Lair – 13 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 05/29/2020
Posted in: PlayStation 3, Retro Consoles, Sony. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: SCEI

Developer: Factor 5

Release Date: 08/30/2007


Available Exclusively On

Fun. This is not a word you will be thinking of during your playthrough of Lair. There isn’t a single redeeming value to putting yourself through the torture of Lair unless it’s for novelty or pure curiosity, like myself. I avoided this game like the plague during and after launch. It was quickly thrust into bargain bins just months after launch, and no one gave it a second thought. The HD era of gaming was a rough start for most developers, and this game put Factor 5 out of business. So what happened?

Well, for Factor 5’s history, you can watch plenty of YouTube videos on that, but Lair seems to start out okay, but within 10 minutes you realize you’re going to be in for a rough ride. The game seems okay during the opening pre-rendered cinematic, as it looks quite impressive for the time. Once the cutscene ends, you are on the ground, and you immediately notice the first few issues before you even jump onto your dragon. The framerate. It’s absolutely abysmal and one of the main reasons why the game is nearly unplayable. It never runs above 30 FPS and quite often dips down into single digits. Whenever there’s an explosion or thousands of enemies rendered on-screen in the form of armies far below you, the game just cannot keep up. The game from this point already feels half-made and like it’s in the alpha stage.

The second thing you will notice is how incredibly ugly the game is, even for its time. The textures are horrendously blurry, pixelated, and stretched out; the models seem half-done; the animations are broken and skip and jump around to different points; not to mention the awful controls. The dragon itself controls halfway decently, but without the patch to add analog support, this game cannot use the precision of the SixAxis motion with this horrible framerate. Nothing feels finely tuned, and you’re always doing large, gross movements to overcompensate for the framerate. When you finally get the hang of the controls, you are to lock on to enemies and shoot them down with fireballs. Pressing the circle allows you to magically zoom up to them, or just magically appear next to them for a takedown-style button-pressing fighting mini-game for health or a QTE animated takedown. You can also bash them on their side by swinging the controller towards them. This entire combat setup seems good on paper, but it’s clearly unfinished.

Locking on doesn’t work half of the time, as the dragon will stay locked on and face the opposite way of the enemy, yet somehow still shoot fireballs at them and sometimes make it. Usually, when you let go of the lock-on button, that’s when all hell breaks loose. Nine times out of ten, you will slingshot across the map and disorient yourself; hitting objects will also slingshot you and will just push you straight into the ground. Every single mission is either an escort or takes out X enemies until something happens. The objectives are so vague, and it’s so difficult to know who the enemy is and what units to attack. There are no highlighted areas, arrows, or anything to help you out. I restarted missions multiple times because I didn’t realize I was attacking the wrong side or completely missing an enemy that I didn’t see. While swooping down and attacking thousands of enemies at once seems impressive, and it should be, it’s not fun at all in this game. The draw distance is abysmal, as animations run at 2 frames until you get right on top of them.

Oh, and the story? Forget it. Two warring factions for no apparent reason, and then you switch sides halfway through. No lore, no goal, just a couple of armies fighting because they can. The enemy design is boring, the dragons are boring, and outside of fighting the controls and framerate, the game is just dull and uninteresting. Even if this game worked, the underlying gameplay loop just isn’t fun. Sure, the maps look huge and there are tons of enemies on screen, but it’s a jumbled mess of confusion and throws the balancing way off.

Overall, Lair is just an awful game and shouldn’t be experienced by anyone. Unless you want to play an infamously bad PS3 game, just stay away. Thankfully, the game is short-lived, but you couldn’t get gold ratings in missions even if you wanted, as the framerate and awful controls prevented you from doing it. There is also no trophy support patched in, which is a real bummer.

Trials of Mana

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 05/20/2020
Posted in: Android, iOS, Mobile Reviews, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Verification, Steam Deck Verified, Switch. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: Square Enix

Developer: Xeen

Release Date: 04/24/2020


Available On

I’m not the biggest JRPG fan, as I don’t like grinding or the typical tropes that go along with them. They are usually extremely bloated, with dozens of hours added just in battles alone, and this is why I only play them if they have a particular something that stands out, albeit the story or the gameplay. Trials of Mana stands out as neither of those, but it does everything in a neatly tightened JRPG package that cuts out the fat and streamlines the genre for the modern world.

The story is nothing to write home about, but it isn’t bad either. You can choose between six different characters, with three being in your party. Each character has class specializations, and this is important when your class is balanced out. It’s recommended to have a fighter, magician, and middle ground class. I chose Reisz, Duncan, and Angela for my playthrough, and it worked out perfectly. The overall story revolves around the typical JRPG plot of saving the world from an evil entity. The Goddess of Mana is being targeted by a particular evil force and wants to be the only existing god. There are other evil kingdoms racing to get the Sword of Mana, which is said to hold untold powers. Yeah, it’s trite and barely interesting, and towards the end of the game, there aren’t many cut scenes left. The English voice acting, in particular, is incredibly bad, so please do yourself a favor and enable the Japanese voice-overs. The characters themselves are very likeable with great designs, and they stand out and are somewhat memorable. They have typical JRPG hero personalities, but I grew to like them nonetheless.

Let’s dive right into battle. Trials of Mana is a real-time battle system played out in closed-off areas. Once you are in sight of a creature, the game surrounds you with a barrier that you can escape from by running toward or just fighting it out. There are heavy and light attacks, as well as the same while in the air. Once you progress far enough and depending on your class, you will unlock moves that are class-specific and consume MP, and then there are class strikes. These strikes use up stamina that is acquired as crystals that enemies drop when attacked. These strikes are powerful, and you get a new one with each new class. These must be strategically timed with boss battles, as they are essential to winning and doing massive damage. Battles overall are intense and fun, with the ability to adjust your AI mates in the Strategy section of the menu. Here you can adjust how often they use their strikes, moves, items, and how to focus on enemies. This is really important to adjust for later boss fights.

While combat is fluid, looks good, and is probably what you will be doing 85% of the time in the game, it is essentially very simple and may seem dull to people who are used to more Western RPGs with more action. While it works in the context of this game, it beats the hell out of random encounters. Leveling up also occurs rather quickly, and the use of cookies allows you to gain additional XP, but these are rare. There really isn’t much in terms of exploring or hidden items, as most chests contain standard items, seeds, and rarely armor or weapons. Seeds are actually an essential part of the game and are required in order to get Class 3. These seeds are grown in pots in inns or near certain Mana (save) statues. These range from item seeds to illusive question mark seeds that drop talismans needed to get to class 3 to rainbow seeds, which have high-end armor and weapons. You can level up the box by planting more seeds, thus dropping rarer items.

Of course, you can buy most things in towns and the single-night market, as well as reset your skill points there. Leveling up is a big deal in this game, and you can allocate points towards various stats like strength, stamina, intelligence, and so on. I highly recommend leveling up where you want your character to be strong and saving your points once you reach the cap for that class level. Once your class is up, you will have tons of points to advance your character even further without wasting them on stats you don’t need to focus on. Getting a higher class also grants a new costume and access to higher-level weapons and armor, in addition to more ability slots. Leveling up stats grants abilities that add passive stats, such as healing after battles, additional damage when entering them, sacrificing HP for additional damage, etc. The great thing is that these abilities are shared amongst all characters once unlocked, allowing you to really customize your style.

Exploring the Trials of Mana is fine, but not wholly necessary. Exploring only gets you basic items, and the very rare weapon or armor piece and the question mark seeds in Chapter 5 are needed to get to class 3. Grinding is also very minimal in this game, as you will mostly stay just behind or ahead of the current area demand. I recommend staying above two levels of the next boss; it will make life much easier, and you will chew through fewer healing items. The levels are very linear as well, and it’s hard to get lost as a golden star will always lead you to your objective as well as on the map. I have to commend Square for implementing this, as one of my biggest issues with JRPGs outside of random battles is never knowing where the hell to go. This allows you to just enjoy the game and not worry about whether or not you’ve been going the wrong way for the last hour.

With all of that said, Trials of Mana also looks fantastic. While not groundbreaking, it has bright visuals, detailed textures, high-poly models, and great animations. The effects are slick, and the bosses are very well designed. While I wasn’t the biggest fan of regular enemies as they are just standard JRPG fodder like rabbits, slime, knights, dragons, and various fantasy creatures, they do require strategy as each has different attacks and debuff effects. So with that said, Trials of Mana won’t change the minds of those who don’t like JRPGs, but those who love them will truly enjoy it. I finished the game and even continued to the additional optional chapter that can grant New Game+ if completed. This is one of two Super Bosses and requires a level 75 party. This final dungeon is about an hour long and combines a piece of every area you have visited in the game into one mega-dungeon. It’s a challenge and fun, and I recommend completing it. Trials of Mana is one of my favorite JRPGs of the last decade, and I can easily recommend it to most people.

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 05/08/2020
Posted in: Microsoft Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, Sony Consoles, Xbox One. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: Activision

Developer: Beenox

Release Date: 03/31/2020 (PS4), 04/30/2020 (PC, XONE)


Available On

Well, what a treat! Modern Warfare 2 is considered the best game in the earlier series, and the campaign was most definitely the best and most memorable. The game takes place right after the end of the first game, with the Russians invading the United States for World War III. You play as various soldiers in this war and bounce back and forth trying to stop the bad guy, Makarov, but the story takes a crazy twist at the last mission.

The question here is: is there anyone asking for these games to be remastered? Most people usually only stick around for multiplayer, and it’s rather strange to only remaster the campaign and release the multiplayer section later. Most Call of Duty players skip the campaign and only bother with multiplayer, and it’s not like the Call of Duty campaigns are anything to write home about. Sure, they’re entertaining and exciting, but they don’t last long, and the story is a trite modern military train of nonsense, so who is this game for?

That’s going to be hard to answer, but I’m one of the few who plays the campaign first and usually goes back for seconds later on. I played the original on Xbox 360 and spent more time in this game’s multiplayer than any other in the series. The maps were perfectly created, and the balance was fantastic, but it’s long dead now, so all we have is this campaign. Thankfully, it’s only $20, as you get about 4 hours of gameplay out of it. It’s literally fun for an evening, and it’s over. The game does have some crazy scenes, like seeing a nuke detonate from space, and the battle in Washington, DC, through the White House is pretty awesome. There are more stealth missions with Captain Price this time around, and overall, we get a good range of different types of action. The boots on the ground mowing down enemies type, the special ops missions, then the stealth missions.

What I would have liked to see was more on-rails stuff. There are a couple of chase scenes in the game and one helicopter ride in which you get to snipe enemies, but I wanted more of these. They’re exciting and just a lot of mindless fun. I did find the game’s difficulty poorly balanced, as I’d blow through a couple of missions and then die over and over in one spot, particularly as Roach in the U.S. Marine levels. There are wide-open areas, and they usually have you running around trying to take down vehicles and large waves of enemies. There is never a dull moment, however, and I had a blast through the whole thing, but it does feel shorter than the first game. The infamous and controversial “No Russian” mission is present but allows players to skip this level entirely. While at the time of release it may not have seemed like such a big deal, mowing down people in an airport as part of a terrorist attack is all too real these days, and there are thousands of people in the US who have fallen victim to shootings or have been near one. It can be a seriously sensitive topic, so good on Beenox for adding this option.

The visuals are amazing, using modern techniques to make the game look like it was made and released today. Fantastic lighting, textures, models, and other effects that PC gamers will love. It runs flawlessly without a hitch, and every moment was a blast. I will say that there is no reason to go back, however, and that’s going to be the deciding factor for people. There’s zero replay value here as Battle.net doesn’t have an achievement system, and while you can find 45 different Intel laptops, what’s the point? There’s no reward for doing so, and there are no extra modes either. There’s a neat little museum mode that lets you see various panoramas of each level, but there’s nothing to do besides pressing a button and having all the character models jump at you and attack. It’s neat but seriously pointless, so no one will probably bother exploring.

Overall, Modern Ware 2 Campaign Remastered is a blast while it lasts. It’s only 4 hours long, with no replay value, extra modes, or a reason to even go back. It’s a game you go back and play every 5–10 years for nostalgia, and that’s it. Newcomers will have a blast and may play through a second time, but that’s all your $20 is going to give you: one fun evening. The visuals are fantastic and look amazing, but that’s about it here. It really is the best campaign of the early trilogy, but what does that mean to anyone? I guess it depends on how much you love linear shooters.

Reviewed On

Keyboard & Mouse

Final Fantasy VIII Remastered

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 05/08/2020
Posted in: Microsoft Consoles, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Verification, Steam Deck Verified, Switch, Xbox One. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: Square Enix

Developer: DotEmu

Release Date: 09/03/2019


Available On

Oh boy, this review has been 22 years in the making. I have been trying to finish this game since I was 8 years old, but I just could not do it. I will admit, I’m not the best JRPG player, as I don’t have the patience to do insane amounts of grinding and play into the earlier Final Fantasy game’s crazy summon hunting. FF8 eluded me for so many years because of one thing: the junction system. I absolutely love the characters, art, and story in this game, but the Junction system nearly ruins it for me. And yes, I had to play with cheats and boosters activated, and even then, I almost couldn’t finish the game.

I did, however, play the game normally. I collected spells, tried to get Guardians when I could, leveled up a good amount, and finally got past disc 2! The issue lies in the overall complicated nature of FF8‘s systems. You no longer just buy weapons and armor and change them out when you get to the next town. Instead, you collect spell cards that are finite, and they can be traded amongst other members. In theory, this sounds fine, but it’s hard to strategize a specific player role when everyone can use magic. Some argue that you can give certain spells to certain characters and break it all up the way you want, but this is flawed because if you don’t collect cards found throughout the world or stolen from enemies, you don’t get to use any magic.

Weapons are only upgraded this time by using parts found on monsters, but a lot of these parts are hard to find, and to upgrade to a new weapon, you must find a magazine to unlock the weapon. This just keeps piling up the frustration as it hinders progress. Characters also have overdrives, which are powerful, unique moves, but some characters, like Rinoa and Quistis, can only acquire new ones by using certain items or finding magazines. FF8 heavily relies on exploration and patience; this is not a game you can just blow through in story mode like previous games. The Junction system also functions as a way to equip Guardians, which are bosses found hidden throughout the world. I only found about half, as the other half requires exploring the overworld map and finding their hidden locations. Accompany this with insanely frequent random battles, and you will spend 2/3 of your time in the game just battling.

If this doesn’t sound complicated enough, there are hidden features not explained in the game, such as being able to “Card Mod” only using Quezacotl’s ability. This allows players to turn found enemy cards into items that are then used to turn into weapons, but this is a very obscure out-of-the-way thing for such an important gameplay element. FF8 is riddled with things like this, and learning the Junction system is like learning math. It was boring, not fun, and incredibly frustrating, and just imagine that as a kid, there’s no way I would have understood any of it. Even after I finished the game, I still felt I hadn’t quite grasped it all and had missed something.

Outside of the awful (or good) Junction system, the rest of the game is standard Final Fantasy. Turn-based battles allow you to do various attacks and use items, and there’s an option for real-time battles or waiting. Players also need to make sure they equip actual functions for each player; otherwise, you can only attack. GF use, items, and magic are all optional attacks that you can choose, but you can only have 4 menus. Another irritating thing about the Junction system. You must sacrifice GF use if you want to use items and magic, for example. FF8 is also standard, with an awful overworld map. This map has no camera controls and is horribly designed. It’s a 3D map, but eventually, you get into a ship, then a car, then a giant flying ship to traverse faster. This is when you can explore more and find guardians.

Let’s finally talk about the story and characters. FF8 has some of the most memorable characters, including Seifer, Squall, Rinoa, Quistis, and Selphie, just to name a few. They are all well-written and designed characters, and I cared for them greatly throughout the entire game. There are long written dialog bubbles that go on for dozens of minutes sometimes, but the mix of pre-rendered cut scenes with real-time models on top is a trip even to this day. There are some imaginative scenes in this game, and it’s a shame it’s hindered by the disc space of the PS1. The story in itself is one of the most controversial in the series, with no real ending being explained, and it is open to fan theory. I won’t get into those, but after reading some theories online, they made a lot of sense, and it’s a good story to talk about long after finishing.

But, also like Final Fantasy games, it’s heavily unbalanced, with the final boss having four whole phases and requiring you to be an insane level towards the end that normal story progression won’t get you towards. Even with boosters activated, I still got stuck and was required to level up normally, and the game could easily take 50+ hours just to finish properly. I can’t bash the game for this, as there’s a huge audience for it, but it’s not for me. One of the few things I won’t knock this game for is how much of a hardcore RPG it truly is. This is a game you must play exclusively for days or weeks and just grind out, and some people love this. The story is thankfully rewarding enough, and after finishing a tough boss, the satisfaction is exemplary.

Overall, FF8 is a strange game indeed. With an awful or good Junction system that changes everything you know about the game, one thing can’t be denied: it’s too complicated. The game looks fantastic, with amazing pre-rendered scenes, great enemy design, a superb music score, and classic gameplay. For me, there’s just too much that keeps it from being fun outside of the story. I often gave up on this game for years, and even with boosters, the game is still a grindfest. However, if you like those things, then you will love this game. When it comes to the remastered part of the game, it disappoints. The game suffers from the same issues as the Final Fantasy IX Remaster, with updated character models on upscaled original backgrounds. It’s a lazy remaster with only new music and some boosts added. There’s no widescreen support or anything else.

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Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories – 15 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 04/26/2020
Posted in: PlayStation 2, PSP, Retro Consoles, Sony. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: Rockstar Games

Developer: Rockstar Leeds

Release Date: 10/24/2005 (PSP), 06/06/2006 (PS2), 12/17/2015 (iOS), 02/11/2016 (AND)


Available On

Grand Theft Auto was an unstoppable juggernaut in the early to mid-2000s. With the rise of the PSP and its new, near-PS2-quality visuals, it was a perfect match for the series. Liberty City Stories wasn’t simply a GTA 3 port, but a whole new story and set of missions set within the same world. The exact copy of GTA3‘s Liberty City is ripped out of the PS2 and copied on the PSP with grace and detail. I felt like I was playing GTA 3 the entire time through my 10-hour campaign, but it came with caveats.

When you jump into a car for the first time, LCS has that classic GTA feel. Arcadey physics, campy humor, and unrealistic everything else. You can run people over, get 5-star police wanted ratings, jump off cliffs, and do everything else you could do in GTA 3. It’s a sight to behold on such a small system. Driving is probably the most enjoyable aspect of LCS, including the missions that have you driving the most. When you jump out of the car, things go awry.

Combat is abysmal in this game and really brings it down. Since there is no right analog stick, you must rely on a lock-on system that just doesn’t work. Half of the time, if you aren’t facing an enemy shooting at you, there will be no lock-on causing cheap deaths. There is no cover system, so missions are tailored toward the console with slightly better controls. It’s impossible to gun down two dozen enemies while also only being able to take 4-5 shots before dying. This is the most infuriating thing about LCS, and it really brings the score down. I had to use cheats to finish the game. I died maybe 10–15 times on several missions, even with cheats! Having only a few enemies is manageable, and some missions felt tailored towards the PSP controls and some didn’t. There were missions I really thought were fun, but then I’d be thrown into a multi-part mission and die a dozen times on the last part just to have to restart all over again. It also doesn’t help that you don’t make much money in this game quickly, so every time you die or get arrested, your weapons are gone. For some missions, I was stuck with no money and had to have a weapon, so I had to use a weapon cheat. The game’s flow was not thought out very well.

At least the story and characters are entertaining. While not as fleshed out as later games in the series, Toni Cipriani and his fellow employers are all classic GTA-style characters, and I enjoyed seeing them on screen. The radio stations are back, and they are one of my favorite parts of the game. Driving around and listening to the hilarious commentary is gold. Due to the small volume of space on the PSP disc, there isn’t much of it. I would start to hear repeated stuff about a quarter of the way through the game, which is a shame, but the game supports custom soundtracks, which are nice. There is a multiplayer mode, but it’s nothing really special. You and a buddy can basically wreak havoc ad hoc. You can participate in races, taxis, and first responder missions, but there’s nothing special here that wasn’t in GTA3 or is PSP exclusive.

The visuals of the game are pretty impressive, but there is a lot of slowdown and pop-ups. LCS pushes the system to its limits, and the amount of detail is crazy. There are reflections when it rains, tons of traffic and pedestrians, and large buildings loom over the horizon. The sound is great, and it feels like a living, breathing city despite how little interaction there is. But, on the surface, after the story is over, there’s no real reason to come back unless you just want to ride around, causing mayhem.

Overall, LCS is an incredible technical feat but is brought down by a mission structure not tailored for the handheld’s control system. It’s way too easy to die with missions that require sometimes dozens of enemies firing at you all at once, which leads to dozens of restarts and endless frustration. There’s a lot of slowdown and pop-in, and the radio stations start repeating after only a couple of hours, but that’s just the roughness of the original GTA open-world games. They weren’t perfect, but they were enjoyable thanks to their sense of freedom and great writing and character design. I recommend playing LCS, but keep the cheat sheet handy as you will need it since there are no difficulty options.

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Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne – 17 Years Later

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

Publisher: Rockstar Games

Developer: Remedy Entertainment

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


Available On

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

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

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

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

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

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Keyboard & Mouse

Max Payne – 19 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 04/18/2020
Posted in: Android, Game Boy Advance, iOS, Mac, Microsoft, Mobile Reviews, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 2, Retro Consoles, Sony, Steam Deck Unsupported, Steam Deck Verification, Xbox. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: Gathering of Developers

Developer: Remedy Entertainment

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


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

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

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

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

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Keyboard & Mouse

L.A. Noire – 9 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 04/16/2020
Posted in: Microsoft, Microsoft Consoles, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Retro Consoles, Sony, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Playable, Steam Deck Verification, Switch, Xbox 360, Xbox One. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: Rockstar Games

Developer: Team Bondi/Rockstar Games

Release Date: 11/14/2017 (XONE/PS4/Switch) 05/17/2011 (X360/PS3) 11/08/2011 (PC)


Available On

America loves to romanticize the police. Despite the political environment we are in, the only way we can really satisfy our lust for crime and murder mysteries is to put ourselves in the shoes of the police. L.A. Noire is set in an almost historically accurate 1940s Los Angeles, right after WWII ended. You play as war veteran/detective Cole Phelps, solving a drug mystery and many murder mysteries within.

The game starts out like any typical open-world game by slowly introducing gameplay elements to you before opening the world up. You are Cole, a beat cop who is called to a murder scene. You chase down a suspect, investigate some clues in an alley, and you’re so good at what you do that you magically get promoted to traffic detective. L.A. Noire has a few core elements, and it mostly sticks to these throughout the game ad nauseum. The first element is crime-solving. This is done by picking up various objects in an area, examining them, and moving on. This sounds interesting in theory, but 90% of all objects in this game are completely useless and really don’t need to be picked up and examined. There are maybe one or two objects that are puzzle boxes and a couple of documents that require you to tap on certain information. It’s cool the first time you do all of this, but after that, it’s boring and feels pointless. Make the objects I’m holding more interesting, or allow Cole to do more than twirl them around.

The next core element is interrogations, and this implements Team Bondi’s groundbreaking motion capture technology that actually makes facial animations lifelike, but in a creepy, uncanny valley type of way. Sure, you see neck muscles move, eyebrows twitch, and it all looks nice, but on hardware that couldn’t run the engine very well, these realistic life-like faces look odd on low-textured and poly-counted characters. The whole point of an investigation is to use these facial expressions to determine whether someone is lying or telling the truth, and it never works as intended. There is no set thing that the game gives you to look for, and it always becomes a guessing game or a crapshoot. Most of the time, the logic never makes sense based on what the game wants or is hyper-specific. A certain question may seem like selecting Good Cop would be a good idea because that’s what your guts tell you, but instead, you were to accuse the suspect and pick a piece of evidence that you never would have guessed. The interrogations are an awful guessing game, and I never felt engaged like the developers wanted.

The next part of L.A. Noire is about exploring and gunplay. Firefights are mundane and feel pretty lifeless. There is a cover system, and the weapons shoot, but they all feel the same, and there’s no feedback or satisfaction from firing these WWII-era weapons. Each firefight is a whack-a-mole-style shooting gallery of enemies popping their heads above cover. When you’re not shooting, you’re chasing people or driving around. Driving is one of the worst parts of the game as compared to Rockstar’s other offerings; it feels stiff, slow, and lifeless, and I had no fun driving around the city. Sure, Los Angeles looks pretty good with some great landmarks, but having a piece of a fence bring my car to a complete stop is nonsense. I can ram through a fire hydrant, but a wooden fence will stop my car dead in its tracks. The driving is inconsistent, and even car chases are no fun.

There are 40 side missions called “Streets of LA,” but these are just various car chases, shooting galleries, or on-foot chases that repeat and become stale and annoying. Thankfully, there’s a fast travel system that allows your partner to drive to the next destination to skip all the boring driving. I understand this is a realistic game, but Mafia did it much better. There are 95 different cars in the game, but they honestly all drive the same, and it just becomes no fun after the first hour of the game is over. There are other side objectives, like finding hidden badges, all the landmarks, and trophies, but why bother? Anything outside of the story cases is just completely boring and stiff; there’s a layer of polish that’s seriously missing.

Lastly, we come to the story and characters. Nearly every character is completely unlikeable in the sense that they are just plain boring. Cole Phelps is a goodie-two-shoes who can do no wrong and has zero character flaws, which makes him very unlikable. His partners on the four desks you work on are also just as poorly written. I hated them, but not because they were written so well that I wanted to hate them. They were just so average, too, Mary Sue. One partner was just a lazy asshole cop and never budged from that stereotype; another was just corrupt, and the issue is that there was no development. There is no back story to any of these characters, and Phelps’ flashbacks to WWII did nothing to make you care for him, as he acted just as stubborn and perfect as he did as a cop. For the game being a noire, there is zero character build-up or any reason to care. The overarching story doesn’t actually pick up speed until the last few cases, as each and every case drones on and on and is exactly the same as the last, just in different orders. I never once felt interested in or attached to any one case. Give me fewer cases and build up the victims within so I can feel like the boring twists are worthwhile.

And that’s where I conclude with L.A. Noire. It’s just “okay.” Each of the many cases feels rudimentary in the end and mundane, and I felt like I was just checking off boxes (literally) and had no reason to care for the first or last murder case. The driving is painfully stiff and slow, and despite 1940s Los Angeles looking nice, it’s stale and boring with nothing going on inside. You can’t even shop for clothes or buy weapons. It’s just a giant hub to get from point A to point B. Streets of L.A. side missions are just randomized gameplay loops of chasing, shooting, and driving, with neither of the three being particularly interesting in their own right. So, is L.A. Noire worth playing? Sure, it’s a fun game, and some of the cases are decent, and I did want to see what happened to Phelps in the end, but just barely. After getting so far in the game, I felt like I had to finish it, hoping it would pick up in the next case. The game plays and looks great on Switch, but it has performance issues and bugs that require game restarts. The framerate can dip into single digits in certain spots, but it’s still very playable.

Reviewed On

Handhelds: What Nintendo Did Right that Sony Didn’t

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 04/11/2020
Posted in: Blogs. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

Everyone knows what the Game Boy is. I had one as a kid, and while late in its life cycle, I received one for my 7th birthday in 1996. I was introduced to Tetris and Galaga and was hooked. I sadly couldn’t play it much because my parents couldn’t afford the batteries for it often, and rechargeable AA batteries were very expensive back then. It was one of the first generations of handhelds, along with the Atari Lynx and Sega Game Gear. I never owned those two systems, but it was the start of something I will always love and cherish: handhelds.

In 2003, I remember Sony announcing the PSP at a press event and going insane for it. I actually pre-ordered the system and put all of my allowance down on it for 6 months. I even did some extra stuff for my parents for more cash so I could pick up a Ridge Racer with it. I owned a DS at the time, but I wasn’t too impressed with it. The PSP looked futuristic, and there is still yet to be a handheld that looks as sleek as it. It had powerful hardware, a sleek screen, and multimedia features that no other handheld had at the time. This was also the pre-smartphone era, so it was out of this world at the time. I loved my PSP and still play it to this day. I owned nearly every model available and modded the crap out of them. When the Vita was announced in 2011, I nearly lost it then too, but that’s when Sony started to lose me, and I still feel disappointed with the Vita to this day.

They got the hardware down pat outside of the useless touch features, dual analog sticks, and more power. I couldn’t be happier, but something else happened. The marketing was poorly done, and the Vita only saw a great run for maybe three years. Around 2015, the system started dying and lost all first-party support. The system turned into an “indie machine,” and outside of larger Japanese releases and ports, the system stopped seeing most regular releases in 2017. What happened? The first two years were strong and steady, and it just died. Was it the ever-growing market for smartphones? I personally don’t think that is what caused the demise of the Vita. The 3DS was still running strong at the time, with huge blockbuster releases and strong sales. What I think happened was the loss of first-party support.

We saw a couple of first-party titles on the system, like Uncharted, Killzone, LittleBigPlanet, and Tearaway, but where were the rest? Where were the unique IPs that kept Sony systems rolling? I feel if they had kept going, the Vita would still be strong to this day. While the slow death of the 3DS is clearly obvious and has nothing but an official discontinuation announcement from Nintendo, the Switch is our last bastion of handheld greatness. The Switch Lite is exactly what this world needs. Sure, the regular Switch is portable, but it’s heavy, sometimes too big, and just doesn’t feel like the best portable system.

Now hear me out. Let’s think about what a handheld system consists of. A small unit packed with the best features of consoles. Great controls, some multimedia features, internet access, and, best of all, fantastic games made that system unique and stand out. The Switch has all of this. The Switch has some of the best video games ever created, both first-party and third-party. Think about that. The Switch could literally be the best handheld system ever created, and it’s because Nintendo wasn’t afraid to do what Sony kept boasting about.

Sony touted the PSP and Vita as portable consoles but never actually treated them as such. Constantly pushing and implying that portable games should be in bite-sized chunks—much shorter, simpler games—when most gamers would spend hours on their systems. Not everyone only has 30 minutes on a bus or short car ride; some of us just like sitting on the couch or laying in bed comfortable, away from the TV and family, and playing our handhelds for hours. I did this with my GameBoy Advance SP, PSP, Vita, and so on. Some of my fondest gaming memories are on handhelds. So why was Sony so afraid to commit outside of paper?

Nintendo went all out and gave us both. A console and a handheld, and at the time of release, it seemed like a silly concept. If I wanted a console, I’d buy one, and if I wanted a handheld, I’d buy that, but why not have a choice? More people who own Switches now play more in handheld format than TV mode. It’s simple and convenient, and you can pull the system out whenever you have some spare time. Nintendo also treats all games like console games; we have a sleep mode on these systems for a reason. Even the PSP 15 years ago had a sleep mode, so the bite-sized gaming never made sense to me. I feel this was Sony’s biggest mistake going in. If you have this powerful new hardware with features no other handheld had at the time, like a sleep mode, insist that games are made like consoles. We got some games that seemed similar to a console version, but that didn’t exactly exist on the PSP. Most of those games were all bite-sized, smaller versions of their console counterparts. It changed a little on the Vita thanks to indie developers, but it never fully took off. I feel Sony focused too much on hardware (did we really need a 3G Vita?) and not enough on the longevity of the system.

The Switch Lite feels like a true handheld system that isn’t ashamed of being a console. It’s truly the next generation of handheld gaming, and it hasn’t been crushed by the smartphone industry. So that theory is clearly not the reason the 3DS and Vita are dead. We can get handheld experiences on our cell phones in bite-sized chunks; we now truly want our home consoles on the go more than ever. The Switch Lite isn’t as clunky as the original model, but it feels bigger than a handheld and isn’t ashamed of it. The system feels light, sleek, has fantastic buttons, and feels like a true next-generation handheld. We get full-blown console experiences on this thing. While it’s taken a step back on online features such as no media streaming or internet browsing, we get a total focus on games. Another thing Nintendo did right was not using proprietary expansion cards like Sony did. This was a huge blow to Sony, especially on the Vita. Many people refused to buy their systems because of this reason, and it didn’t stave off pirating at all.

To conclude, the Switch is the true next generation of portable gaming, not the Vita. Sony bragged about having a portable console but never once treated it as such. Nintendo took a huge risk and received an insane amount of criticism when they announced the Switch, like they do with every system they put out. In the end, it’s paid off and has proven that handheld systems are not dead and the smartphone industry hasn’t killed it. It’s the strongest it’s been since the heydays of the original DS, which sold out everywhere, and nearly every gamer these days owns one. It’s surpassed the lifetime sales of the Xbox One, even though this is clearly what people want. So, if Sony does decide to jump back into the market, they need to make a console hybrid, and I feel they could knock it out of the park and even do a better job than Nintendo. Their systems are insanely unique and feature-rich, but they need to back them up like a console and go all in.

Nintendo Switch Lite

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 04/10/2020
Posted in: Hardware, Nintendo Consoles, Switch. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

Release Date: 09/20/2019

MSRP: $199.99

Colors: Gray/Yellow/Turquoise

A Switch console that can’t be switched. Preposterous right? Well, not exactly. When the controversy stirred up about the Lite not being able to be docked came about, I wasn’t on board with that. The Switch is a portable system as well, and that’s its main appeal. Nintendo’s data also shows that a good majority of Switch owners use it exclusively in handheld mode. The Switch itself isn’t the best handheld device. It’s very large, a little heavier than a large iPad, and the Joy-Cons aren’t that great (sorry they aren’t). When I can, I always use the Switch in tabletop mode with a Pro Controller, or I just keep it docked. When I saw that there was a slightly more powerful, smaller version, I was actually excited.

When holding the switch, you notice everything right away. The console is about a third of the weight of the original console, thanks to the attached Joy-Cons. Yes, people complained about the Joy-Cons not being detachable, but at that point, just buy the regular Switch, yeah? The buttons actually feel better than the Joy-Cons themselves. We get an actual D-pad, not chiclet buttons, tighter joysticks, and better-feeling shoulder buttons. The screen is slightly smaller, but in the format, you won’t notice. It just looks slick and like it was always meant to be played this way.

Outside of the slick form factor (it’s just a joy to hold and use), the system boasts better battery life than the original Switch, but an hour or two less than the revised model. The original Switch’s battery life was pretty bad, with most games only lasting 3–4 hours. The system still has 5Ghz internet speed, an SD card slot, and a game card slot. This isn’t a digital-only switch, which they could have easily done but didn’t. Outside of all of this, physically, the system is rock solid and is only missing the ability to dock. If you can only afford or wish to have one Switch, think about how much you will use the system in handheld mode. If the answer is most of the time, I would pick this guy up instead, honestly. The system isn’t more powerful than the original model but has a more efficient processor, allowing for better battery life. My only main complaint is that the system doesn’t have HD rumble, so you would need to connect Joy-Cons or a Pro Controller to have that feature. It really stinks, and I miss it, but with all the other pros, it outweighs this major con.

I do have to mention that the system only comes with 32GB of onboard memory, which is a shame, but large microSD cards are under $30 these days, so it’s not an issue. The $100 price tag difference is great, so with a 128GB SD card, the system still costs less than the original model. I don’t have much else to say about the system except that the new colors and overall sleekness of the system just look better than the original. That flat black tablet against brighter colors didn’t look too hot, but this new portable system with a universal color scheme just looks sharp. I haven’t seen a better-looking handheld since the PSP was released 14 years ago. While the 2DS XL looks super sharp as well, this is clearly Nintendo’s replacement for the 3DS; they just haven’t officially announced it yet.

If you do own two Switch systems, I highly recommend having a Nintendo Online account, as cloud saves can be transferred between the two systems easily, so you don’t have to manually transfer the saves every time. As far as I know, the only game as of this writing that can’t do that is Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Sadly, the game data can’t be transferred, so you’re stuck downloading all the software again. Overall, the system has a slightly smaller screen, but it doesn’t feel smaller due to the overall lighter form factor, and the speakers are surprisingly really good as well.