Sound design is probably the most important thing next to the gameplay. Without some sound, there’s not really a game, and the best sound design makes things sound authentic for the universe it’s in and makes the sound convincing, and usually, it’ll pack a good punch, sound epic, or just subtle details in sound helps.
How can a war game have the best sound design? The first Bad Company truly made a game sound amazing with realistic weapon sounds, epic explosions, and differential sounds such as shooting in a building sounds different than outside and the echo traveled when walking through a door. That is the kind of detail that most games don’t make. The sequel follows suit with more detail in this department, and there’s nothing that can trump the epic explosions and sounds of gunfire.
What defines an atmosphere? It’s the portrayal of a setting and world that feels authentic in the sense that it can make you feel you’re in it. It can scare you, make you feel like a superhero, or make you feel full of magic. The atmosphere in a game is extremely important and with the latest technology developers can bring us more authentic settings.
While Metro 2033 didn’t see much light from retail it has one of the most amazing and scary atmospheres ever created. Feeling all alone in a subway in Russia with just a lighter, gas mask, shoddy handmade weapons, and the sounds of creepy dogs howling down the tunnel? Only one clip left and there could be ten or more? That is one scary situation, and even the outside environments are incredibly hostile feelings. The mix of enemy camps with stealth missions makes you feel desperate, and if you get caught the whole world will come down on you.
What makes music in a game good? Something that fits the style of game, setting, and something that isn’t repetitive, annoying, or something we’ve heard in a million other games. Music is probably one of the most important parts of the game but easily overlooked by most gamers.
Bayonetta’s music isn’t only angelic and beautiful, but it’s so catchy that you just want to hear it again and again, and it really fits Bayonetta and her style. You just get goosebumps when seeing Bayonetta fight with style on the screen along with this angelic music. While there isn’t a huge variety what does play is amazing and is memorable.
A lot of games wind up getting overhyped and overall pissing off the entire gaming community, especially if it’s a game with a huge and strong backbone of fans. Star Wars has always been this way, whether it’s books, movies, games, or cartoons; there has been a huge following with the Star Wars universe, and this is one such game to be buried under the overhype train. LucasArts promised a huge sequel that would make the first game seem like a pile of doo, but it’s only slightly better. Sure, the mechanics are tighter, and the fat has been cut away, but we’re just left with the bones because they somehow fed the meat to the dog.
The developers even had to come up with some absurd way to resurrect Starkiller by having Vader clone him. He’s possessed with memories of his former self and wants to find Juno Eclipse, his lover from the first game. The story is really bare and is really one-dimensional, and only in the last cutscene does it get interesting at all, and this is so lame and cliche that it makes you want to smash your computer in frustration. We’re at the end of 2010, and LucasArts can’t hire writers who can write better than this! You could probably write the entire plot on a napkin. Oh, wait.
Other than that, the combat is fast but still flawed. While Starkiller is dual-wielding here, he still feels stiff to control and a bit chaotic. You have all your powers from the original game, so you’re not trying to find them again. You can use lighting, pushing, mind tricks, tossing crap around, and charges and upgrades of these Force powers, but you’ll mainly stick with Force lightning. I never used the mind trick and only used push when the game called for it. The enemy variety is even less than the original, with your usual Storm Trooper grunts and some bigger guys that are taken down with QTEs, but these are repeated dozens upon dozens of times and get very boring.
Other than that, the actual fighting is okay if only Starkiller could move more than two inches when swinging his sabers around. Mashing X will only kill people next to Starkiller, so you have to stop and move next to the enemy, then start mashing away. That’s why you end up using lightning so much since storm troopers are easy to kill. The combat animations can’t be interrupted, and when he gets stunned during a fall, you’re still vulnerable—and even vulnerable during some QTEs! What’s up with that? Even allowing you to change your saber crystals for stat effects doesn’t really do anything, and you’ll forget it’s there once you discover it.
The game doesn’t have many epic moments, and the only good one is the second level facing off against a giant creature, and it’s completely God of War-style and hugely epic. The only other memorable moments are the few free-fall sections, and that’s all. The game lacks any moments that are memorable, and this is a huge kick in the teeth for a game with such potential. The game is just really repetitive, highly unbalanced, and just isn’t what it could be. The game looks pretty good in some spots, but it could look a lot better. Unleashed II just feels like it’s half done, and even the short length helps this along. There are challenges and extras, but after spending 5–6 hours with this game, you’ll just uninstall it and forget it, just like the last game. If there is ever a Force Unleashed III, please take your time and make it what it should be!
All the great World War II shooters are going away from that genre since it’s been beaten to death. Medal of Honor went the way for Call of Duty and was adapted to modern warfare, which works for this series. The single-player campaign is nothing really special, but it does showcase the realism of war and really makes you feel like a helpless nobody warrior in the middle of a Taliban shootout. It does this better than Modern Warfare, but not the multiplayer.
The single-player campaign has you playing as four different parties: a regular soldier, a Navy SEAL, a pilot, and a Tier 1 operative. Like most war games, you never get attached to the characters, but you do care for them enough towards the end. The game’s pacing is pretty good with you moving from night to day levels, and there is even an ATV level (why choose the loudest vehicle to do a night raid?), and the flying levels are pretty fun but extremely linear and limited in control. You can actually move the helicopter, but instead, just aim and shoot. There are some great moments, like the Tier 1 sniping sections and cinematic arts, but these are far and few. Most of the game consists of moving from cover to cover and shooting everything in sight. Sound familiar? Sure! Is it still fun? Why not! You seem to always be equipped with the right weapons, and ammo is unlimited since you can just ask your fellow teammates. I never had to pick up a weapon off the ground, but it’s there for variety.
My favorite moment in the game has you playing as army soldier Adams, and you and your squad are stuck on a hill inside a tiny little mud shack, and the Taliban are raining down on you from the mountain. You hear military chatter an awful lot, but it sounds more authentic and not just silly babble. Your team slowly runs dry on ammo, and after the cinematic music plays, almost all hope is lost to the helicopters! During this sequence, it seems it never ends, but the surrounding chatter makes the whole experience more intense and authentic to real-life battle warfare. But the whole game isn’t like this. There are a lot of moments that seem more like the rest of the shooters, so the pacing is off a bit, but it doesn’t fall apart.
You’ll mainly come back for multiplayer, which is your standard military shooter affair. There are only three classes, a few maps, and that’s pretty much it. It’s fun since DICE (Battlefield: Bad Company) makes it, but it’s no Modern Warfare. You have your usual three classes of ranger, sniper, and specialist, so everyone is pretty much the same person. It basically shoots whatever moves it makes and racks up a score. There is an objective-based type of game mode, but it’s essentially the same.
The game also does one of the weirdest things, and that uses two different game engines. The single-player uses an outdated version of the Unreal Engine, and it’s obvious that it looks outdated due to low-resolution textures and some low models. It uses the Airborne engine, which was a poor move on Danger Close’s part. The multiplayer uses the Frostbite engine that’s used in Bad Company 2, and it looks great! Why the weird design choices? I don’t know, but I hope MoH2 changes its engine. Is the game worth a purchase? Not really, but maybe a weekend rental. After about five or six hours of multiplayer, you’ll be bored and probably just switch back to a better shooter. If you get bored, you can go into Tier 1, which disables everything and times you. Yes, health restores slowly; no ammo refills, no reticle, nothing. So enjoy the super-hard mode.
There was a brief period when a bunch of adult-oriented games came out to capitalize on The Sims-style gameplay, and this was one of them. 7 Sins stars you as a man who is trying to strike it rich and get laid at the same time. While there’s no overlying story other than this, there’s just barely enough here to keep you playing, but most will quit after just the second level.
The game is comprised of mini-games that are pretty crude and rude, and what these are for will be revealed in a bit. Your main goal is to invite women to an area to talk to you. You wander around different areas and sit down with them, or engage in that activity, and try to reveal their sensitivities through dialog. Different icons represent these, and you have to use trial and error to figure them out. There is a rating bar that’s broken up into six pieces that represent your relationship status with that female. Once you reach the top of a piece, you can engage in an advancing dialog to further the relationship.
Different types of dialog represent things like machoness, sensitivity, being cool, showing off, being intellectual, funny, etc. When a chick doesn’t like what you say, they’ll respond in that manner, and you also have three different meters to watch out for: lust, anger, and stress. If you reach the peak of any of these, you freak out, run out of the area, and wind up dropping the meter of any relationship you were working on. This can be frustrating because you then have to go back and wander around everywhere, trying to increase that meter again.
You can play mini-games to decrease these meters, but some are specific and some decrease them all. These range from peeing on bugs, jumping sheep over a saw, ogling boobs, viewing upskirts, or just some that decrease the meter without a mini-game. If you do these, they are sins, so if you commit your sins, you must do something to repent, which is an angel icon. This can be done by eating a salad or just engaging the icon in a dialog with a chick.
This doesn’t sound too bad, but when you have to get up and move to a different spot to engage in the same dialog you just had five minutes ago until you reach your peak, you can get laid. Even though this has mini-games involved, after you play each one a few times, you’re done. The animations are horrendous, the graphics are terrible, and the game uses Simlish-type speech. Animations range from goofy things to awkward humping. Even with the nude patch, this game isn’t very interesting since each woman looks the same, and there’s just no character or charm to the game. Sure, it’s fun for a couple of hours, but after that, you get sick and tired of the game.
It wouldn’t be too bad if you could fly through the game, but even in the second level, women take forever to get high enough to bring home, and your meters fill up so fast that you have to play a mini-game every 5 minutes, and it gets so repetitive and stupid. Do everyone a favor and stay away from this game unless you’re a real pervert or just plain bored.
The original Mafia may not have been the best shooter in the world, but it gave us a great narrative and likable characters, and Mafia II tops this. You play as Vito Scaletta, whose parents migrated from Italy to New York, and you follow him through his ups and downs in the Mafia. The game’s narrative is amazing, with lots of plot twists and excellent character development. The game isn’t just mind-numbing shooting, but it’s delicately spread out with menial tasks and interactive narrative bits that really keep you hooked.
For example, you start out during WWII in Italy, helping the rebels. This is completely unexpected and is a nice touch to delivering the background of Vito. Another bit I cannot explain (due to huge spoilers), but let’s say you do some gross tasks and some hand-to-hand combat in a place you don’t want to ever end up. You will actually go through 3–4 chapters with no shooting at all, and this makes you savor the shooting bits because they get thrown in a lot in the last few chapters.
The shooting has tight cover mechanics, and the 50’s-era weapons pack a punch and really feel powerful. Knowing a guy out with a shotgun or even popping a guy in the head with a.44 Magnum just feels right. I never experienced issues during firefights with controls, and this is great, so the shooting part is pretty much perfect.
Of course, you have a huge open world, but I guess the biggest flaw of the game is that it’s only used as a “portal” to mission objectives. You don’t go around and get missions from people a la Grand Theft Auto, but maybe this is a good thing and keeps you sticking with the story. Each chapter has you waking up in your apartment, and you have to complete missions as told, and they are varied and never get old. Driving around town feels right, and the cars handle really well. There’s a large variety of them, and driving down the road listening to 50’s-era tunes just feels so authentic. If you aren’t careful and follow the speed limit (there’s a speed limiter button), cops will try to pull you over. If you want, you will have to either change your plates or your clothes.
You can pull into body shops and change the color of your car, repair them, change rims, tune them up, and store them in your garage, or just go sell them at the junkyard. You can buy threads, guns, and food, and it really feels authentic and doesn’t pull too far away from the main game. One thing that you can collect that will completely surprise people are Playboy centerfolds. Yes, fully nude centerfolds, and while finding them may be a pain since they are well hidden, it’s well worth it. These are 50’s Playboys, and they are interesting finds. You can also collect artwork and read about cars in the Carcyclopedia.
The game looks really good with well-animated characters, excellent lighting, and highly detailed textures, but up close, some of the characters look a little lacking in the texture quality department. The game sounds great too, and it’s just all the little details that make the game that much more authentic for its time setting. People arguing in the streets, cops pulling other people over—it’s just really great to see all this detail. However, the 2K Czech could do a lot more with Mafia III, and I’d like to see side missions, a bigger world, and more little extras.
Overall, Mafia II is an excellent game with wonderful characters that you truly care about; the voice acting is top-notch, and everything just feels almost perfect. The game needs more extras and a little something to stray away from the main game, but what’s here works and is solid with excellent shooting mechanics, driving mechanics, controls, and just enough content to keep you going. There isn’t really any incentive to play through this again at all unless you really need those Playboy centerfolds.
Collector’s Edition: If you want to shell out the extra $20, you get a nice poster of ads in the game, the soundtrack, a steel case, the Made Man DLC pack, and a color art book. Is it worth $20? Probably not for most, but hardcore collectors will like this a lot. Most people should just pass, but what is provided is worth it.
Shadowgrounds was a pretty decent shooter a few years ago, but Survivor doesn’t really do much new and is pretty boring. As a top-down shooter, you play as a marine who is trying to escape a ruined base that is overrun by aliens. The weapons are pretty generic, with shotguns, assault rifles, flamethrowers, grenades, etc. You can pick up health packs, ammo, and OK, you know this formula already.
Unlike other better shooters like Alien Shooter, the game doesn’t even offer intense moments. There are a few straggling aliens coming after you and maybe a few hard ones, and that’s it. You can easily kill these guys, and it doesn’t feel very satisfying at all. You can shoot barrels, toss grenades, or just run around holding the fire button, and you’ll beat these guys. Ammo is plentiful, so you never feel like you’re “surviving,” and it’s pretty hard to die.
There is an upgrade system that you use by finding “parts,” and when you level up, you can use points for different upgrades like sonar, health boosts, etc., and each character you play has the same upgrades. That’s pretty lame. While each character has a different loadout, there’s just nothing exciting about it at all. The game is fun, however, since it’s good for more casual players who don’t like the intensity of other top-down shooters, but even the aliens are generic-looking. Instead of creepy, deformed things, you just get the typical bug-like aliens.
The game doesn’t look or sound too good either, and the music almost seems nonexistent while the game looks pretty bland. The level design is also pretty bad since I wandered around areas and didn’t know where to go, like shooting a glass panel to open a walkway. There is no hint; the panel doesn’t even light up or flash. So this is bad level design, and the whole freaking game just feels boring! The game is a little fun if you’re bored or just want a decent top-down shooter.
The Spider-Man games have always been generally good, but with the success that Treyarch made with Spider-Man 2, it’s a wonder why this game is not as good. With the success of that game, you wonder why this could have been messed up so badly. While the core game is pretty good, there’s just so much wrong with it, such as a terrible camera, a useless upgrade system, a poor story, bad voice acting, bad graphics, repetitive missions, and the list goes on. The game is about Venom fusing with a bit of Spider-Man and creating bastard symbiotes that are trying to destroy the town. They take over a few Marvel characters (Wolverine, Black Cat, and Vulture, just to name a few), and it’s an interesting twist, but not interesting enough.
The gameplay is what the game is supposed to be best at, but it falters on this. You have a pretty robust fighting system here with heavy and light attacks, web shots, and new wall and aerial combat, but it just doesn’t work very well. The aerial combat isn’t as broken as the wall combat and can be pretty fun at times. You can shoot a web at someone in the air and just keep juggling them. Upgrading this allows for more juggles and more powerful follow-ups. You can also just attack normally, and you will kind of home in on the enemies, and it’s pretty solid.
Ground combat works too but feels pretty boring due to the fact that there are only a few combos that you can upgrade, and there really isn’t anything Spider-Man about it at all, like tying enemies up to light posts or anything like that. Wall combat is the most broken, thanks to the crappy camera. You can climb a wall, but instead of the camera zooming out at a fixed angle, it follows you, and if you’re locked onto an enemy, it’ll follow it, and the camera will do backflips and somersaults, and it’s nauseating. Not only that, but you can’t look very far up a building thanks to the camera being right behind Spidey. The camera also poses an issue when swinging around the city because if you get stuck on a building, the camera jitters and freaks out, and it can get mildly annoying.
Of course, you have a black suit that you can do, but it’s not much different from the red. Instead of being extra powerful or using a completely different fighting style, it just borrows from the red suit and changes the combos slightly. This also leads into the story of being able to be a good or bad spy, and the results are mildly amusing. It’s interesting to see Spidey turn bad, and you can choose the path at different points in the story. I would normally mention epic parts of the game that could have saved it, but there aren’t any.
The missions are also highly repetitive and irritating. There will be a mission that has you waiting and guarding citizens, and then the next mission will be the exact same thing, but just shorter! Forget about the side missions because they are even more repetitive, and even doing things like saving citizens, rescuing them, and fighting bad guys is just boring and not fun at all since it never ends.
Lastly, the game doesn’t look too good. It doesn’t look next-gen at all, but it’s a highly polished Xbox One game. The game just doesn’t look good at all and doesn’t even sound good. Spider-Man has a whiny voice and sounds like he belongs in an emo band. Plus, everyone else sounds pretty bad and just, well, isn’t up to Marvel standards. Web of Shadows isn’t the best game in the world, but it’s good enough for a mediocre rental if you’re craving Spider-Man action.
I could never get into Serious Sam, mainly because I didn’t have the (at that time) powerhouse of a computer to run this strange FPS. Serious Sam was in vain of other first-generation FPS games like Doom, Duke Nukem, and Quake. Serious Sam infused strange humor, and that’s what set it apart from the more serious shooters. The HD version is just a prettied-up version of the second game, and it still stands that only fans will enjoy this.
There is no real story attached, but you pay as Sam, who runs around shooting weird, yet interesting, foes with super powerful weapons. Weapons range from your standard array of FPS weapons, such as a flamethrower, rocket launcher, double revolver, shotgun, etc. The foes can be pretty funny, with headless kamikazes that scream, skeleton horses, and just weird, indescribable beings. On top of this, the levels are pretty open and the HD graphics look nice, but it’s not enough to save the ancient gameplay.
We’re so used to amazing cinematic gameplay that just runs and gun shooters seem boring. Not only this, but the weapon selection is a pain because there’s no radial menu of any type or even category. They aren’t even numbered! You can never remember which weapon is which number, so you try to find the right weapon while backing away from enemies, which leads to frustrating deaths. Also, the game is plagued with irritating hidden secrets that are nearly impossible to find. The game is also very hard unless you play on the easiest setting, and your guns never feel quite powerful enough.
While there is a nice variety of environments, they seem static, stale, and lifeless. I would have liked to see more detail, like animals running around, birds flying, and just the extra stuff you see in modern games. I don’t want just an old game with better graphics. Why bother unless you modernize it a little more? Because that’s who’s going to play it. People who are used to modern shooters. I really wish Serious Sam would evolve into a modern shooter, because I can guarantee it would be amazing.
There are a few neat things, like being able to record your game, but unfortunately, no one’s playing online. I would have liked to see some making-of videos, a history of Serious Sam, or something like that. I understand fans of the original will dig this, but the people who evolved along with the genre just can’t get it.
thebinarymessiah.com 
Try multiplayer. A lot of fun !