workout, but hindered the visuals and content department. People also complained of needing said basketball and a hard surface. Anyone living with downstairs neighbors was also left out.
Most Recent Entry: NBA 2K23 – 2022 (PC, XONE, PS4, PS5, XSX, NS)
Hybrid – 2012
Even if you wanted to play this game you can’t. It was online only with no bots and isn’t for purchase any longer. Now it’s just a relic and time capsule. The game was praised for doing interesting things, but was priced too high, had no offline play, and had weird controls.
Small Arms – 2006
An early title that launched with Xbox LIVE Arcade. This four player brawler had a charming roster and fun combat but didn’t offer much in terms of longevity or depth. It’s still available today to play on Xbox One.
Raiden Fighters Aces – 2009
For a budget retail title, it offered three Raiden games that hardcore fans would love. Other than that the game was questioned for being double the price of most LIVE Arcade games and only including three.
Most Recent Entry: Raiden IV x MIKADO remix – 2021 (NS)
Zumba Fitness Rush – 2012
Fitness games were everywhere for the Kinect and motion devices. It was an unstoppable plague. Zumba Fitness was considered one of the better ones, but each version lacked a variety of content.
Most Recent Entry: Zumba: Burn It Up! – 2019 (NS)
Kinect: Disneyland Adventures – 2011
Of course, this was going to happen. Riding the apex of the Kinect’s popularity you can take a trip down a virtual Disneyland. The game was praised for capturing the magic of the theme park but lacked content or challenge.
Scene It? Lights, Camera, Action – 2007
Trivia games have always had their audience and Scene It?burned up and fizzled out fast. This one was exclusive on Xbox 360 for some reason and was critiqued for having trivia that only 20 something’s (who are in their 30s now) would get and understand. It wasn’t great for family night.
Most Recent Entry: Scene It?: Movie Night – 2011 (X360, PS3)
Kinect Sports – 2010
The most popular Kinect game, it launched with the device, and it was a direct rival to Wii Sports. It didn’t have the same charm sadly. While the games were fun the motion controls didn’t register accurately and it lacked overall content. The series would try one last time on the Xbox One before fading out of existence.
Most Recent Entry: Kinect Sports: Rivals – 2014 (XONE)
Crimson Alliance – 2011
Praised for its bright visuals and fun take on the Diablo formula, but was really short and didn’t offer much in terms of content. It was also best played with other people as the AI wasn’t very good.
Omega Five – 2008
A fun yet shallow side scrolling shooter. It looked really good as well with lots of nice effects, but it didn’t have a unique hook or visual style and in the end, many people lost interest.
Race Pro – 2009
A racing sim that was praised for its realism but lacked content and felt too similar to the PC racing sims. It just couldn’t compete with the likes of Forzaand Project Gotham Racing.
Amped 3 – 2005
A system launch title and originally Microsoft’s answer to SSX Amped had its following and crowd. Amped 3 was well…amped up to launch and was one of the better-selling games. Despite this, the game lacked content despite looking next-gen, but it looked bland and didn’t have much flair or style to it. It played like a generic snowboarding game. The series would end here.
Gel: Set & Match – 2009
An original puzzle game indeed, but it just felt like it wasn’t enough or didn’t reach its full potential. It wasn’t super accessible and also not challenging enough at the same time.
Star Ocean: The Last Hope – 2009
Xbox 360 exclusive JRPGs weren’t plentiful and none of them were stellar. Many kept playing them until FFXIII would surface, but Star Ocean hasn’t been a good franchise in over a decade. The Last Hope was full of long drawn out cut scenes, an uninteresting story, and gameplay that was boring and average. However, regular JRPG lovers will find enough to like here. It would later released on PS3 with little fanfare.
Most Recent Entry: Star Ocean: The Divine Force – 2022 (PC, PS4, XONE, XSX, PS5)
Phantom Breaker: Battlegrounds – 2013
This is a hardcore beat ’em up similar to Castle Crashers, however, it’s not as accessible. Some claimed it was too complicated, and some said it had gameplay mechanics that weren’t the best. Overall, if you like this genre there’s something here for you. It’s also getting a new game this year.
Most Recent Entry: Phantom Breaker: Omnia – 2022 (PC, NS, XONE, PS4)
South Park: Let’s Go Tower Defense Play! – 2009
Considered the best South Park game at the time, but that’s not a big shoe to fill. You either needed to be a South Park fan or love tower defense to enjoy this. It offered very little variety and not much outside of multiplayer.
Most Recent Entry: South Park: The Fractured But Whole – 2017 (PC, PS4, XONE, NS)
Axel & Pixel – 2009
A great looking original point-and-click adventure that was praised for being brave enough to bring this genre back, but the story wasn’t interesting enough to garnish sales for a sequel. If you love the genre and haven’t played this then you’re in for a visual treat.
Hexic 2 – 2007
A new game by Tetris creator Alex Pajitnov is exciting. Hexic 2‘s Xbox 360 exclusivity wasn’t a surprise, but it wasn’t much more than the original. The first Hexic game was the first ever LIVE Arcade game I played as it came with my system bundled in. I never bothered with the sequel, but my sister was obsessed with this game. Many complained the game cost too much for how little it offered.
The Splatters – 2012
A unique and fun physics based puzzle game, but players felt the game was too hard, unfair, and overall rough around the edges. It’s still fun for puzzle fans as there’s nothing else like it.
Nike+ Kinect Training – 2012
Nike threw their hat into the Kinect ring a little too late and what we got was a pure training simulator with almost no game. It wasn’t fun, it was very serious and didn’t have the best motion detection setup. If you had one training sim for your Kinect you had them all.
Meteos Wars – 2008
The DS phenomenon came to Xbox 360 but was hampered by an overly aggressive AI and no online play. Despite the name, you’d mistake this for an online only game. While the core gameplay was intact, it didn’t have a lot to offer. This would be the final nail in the series’ coffin.
Lips – 2008 Lips: Number One Hits – 2009
If the name wasn’t dumb enough the karaoke genre was overflowing with shovelware at this point. Despite this one-off game for the 360 being decent as a simulator. It wasn’t really a game. You just sing to the words like any other game with no modes or actual fun.
Fruit Ninja Kinect – 2011
Does anyone remember Fruit Ninja? It was a smartphone phenomenon. It also got a giant arcade version which I actually got to play. While this is one of the better Kinect games it was way overpriced and this hurt sales and reviews. It had about the same content as the smartphone versions at nearly full retail price. It’s a great title to own if you have one collecting dust somewhere.
Most Recent Entry: Fruit Ninja 2 – 2020 (AND, iOS)
Easy Golf: Course Architect – 2008
This was a more high-profile indie game that was made by the community. It looked simple, but played well enough and had a robust course editor. It was best played online. However, the rather ugly visuals and UI hampered the experience a bit.
Chromehounds – 2006
If the cover isn’t the most generic thing you’ve ever seen it doesn’t end there. The game didn’t look up to snuff for the era, but offered a robust customization suite with great online play, but lacked everywhere else. It’s a decent mech game that was exclusive to the system but quickly forgotten about.
Crackdown 2 – 2010
The first Crackdown was loads of fun and felt original. Sadly, due to the surprising popularity, the sequel was greenlit too fast and we got more of the same which wasn’t really a good thing for an open world game. It felt like an expansion if you can say that. The series never reached the heights of the original.
Most Recent Entry: Crackdown 3 – 2019 (PC, XONE)
Bubble Bobble Neo! – 2009
Another arcade version of Bubble Bobble. Nothing new or innovative and incredibly hard, but if you love arcade games then this is for you. At this point in time, any form of Bubble Bobble was heeded with groans as it was a series Taito had beaten into the ground at this point.
A hyped up exclusive that got attention everywhere. It was first looked down upon due to its dated visuals which didn’t look next-gen. It was also a slower paced strategy title that would automatically neuter sales. In the end, the game had fun multiplayer, but was really repetitive. It would have done better as a PC title.
Bomberman Live: Battlefest – 2010
Better than the abysmal 360 exclusive, but plays it too safe to set itself apart from other games. The online play was a good addition, and the visuals are charming, but that’s about it.
Most Recent Entry: Amazing Bomberman – 2022 (MAC, iOS)
Full Auto – 2006
A very short lived series and a not-so-surprising Sega exclusive on Xbox. This was a generic feeling car battler at its core despite the high octane thrills and average track design.
Most Recent Entry: Full Auto 2: Battlelines – 2007 (PSP, PS3)
Haunt – 2012
This Kinect title was late to the game, but provided a charming haunted house to travel through. Ultimately it was over in a few hours and didn’t have much gameplay or depth to keep you coming back.
Ticket to Ride – 2008
There wasn’t anything inherently wrong with the game. It was for hardcore boardgame players really. It had a dry presentation and was simple to learn but hard to master. I feel if it had flashier visuals it would have appealed to more people.
LucasArts’ SCUMM engine games hold a great fanbase for those who grew up in the 80s computer gaming scene. They were bright and colorful. revolutionary for their time in terms of gameplay and art. They were also later updated with voice acting, which was some of the first of its kind. While the games were short (running around 6 hours per game), they were memorable and had a special sense of humor that was considered top-notch. The series got a much-anticipated remake, starting with the first game. While not much was really added, the entire game was redrawn from scratch with all new lines of dialog recorded by the original cast.
The game definitely plays like an old point-and-click adventure of yore. Clumsy controls (which were never really fixed), slow pace, obtuse object hunting, and no puzzles That’s not to say the game is bad. While it doesn’t feel as modern as The Longest Journey or even David Cage’s games with quick-time events and button pressing, that’s part of the charm. Thankfully, the game has a hint system that slowly gives you more specific hints, including full-on arrows pointing to the exact spot you need to be. This was really helpful and a must-have for first-time players or those who aren’t familiar with this era of adventure games.
The game has two main areas. The first one consists of some small areas, a town, and a large overhead map to get to these areas. Most of the game is spent gathering items and figuring out where and how to use them. You have multiple commands, such as talk to, push, pull, look at, use, open, and close. These are used by pulling up an action command menu, and then you have your inventory. To use these commands, you need to pull up the command menu and then the inventory. This is cumbersome and took a while to figure out. You control Guybrush by clicking around on the ground, but his walk cycle is pretty slow. There’s a lot of backtracking in this game, and this slowed the progress a bit. One thing I didn’t like was the insult for sword fighting. You have to lose to pirates to learn their insults and comebacks. You need to learn enough to defeat the first “boss”. There was a lot of trial and error doing this, and it got really frustrating.
The stars of the show are the characters and the writing. The salesman Stan, for example, is hilarious. Using overexaggerated arm waving and an obnoxious coat to look like a sleazy salesman. The pirate LeChuck doesn’t get much on-screen time, but neither do most of the characters. The main character, Guybrush, is who you will get to know the most. There is an optional dialog for most characters to get to know their personalities more than their backstories. There just isn’t enough time to get to know them more. So, it makes up for funny writing and witty humor, which the game does solidly.
I liked the visuals in this game. The hand-drawn art is beautiful and still captures the classic LucasArts look. Some of the animations feel a bit stiff still, but again, that all adds to the charm. The voice acting is awesome, and there are some funny uses of items and small tidbits of humor thrown in that did make me chuckle. I have to say that this game won’t hold everyone’s attention. It is slow to build up and takes a while to get going. A lot of people might feel lost clicking on everything and not realize what order to do things in, but the hint system makes this game much more enjoyable. I highly recommend this classic remake, but it won’t be to everyone’s taste.
Many people use video game reviews to determine how to spend their hard-earned dollars. While as an adult I don’t take this as seriously and I now make my own money I am more forgiving of games that aren’t perfect. As kids or teens, we have limited money and are usually picked through gaming magazines to determine if that one game was worth the money because we only got a few a year. For me, it was only during Christmas time that my parents bought games. I mostly rented mine throughout my childhood and teen years. Even for rentals, I was picky as I didn’t want to be stuck on my weekend with a dud of a game. Even a 7/10 or 3.5/5 would be considered a waste of time. This was the last generation in which AAA title after AAA title would be considered fantastic and with so many exclusives it was hard to keep up with. The HD era of gaming would see budgets balloon to insane heights and game releases slowed down as a result.
In my eyes, 7/10 or 3.5/5 games are mostly ignored. These aren’t always considered hidden gems either. Some are, but some are just considered forgettable. Not awful or good, but just passes under everyone’s radar. These aren’t the “so bad it’s good” type of games either. A few of these games have cult followings while a few I had only heard of while compiling this list and some I played myself growing up. I compiled this list from Metacritic with games between 74-70. I feel that’s the true blue 7 range. 79 and 78-rated games usually only have about 25% of the critics giving it a 7 to bring an otherwise 8 score down some. These games are at least rated by half the critics as 7/10. While I know a lot of people don’t listen to critics and some might feel this game should be rated higher or lower is subjective. Like it or not, critic reviews drive sales and it may be the reason why you might find a few games on this list you’ve never heard of, thought was talked about worse than you remember, or something along those lines
Greg Hastings Tournament Paintball – 2004
Paintball is an odd choice for a game, but it worked. It was a popular Xbox LIVE title that blended FPS gameplay with the fun of paintball. It was low budget but worked. The series would eventually die out in 2010 due to low sales.
The UFC series is incredibly popular. Maybe a B-tier sports title. It made its home on Xbox with stunning visuals, but people complained of the short length and lack of overall content.
Most Recent Entry: UFC 4 – 2020 (PS4, XONE)
Dai Senryaku VII: Modern Military Tactics – 2005
TheDai Senryaku is a hardcore Japanese tile-based strategy game and it was weird to see this series become an Xbox exclusive for a while. It was praised for its monumental amount of content, but this is a very niche crowd that’s mostly kept on PC. It was criticized for its ugly visuals and sound, however.
Most Recent Entry: Dai Senryaku Perfect 4.0 – 2018 (NS, PS4, PC)
Ultra Bust-A-Move– 2004
It seems every system had its own exclusiveBust-A-Move. The Xbox couldn’t even escape it. It’s the same game we’ve all played before. While slightly more colorful and childlike than other versions, it’s fun and you can play online.
Most Recent Entry: Bust-A-Move: Journey – 2017 (AND, iOS)
Apex– 2003
An interesting attempt at becoming the best racing sim on Xbox. It was liked for its great visuals and varied tracks but had very little content and no online mode.
Transworld Snowboarding – 2002
A one-and-done by Atari, Transworld was trying to grab at that Xtreme Sports cash and couldn’t catch on. SSX was the dominating snowboard title. While this one looked good it just couldn’t hang with the rest.
NFL Fever 2003 – 2002 NFL Fever 2004 – 2003
The third and final entry at a Madden killer, NFL Fever looked dated and on a budget. It was praised for gameplay that tried to be different, but many people couldn’t look past the dated looks.
Phantom Crash – 2002
This was a decent attempt at a mech game on Xbox before MechWarrior came out. It looked great but had a steep learning curve and was a bit on the dry side gameplay-wise. The sequel would later move to the PS2 and then end due to low sales.
Most Recent Entry: S.L.A.I.: Steel Lancer Arena International – 2005 (PS2)
Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball– 2003
This is a game that really needs no introduction. You ogle atDead or Alivegirls in bikinis playing mini-games. It was every teenage boy’s dream to get a hold of this game without their parents knowing. I wound up playing the sequel by renting it secretly from Gamefly as a teen. The series is fine. It spawned a couple of later sequels and remains mostly the same. Shallow gameplay and perving out.
Most Recent Entry: Dead or Alive: Xtreme – Venus Vacation – 2019 (PC)
Voodoo Vince – 2003
Microsoft was really pushing to get a mascot platformer on their system. While none of them were stellar Voodoo Vince was one of the most original. It was angst and mature enough to reel in the adults and teens while providing fun challenges. It had a wonky camera and some weird elements that turned people off. It got a remaster in 2017.
Most Recent Entry: Voodoo Vince Remastered – 2017 (PC, XONE)
Gunvalkyrie – 2002
This was one of Sega’s contracted games with Microsoft. It was a shooter similar to Panzer Dragoon, but involved puzzles. It looked good and felt unique, but there was something off and janky about the whole ordeal.
NBA Inside Drive 2003 – 2002 NBA Inside Drive 2004 – 2003
Microsoft really wanted to have exclusive sports franchises on their systems but they all felt the second rate. While NBA Inside Drive wasn’t awful it didn’t evolve as fast as the competition. It looked great, but everything else was falling behind. The series didn’t last any longer and was canceled.
Sega GT Online – 2004
A mostly online-only update to the Sega GT series. This $20 entry was great for newcomers, but previous players could import their save. It was too little for the final game in the series but was decent arcade fun.
The House of the Dead III – 2002
This was another contracted game from Sega. One of their promised 12 games. The improved graphics were awesome, and it was classic House of the Dead gameplay, but felt dated and was really short.
Most Recent Entry: The House of the Dead: Remake – 2022 (NS, PC, PS4, XONE, XSX)
Dungeons & Dragons Heroes – 2003
Heroes was well-liked for its fun co-op gameplay, but wasn’t fun solo and wasn’t very deep. The series struggled during this time on consoles and various reboots were hit or miss.
Most Recent Entry: Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance – 2021 (PC, PS5, XSX, PS4, XONE)
Hunter the Reckoning: Redeemer – 2003
Being the final game in the series and exclusive to Xbox, Redeemer was a slick-looking hack-and-slash but had a terrible camera and an unpleasantly boring story. I remember playing the demo of Wayward on my PS2 over and over again and never got a chance to play this one.
ToeJam & Earl III: Mission to Earth – 2002
Another Sega exclusive on the system, this brought the beloved Sega Genesis/Mega Drive series back in 3D! It felt a bit wonky with some control issues, repetitive gameplay, and overall weirdness that either sat well with you or didn’t.
Most Recent Entry: ToeJam & Earl: Back in the Groove! – 2019 (PS4, MAC, NS, PC, XONE)
Breakdown – 2004
This is one of the first Xbox games I ever played. It’s a weirdly ambitious title with a lot of realistic gameplay elements thrown inside of a poorly balanced and frustrating mess. The unique elements and interesting story are worth it if you can stomach the problems.
Raze’s Hell – 2005
An attempt at a cutesy yet mature game full of great visuals and humor, but it doesn’t excel a lot in the gameplay department. It’s a unique game and has that “Xbox needs to have ‘X’ type of game” feeling that the system had in its hayday.
Blood Wake – 2001
A weird vehicle combat game with no online play. It doesn’t exceed anywhere and looks too realistic to be memorable. It looked great, but that was mostly it.
Blinx: The Time Sweeper – 2002
Microsoft’s Ratchet & Clank. This was supposed to be the platformer with ‘tude, but didn’t sell very well. It came off as too kid-friendly and the adult manly console. It also didn’t help that the game was very dated and became a linear collect-a-thon. The sequel would radically change the series, but still wasn’t enough. It wouldn’t see the light of day after this.
Most Recent Entry: Blinx 2: Masters of Time & Space – 2004 (Xbox)
Quantum Redshift – 2002
This was Microsoft’s answer to Wipeout orF-Zero. It looked amazing but fell short in gameplay. It’s fun, and not broken at all, but it doesn’t stand out from the other games. There’s no soul here.
Xyanide – 2006
This was a late entry shmup offering. The cheap price point was appealing and it looked great, but was hard as nails and very short. A lone sequel would appear on PS2 and PSP the following year, and surprisingly absent from the Xbox.
Most Recent Entry: Xyanide: Resurrection – 2007 (PS2, PSP, PC)
Steel Battalion: Line of Contact – 2004
The infamous Steel Batallion controller is a serious collectible. This game brought the series online and was best played there. It’s very niche and didn’t sell well. The series would be rebooted for Kinect and become a colossal disaster.
Most Recent Entry: Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor – 2012 (X360)
Fuzion Frenzy – 2001
A party game for a launch title is a bit risky but makes sense. Many people visit during console launches and this is a great game to play with everyone. It’s a cult classic and has been added as backwards compatible on every Xbox system. While shallow and lacking in content it’s a must-play with real people.
America’s Army: Rise of a Soldier – 2005
The popular yet niche series is officially endorsed by the U.S. of A and Uncle Sam. This realistic shooter wasn’t your yearly Call of Duty. It was slow-paced and tactical and while dry and dull at times it made you think.
We all love a good scare, right? Horror games are some of gaming’s greatest past times. Usually booming in October, horror games from the past and present are played all around the world. The problem is, there just aren’t a lot of them made, and the best ones are far and few between. Usually, this is a great time to dig up old classics rather than trudge through recent crap. While the PS1/PS2 era was the golden age of horror games, the HD era, or the seventh generation of consoles, struggled and was probably the most anemic when it came to horror games, especially the good ones. There’s a reason why some of the rarest and most coveted physical games are horrors. It’s the genre that’s been the least explored and not done well enough most of the time. If you can look past clunky controls and awkward gameplay, most retro horror games do provide good scares, atmosphere, creepy monsters, and good visuals. I’ve compiled a list of the best and the worst.
American McGee is well known for his dark interpretation of the Alice in Wonderland series. The first game, American McGee’s Alice, was clunky mechanically but was a visual treat. The same goes for the sequel. It’s a gorgeous game with a lot of dark themes dealing with mental illness. The enemies are fantastically designed, and the levels themselves are living art. Despite the incredibly repetitive gameplay, this one is a blast to play through.
A lot of people didn’t like Homecoming due to its more action-oriented combat, but I actually quite liked it. I feel it was the last good Silent Hill game in the series, and it still retains the creepy atmosphere and insane creature design. The haunting music is still present as well. While it’s not as tense as the original trilogy, Homecoming does have better combat, despite being the wrong focus here. This was the first game in the series that was part of the jump to the next generation. The next game in the series, Downpour, would be considered the worst in the series, and I personally hated it. These would be the last games in the series to date.
Metro 2033 and Last Light were some of the best horror games to grace the seventh generation of consoles. While they played and looked best on PC, the console versions still looked great and did a good job giving us scares. The post-apocalyptic horror series had an intriguing story and a tense atmosphere, along with crazy creature designs. The final game in the trilogy, Exodus, would be on next-generation systems and receive mixed reviews.
While not inherently designed to give you nightmares, Shadows has a lot of horror elements in its design, such as creepy enemies and an overall atmosphere of dread. It’s more of a comedy-horror title, but it has tons of style that helps make swallowing the shallow substance a bit easier. It’s also not very good-looking, on a technical basis, but the art is awesome. Most of Suda 51’s games were one-shots and never saw sequels. SotD never saw high enough sales, even if he wanted to do a sequel. To date, it hasn’t seen a remaster, remake, or port.
Condemned Series
Condemned: Criminal Origins really showed us what next-generation visuals could look like. The E3 2006 demo blew me away, and it was one of the reasons I got an Xbox 360. This was one of the few games that looked the part and really pushed the industry into a new era of HD visuals. It’s a game that can be replayed many times, and you will always have a fun experience. It’s too bad the series is dead because Monolith nailed the atmosphere here. The game is intense, with crazy melee combat and incredibly dark and haunting levels. Crazy bums coming out of nowhere, breathing, panting, and trying to attack you in dark hallways is something else. The sequel, Bloodshot, was great but focused more on combat and less on the atmosphere, so it’s not quite as scary. It was also the nail in the coffin, as due to the poor sales of the sequel, Sega shuttered the series for good. To date, the series hasn’t seen a remaster, remake, or port of any kind.
Dante’s Inferno is one of the best hack-and-slash games ever made, but EA was bound to make sure you didn’t know that. It didn’t get much attention and was considered just another God of War rip-off. While the game was short, it had incredibly responsive and fun combat, an interesting protagonist, and insanely gory and adult-themed levels. It’s just too bad the story wasn’t fleshed out enough. What’s here is a fun 4-5 hour game that you won’t find anywhere else. Sadly, the game’s low sales sealed its fate to have no sequel, caused Visceral to shutter, and hasn’t seen a port, remaster, or remake to date.
Specifically speaking about the first two games, BioShock had a crazy dark atmosphere, some creepy enemies, and horror that kind of just oozed everywhere. There were no jump scares or downright frightening scenes, but you always had a sense of dread and fear, and that’s really hard to pull off in games. The game was more about psychological horror and isolation, and it sure pulled off mostly the best in the first game. Surprisingly, the entire trilogy was released during this generation and would receive barely passable ports later on as the BioShock Collection.
While Dead Space 3 was mostly about action and less about horror, the first two games were damn scary. I would consider them one of the scariest games I have ever played. Jump scares aside, there was a constant foreboding presence of something lurking around every corner, and the Necromorphs are some of the greatest video game enemies of all time. This was peak horror during the HD era. Another trilogy saw its ending in the same generation cycle. The series would stall here, and the first game would receive a remake two generation cycles later.
Deadly Premonition is the perfect game; it’s so bad, it’s good. The gameplay is dated and feels like a PS1 game; the graphics are terrible; and the voice acting is awful, but the writing and overall atmosphere the game presents are well done and memorable. It really feels like a PS2 game that was quickly ported over to next-gen consoles without any improvements in mind. It can be scary in the sense that its trippy Japanese horror weirdness will freak you out more than scare you. This is one of the few games you should stomach for its terrible design and weirdness. It’s worth it. It would get a sequel in the next generation, but it would not look like it and would be poorly received.
Oh, man, this one brings me back. The first game was very scary, with crazy The Ring girl vibes that were all the rage in the early 2000s. The gunplay was genuinely solid, and you needed a NASA PC to run it back in the day, but forget about understanding the story. The second game had some really scary elements but was more action-oriented and had less of a mid-2000s PC shooter Half-Life 2 style vibe to it. The third game, well, just isn’t scary at all. Another trilogy was released in the same console cycle. While the first game was a port and was released during the PS2/Xbox era, the entire trilogy would never see a remake or remaster.
The Resident Evil series really took off after the previous generation. This generation will see the most action-focused games yet. Resident Evil 5, 6, and Operation Raccoon City were the main releases. There was also an HD port of the 3DS exclusive Revelations, as well as Revelations 2 as a sequel. Some would consider this the weakest run the series had, only to go back to its roots in the next generation cycle, starting with Resident Evil VII. The games also weren’t very scary around this time. They were just too action-focused and didn’t have the same nuanced scares and puzzles as before. Revelations would be the only sub-series to feel scary or have any tension at all. Operation Raccoon City would be lauded as the worst game in the series.
The Last of Us would be considered one of the best horror games ever made. It was wildly praised and made waves throughout the gaming industry, receiving awards and praise from all angles. The tense stealth scenes with the Clickers were awesome. These monsters are some of the creepiest and eeriest creatures ever made for a horror game. This wasn’t just another zombie game. It would receive a sequel in the following generation as well as some of the most controversial decisions ever for a game. It would also receive a full remake and remaster.
Outlast
Released at the tail end of the HD era of gaming, Outlast never saw a port to consoles until the next generation. It was damn scary. This small indie game made waves and became one of the top streaming games of all time. The tense atmosphere and overall great design, in general, made Outlast terrifying. The sequel would be released several years later on PC and consoles, as well as a port of the first game released about a year later.
Amnesia was probably the top-streamed video game of the year in 2010. Game streaming was new, and scare reactions reached the charts on YouTube. There hadn’t been many really scary games during this generation. It was all action-focused and multiplayer-focused to generate sales. That’s why this indie game was released on PC only at the time. It had interesting puzzles and enemies you couldn’t fight. It wouldn’t receive a port until many years later and two generations later. The sequels, A Machine for Pigs and Rebirth, would be poorly received, and I personally didn’t like them that much either.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Series
The STALKER series wouldn’t sell well at first but would gain a huge cult following. The entire trilogy was released around the mid-life of the HD era and was exclusive to PC. It’s rough around the edges, but a huge following of moderators would improve the game, and it wouldn’t be until two generations later that a true sequel would be released. The game never saw a port to consoles, and for a reason. The engine is already poorly optimized on PCs and wouldn’t do well on consoles. It would be a huge undertaking to port the entire trilogy, and it would be hard to market.
Alien Isolation
Alien Isolation wasn’t technically developed for HD consoles, but mostly for PC and next-generation systems. It came out right as the next generation was coming in, and the HD versions were quickly forgotten. Isolation is considered the best game in the Alien series and one of the best horror games of the last couple of decades. It captures the 80s aesthetic of the movies and tells a great story while being terrifying. I still haven’t completed it to this day because of how scary it actually is.
Penumbra Series
The original horror trilogy, Penumbra, was developed by Frictional Games, which would later go on to make the Amnesia series. This was released for PC only and never received a console port. It was a less talked-about indie series that was loved among horror fans, but indie PC games didn’t receive the same spotlight that they do now. Console gamers didn’t care unless they were ported. Penumbra is a slow-paced, puzzle-focused horror series all about adventure and discovery. It’s creepy, full of psychological horror, and a must-play for any horror fan.
While this is stretching it a bit, The Evil Within was mostly meant for next-generation consoles and PCs. It played and looked nice on PS3 and Xbox 360, but those weren’t the intended systems. This was Shinji Mikami’s next opus and was definitely creepy and had some good elements, but it was too action-focused and unbalanced, and the story made no sense. Some say that’s the charm of survival horror games. There’s a bit of jank that’s needed. I personally just thought this game was okay, despite the amazing monster designs. A sequel would later come out, but not sell as well.
This is one of my favorite horror games of all time. It has a great story, memorable characters, and a great combat system that plays off of light and darkness. I’ve replayed this game many times, and it wasn’t an instant hit for Microsoft. The sales were slow, and it wasn’t appreciated until much later. It received a PC port and a recent remaster. It’s a must-play for any horror fan.
Siren: Blood Curse
It was a surprise to see a niche and obscure horror title return to PS3. Siren didn’t sell or review well but is considered a cult classic and part of the classic survival horror era. Blood Curse was a digital-only episodic release in the US that had some great scares and an overall fun adventure. Sadly, only Japan and Europe received a physical release.
Oh man, where do I start? My favorite horror series was butchered with this release. I rented this from GameFly and had to follow a guide through most of the game. It was a confusing, convoluted mess and felt like a chore to play. It wasn’t scary, it wasn’t fun, and it was the worst game in the whole series.
While the movies were quite enjoyable despite their flaws, the games were just awful. They weren’t as gruesome as the movies and played it too safe. Pretty much every bad conventional video game flaw was present here. Awful voice acting, terrible graphics, bad puzzles, and poor level design.
Vampire Rain
Easily considered one of the worst games of the HD era, there was no redeeming value in this game. There was nothing you could overlook. There wasn’t any “it’s so bad, it’s kind of charming” to this game either. It was just a disaster and an unplayable mess. It wasn’t scary; it felt like it was trying to be several games at once; it looked bad; it played even worse; and it wasn’t any fun despite all the hype leading up to its release.
Aliens: Colonial Marines
This game needs no introduction. It’s been covered by every “worst of” and “most controversial” video game on YouTube out there. Its history has been extensively documented. From broken AI to awful visuals, this is just a completely unfinished and broken game. It’s also considered one of the worst games ever made. It’s a stark contrast to Alien Isolation.
I had the displeasure of actually finishing this game when it came out. I was hoping it was going to be a great reboot of a classic horror series. I followed the developer’s diaries all the way through the release and played it without reading any reviews. The game is pretty bad. It’s one of the worst games of the HD era. It was just an awful chore and a mess of a game. It wasn’t fun. It wasn’t scary. It was just plain bad.
Amy
Probably one of the worst games ever made. This was a small indie game that was supposed to be full of suspense and horror, but instead, it’s a chore of a game with awful controls and graphics. The game was also poorly optimized and suffered terrible framerate issues. The story made no sense, and overall, it was just a stupid and lazy game.
I was so excited about this game, and every time I think about or have to write about it, it breaks my heart. I absolutely love Clive Barker’s work and have had it since I was a young teen. I fawned after the figures from Todd McFarlane and loved the characters in his movies. Undying was also a cult classic. The game was just trying to do too much at once. It had cramped-level design, awful performance, dated visuals, and just felt like a chore. The only thing it had going for it was the art design. It’s one of the worst games I’ve ever played and one of the saddest scars of the HD era.
TheLost Planet series is one of those sad ones you see on “worst of” or “what happened” YouTube videos. The first game is great if not repetitive. It was early in the HD era of gaming and showed off what the Xbox 360 could do. The second game took a serious dive and tried to be a Monster Hunter rip-off and the third game tries to blend both but doesn’t do it very well. The biggest strength in Lost Planet 3 is the continued story from the first game and it’s done quite well with story twists and surprises, but it’s dished out too slowly and the game in between is repetitive and slow.
You play as Jim Peyton. A man who is just using his rig to make some money to send back to Earth for his wife and baby. You are back on E.D.N. III and you are back to work for the NEVEC company just like in the first game, and the story starts out really slow. While you wait for that to pick up you get to learn the two main gameplay loops here. On foot shooting and your rig. The rig is a hulking mech that can’t really fight. It’s mostly used to trek across small areas to get to an objective and I honestly find this a waste of time. The whole trapesing across areas to get to somewhere isn’t done right. The areas are small, there’s zero exploration, and it just wastes time. You can eventually unlock fast traveling, but you can only fast travel at the opening of each area. The first 2/3 of the game starts each mission with you doing the same preamble of walking out of the base and then across the same areas dozens of times to get to the objective. When fast travel is unlocked it helps, but why wasn’t this an option from the start?
The rig can kind of fight, but it’s melee brawling with larger Akrid which are the planet’s native creatures you must kill. The same five-six enemies repeat throughout the entire game and it gets old quickly. There are a ton of repeated boss fights in the game and to mix things up (not really) you can fight them in the rig as well. This consists of timed blocks and then using your claw arm to and drill to get at their weak points which glow orange, a series staple. This orange stuff is the lifeblood of the planet and used as currency in-game and is sent back to Earth to solve the energy crisis. The mech itself is very clunky but in a bad way. It feels unresponsive and sluggish to move and the boss fights are never epic feeling or satisfying. The most irritating missions are the ones in which it turns into a drilling platform and you must defend it. These missions last for what seems like forever and you never have good enough weapons for the enemies at hand.
Let’s get to the on-foot combat. The weapons here are completely useless. Only the shotgun and assault rifle is any good. The hunting rifle, bowcaster, and grenade launcher are mostly useless. They fire too slow as every single enemy moves fast and swarms you. They only became useful in the final chapter when you finally fight human enemies. The same few enemies repeat. Three small swarming enemy types, two larger giant dog-like creatures, one centipede-like creature that can use cover, and three boss types that repeat often. That’s it. The game relies on quick-time events when enemies get too close and especially in the rig. They all move fast and don’t benefit from long-range weapons or slow-shooting weapons. You need a lot of ammo to pelt at them to keep them off of you. There are upgrades and weapons to purchase, but you wind up not needing most of them for the other weapons because they are useless. You can also upgrade your rig, but outside of armor there really isn’t a reason to do much upgrading.
The entire game is also dull to look at. Sure it looks nice graphically, but artistically the entire game is just ice and snow. There’s no variation and it just looks boring. Even the base is boring to be in because it’s all ice and snow. I know this is a frozen planet, but there are usually other biomes on every planet type. Mix it up some. Outside of shooting Akrid you are pulling levers, turning knobs, and pressing buttons. There are some scripted events, but the few interior areas are drab and just as boring as the outside. The game has no soul and feels like a typical cookie-cutter shooter. It feels like it tries to be Dead Space 3 sometimes with odd horror music that doesn’t fit and the creatures that hide behind cover.
Overall, the game is just so underwhelming. It doesn’t have compelling shooting, the weapons suck, the rig is wasted by not having any weapons, and the areas repeat just like the bosses and enemy types. The story is the only thing worth sticking around for, but unless you’re a hardcore Lost Planet fan there’s no reason to play this. The story is for fans of the original game and newcomers won’t get the full impact of the twists in the story. The graphics look nice, and the voice acting is great, but the same repeated ice and snow levels for 10 hours get old really fast. Sadly, this series doesn’t end with a bang and there’s a reason why Capcom left it in the graveyard.
The original release of Doom 3was a huge deal. It was a technical marvel with fantastic new lighting effects and textures that could fill the latest GPU and all of your RAM. It split fans due to the slower pace and focus on jump scares (that honestly don’t really work these days anymore) and a bigger focus on the story (if you can call it that). The game retains the same dark visuals and monsters from before, but being the first game in full 3D it had a lot of problems.
The first thing you will notice is that this release has no visual upgrades outside of some texture filtering and anti-aliasing and slightly better lighting. The textures still look muddy and the models are still low-poly. With this being the third official release of this game I’m surprised more work hasn’t been done to it. You play as a marine who is stationed on Mars when things suddenly go wrong. The first couple of levels is probably the best since they slowly introduce the gameplay to you and have better-designed levels. Zombies emerge from the dark, and your flashlight is a lifeline. It does have a short battery but recharges within seconds.
The main issue with Doom 3 is its much slower pace in every part of the game. The movement is slow (you have adrenaline that’s used for limited sprinting which is annoying), and the weapons reload slowly (why is there reloading anyway?). Not to mention the weapons just plain suck. The pistol is useless outside of the first couple of levels. I never touched it after this. The machine gun is useless in later levels, and everything else just feels slow. Enemies feel slow as well. The environments are also cramped with too many enemies spawning at once and I constantly backed into walls and got stuck in corners trying to get away. Very rarely does the game ever feel like a classic Doom game with more open areas.
The level design is also terrible. The game is way too long as it is and it’s just boring hallways after hallway finding PDA access cards, running back and forth activating switches, and trying to open doors. nearly eight grueling hours of this. It felt like a chore after the first two. Eventually, you do get to Hell, but it’s such a short level with a boss fight at the end, but it still suffered from cramped areas and nothing new except a couple of enemies that finally show up such as the Hell Knight and Arch-Vile which are some of the toughest enemies in the game. I mostly stuck to the strategy of using guns that shot the fastest such as the Cell machine gun being the most powerful with the chaingun being second. I used the shotgun through most of the mid-section of the game until I got the cell rifle.
There are a few boss fights in the game that all play out the same, and in the end, the entire game is just one long boring chore. It’s fun at first, but if you are a veteran of classic Doom games then most of you may just shut this off early. This is my third play-through of this game and it’s less enjoyable each time. I originally played this on Xbox, and then PC, and then dabbled in it a bit on Xbox 360 and never finished it. Now I completed it on Switch.
Speaking of the Switch the game plays fine, but there is some slow down in the larger areas and it doesn’t always stay at 60FPS. In handheld mode, the game runs fine as well, and you have the option to turn off flashlight shadows to help, but overall it’s great to just have another FPS on the Switch. These don’t come around often. Included is the Resurrection of Evil expansion which I already finished once on Xbox and a new Lost Mission short campaign which I will get around to eventually. It’s nice that there’s some new content. Overall, this could have easily been a remake from the ground up or a mode that made it feel faster-paced like the classic games. If you are itching for a mid-2000s FPS game then go ahead. Don’t come into this thinking it’s like the newer Doom reboots. This game was a specific era of id Software at its lowest point (Quake 4, Rage)
Assassin’s Creed II is by far one of the biggest sequels in video game history. When it came out, everyone was blown away by the scope and ambition put into this game. It made the first game feel like a concept demo. It felt like just the core of the first game was present, and so much was built on top of that game. The world was five times as big; there were new mission types, cinematic story missions, and tons of overall additions and improvements; however, the game did suffer on its own for various reasons.
This game starts the epic saga of Ezio Auditore de Firenze. one of the most iconic video game characters of all time. It was a surprise that Ubisoft scrapped Altair and his story so quickly, but we are greeted with 15th-century Italy and various historical characters that appeared during that time, such as Catarina Sforza, Leonardo Di Vinci, and Machiavelli. The story itself is fairly easy to follow and has a few twists, but most of all, it has a really surprising ending. Ezio works his way up as an assassin, knocking down templars, to retrieve the apple of Eden and keep it from the templar’s hands. The main villain, Rodrigo Borgia, is a nasty snake, and overall, all the characters are well written, and I wound up really liking most of them.
First off, the overall way you maneuver has been improved slightly, but more things have been added. While you can swan dive into haystacks and climb ladders, the entire game has been built with parkour free-running in mind. You can climb every building and stay off the streets by staying on the rooftops. Overall, the system was impressive back in the day, but it has a lot of quality-of-life issues. The overall parkouring feels too sticky. Ezio will jump around like a rabbit sometimes, so fine-tuning your turns makes it difficult to forget any type of mid-jump change. Once you get close to a wall or object, Ezio will climb, and quick button presses just aren’t responsive. I would start climbing a wall and then try to tap the descent button, but instead, he would just fall to the ground. Other instances had guards chasing me while I was trying to round a corner, and Ezio would cling to the wall and get stuck or jump onto the wall or object nearby instead. This can get incredibly frustrating as the system just doesn’t allow fine tuning or sudden changes.
That’s not to say the parkour system is bad. When you have a good line of sight, it works well, or you just want to climb broadly over a building. There were other instances in which precise jumping became a chore during Assassin’s Tomb missions. There is a fast walk button, and holding down the run button together allows Ezio to scale things quickly. If you are holding that run button after each jump, Ezio will just go in that direction, whether there’s something to grab on to or not. For small jumps across beams, I had to let go of the run button after each jump to re-align myself for the next jump. Quickly parkouring around just isn’t possible due to this finicky system.
Some other frustrations stem from combat. Firstly, the system is mostly the same as the first game, as it can be easy due to the whole system being a parry-fest. You can whack away at enemies, but instead, just hold the block button and parry when enemies strike, and it’s a one-hit-kill city. Once I acquired my wrist blades, I didn’t even use my sword anymore and never once used my secondary dagger weapons. This is a flaw in the combat itself and needs serious overhauling. It makes open combat boring and sometimes too easy. What is challenging and annoying is trying to lose guards and become anonymous. Sure, you can blend into crowds, benches, and haystacks, and you can now hire prostitutes or mercenaries to distract guards and get them off your tail, but the combat and finicky parkour system make losing guards incredibly frustrating. You have to lose their line of sight by rounding corners or jumping off buildings, and if you can get far enough away, it will create a search radius. You can hide in that radius or continue escaping. There is an anonymity meter, and once it’s solid red, every guard will recognize you, and it’s a frustrating mess to find a town crier to bribe and take 50% of the meter away.
With those two major things out of the way, that leaves content itself. The sad thing about all this new content is that it’s meaningless in the end. There are no rewards for any of it except for achievements or completion’s sake. There are 73 viewpoints to find that are actually fun, as most of them are climbing puzzles on their own. Now it does still feel like overkill, as each viewpoint only reveals the surrounding buildings and not much else. I felt there were just too many. There are races, assassin contracts, courier missions, and fights. These are boring and pointless, and they are just there to add filler. You can really tell this is where the Ubisoft plague of too much crap to do in a game starts. The only rewarding side content is The Truth Puzzles. There are 20 hidden glyphs throughout the game, and finding them will grant you puzzles to solve. These get increasingly hard—absurdly hard, in fact—in which the clues become obtuse and impossible to decipher. However, what’s revealed is a cool video.
The story missions themselves are mostly varied, with various tasks such as assassinations, tailing, fights, horseback riding, and the occasional scripted mission. I really liked the story and characters enough to stick around and wound up completing all viewpoints, The Truth puzzles, and finding all the codex pages that max out your health. I do need to mention the various gadgets you get, which are mostly useless. Poison darts can make enemies go berserk and attack each other, but you also have smoke bombs, throwing knives, and a pistol, and that’s about it. I mostly used the throwing knives to take out rooftop guards, and smoke bombs were great to get away from large groups of enemies and become anonymous. In fact, they’re required to reduce frustration.
The visual upgrade for the Ezio Collection is minimal. There aren’t any actual improvements outside of some draw distance gain, anti-aliasing, and texture filtering. The lighting is slightly improved as well, but not by much. The game runs incredibly well with no slowdown, but I did run into a few crashes and glitches. I wish we got a full remaster or remake, but what’s here is fine. It’s crazy how well this plays so many years later and just shows how far ahead the game was at the time. There are a lot of quality-of-life improvements that need to be made, and most of the core mechanics have frustrations you will need to forgive or work around, but the story and characters are worth sticking around for. There is also a lot of bloated side content that has no meaning or rewards, including fully upgrading your villa, which literally just generates more income and isn’t used for anything besides dying armor, buying weapons, and armor itself. The assassin and templar tombs are a lot of fun as well.
Great post tthankyou