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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, Sony Consoles. 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)


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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 GTA3 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 GTA3 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 GTA3. 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 is when 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 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 are one of my favorite parts of the game. Driving around listening to the hilarious commentary is gold. Due to the small volume 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 over ad-hoc. You can participate in races, taxi, 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 as well as 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 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.

L.A. Noire – 9 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 04/16/2020
Posted in: Microsoft Consoles, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, 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)


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 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 in 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 as 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 a 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 life-like 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 to tell 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 its 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 exploring and gunplay. Firefights are mundane and feel pretty lifeless. There are 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 and 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 make 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 and 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. 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 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 go buy weapons. It’s just a giant hub world to get from point A to B. Streets of L.A. side missions are just randomized gameplay loops of chasing, shooting, and driving with neither of the three is 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 has performance issues and bugs that required game restarts. The framerate can dip into single digits in certain spots, but it’s still very playable.

Watch Dogs 2

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 07/23/2019
Posted in: Microsoft Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Unsupported, Steam Deck Verification, Xbox One. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment
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Publisher: Ubisoft

Developer: Ubisoft Montreal

Release Date: 11/15/2016


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Do you trust your government? Do you trust your social media outlets? Do you trust anyone with money or power? That’s what Watch Dogs 2 constantly asks you as you play through the campaign. You play as a hacker named Marcus who is trying to take over what Aiden Pierce did in the first Watch Dogs and take down the corporate conglomerate Blume and their ctOS 2.0 system that is continuously monitoring the people’s every move and step to a creepy factor.

Watch Dogs 2, now set in San Fransisco instead of Chicago, is a gorgeous open-world game full of many activities as well as side missions to complete next to the main campaign. There are also collectibles and various shops in which you can deck Marcus out in cool hip threads. But, that’s not what I want to talk about first. Let’s first talk about this whole “hack anything” gameplay feature that Ubisoft bragged about for Watch Dogs 1 and didn’t deliver. Your main weapon is your cell phone and when you move the camera a white line will connect to everything around you from cars to electrical boxes to people and let you either control it or the citizen’s cell phones in various ways. Steal cash from their bank account, burn their phone up (and kill them in the process), set the police or gangs on them, and even listen in on texts and audio calls. It’s really neat and works much better than the first game and it’s integral for combat when going into restricted areas which are about 90% of every mission’s contents.

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When you get to a restricted area it can be as small as a house or as large as a rocket building facility or even a boat. You can either go in guns blazing which is impossible early on as the better weapons are really expensive to buy and you must unlock weapon slots. Your main tools are your RC Jumper Car and your RC Copter. The RC Copter comes in halfway through the campaign, but you get the car immediately and you can complete entire missions with this thing without ever having to walk in. Set up just outside the restricted boundaries and control your RC car through vents, and doors, have it hack laptops, and even distract guards by making their cell phone ring so you can roll on by. The RC car has physical capabilities that the copter can not do such as pick up items and physically hack certain things that require access through to main objectives.

The RC copter is great for scouting and remotely hacking things that don’t require physical interaction. Now, there are some missions in which Marcus must physically hack into something himself and these can get a little tough. You don’t last very long in this game by shooting as you die after a few shots. It’s better to maybe call in the mafia on a guard and have them shoot it out and thin the herd a bit, or use the cameras around the building and maybe rig electrical boxes and have guards go out that way. Sometimes I would just remotely have a car rampage its way through an area which is a lot of fun. There are so many ways to complete objectives and it’s basically a fun sandbox of hacking and shooting. The RC car and RC copter are a Godsend as some facilities are just too difficult for Marcus to enter without dying constantly.

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Then there are a few missions where you just hack your way through via scripted puzzles which are a blast. Making people suffer or humiliating them through various hacking scenarios is just so much fun and I always wanted more. Outside of these missions, scenarios are how you escape from the cops and that’s a whole thing. You do have a cooldown timer when you are caught and once you hid long enough everyone will break off, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. In the city, running from the cops requires either hiding away from the streets or ducking down in a car. I would sometimes duck down in a car and when a cop car strolled by I would hack their car and kick it into reverse before they spotted me. It’s really cool to see so many ways to play around with the game from having cranes lift you hundreds of feet into the air and onto a building, to using a forklift to deliver an explosive canister to a group of guards and have them blow up.

That’s what the game is mostly made up of with some side activities such as races, hacking events, real-time co-op side missions, and situations in which another player enters your area and you must find them with your hacker vision before they steal your followers. Outside of this, the story is great with memorable characters that I really cared about thanks to the amazing voice acting and well-written dialog. The cut scenes kept me pushing through this game through an entire week and I didn’t want to put it down. The game uses fake groups that represent real-life corporations such as Nudle (Google),!Nvite (Facebook), and the overall social media trend are being used to manipulate the public. It really makes you think about what’s going on in the world today and I have to commend Ubisoft for making real-world problems like racism, sexism, and various social issues present in the game to wake up gamers.

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The game also looks fantastic with a very realistic San Francisco such as the Golden Gate Bridge, the famous hairpin street, and various monuments, and buildings. The game, however, suffers from a poorly optimized engine with even two GPU generations ahead of what’s required struggling to keep up at max settings at 4K. MSAA anti-aliasing cripples anything but multiple GPU setups and I constantly would go from 90FPS and dip into the 30s during driving scenes or climbing buildings for no apparent reason. Despite all of this, the game looks fantastic.

Overall, Watch Dogs 2 is a sandbox of hacking and shooting with so many fun scenarios and ways to complete them. The story, characters, and dialog are all well written and keep you coming for more, and using real-world problems to deliver this story is a plus. Despite the poorly optimized engine, the game looks amazing and the rebuilt San Francisco is a blast. I just didn’t care much for the tedious activities and collecting spray cans and hacker points to max out my research. It just felt incredibly tedious.

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Far Cry 4

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 05/24/2015
Posted in: Microsoft Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Playable, Steam Deck Verification, Xbox 360, Xbox One. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . 2 Comments

Publisher: Ubisoft

Developer: Ubisoft Montreal

Release Date: 11/18/2014


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An open jungle, a rebel war, a tyrant, a guy who ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time, lots of guns…sound familiar? Yes, another Far Cry run of a giant open world that might be too large for its own good. Far Cry 3‘s mediocre missions were made up for an excellent story with fantastic characters, however, Far Cry 4 seems to be doing the opposite. You play Ajay Ghale, a man trying to bury his mother’s ashes, but is captured by a tyrant known as Pagin Min. Min is a man who is bringing the people of Kyrat down, and you are here to help the rebel army rise against him. Sounds cliche and boring…and it is. The story and characters are Far Cry 4‘s downfall as they are either just really badly written or uninteresting. Pagan Min isn’t so bad, but the rest of the characters just don’t hit home like FC3 did.

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There are honestly more side missions than story quests, but to the point in which it’s overwhelming. Far Cry 4 is huge. Five times the size of Far Cry 3. Despite the story being bland, let’s talk about the gameplay. It’s nearly identical to FC3 in terms of gunplay and the choice of stealth or guns blazing. However, the choice of stealth, I feel, is stilted and guns blazing tends to be the forced choice. There are multiple side quests from destroying propaganda towers, intercepting couriers, taking over camps, storming fortresses, hunting, races, and several others. While all these are fun for a bit, they all wear thin as there are just so many of them. There were missions that required me to sneak into an enemy base, but no matter how quiet I was someone always saw me. The enemies have had this problem since the first game.

Outside of the side missions, you can buy weapons, and maps, hunt for treasures (which is probably the most tedious), and skin animals to increase carrying capacity. Gathering plants for syringes is back as well, but all of these things are second-hand from FC3, and there’s just not enough here that’s new to make it feel like FC4. Thankfully, the gunplay is rather solid, and customizing weapons was one of my favorite things to do. I’m not saying any of this stuff was bad, but it was tedious and felt too similar to past games. Nothing really stands out on its own.

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FC4 is also heavily reliant on co-op play as some camps and fortresses are nearly impossible to take over by yourself. I died multiple times and had to exploit strategies to beat some of them. I would give up and wander around collecting treasure, taking over a tower, complete some side quests, only to continue getting distracted from the main story. This is usually a good thing, but FC4‘s world feels sterile and empty and too artificial for its own good. Most people would love all these things to do, but it’s all just kind of dull and only good in short bursts.

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The graphics are actually quite fantastic and show off the power of next-gen consoles, however, it’s not much different looking than FC3. In the end, after completing the story I felt overwhelmed by the vast amount of things to complete the game and just told myself I would come back to it later when I’m really bored. In the future, Ubisoft needs to work on Far Cry feeling more important with less filler content. Honestly, this series needs a reboot or a complete overhaul to justify its existence.

Grand Theft Auto V

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 10/19/2013
Posted in: Microsoft Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Playable, Steam Deck Verification, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: Rockstar North

Developer: Rockstar Games

Release Date: 9/16/2013

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Well, here it is folks. Probably one of the most anticipated games of all time. It’s breaking records everywhere. It has made over $1 billion already, it was the UK’s best-selling game of all time, and the list goes on. Why is such a “real” game-like GTA5 so popular? Usually sequels and series are dead at their fifth iteration, so what makes GTA5 so special? Love and care. Rockstar loves their franchise so much, they have put 5 years into GTA5 to make it what it is which is nearly perfect. There is so much freaking detail in this game I could go on forever describing it all. So let’s start with the story.

You play as three characters this time around which is a first for GTA5. Trevor, Michael, and Franklin are your average joes trying to get rich quick. The game starts out differently than any other GTA. You aren’t starting out just outside of a car, this time Rockstar got a little cinematic on us. You’re in the middle of a bank heist in a small town. You end up fighting your way out and the story fast forwards 10 years. Right from the start, you get introduced to Michael, then Franklin, then Trevor later on. Each character is very well fleshed out and you end up getting attached to all of them in the game. Of course, the other half of the great characters are people you get your missions from and this doesn’t change here. While there aren’t as many characters as in past games they are better designed and original. You end up going through the trials and tribulations of these three men as they get caught up in the mafia, street gangs, the government, and millionaires. Basically, Michael is trying to make amends with his family on the side while Trevor is trying to find out what he really wants — Franklin just wants to get out of the hood.

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The largest problem with GTA has finally been addressed: the terrible shooting mechanics. GTA IV tried to fix this, but it felt too sticky and too clunky. GTA 5 is finally more refined and feels like a third-person shooter should. You can snap into cover, aim with precision, and all that great shooter stuff. You can even change the reticle if you want, honestly, GTA 5 gives you more options on a console than any other game I can remember. While we’re in combat you can finally customize your guns for the first time in a GTA. Add suppressors, scopes, extended mags, flashlights, new paint, etc. It’s not Call of Duty deep, but it’s a huge step up for GTA. However, the combat is still tough as nails. You will die in a few hits if you aren’t careful and I restarted many missions a lot because of how hard the game is.

Secondly, the vehicles still control like you’re driving on syrup. You will spin out a lot and easily lose control. At least the cars look updated and are actually knock-offs of real cars. The Banshee looks like the Dodge Viper and there’s a car in here that’s called the Coil. Figure out what that one’s based off of. They look good and you can customize these as well! Yes! It’s a lot deeper than you think. There are different levels of upgrades and they make a huge difference in how they perform. Some missions even require upgraded cars. Car-wise, the game still shines and doesn’t disappoint.

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While we’re talking about cars and combat they all tie into missions just like in previous games. Honestly, GTA 5 feels so polished and refined and is a perfect GTA game. The missions are a huge step up because you get to choose how they play out this time around. There are large heists that you need to perform and you can pick your accomplices and can choose two different routes to go. They are usually sneaking and going through the front guns blazing. It’s a lot of fun and you really feel like you earned your cash in the game. During some missions, you can switch between the three characters on the fly for an advantage. This adds a whole new layer to combat in GTA. The missions are much more varied than previous games and are just so much fun, honestly, I haven’t had this much fun in a sandbox game in a long time. You get rated after each mission and there are side objectives to complete for gold stars.

Outside of those story missions are side missions called Strangers and Freaks. You meet weird people that you help out and these characters are both funny and strange. On top of that, you have random encounters where you help people on the fly as you pass them. It really helps bring the world to life. While we’re on that subject, GTA 5 is one of the most surreal game worlds ever created. Los Santos is huge and I mean just huge. There are whole mountain ranges, huge areas of the ocean, and San Andreas as well as Los Santos itself to explore. Even the ocean looks so real thanks to the great water physics and underwater effects. Scuba diving is a brand new option here, and yes there are underwater missions. However, Rockstar took all this to a whole new level when it comes to detail. You can hunt in the mountains, the scenery gradually changes as you move around the world. It’s just so awesome it’s hard to believe that this is all out of someone’s imagination.

Your cell phone, for example, is an expansion of the one in GTA IV. You can buy stocks and bonds online, buy vehicles to get delivered to your garage, and buy boats, planes, and various other things on the phone. You can now order a cab and most messages are done through text and email. It helps bring GTA to the present times and feels that way. The amount of detail in both the characters, world, graphics, and gameplay is just phenomenal. From the turbulence in aircraft to the way, boats bounce off waves. GTA 5 has an unparalleled detail that is rarely seen in any entertainment medium.

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At the end of your first day, you won’t want to put the controller down. With over 100 missions GTA 5 is full of things to do and places to explore. Michael, Trevor, and Franklin are great characters and everyone will have their favorites. Despite the ultra-violence, cursing, and nudity in the game GTA 5 is gritty and raw and should be. Rockstar is one of the only came companies that have the guts to show everyone their vision without being afraid of political backlash. I’m sure GTA 5 will have plenty of that (thankfully Jack Thompson will be absent for this one). GTA 5 is one of the best games I have played in a long time and I can’t find much wrong with it. Honestly, it’s just typical stuff like frame rate slow down, some ugly textures, the online component was missing at launch, and a few bugs and glitches here and there, but other than that the game is almost perfect.

Far Cry 3

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 02/20/2013
Posted in: Editor's Choice, Microsoft Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 3, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Playable, Steam Deck Verification, Xbox 360. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: Ubisoft

Developer: Ubisoft Montreal

Release Date: 12/4/2012


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Skyrim with guns. That was Ubisoft’s description for Far Cry 3. While it isn’t quite Skyrim with guns, that’s okay because no one really wanted that. Far Cry 3 is still a huge open-world game and is exactly what Far Cry 2 should have been. After Far Cry 2 left a bitter taste in my mouth with its boring empty world and mediocre story and missions, I just didn’t have much hope for Far Cry 3. Thankfully I was wrong because this game is truly great with memorable characters and a great story. The whole world feels more lively this time around and less empty.

Far Cry 3 has an awesome opening and really shows that this is already the best game in the series. You play as Jason Brody, just a regular guy who vacations to an island with his girlfriend and a few friends. Of course, things go wrong and you are captured by some local pirates. The story has a lot of torture scenes spread throughout, but the beginning jailbreak with your brother really shows off the amazing voice acting and animations. You immediately get attached to these characters, and you are introduced to one of the most memorable game characters in recent history, Vaas. This guy is a sick and twisted psychopath and is truly demented. His relationship with Jason reminds me of Joker and Batman a lot. Jason makes Vaas question his own sanity and he is NOT comfortable with that. Jason seems to always come back from the dead, and this infuriates Vaas all the time. Every time Vaas comes on to screen you can’t help but get excited for what thing he’s going to do next. Truly, a well-developed character.

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Once you get past the first scene you are dumped into this huge luscious jungle and start getting introduced to various gameplay elements. Hunting is introduced as well as crafting. This includes crafting with animal skins to hold more things like ammo, weapons, and syringes. You can gather plants to craft syringes for health, enhance perception, hunting, steadier aim, and various other things. While these two new elements are fun, they seem a bit disconnected from the formula of Far Cry. The hunting is a bit underdeveloped because stalking these animals isn’t anything like in Assassin’s Creed III. You can try sneaking up on them, but most are hidden in grass forcing you to use hunting syringes. When you fire off a shot all animals scatter and some take quite a few hits to take down. If you don’t get them down in one shot you have to chase them down and eventually you lose them. The crafting requires different animal skins for each set, but I really felt it the hassle to do this.

The same goes for plant gathering. Certain plants are required for certain syringes, but early on these fill up your loot sack forcing you to hunt for the skins for a bigger one. You also get a small wallet and have to craft a larger one for more money. Not exactly economical game-wise, but this is to the taste of the player. I didn’t mind it, but never really pursued hunting specific animals. I just gathered whatever got in my way. There just isn’t a huge incentive for hunting and gathering this game.

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There are a few side quests such as hunting specific animals with certain weapons, killing marked targets, racing, and Trial of the Rakyat which requires you to complete certain goals such as killing everyone in the area with headshots. These are fun and can break up the main story. The map is actually completely blacked out until you find radio towers and take them offline. This involves climbing the towers and figuring out how to scale them. Feels a bit like Assassin’s Creed actually. There are also loot containers and relics spread throughout the island, but I honestly didn’t bother. I really hate item gathering in games because it is a lazy way to extend the playtime, but some people out there like it.

My favorite part of the game was the main story. Missions vary greatly, but I looked forward to the new characters and the ever-evolving story of Jason, Vaas, and Hoyt (the main bad guy). The whole idea of going from a city slicker to a powerful tribal warrior is really interesting. There are some fantasy elements thrown in when you go through trials to become the most powerful Rakyat warrior on the island. You have to defeat a giant boss at one point with a bow and arrow. Pretty exciting and fun. This is probably one of the more interesting FPS campaigns I have played in a long time, in fact, most FPS games seem to bore me these days. Far Cry 3 was a nice change of pace.

When it comes to visuals Far Cry 3 pushes PC’s yet once again like it did back when it first came out. The game has amazing DirectX 11 features such as SSAO and HBAO as well as anti-aliasing, high-resolution textures, high-quality shadows, and some amazing lighting effects as well as some great shaders thrown in to make this game look like a lush jungle. You will need the latest PC gaming hardware to run it like this though, even my rig couldn’t run it 100% maxed out. The PC version is definitely the best. When it comes to multiplayer I really can’t say much other than you won’t be coming back too often. Nothing really exciting there.

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Overall, Far Cry 3 sports amazing visuals, a great story, and memorable characters, the huge open world is fun to explore, but the hunting and crafting mechanics feel a bit forced and underdeveloped. Multiplayer isn’t as interesting as you think, but the co-op campaign is where it’s at. If FPS games have been boring you lately take this for a spin.

Sleeping Dogs

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 09/28/2012
Posted in: Editor's Choice, Microsoft Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Unsupported, Steam Deck Verification, Xbox 360, Xbox One. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: Square Enix

Developer: United Front Games

Release Date: 8/14/2012


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Sleeping Dogs is actually True Crime: Hong Kong for most people who didn’t know. Does anyone care? No, because the True Crime series had two previous games that were mediocre to poor and there was little hope for this game. Square Enix picked up the project, seeing the potential in the game, and released it as Sleeping Dogs because they did not buy the name from the previous company. What we have here is probably the best GTA clone since Saints Row and that’s saying a lot. There have been many GTA clones but very few are any good or do anything different. Sleeping Dogs features a fluid martial arts system, a huge open world, a gripping story and characters, and a few side missions.

The story is actually very gripping and entertaining. You play as an ex-triad member turned cop named Wei Shen. You are working undercover to bring down the Son On Yee triad gang and bring in their Chairman. Your rival gang is the 18K which is relentlessly making hits on your turf. This isn’t just your typical gang war story. You actually get to really like the characters and feel for all of them in different ways. While you were working for the triad you can do cop missions on the side as well as bust drug deals throughout the city. This story is pretty epic and has a satisfying ending; I never once felt bored or detached from the story.

If that isn’t enough then the combat system should help bring you in. The combat system is simple, but deep and requires some skill to stay alive. You can counter when enemies turn red, but you must use the attack button and hold the button in combination to bring them down. The animations are fluid and you can really feel the punches. This isn’t just some wailing and kicking combat system that feels half-baked and broken. Some enemies may have weapons that you can take and use, but they are pretty rare because they do so much damage. If you are doing really well you will go into an adrenaline-type state and start to heal while enemies may flee from you. The other half of this combat is the gunplay which is really smooth and well designed. The cover system works great because as you leave cover you can go into slow motion and shoot out enemies who might be an immediate threat. This also goes for jumping from ledges. Once you actually start completing missions you will earn Cop, Triad, and Face experience which allows you to upgrade to better moves. Each one can be upgraded to level 10, but I reached this level way before I finished the game so I felt all that experience, later on, was wasted. There just aren’t enough upgrades in the game.

Another main feature of the game is a parkour system similar to Assassin’s Creed. Chase sequences play out often, but instead of climbing up walls you can climb ledges and jump gaps. The trick here is to hit the sprint button just before each obstacle so you smoothly go over them. Keep fumbling over everything and you will lose your target. This is something that has never really been incorporated into a GTA clone, and Sleeping Dogs nails it perfectly.

Of course, you can travel around the huge open city of Hong Kong, but there isn’t much to do. There are the drug-busting side missions, favors, races, and random events, as well as finding hidden boxes for money and clothes. That’s about it. I wound up doing all the favors and most drug-busting side missions but didn’t care for the others. There are some hacking mini-games thrown in here as well as lock picking, bug planting, and other mini-games which are fun. There’s a lot of detail put into the gameplay of Sleeping Dogs, but I just wish I could do more in this huge city.

After you finish the main story there’s no reason to really go back unless you want to collect all the boxes (which can all be shown on your map thankfully), but after you finish this you will probably have had enough. The driving works great, there are lots of different cars, taking taxis is convenient, and there are other things you will be familiar with within this kind of genre, but Sleeping Dogs masters the story, characters, and combat system very well. My biggest complaint is only the lack of side mission variety and the large about of bugs and glitches in the PC version.

The PC versions do give us some nice DirectX 11 visuals with a free high-resolution texture pack for people who have 1GB video cards or better. There is a huge difference with the game maxed out over the consoles. The anti-aliasing and FXAA make the game look smooth and flawless, plus the ambient occlusion adds a little extra that consoles can’t do. The PC version is by far the superior version, and most of the bugs have been ironed out by now since there have been 5 patches released thus far, but a large number of crashes and bugs were unacceptable at launch.

Sleeping Dogs is a beautiful game both in execution and spirit. The game really captures the Chinese culture, atmosphere, and triad feel of Hong Kong. This is a must-buy for any fan of the genre, and if you have a high-end PC, make sure to pick that version up.

Saint’s Row: The Third

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 01/30/2012
Posted in: Editor's Choice, Microsoft Consoles, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 3, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Playable, Steam Deck Verification, Switch, Xbox 360. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: THQ

Developer: Volition

Release Date: 11/15/2011


Also Available On

A game claiming it’s one of the craziest around is something that would be hard to live up to. Thankfully Saint’s Row: The Third does and man is it crazy. Parachuting out of planes, shooting tanks while falling out of the sky, God of War-style boss fights in virtual reality, beating people up with giant purple dildos? Yeah, I’d say that’s crazy, but The Third offers even more!

The story is really great with awesome characters and witty dialog. Johnny Gat dies in the beginning mission (that’s no spoiler), but returning characters like Pierce and Shaundi return, and the new characters are just as great such as the bit brute Oleg and the nerd Kenzie. This time around you are famous and the Saints own the city, but they lose it because three new gangs move into town: The Morningstar, Deckers, and Luchadores. A para-military group STAG has also moved in with heavily armored guys, tanks, and VTOLs (jets) that, yes you can fly and keep in your garage.

A lot of the story missions are interesting and completely varied to help deliver this interesting and entertaining story. From going inside a supercomputer and fighting as a walking toilet, blow-up doll, or fighting in a Luchadore match, and shooting cars with a rocket launcher from a helicopter, to just running around and killing everything is a huge blast and each mission is different. Of course, there are side missions such as Trailblazing where you drive around in a fireproof suit on an ATV and run into people and cars to blow them up to earn seconds on a clock as you blow through a checkpoint race. There are other side missions that let you pimp your girls around, Insurance Fraud lets you get hit by cars to earn money, Mayhem lets you use pre-determined weapons to cause as much destruction as possible, and a lot more. My favorite is the Genki matches which are like a gladiator-type game show. There is no shortage of things to do in The Third with collectibles to be found, assassination missions, car theft missions, and tons of challenges.

Saint’s Row doesn’t stop there with a ton of cars to drive as well as a bunch of customization options for building your character, upgrading and decking out cars, to a crap ton of upgrades, for you and your guns even. You can use your phone to call in homies to help you fight, delivery vehicles, and even customize how your gang looks and taunts. You can run around and buy property to increase your respect rating and how much control you have over that territory.

But what about the world you play in you say? It looks amazing with DirectX 11 features exclusive to PC which makes the game look ten times better than that of the consoles and the world is huge and bursting at the seams with life. The game never looks boring, feels boring, or sounds boring with great radio stations with funny commercials, and even one radio station dedicated to Adult Swim. I just can’t describe how crazy this game is because you have to play it to experience it. The controls are silky smooth with great car control, and even aircraft control nicely. Is there anything wrong with the game? Yeah there are some irritating issues like ragdoll physics when you get blown up, there are way too many enemies to kill, and the side missions are extremely difficult, but these things can be easily overlooked. If you love open-world games I would say Saint’s Row: The Third is the best out there and there really isn’t anything quite like it.

Games That Would Have Gotten A 10 — Part 2

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 01/28/2012
Posted in: Blogs. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Continuing the second and last part of Games That Would Have Gotten A 10. These games are in no particular order, and I highly suggest for anyone who hasn’t played them to do so because you are missing pieces of gaming history.

Dead Space

The first time I saw a necromorph I nearly crapped my pants. I had never played such a scary or visceral and atmospheric game (horror-wise) since the first Silent Hill. Just feeling the dread that something might pop out any minute or watching the few people who had survived kill themselves or listen to their mindless mumbling made you feel uneasy. The game was cinematic, had great controls, graphics, and the weapons were engineering tools that made the gameplay very different. The de-limbing system was revolutionary and helped the game stay away from traditional shooting gallery problems. When I finished Dead Space it was one of the few that I played through more than once and still got a kick out of the entire experience.

Rock Band

I was used to Guitar Hero for years, but nothing prepared me for the show-stopping gameplay that Rock Band brought to the table. It changed the rhythm genre with the addition of the drum set and quickly became my favorite instrument. The game had deeper customization, a more streamlined multiplayer, and even featured a ton of great songs on the disc and had hundreds of DLC. I forgot about Guitar Hero for the longest time and was addicted to this bad boy. Even at the steep price range at the time it offered a unique experience that no other music rhythm game could offer.

Mass Effect

While the second game was great the first game introduced us to the beginning of choice-based dialog that really made a difference. Mixing shooter elements with RPG was something that no one thought could be done right and BioWare nailed it. The memorable characters, amazing visuals, and the vast amount of lore and content put it at the top and helped pave the way for choice-based games. I played through this game three times and found new things each time. The excellent voice acting and facial animations were out of this world and remain a classic in my library.

Okami

Okami was a game that came out of the left-field with stunning visuals, and one of the most unusual game mechanics of all time: the Celestial Brush. It was so cool using the brush and making things reappear, using it in combat, and solving puzzles, plus the vast open-world helped push the boundaries of the aging PS2. The memorable characters, charming story, and devotion to ancient Japanese lore were mesmerizing as well as fun to watch. Okami was a one-of-a-kind experience that you couldn’t get on any other console and should be played by any fan of games.

Games That Would Have Gotten A 10 — Part 1

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 01/22/2012
Posted in: Blogs. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

There is no such thing as a perfect game. There never will be and that’s just the cruel hard truth. Very few games come close and that’s why I have only ever given one 10 (Gears of War). If I could go back and give games a 10 what would they be? Some almost felt perfect, but there was something there that didn’t quite make it that high. Games that get 9.5’s are usually amazing and probably the best games out, but sometimes games will sit as perfect to you whether they are technically or not. This is part 1 of 2 because there are just too many to list in one sitting. These are the game I have reviewed and sit as 10’s in my heart (in no particular order of course!)

BioShock

This game pretty much changed narratives from here on out because BioShock really blew me away. Not only was the pacing perfect, but the story was dark and terrible and something imagined in nightmares. It wasn’t monsters popping up out of the closet, zombies shambling towards you, but it took humanity’s imperfections and let them loose. The gameplay had an array of amazing weapons to use, the EVE powers were great to use, and who can forget seeing a Big Daddy and Little Sister for the first time? That demo really blew me away and it was one of the few games that I could play over and over and never get bored. At the time the graphics were fantastic and helped you feel claustrophobic in that underwater utopia. With BioShock Infinite coming along I hope it hits me the same way.

Mortal Kombat

Who can deny the fact that this was the true return of Mortal Kombat? The game was everything fans wanted with the best characters, excellent graphics, a simpler fight system, and the inclusion of great content for single-player users. The X-Ray moves were shocking, plus the return of superb and original Fatalities that have been lacking since MK: Deception. The game was silky smooth in the controls department, plus the addition of four DLC characters and a slew of classic costumes. I truly felt like a kid again and was basking in the feeling that MK was back and felt just like it did 20 years ago.

Portal 2

A puzzle game usually doesn’t get as much recognition as Portal has gotten. It has become a household name thanks to one thing that the game is named after. Portal 2 completely turns the game into a full-fledged adventure through different areas complete with scripted cinematic events. What makes Portal 2  as great as it is the voice acting and characters. Never have characters been so memorable, and being game staples is hard to become. The pacing was perfect, there was just enough content not to overwhelm you, but to make you feel like it was new and fresh. The puzzles were laid out perfectly and gave you that “AHA!” moment when you finally solved it. I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed playing through the entire game and laughing through the entire thing. Portal 2 will always sit with me as one of the best games ever made.

Red Dead Redemption

Not only is Rockstar the best at making worlds you can totally get lost in, but RDR also made you believe it was real. When I played through RDR I felt like the game came to life with such accurate landscape, wonderfully played out characters, and some great missions that make you feel like they were different every time. The atmosphere was rich and bursting at the seams with depth. I never played a game where I felt like a real cowboy and felt like I was doing cowboy things that made a difference. RDR will always sit as a game that many should be based on especially open-world games because this one was perfect to me.

God of War III

God of War is the father of a lot of things. Cinematic action/adventures, quick-time events, and huge giant bosses in said action/adventures, but nothing could prepare me for GoW3. The graphics were way ahead of their time (even in this generation) and the pacing and story were just perfect. The combat was so smooth and just ran like butter across the screen. The powers you held, the weapons you got, and the puzzles were so fun that you actually savored each moment in the game. Sure, the first game made me think differently about how games should be made, but GoW3 set the standard and still is today. GoW was the first game series I could play over and over again and never get bored, and GoW3 is probably on top of all of them.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

If I had to pick my favorite game of all time this would be it. I had never spent so many hours on a game as I did in Oblivion. It set a whole new standard for RPGs. The interaction with characters, the looting, the lore, the dungeons were all just fascinating and mesmerizing. Over 100 of just minute detail that I had never seen in any game. All the books could be read, random quests from people who actually mattered because the effects would impact you later on. Being able to pick plants, the number of swords, magic, spells, tomes, shields, armor, and riding horses? It was truly a fantasy book come to life and it had never been done before in that much detail. I actually would get lost for over a dozen hours without putting the controller down and no other game could make me do that. Oblivion sits in my heart as something more than just a game, but a world I could escape in and forget about all my problems.

Assassin’s Creed II

AC2 really hit home with me because of the grand scale of the characters, story, and the just sheer amount of content in the game. I really got sucked into this world that beautifully recreated, and for once I felt like I was playing a piece of history. No other game has been capable of that, but what got me more than anything was how free I felt. Running from rooftop to rooftop and seeing and hearing shingles shift under my feet, climbing grand buildings, unfolding a deep mysterious plot, and using awesome kill moves is something of most kids’ dreams (if you’re a psycho kid like I was). The graphics were unbeatable at the time, and it still holds up as the pinnacle for free world action/adventures to this day.

Batman: Arkham Asylum

Arkham Asylum set the standard for superhero games and is declared as the best one ever made. Not only was the combat silky smooth, and the fact that you were Batman, you actually did everything you could in the comics! It was unbelievable using the detective mode, swinging around with your bat claw, and scaring the daylights out of enemies by tossing a Batarang at them. How cool is that?! The excellent voice acting and all the characters from the comic helped make it the greatest superhero game ever made. EVER.

Fallout 3

When I found out Bethesda was making Fallout 3 I knew I would be sucked into another amazing world for over a hundred hours, and I was right. Fallout 3 sucked me in just like Oblivion with tons of memorable characters,  a great overarching story, but the setting and environment was the main character and drew me in. I actually felt lonely and scared walking The Capital Wasteland, and no other game made me feel that way before. I looted every corner with caution because the game felt so close to home, and you could wonder about this giant apocalypse. I really felt a sigh of relief when I found a new town and almost dreaded going back out in the wasteland alone. What kind of game can you think of that made you feel that way? Probably none.