Wolfenstein II was up against some big names, but it featured a unique and solid single-player campaign that the other shooters did not provide. The game felt good, was challenging, had a great story, and varied locales that were gorgeous to look at. Single-player shooters like Wolfenstein are hard to come by these days.
Am I 13 again? That’s the question I asked myself when I first loaded up WWII. World War II shooters dominated the gaming industry back in the late 90s and early 2000s, with Medal of Honor and Call of Duty at the forefront. With so many WWII games (check out my articles on nearly every WWII game ever made), everyone was done with them into the late 00s. With Modern Warfare, Battlefield, and other games jumping into modern combat, we quickly got sick of those in about the same amount of time.
Here we are in full circle. It’s rather funny that a WWII shooter feels fresh when, just 10 years ago, we were begging for it to end. Call of Duty was always my favorite of the bunch, as its slower, more cinematic take on the war was memorable and the gunplay was more realistic. There was always an interesting connection between teammates, rather than the war as a whole. In Call of Duty, you always followed one squad, or a small few (Finest Hour), but it never created anything groundbreaking.
WWII follows this old trend again as you play Private Daniels, who follows his squadmates through theaters of war and discovers losses along the way. It’s enough to keep you moving forward, but it never really amounts to anything. These are just generic soldiers that we have seen time and time again in these historical war shooters. What I was in for was the cinematic set pieces, weapons, and realism of WWII coming back with our current technology. Remember, these WWII shooters died in the middle of the last generation cycle.
I was very impressed with the storming of Normandy Beach as the game opened up. It showed the visual prowess of the game, with bullet shells flying everywhere, realistic and detailed characters and animations, and great water physics. What amazed me the most was when a soldier’s head was blown clean off, and I said to myself, “Wow, so they finally took the hint from Brothers in Arms that there was gore in these wars.” It’s just a no-brainer. I don’t know if it was technical limitations or just trying to get the teen rating, but why was there no gore for all those years these shooters were out? Only Brothers in Arms did that, I can remember.
As I played through the campaign, I had a sense that I was the small man in the war, never really a true hero. There are “heroic moments” that allow you to pull someone to safety to save someone from a Nazi trying to kill them, but these felt like they were wasted and just got in the way. Same as trying to find hidden moments everywhere. When you’re stuck in the middle of tank fire or being raided by bombs, you aren’t going to go around hunting for stuff; it’s just plain silly.
That wasn’t the only silly thing in the campaign; some of the cinematic scripted events are too crazy, and they feel like some sort of Indiana Jones thing, like when Daniels is falling down a bell tower and the bell is chasing him. Don’t drag it out so long and make so many near misses that you start rolling your eyes. These things took me out of the experience. However, the game did change up the pace quite a bit by throwing in stealth missions, escort missions, one mission where you are flying a plane (which is horrible), and even some tank and driving sections. It’s all here, and it feels like the culmination of Call of Duty from yesteryear, but in the end, it’s still missing something.
You can feel a bit of the Modern Warfare series in this game, such as the hit counter, quick scoping, and grenade lobbing. I wanted this game to stand apart from those and have nothing familiar in it, but it gets even worse in multiplayer, where it feels like Modern Warfare with a WWII skin attached.
After I finished the 8-hour campaign, I was left wanting more, which is always a good thing. I’m sure Activision will milk this again, as will other developers, but let’s use this opportunity to create something unique and give us parts of the war we haven’t seen. How about through the eyes of the Jews, or something a little more personable? It can happen, but WWII did what it was supposed to, for now.
I won’t get into multiplayer or Nazi Zombies much, but zombies are completely evolved. The new story carries out, and the map is much larger, with little puzzles here and there. There are a lot of upgrades, and Zombies is at its best yet, but you should probably already expect that. I never played Zombies much on CoD and probably won’t here either. Multiplayer is a little different and isn’t sure if it wants to be WWII, a Modern Warfare skin, or a Battlefield 1 clone. Multiplayer needs the most work in the next series, but I would love a larger campaign.
As it stands, WWII is a much-needed game in the series. Another Infinite Warfare, and the series would have been done for good. A few more hours in the oven, and Call of Duty could possibly cook up the best WWII shooter ever created next time around. With fantastic cinematic moments, a variety of gameplay, a long campaign, amazing visuals, added gore, and wholesome weapons, WWII is one of my favorite shooters to have come out in recent years.
Immortal Redneck is, unfortunately, not going to get the attention it deserves. It’s neither a fantastic game nor a bad game, nor is it original in any sense, but it does combine elements from several other games into one package and does it fairly well.
You play as, what else?, an immortal redneck mummy with a wooden pistol, shotgun, and dynamite. At least those are your starter weapons. The game is set in Egypt, and the idea is to defeat all the enemies on each “floor” to make it to the top of a pyramid. The game is a mix between Serious Sam, Rogue Legacy, and Dark Souls. Like Serious Sam, the game is set in Egypt and features fast-paced first-person shooting action with strange monsters. The game almost looks like Serious Sam as well. Like in Rogue Legacy, when you die, you actually get stronger by using the gold you collected to unlock various upgrades and buy new weapons.
Like Dark Souls, the game is extremely hard, gets repetitive, and isn’t for people wanting a linear FPS experience. Your first hour you will spend just dying a lot and obtaining upgrades until you can unlock the weapons shop, and that’s where things pick up. However, the constant repetition of going floor to floor, despite it being randomly generated, can be annoying and get boring after a while. Redneck doesn’t have much going for it style-wise that other games haven’t tried. It looks good, on a technical level, and the shooting feels just fine.
The issue would be just the difficulty alone and the grinding to achieve better weapons and upgrades until you can beat the pyramid. It’s nothing amazing, but it’s also fun enough to make you stick around to the end, but only if you like any of the above-aforementioned games. The game is just average all around, honestly, but still worth a weekend purchase. On a second note, it’s nice that the game supports modern systems such as 4K and ultra-widescreen monitors.
Man, where do I begin? Call of Duty was one of my favorite franchises growing up, and Modern Warfare helped kickstart FPS games into a new cinematic, next-generation universe. That Pripyat level in the first modern war still sticks with me to this day. After MW2, the series took a steep downhill slide and hasn’t stopped since. Here we are with Black Ops III, a futuristic military shooter that is a far cry from what the original Black Ops was, which was absolutely fantastic. You play as a squad of black-ops cybernetic soldiers who are trying to stop an all-powerful AI from destroying the world. See, the whole world is completely infused with technology that can read people’s minds and know our every move. The CIA has several operations around the world to keep this in check, but it all goes wrong one day. The actual concept is interesting and could have gone somewhere, but instead, we dredge through a sewer of boring, mediocre, and lame campaign levels that drag on way too long and overstay their welcome.
The game plays exactly like every other CoD since MW1. You run and gun your way through waves of enemies that are as dumb as dirt, and you face unbalanced difficulty spikes and repeat about a million times. I have to point out that I really hate the new weapon system in this game. You can no longer pick up guns from enemies but instead run into mobile armories where you can swap your loadout. This is a campaign, not multiplayer. I want to pick up weapons from enemies and keep things constantly mixed up. Several times through one level, I would need a shotgun or sniper rifle but was screwed because I couldn’t get to an armory. I can’t predict what’s going to happen next, so this is a huge mistake, and I really hated it.
Second, the enemies are as boring as ever, with generic robots and super soldiers. You get the occasional mobile armor, but that’s about it. It’s so boring that I just shrugged because I knew this was coming from a game like this. I mentioned the terrible weapon systems, but let’s talk about how terrible the actual weapons are. For one, there’s a small amount for a CoD game, and they all feel the same. Sure, you have shotguns, assault rifles, and pistols, but they just feel the same. They seem to have no weight, no bearing, and no personality. It’s futuristic shotgun A and futuristic assault rifle F. There are no real-world weapons anymore, and it’s just a borefest due to a lack of personality. The entire game has zero personality or originality. It all feels like endless metal corridors, hallways, and concrete. At least the first Black Ops felt original and had some personality and weight to it.
To make the game feel more like multiplayer, you get dumped into a central hub after every level and can change your loadout, unlock weapons with fabrication kits, and customize your weapons. There’s a new concept introduced called cybercores, which are powers that you can use against enemies. I found these almost worthless, as the game offers no opportunities to change to the standard CoD gameplay to implement them. It just felt like something tacked on to say, “Hey! We did something different! SEE?!” which I didn’t fall for. The only useful power was stunning multiple robots at once, but that’s about it. For most of the campaign, I forgot these powers were even there. I just ran around shooting everything in sight, like every other COD. I wish the series would stop pretending to be sophisticated and complicated when really it’s a dumbed-down snoozefest with no personality. It has been years since CoD has put its own fingerprint on the FPS genre, and this game doesn’t do it any favors.
I hated the campaign, but the multiplayer was at least fun for a while. It’s still the same old CoD MP that we’ve grown to either somehow tolerate or completely hate. However, Black Ops III is much more grindy than any other CoD game, and I gave up after around level 5. Even in single-player, it takes many levels before you can purchase decent weapons and load-outs. It’s part of the reason why the game gets so boring so quickly; the fast unlocks of the past are gone, and it feels almost free to play, which is a damn shame.
Graphics-wise, it’s nothing impressive except for how powerful of a PC you need to run something that shouldn’t push high-end systems. With the GTX 970, I used to have to turn down settings and still get massive slowdowns. It wasn’t until I used an overclocked 1070 that I got steady FPS with everything maxed out, and even then sometimes the game dropped down to 40 FPS for no apparent reason. The game is poorly optimized, has awful glitches that still exist after all the patches, and just doesn’t look all that original or impressive.
Overall, I can’t really recommend this game except for the hardcore CoD players, and fans of only the older games will hate this. The weapon system stinks, the campaign is boring, lame, tedious, and full of glitches, and the unlocks are a grindfest. There’s so much wrong with Black Ops III that it took me over a year to finish the campaign. It’s just boring and not fun to play, as there are plenty of other great shooters out there. I’d rather play Half-Life 2 for the 20th time or the Crysis trilogy than spend one more minute in this game. Now, that’s not to say I hate it to death, as the multiplayer can be pretty fun with new modes and playable heroes at a little depth, but it’s not enough to save the core gameplay. Zombie Mode is the final saving grace, as it still provides entertainment, but like multiplayer, it will only last so long with boring guns to use and average visuals.
It has been a long time since Halo was first released. Most people may not even remember it, but it was a series that almost never saw the light of day. Halo: Combat Evolved was a well-made sci-fi epic first-person shooter turned into a multi-million dollar sci-fi odyssey spanning dozens of comics, books, TV shows, and almost a movie. The first three games were absolutely fantastic, with Halo 2 being the best of the bunch. With revolutionary multiplayer and combat mechanics, Halo has been copied countless times over and over again. But how far can a series take something revolutionary and continue to build on it? Halo had three spin-offs, with ODST and Reach expanding beyond Master Chief and Wars being an RTS.
Halo 5 is the direct sequel to Halo 4, with Cortana’s rampancy going off the charts and team Osiris trying to track down the Blue Team, which is Master Chief and co. The story will make zero sense unless everyone has been playing the games recently and even reading the literature. The story has become so complex and involved that the games can’t tell the whole thing anymore. I didn’t even make much sense of it and was lost most of the time. With the story out the window for most, what we have left is just the gameplay.
Halo 5 has a solid campaign, but it is forgettable and too similar to previous games. With the added Prometheans from Halo 4 returning and the remade Covenant, it is definitely a strange game to accept. All your Halo vehicles are here, albeit remade, and even the new mix of UNSC, Covenant, and Promethean weapons can make your head spin. The weapons are rather unique, and they all feel great and are well balanced. You are forced to switch weapons based on the situation, as each enemy plays differently and requires different tactics. This has been a staple of Halo gameplay, and it is at its pinnacle here.
Missions are sadly unvaried, with just on foot trotting through various landscapes and getting on vehicles here and there (the least amount of vehicle riding out of any Halo game), and that’s about it. You get new jetpacks and a Spartan Charge and Stomp move as Locke when you play the Osiris team. Master Chief feels like his same old self but is only played at a couple of levels in the game. This feels more like a spin-off and more on the lines of ODST and Reach than the main Halo game. The campaign has 14 chapters and will take around 8–12 hours to finish. Once you do, you’re on to multiplayer and customizing your character.
Halo 5 introduces card packs to rake in microtransaction-loving fools this time around. These packs have perks and extra customization options. There’s a lot to customize, such as your armor, emblem, narrator’s voice, weapon skins, and some other things. Outside of this multiplayer, Halo has been so involved and similar through each game that it all blurs together. I’m not a Halo multiplayer veteran or expert, but I can only tell you that it’s fun and isn’t less fun than other Halo games. There are plenty of maps and modes to keep you busy for the rest of the year. Halo is its own beast and carves its own path in the FPS multiplayer landscape. It may not be for everyone, as it doesn’t feel like the military shooter, just like with Gears of War. It’s difficult; there are people who play this professionally online or have played since the first game, and you will die more times than you can count.
Outside of multiplayer, there’s 4-player co-op and Halo Forge, which allow you to build multiplayer maps. I honestly didn’t dabble in this too much as I’m not very good at it, but it’s very robust, and map creators will be in heaven here. Let’s get sad here and talk about what I didn’t like. The visuals were extremely disappointing. With this being the flagship Xbox franchise, the graphics were more like they were ported over from Xbox 360 and touched up. The textures are fairly low resolution, and the model detail wasn’t too great. This game doesn’t look much better than Halo 4 outside of the lighting effects and draw distance. The game doesn’t even support HDR, which was a real letdown as well. The game just isn’t much of a sequel, and Halo needs a serious reboot at this point.
Overall, if you hate Halo or are tired of it, this won’t change your mind at all. Halo has declined over the years and doesn’t retain the quality it once had or the chokehold on the FPS genre. This is far from the king that it used to be and needs a passover with fresh minds and new ideas. Stay for the multiplayer, but most people will play this game and forget about it.
Well, 2016 seems to be a great year for the comeback of shooters. First Overwatch, now DOOM (well, in reviewing order). DOOM could have gone so bad, so quickly. However, ID Software went back to its roots, updated it for 2016 technology, and gave the middle finger to all the rest of the stuff plaguing the genre. DOOM is by far one of the best FPS games I have played in over a decade. It’s fast-paced, challenging, fun, full of secrets for veterans, and just plain old shooting.
The game actually does have a bit of a story, and it’s done just right so that it won’t get in the way of the shooting. You play Doomguy, a UAC Marine who has to help a robot scientist named Hayden stop another researcher from bringing Hell to Earth. Amanda Pierce let the tech and religious aspects of Hell get to her, and it overran the advanced Mars facility. Most of the story is told through logs, which are actually the best way to keep the story from getting in the way or becoming a train wreck. There are few cutscenes in DOOM, and when they play out, they are a nice break from the challenging gunplay. It’s light and crisp and isn’t stale, which is great for the genre. Too many games—Battlefield and Call of Duty, in particular—try to do this Hollywood sci-fi script of I don’t know what the hell to impress the edgy gamers out there. It doesn’t work; it’s a train wreck, and those stories are a complete mess. The FPS genre relies too heavily on story and not enough on gameplay.
With that said, DOOM is just like you remembered all those years ago—forget about Doom 3. As soon as I took control of Doomguy, I was in heaven. It’s fast-paced, controls amazingly well, and the guns feel fantastic. The slow build-up of your arsenal makes you smile every time you acquire a new weapon. Seeing Doomguy pick up the shotgun brought a “hell yeah” smile to my face. Seeing the chainsaw rip through enemies just gave me satisfaction as a shooter I haven’t felt in years. There’s a strong arsenal, and not all classic weapons return; a majority are new. The chaingun is fun, the heavy assault rifle is fun, and the gauss rifle is just so much fun. DOOM starts bringing the series into 2016 with weapons mods and Praetor Suit upgrades. These seem unnecessary at first, but with the way the enemies are balanced and maps are laid out, you feel you need them. Each weapon has two different mods, which are incredibly helpful. The shotgun can get an exploding buckshot or a three-round burst. There’s no reloading ammo in the game, so the R key is used for switching between mods. To keep things balanced, there’s a mod switching animation, so going into combat with what you want is necessary.
Let’s talk enemies. The game is chock-full of them, and all the classics return. Pinkies, Hell Knights, Cacodemons, Imps, etc. They look fantastic, blow up great, and the game is so gory and full of detail. The game isn’t the most technically impressive as some textures are lacking, but the game has incredible lighting, and the game runs at a nice smooth clip at 60 FPS. It does require the latest PC hardware to run at maxed-out settings, with Nightmare textures needing a GTX 980 or higher as it requires 6GB of VRAM. If you have the rig, you’re going to be in for a visual spectacle. I also have to commend the audio. The explosions, gunfire, enemy sounds, and gory splats are fantastic. The game also has a good ‘ol heavy metal soundtrack with a techno twist. This is one of the best video game soundtracks this year.
DOOM’s level design is actually very old-school, and it works well here. Each level is made up of arenas with linear hallways in between. 50% of the fun in DOOM is finding all the secrets, thanks to the excellent map. Once you find the Auto Map, all secrets are revealed, but they are still challenging to find. You might see a collectible floating in the air, but you have to find the right switch or path to get to it. I haven’t had this much fun finding collectibles and secrets in a game in a very long time. It was done right here and was not forced. Everything you miss can be reacquired by replaying levels. DOOM also features a new Rune Trial mode, which is a super fun mini-game of sorts that is quite challenging. I was able to beat them all through the first play-through, but a few proved tough. You get timed to complete certain goals, such as killing a certain number of enemies under certain circumstances. They change up the pace and are a warm welcome to the series.
Multiplayer is a bit of a disappointment, but it’s not awful. It’s fun for quite a while, but it won’t have you coming back months later like other shooters. You have your classic modes, and it’s just plain old run-and-gun fun online. It just feels like it’s lacking something or something that needs adjusting. Hopefully, the next DOOM will address this issue, or we will get a stand-alone DOOM multiplayer suite.
DOOM is a fantastic shooter and one of the best to come out in the past ten years. It does have a few flaws; I forgot to mention glory kills, which are melee kills used when an enemy is stunned and flashing. Pressing F can launch you towards the enemy to acquire health and ammo, but it’s overused quite a bit. Thankfully, it’s totally optional, and towards the end of the game, the novelty wore off, and I only used it for health and ammo. The game does get repetitive towards the end, but not in an overly bad way. It’s just part of the genre and series and is a staple that will never go away. Outside of these issues, the game is worth a full purchase.
First-person shooters have hit an all-time slump in the past 10 years. With Call of Duty and Battlefield every year, they have kind of polluted the genre. FPS games are the laughing stock of the gaming community, and it needs to stop. Even worse, FPS multiplayer has taken an all-time low as well. I have not enjoyed online multiplayer since Team Fortress 2, and that was a long time ago. Overwatch finally fixes this problem. Yes, Overwatch is the best multiplayer game I have played in nearly 10 years. That’s not an overstatement; that’s not an exaggeration; that’s a true, hard fact.
What makes Overwatch so great? First off, the characters. Overwatch has some of the best characters gaming has seen in ages, with every single one being memorable, unique, and fun. Not once did I find myself hating a character or preferring not to play as one. But you’re also probably asking, “What is Overwatch?” A team-based shooter with 6-vs-6 with various maps, objectives, and downright amazing fun.
Overwatch does not have a story, so let’s make that clear. It doesn’t need one either, and that’s a damn miracle on its own. You boot up the game, play the tutorial, and go; that’s all you need. This is very refreshing, as I’m tired of shooters shoehorning crappy stories into games. There isn’t even a backstory for the characters, which is also not needed as it just works. I can’t express this enough; the game just works, and it’s a masterpiece.
Let’s talk about gameplay. The game is perfectly set up for this type of game and strays away from leveling up weapons and getting new gear like in other FPS games. Each character has two abilities and two modes on their weapons. Characters are divided up into class types, which are tank, offense, defense, and support. Each class has about five characters, so there are plenty to choose from. Not a single character plays the same, and this is key to balancing out matches. One feature I absolutely love is the match hints when selecting characters. It lets everyone know when there are too many offensive characters, too many snipers, not enough tanks, etc. This allows you to balance out the match and works wonders. Rarely did I play a match in which players did not follow these guidelines.
Having each character play completely different forces forces everyone to either pick a few favorites or experiment. I still haven’t played all characters yet, but I stuck with Mercy (a healer) through most of my time. She doesn’t have any defense or offense abilities outside of a small pistol that does minimal damage. It’s up to other players to protect you and use your abilities to their full extent. She can fly towards another player from a good distance, and this was a great defense. If you’re out in the open, you can fly to a character, and they will usually protect you. Her secondary fire ability is increased damage dealt, so I would use this on a player until their health dropped. Every character also has a special ability that needs to be charged. Once charged, these can turn the game around and give your team an edge. Mercy can resurrect a dead player, which I have actually won matches doing.
Another character I played a lot was Pharrah. She’s a rocket launcher offense character that can fly. Her gameplay is designed for vertical play, and it’s so much fun. Her rockets are fairly balanced and bring me back to the days of the Unreal Tournament. Her abilities are a rocket pack that allows her to glide, a super jump, and her special ability is a rocket barrage, which is best used in the air as she’s immobile during this ability.
As you can see, the game is perfectly balanced. Not one single character is overpowered, causing players to use only one character. There are melee-only characters like Reinhardt, who uses a giant shield that players can take cover behind, but he also wields a giant hammer. He’s deadly up close, but he can’t do much for players far away. Then there’re characters like Widowmaker and Hanzo, who are snipers and do great damage from far away but can hold their ground in close combat if it’s one-on-one. I just love how well each character plays and each one is unique, and I haven’t had that feeling since Team Fortress 2.
Once a match is over, there’s an awesome play of the game that is picked by the winning team. You get a cool character intro screen as well as great adrenaline-fueled music along with the 10-second replay clip. Right now, there’re issues with computers spitting out outplays via numbers, so a lot of support characters get overlooked, but Blizzard is currently working on this. The whole time I played Mercy, I was only Play of the Game once, and that was because a player I was healing killed a lot of people, and then I resurrected someone, making my numbers slightly better. It’s unfair, as characters who do quick high damage get the most plays, such as Reaper, Hanzo, McCree, Bastion, Reinhardt, and D.Va. Most of the characters have huge AoEs, which the computer considers the coolest.
Once the play is over, players can rate the match and commend the players with the best numbers, and then you go to your XP bar. Every time you level up, you get a loot box, which contains four items ranging from new skins, sprays, icons, and voice lines. These are nice perks to make your character stand out a bit, but I would have loved something more robust. Maybe being able to customize the character fully would have been nice, but any weapon or ability upgrades would break the entire game. It’s perfectly balanced as it is.
The map’s design is also fantastic. I didn’t find a single map I disliked or didn’t want to play. There are about a dozen or so maps right now from around the world, ranging from Russia to the USA, China, and Mexico. They are laid out just right so every character can take advantage of something, whether it’s a sniper spot, large open area, or corridor.
Now let’s talk about visuals. Overwatch is not as technically impressive as it is artistic. The game looks fantastic; don’t get me wrong, but this isn’t going to make the latest GPU sweat. There’re some low-res texture issues here and there, and you can tell it was optimized for consoles. The lighting effects are fantastic, and everything is highly detailed, but don’t expect The Witcher 3 status graphics.
With all that said, Overwatch has been one of the best shooters in the past ten years. I recommend every shooter fan pick this up, especially if you love Team Fortress 2. The game is perfectly balanced, has memorable characters, and is a blast to play as it forces players to work in teams even without communicating.
Well, I finally did it; I actually beat ODST. I rented the game when it was first released, and it was so boring that I nearly fell asleep. I turned it back in after the first mission. In retrospect, I realized I just didn’t know enough of the Halo universe to understand the story of ODST, as non-fans won’t quite understand this little slice of the story, and that’s exactly what ODST is: a slice of Halo.
You play as an ODST (Orbital Drop Shock Trooper), who are the grunts in the warfighting most of the fights while the series is mainly focused on Master Chief. In ODST, you are dropped into New Mombasa, which is now completely overrun by Covenant and devoid of life. You were supposed to meet your fellow teammates for a mission, but everything went to crap, as usual, and now you have to figure out what happened to them. You are supposed to find clues as to what happened to each member, and these result in flashback missions. After completing the game, I realized how short it actually was, with only about 8 missions or so. Outside of these missions, finding 30 audio logs ends up being filler content, as I spent most of my time with the game hunting these down for achievements.
If you don’t bother hunting these down, you’re in for one short game, but this was just to help tide people over before Reach was released and for the inevitable release of Halo 4 that everyone wanted. Wandering around this hub is actually quite boring, with the occasional Covenant firefight breaking out. The city is devoid of everything and felt like an unnecessary filler to add a couple extra hours of aimless wandering. There are objective markers for each clue, but getting to each one is tedious and has no point. The audio logs serve as a side story of what happened to the city and a particular inhabitant, but the actual story outside of this doesn’t pick up until the end of the game, which is really weird.
The mission is to retrieve the data of the superintendent, which is in a huge data hive that is underneath New Mombasa. It turns out this was extracted by an alien species that becomes an ally, and you must bring it back to Earth. I will actually praise ODST’s missions for being of decent length and mixing up the gameplay a little bit. While it’s the same Halo stuff we are used to, it’s in shorter bursts. Vehicle sections mixed with highway sections mixed with on-foot stuff work well here, just like in any other Halo game. There is some better balancing over Halo 3 (it uses the same engine), with better weapon handling and tighter mechanics. It still feels like Halo, which is what counts, but this is obviously a diversion. I honestly asked myself in the end: if this game was never released, would it have mattered? No, it wouldn’t have, as it’s not the main Halo game, and most people actually never played it.
In the end, we get a mediocre Halo game with characters we really don’t care about due to a lack of character development. The graphics are decent and look even better on Xbox One, but what does it all mean in the end? Nothing we couldn’t have gotten out of a novel or comic series proves that ODST is just a diversion to stem the tide of anticipation for Halo 4. With a boring hub world and a broken story, ODST isn’t a necessity for anyone, fans or non-fans alike. Play this if you just want to finish the whole series or feel like you need a break from the main road.
Man, playing this game has been a long time coming for me. I played the demo when it was first released, as it was highly anticipated. Clive Barker’s Undying was a very well-received horror FPS, and maybe he thought he could up the ante by making a squad-based shooter set in his universe. It sounded good on paper, and the trailers and screenshots looked decent, but once everyone got their hands on the game, the bad reviews and anger started up. I rented the game, actually bought it once when it was dirt cheap, and sent it back both times. I just couldn’t understand the game, felt it was boring, and didn’t have the patience for it.
Now, almost ten years later, I decided to try one last time, and I finally got through the game. The story is what I had high hopes for, as Clive Barker is a great storyteller. You play as a squad of seven named Jericho that is sent to close a breach in a portal to hell. This self-contained hell is called the Pyxsis, which is a series of levels within itself. It doesn’t sound dissimilar to Clive Barker’s own Hellraiser series. Once you pass through each breach, a new setting is revealed, usually a time period from the past, and a new boss is on the horizon. The smaller story elements are decent, but the game has one of the worst endings I have ever seen. Once you beat the final boss, the game cuts straight to the credits with no pause—a complete shitty ending.
Actually, playing the game is quite a chore, and this is because the developers became too ambitious with you having to play as seven people, and it becomes a chore. Each member has their own weapon type and magic abilities. Delgado is a heavy mini-gunner with a fire demon spell and a fire shield. Jones uses an assault rifle/shotgun combo and can possess bodies. Black is a sniper and can use a bullet cam and telekinesis. Get the idea? There are seven of them, and you have to keep track of all of them in cramped linear hallways. Every so often, the squad splits up, but it still doesn’t matter. I went through endless hallway after hallway, killing the same three enemies throughout the entire game, and I wanted it all to end so quickly.
What makes matters worse is that the game is extremely difficult and poorly balanced. One level might be easy, but the next is wave after wave of enemies. Reviving each and every player every time they fall really stinks and makes things more difficult. Fighting a wave of enemies and having to run around and heal everyone who is down just makes the game more unnecessarily difficult. Even with the easy difficulty, I died a lot. On top of all that, the shooting mechanics are awful, as there’s no feedback or weight to the weapons, and they all feel the same. I just stuck with Delgado and the mini-gun through most of the game, as any strategy is null and void when you’re stuck in corridors through the entire game.
There were a couple weird puzzles thrown in randomly, and the boss fights became more and more frequent towards the end, like the developers ran out of ideas. After the 25th level, the game accelerates towards the ending. I can see how this game would have been better if there was more enemy variety, less linearity, and not so many squadmates. Just a tighter, more fine-tuned squad-based shooter would have been fine. Instead, we get seven people that we don’t really care about, as the game’s story randomly throws in cut scenes and there’s no character development.
Outside of that, the atmosphere is fantastic and is the best part of the game. Clive Barker’s signature is all over the enemy and level design, with gore and blood on every inch of everything. The enemy designs are awesome, but there are about a half dozen, and they get boring to kill after a while. The levels are neat to look at, but they are nauseating in closed-up hallways and are always way too dark.
With that said, Clive Barker’s Jericho is only worth a playthrough if you are a hardcore Clive Barker fan; otherwise, there are zero reasons to even touch this game. It’s unbalanced, difficult, and boring; the story doesn’t really go anywhere; and controlling seven different people is a chore. The guns shoot like crap, and the only redeeming value is the art style and atmosphere. Stick to Undying if you want Clive Barker’s better adventure.
Note: This is a re-review due to my original Halo 3 review being very brief and not up to par with how I write these days.
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Developer: 343 Industries/Bungie
Release Date: 9/25/2007 (X360), 11/11/2014 (XONE)
Available On
Nearly four years in the making, Halo 3 was one of the most anticipated games of the last-generation console launch. While it didn’t quite make the November 2005 360 launches, it did garner huge sales and broke records at the time. I remember playing Halo 3 shortly after its release and thinking it was the best of the trilogy. Now, after playing Halo 1 and 2 remastered, I have to say Halo 2 still stands superior. While Halo 3 is better balanced and has a better dual-wielding system, it’s shorter in length and feels like too much of the same. How many times do we have to “stop” the flood? How many Halo rings do we have to land on? It keeps getting boring and tiresome, and for me, the series has hit a fatigue plateau that it needs to get out of. While the Brutes are a more relevant enemy and there are more Flood variations, I’m still tired of it all.
Despite those complaints, the game is still solid, no matter what. It’s challenging, for sure, and there are some added elements that change it up just enough to justify calling it a sequel. Remember those giant scarabs from Halo 2? Now you get to battle several of them in the game. We can now drive Scorpions and new Covenant vehicles such as Choppers, but sadly, we can no longer drive Wraiths. These balancing tweaks help make the gameplay better, just like only certain weapons can be dual-wielded. Dual Needlers can still be rocked around, as can Brute machine pistols, Brute shotguns, more energy weapons, and improved UNSC weapons.
The game is shorter than the last games, but each level is completely different. One level has us on a Halo ring, another on the derelict Ark, so it doesn’t get too boring, but everything is very familiar. The whole point of the game is to stop the Flood and the Prophet of Truth from firing the Halo rings and killing everything in the galaxy. While the story is just as brief as the last games, I still found myself disappointed in not seeing or hearing about more lore. The series hasn’t exactly been expanded upon; it just stretched out through the trilogy, which I felt was disappointing.
Graphically, Halo 2 remastered looks better than Halo 3, but this isn’t a surprise. Halo 3 was criticized for not having “next-gen” graphics at the time of launch and was claimed to just be marginally better looking than Halo 2. Halo 3 doesn’t get a remaster here, and the gorgeous pre-rendered cut scenes are gone, which is a huge letdown. Honestly, Halo 3’s graphics are kind of all over the place with decent character models, but some textures look awful in spots and the physics seem weird and too floaty—even for Halo standards. Halo 3 received some lighting enhancements, and certain areas look pretty good (mainly outdoor areas), but don’t expect to be wowed by the looks of this game at all.
Overall, Halo 3 does what it was supposed to do: let us finish the fight against the Covenant Prophets and the Flood. The ending is satisfying enough, and I felt the game was shorter than previous installments, but somehow it was just right for this game due to the same feel it has. Sadly, the game was not remastered and feels inferior to the remastered versions of Halo 1 and 2. There’s just enough variety and changes here to make it feel like a sequel, but not the earth-shattering sequel that Halo 2 was.
thebinarymessiah.com 
Yep! The fact that I forgot about this game until you made a comment proves that.