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Haze – 12 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 06/02/2020

Posted in: PlayStation 3, Retro Consoles. Tagged: exclusive, first person shooter, fps, free radical, haze, playstation, playstation 3, ps3, Sony. Leave a comment

Publisher: Ubisoft

Developer: Free Radical

Release Date: 05/20/2008

Available Exclusively On

It’s not a mystery that developers around the world struggled with the HD era of gaming. Development went from a few dozen to hundreds almost overnight, and with the advancement of shaders, more complicated lighting effects, higher resolution textures, larger worlds, and more dialogue, it was a huge undertaking that put many companies out of business, and Haze is a casualty of this struggle.

You play as a private security mercenary named Shane Carpenter who is tasked with eliminating a rebel group for some reason, and it’s never said why. You are a supercharged soldier hopped up on the stimulant known as Nectar, and as the title says, halfway through the game, you are an outcast and deemed Code Haze. The nectar is used to force the soldiers to see the world in the way that the company wants them to see it, and in turn, you help the rebels take down the Mantel organization. Surprisingly, the story is the only interesting thing going on in this game. It had a couple of really good moments, and only if the developers had more time to work on this, Haze could have been one of the best shooters of the HD era of gaming. But, like most games back then, the publishers were pushing for money and time, and thus the game fell through.

The shooting, sadly coming from some masters of FPS games, is awful. There is zero feedback in the gun, the controller, or hit detection, so every enemy just feels like a bullet sponge. The guns feel the same, and there’s just no satisfaction or character in them, such as in a game like Resistance, for example. Why there is no rumble function for firing weapons is unknown, but it sucks big time. Aiming and shooting became chores due to the poorly laid-out control scheme, which I completely had to change. It doesn’t help that there are very few weapons. A shotgun and an assault rifle were the only weapons I used throughout the entire game, outside of a few areas that called for a rocket launcher. There are supposed to be rebel weapons and Mantel weapons, but they are both exactly the same with just different ammo counts. They both feel exactly the same, which is ludicrous. There are a couple of interesting ideas, like being able to create nectar grenades to confuse soldiers and make them fight each other. Meleeing enemies and taking their weapons is also a good idea, but it’s all executed so poorly and feels half-baked.

The level design is also bland and uninspired. Boring jungles, boring gray buildings, and hallways—the game just looks half-built. Many buildings are void of any furniture or character. I mean, why are there so many buildings in this world without desks or paintings? Does everyone just live on the floor? Then let’s get into the vehicle sections. I don’t think these were ever playtested. The vehicles are floaty and too vulnerable, and scripted vehicle sections actually destroy the vehicle and force you on foot. Imagine any other game with a scripted vehicle sequence like Uncharted and having your vehicle blow up, and you just walk on foot through that section while the rest of the sequences trigger. It’s broken and awful and should have been cut completely.

Visuals, you say? Outside of the boring design, I guess the game looks decent for an early PS3 game. The game runs well at a good framerate, but it could have looked better. The multiplayer servers have long since shut down, but you’re not missing much at all. For the bargain bin price, I can only recommend this to those wishing to fill a PS3 void that they missed or are just curious. Haze is one of the most infamously awful games, and it left a stain on the video game timeline forever. It’s short-lived, but you’re better off playing one of the other many amazing shooters on PS3.

Lair – 13 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 05/29/2020

Posted in: PlayStation 3, Retro Consoles, Sony. Tagged: action, dragons, exclusive, factor5, lair, playstation, playstation 3, ps3, Sony. Leave a comment

Publisher: SCEI

Developer: Factor 5

Release Date: 08/30/2007

Available Exclusively On

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

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

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

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

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

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

Killzone – 15 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 04/06/2019

Posted in: PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Retro Consoles, Sony. Tagged: guerilla games, halo killer, hd, killzone, playstation, PlayStation 2, playstation 3, ps2, ps3, remaster, Sony. Leave a comment

Publisher: SCEA/SIE

Developer: Guerilla

Release Date: 11/02/2004 (PS2), 10/23/2012 (PS3)

Available On

If you ignored the original Killzone back in 2004, I can’t blame you. It was a rough road for Guerilla as they tried to make an exclusive first-person shooter for Sony’s underpowered console to out-beat Halo and Metroid Prime. Sony never had an FPS that was exclusive to their system, so it was Guerilla’s time to shine. It was dubbed “The Halo Killer” by fanboys, and it sadly received lukewarm reviews upon release. I actually got this for Christmas 2004 and ate it up like candy. I was a serious fanboy over this game. Fast forward 14 years, and I can see the game’s many flaws but also appreciate what it did for the PS2.

You play as a squad of four who are tasked with stopping an evil Nazi-like empire known as the Helghast that is trying to destroy all of humanity on the planet Vekta. The story is bare-bones, but there’s a lot of potential here with interesting art assets and great voice acting, but it just falls flat. There’s no background on the main characters of the war you’re fighting in. You’re literally just dropped in with no background or reasoning behind it. This was never done with Halo or Metroid Prime, as you were pulled right into the war or battles and understood exactly why you were there. It’s just a bunch of cutscenes with the squad going after various generals and moving from Helghan base to Helghan base.

The shooting is very interesting, as it’s part of why Killzone was loved by those who did like it. There’s a lot of weight behind the weapons, and they are actually quite unique and shoot well. It’s your standard array of military weapons, but with a twist and some personality behind them. Honestly, the weapons are the only thing front and center in Killzone and dominate the entire game. From the ISA and Helghast standard assault rifles to rocket launchers, grenade launchers, pistols, and heavy machine guns, Most weapons have a secondary fire that helps balance their weaknesses, such as the Helghan’s rifle, which has a shotgun attachment, and the ISA rifle, which has a grenade launcher. I personally stuck with the Helghast assault rifle through the first fourth of the game, as you can only play as Templar, but once the other characters were unlocked, I played as Rico since he has a chain gun with 800 rounds and a missile launcher. It’s seriously overpowered, but it feels so good to mow everyone down around you. The only weapon I really disliked was the shotgun, as it’s so slow to pump and shoot that unless you are one-on-one with a single enemy, you’ll get killed because you can’t fire fast enough. It’s practically useless, even in tight corridors.

The downside to the weapons having a lot of weight behind them is the animation. They are so long that they make the game more difficult than it needs to be. Every time you switch weapons, there’s a long animation of pumping the shotgun, fiddling with a rocket launcher scope, and flipping up the lid on the scope to the sniper rifle. Rico’s chain gun takes at least 2-3 seconds to swing out, then there’s a weird pump animation after, so you have to hide behind walls every time you switch weapons because of these animations. The same goes for reloading. Some weapons take over 5 seconds to reload, with the shotgun taking nearly 10 to load every single round. It’s fun to see and was never done up to that point in time, but it needed to be sped up or changed.

Outside of the weapons, the enemy AI is as dumb as a doorknob, with the Helghast literally standing around, not shooting at all, or they won’t move to cover. Part of this is the underpowered CPU in the PS2 and the game engine that pushed it way too far. There’s so much pop-in with fog of war to make up for the lack of a draw distance that enemies pop in and most of the time all at once, so an entire room or corner will be full of Helghasts that are easy pickings with a single grenade or kill you really quickly if you don’t notice them. The game engine just chokes the PS2 like no other game, with framerates dipping into single digits. I also played the remastered version for PS3, and while the 720p resolution looks sharper, there are still framerate drops because the engine just couldn’t handle the load. Sadly, because of the limitations, environments are bland and boring, with claustrophobic corridors and almost no draw distance. The game is gray, dull, and colorless, and while this could have worked, the weak PS2 brings the art backward because not enough can be rendered on the screen to make it look nice.

The entire game pretty much plays the same way and takes about 5 hours to finish. There are no vehicle scenes, no scripted events; it’s all just running and gunning, which gets old towards the end. For the PS2, this game is quite impressive and has a decent multiplayer mode, but there are more flaws than there are perfections. I would rather have had an ugly game that played better, but PS2 fanboys were clamoring for something that pushed the system like Halo did the Xbox. Is Killzone a Halo killer? Absolutely not, and it doesn’t even come close.

Reviewed On

God of War III Remastered

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 06/02/2018

Posted in: PlayStation 4, Sony Consoles. Tagged: god of war iii, playstation, ps3, ps4, remastered, santa monica studios, Sony. Leave a comment

Publisher: SCEA

Developer: SCE Santa Monica Studios, Wholesale Algorithms

Release Date: 07/14/2015

Available Exclusively On

God of War usually defines the generation of consoles it’s released on. God of War III was no exception. We were already halfway into the PS3’s lifecycle before we got God of War, but it was well worth the wait. It was bigger, better, faster, and more epic and violent than any previous game.

We also already had two PSP games by this point, so there was a lot of content for the team to look upon, and it did take some inspiration from the PSP versions as they were the latest games in the series. God of War III sees Kratos continuing his journey to kill Zeus and destroy all of Olympus for refusing to take away the nightmares of killing his wife and daughter.

The game starts out more epic than any other God of War game, or any game at all, for that matter. You are battling Titans in God of War III, with Gaia being the first one. Running around a giant, colossal enemy and destroying it from the outside is just something that has never been done or has never been done since. Right off the bat, the game feels smoother, silkier, and more responsive than ever before. The game has amazing lighting effects with a glow that shines on every object, and Kratos’ Blades of Exile look amazing in action. It’s still jaw-dropping even today to see something of this scale play on your screen.

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Combat isn’t just smoother, but slightly enhanced with new layers added. There is a new item meter that recharges on its own and allows you to use various items, such as Apollo’s bow and Helios’ head. This allows the team to focus more on balancing combat and using these items for puzzle solving rather than strictly combat. Magic items are now attached to the four weapons. Each weapon has a unique magic attack that balances combat and keeps it from feeling the same as other games. There is also a new X-button combo that allows Kratos to combo through all four weapons, which is just awesome to see. I don’t want to spoil the new weapons, as they are as big a part of God of War as the enemies and story, but they are awesome and the best weapons yet in any God of War game.

The game also feels like it just flows better this time around. There is no longer a central hub that the game focuses on, but you do backtrack to a few beginning areas briefly, which is fine. The game is very balanced, and I never felt overwhelmed except toward the end of the game, which is expected. New enemies are introduced with gobs of gore and violence in more detail. You can actually rip out a Cyclops eye, disembowel a Centaur General, and some enemies have multiple stage circle button prompts, which is a lot of fun. The button prompts are also moved to the sides of the screen, corresponding to button placement on the controller, and they flash, keeping you from having to miss a prompt. They aren’t as heavy-handed this time around and feel more natural, but the best parts are the boss fights. They are challenging, deadly, and gruesome, and they leave such a great smile on your face.

The environments are more impressive than ever, with larger-than-life structures and multi-tiered areas that span miles and miles. It’s insane how all this worked and was crammed on the PS3 hardware. Daedalus’ Labyrinth has giant floating boxes and gauntlets of platforming segments to test your skills and reflexes.

This is actually the third time I’ve played this game, and it amazes me with every playthrough. I never get tired of it. The PS4 remaster adds a coat of paint to an already great-looking game. The visuals are less blurry and sharper, and the game runs at a solid 60FPS. The textures do look ugly in spots, but that was due to PS3 limitations, but overall, the far-away shots look amazing.

Overall, God of War III is still an amazing game to this day. It was one of the best PS3 games to be released and is a must-have for PS4 owners. Sadly, the previous games were not included, so if you jump into this game, you won’t understand a single thread of the story.

God of War: Chains of Olympus – 10 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 06/02/2018

Posted in: PlayStation 3, PSP, Retro Consoles, Sony. Tagged: chains of olympus, god of war, playstation, ps vita, ps3, psp, Sony, vita. Leave a comment

Publisher: SCEA

Developer: Ready at Dawn Studios

Release Date: 03/04/2008

Available On

Chains of Olympus was probably the single biggest PSP release during the entire console’s life cycle. It was one of the first games everyone wanted for the system, and Ready at Dawn delivered a God of War experience just like the console version, with no cut corners.

The game takes place between the first two games, with Kratos continuing his journey to rid every god of Olympus and his quest to kill Zeus. He finds himself discovering more nightmares of his past, his daughter, and various new gods not seen in previous games. The story is just fine and feels just like a God of War game, but it’s very short and can be finished in less than 4 hours.

I remember starting up this game for the first time and seeing half of Kratos’ face in the main menu, just like in previous games, and pressing that new game button. The game starts with you at the Battle of Attica, fighting off a giant basilisk sent to destroy the city by the Persians. I knew the game would have an epic first boss fight and a giant city to fight in, as the previous games did as well. You also have to remember that this was released two years after God of War II, so there wasn’t much else to go off of at the time. Thankfully, this game carved its own path in the God of War series, and later games actually borrowed things from this game.

Surprisingly, the controls work out just fine with the handheld version. Pressing the shoulder buttons and moving the analog nub allow you to dodge. The combat and animations are gorgeous, and the game runs at 30FPS most of the time. Very rarely did it ever drop below that, and sometimes it even went up to 60 FPS in smaller areas. Everything about this game is so familiar yet somehow slightly evolved from GoWII. The moves are more fluid, and upgrades are a bit different as well. New magic items and a brand new weapon are introduced as well.

The Gauntlet of Zeus is a giant fist that brings slower, more powerful hits; sadly, due to its short length, only one extra weapon was introduced. Efreet is the new AOE magic attack that uses fire damage; Light of Dawn is a long-range magic attack; and Charon’s Wrath stuns enemies. Kratos also gets a shield in the game, allowing new counter-attacks and throwing back projectiles at enemies. The whole combat system as a whole feels new and enhanced enough to make this feel like a sequel rather than a spin-off.

Just like in previous games, you can upgrade your magic and health with hidden Phoenix Feather and Gorgon Eye chests, as well as using red orbs to upgrade items. Most of the hidden chests are easy to find if you explore all areas and pay attention to breakable walls and side paths. The best part about this game is the new enemies and bosses, which is what makes God of War so epic to begin with.

After beating the Basilisk, you will come across a few other bosses, but they aren’t large epic enemies like previous games; they are smaller and more challenging combat-wise, which is fine for the story that it delivers. I don’t want to spoil the game and tell you all the bosses right here, but the final boss proved quite a challenge and will test your reflexes for sure.

The environments are also amazing, as with any God of War game, with huge set pieces, massive buildings, giant statues, and various background stuff going on. Chains of Olympus was the best-looking handheld game ever released at the time and stunned everyone. It sold more PSP systems, which was good and was the main reason why most people bought a PSP. The lighting effects and textures look great and are a step up from God of War II. There is some noticeable aliasing and audio compression, but overall, the game seems impossibly good on the small system. This was also the first PSP game to use the full 333 MHz of the CPU and required an update before playing.

Overall, Chains of Olympus is a milestone and a pinnacle game in the handheld market and shows just how much of a powerhouse Sony’s handheld was back in the day. Sadly, we never got a new God of War on Vita, but this game is playable on that system as a PSP download.

Reviewed On

God of War – 13 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 05/28/2018

Posted in: PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Retro Consoles, Sony. Tagged: god of war, playstation, PlayStation 2, playstation 3, ps vita, ps2, ps3, remake, remaster, Sony, vita. Leave a comment

Publisher: SCE

Developer: Sanzaru Games, Santa Monica Studios

Release Date: 05/06/2014

Available On

Kratos and God of War are PlayStation icons and symbols of what the system can offer. This game was the biggest hit in 2005, and I went nuts for it like everyone else. It reinvented the action-adventure genre like no one else had with epic boss fights, cinematic combat, and insane-level design. We finally get all of this in portable form on the Vita. While it isn’t the most ideal version, it’s still plenty of fun.

God of War is really starting to show its age and flaws these days; that is really clear. It was a new idea, however well executed, but still had some issues. The game isn’t quite as epic as I remember, thanks to the newer games in the series being insanely huge. There are only two big boss fights in this game, and I could swear there were more. The game is brutal in spots but still rewarding, with many secrets and areas to explore.

You play as Kratos, a Spartan general who cried out for Ares to save him and defeat his enemies, but this all came at a huge price. I won’t spoil more of the story if you have never played this series, but longtime fans know it already. The game has amazing combat, which is what was praised so much 13 years ago. Using the Blades of Chaos, Kratos can swing and spin them around with amazing animations and kill hordes of enemies. I’m not kidding about hordes; there are some scenes where you must defeat nearly a hundred enemies, which is brutal.

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The enemy variety is also great, as there are small, easy enemies to huge, lumbering cyclops that take many hits to kill. God of War is famous for quick-time event kills. After so much damage is taken, the enemies will display the circle button above their heads. This initiates a quick-time button pressing, which will give you health orbs. Each enemy has its own unique animation. Each enemy is also a challenge on their own, as some are dangerous on hordes while others are not so much alone. The level design is fantastic, and the enemy placement is cleverly laid out to offer a challenge every step of the way.

The series is also famous for the magic powers you acquire that are different with every game. You get four, which become very useful for various enemies. Poseidon’s Rage is great for clearing hordes of weaker enemies, as it’s an AOE attack. Zeus’ Fury is the only long-range weapon you get for picking off ranged enemies. Souls of Hades is like a shield, and Medusa’s Gaze is great for larger single enemies to turn them to stone. On top of the Blades of Chaos, you also get Artemis’ Blade, which is a powerful short-range heavy weapon, but once the Blades were fully upgraded, I honestly never really used it.

Outside of combat, there are puzzles that will sometimes slow you down. Most consist of pressing switches in order, climbing puzzles, or jigsaws. Pandora’s Temple is a giant puzzle within itself that takes up a third of the game near the middle. I just can’t stress enough how hard this game can be. Some spots had me restarting dozens of times until I got it right, and this included platforming sections. The first game’s Hell area is notorious for being brutally difficult. Having to balance on long spinning logs covered in blades and then climb spinning spiked towers that stretch on forever is daunting, but rewarding when you do complete it.

Overall, God of War is still a blast to play 13 years later and is as polished as I remember. Outside of hardware limitations at the time, Sony did an amazing job creating what they did. There are some cheap deaths, unbalanced difficulty in spots, and the quick-time events do get repetitive, but it’s minor issues that can’t really bring the game down even today.

The Vita version is the only way to play this game in portable form, and it’s not the most ideal version. The PS3 version runs at a smooth 60FPS, but the Vita cleans up the visuals a little and does have some FPS drops when a lot of enemies are on screen, but it’s not often. I’m sad to see this game doesn’t hit 60FPS, which it does even on PS2 sometimes, which keeps this game from getting a perfect score.

Reviewed On

Life is Strange

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 06/25/2016

Posted in: Android, iOS, Linux, Mac, Microsoft, Microsoft Consoles, Mobile Reviews, PC Reviews, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Retro Consoles, Sony, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Playable, Steam Deck Verification, Xbox 360, Xbox One. Tagged: adventure, life is strange, pc, ps3, Xbox 360, xbox one. Leave a comment

Publisher: Square Enix

Developer: Don’t Nod

Release Date: 10/20/2015

Available On

Have you ever wanted to time-travel and change the past? How about just the last 30 seconds? You get that option in Life is Strange. You play Maxine Caulfield, who discovers she can rewind time by saving her childhood friend from a fatal gunshot wound in the girl’s bathroom. This changes Max’s life and everyone around her, but it’s up to you to decide if it’s for good or worse. Life is Strange tells a fantastically beautiful story with wonderfully written characters. The game will keep you hooked and have you playing all 8 hours with barely a blink.

Life is Strange tries to build on the revolutionary point-and-click adventure genre that The Walking Dead revived from Telltale Games. The game is a little more open-ended, but not by much. There’s more to explore and items to “look at,” which gives you a bigger insight into Max’s own thoughts and mind. Honestly, by looking at all these objects, you get to know Max better and the world around you more. Besides this, you just walk through every area to the next character that advances the story. There are some “time puzzles” that require you to select certain dialog choices and then rewind time to use that information to your advantage. It’s an interesting idea, but Life is Strange’s storytelling is a bit of a mess and requires you to pay attention very closely or you will miss something.

The game is broken up into 5 episodes, and each one has a cliffhanger ending. The game goes on at a good pace except for the final chapter, which is a roller coaster and kind of a mess. Without spoiling everything, you kind of “review” everything you have done through the game, which involves an awful stealth sequence. However, through the entire game, I couldn’t help but realize that no matter what I chose, the final outcome never changes, which is odd. It’s not until the last two chapters that all your choices start to unfold, but I feel they are just detours rather than different outcomes. Despite that frustration, the story in Life is Strange is amazing.

I have to talk about the atmosphere of this game. It’s so nostalgic and really reminded me of my adventures as a kid growing up, and it really makes you think about your family, friends, and what’s going on around you in your life. That small country life is something I grew up with personally, and the game really hit home with me. It sucked me in every minute, despite the slow start I had to push through. The entire game is so touching and full of emotion; it’s one of the best video game stories I have ever seen, but it still doesn’t top Soma. This is a story you will talk about long after the game is over and ponder over. The only thing that really annoyed me about the story is that it tries to turn this innocent teen drama “Where did my best friend go?” mystery into a serious murder mystery, which is kind of jarring. I loved exploring these areas out in the middle of nowhere and getting into shenanigans with Max and her best friend Cloe through their time travel events. Once the murder mystery stuff hit, it was a bit of a turn-off, but it wasn’t until towards the end.

Life is Strange also isn’t the prettiest game to look at; it’s rather ugly. The game has a nice watercolor art style, but the game’s technical level is a first-generation Xbox 360 game at best. The textures are muddy and awful, and the character models are terrible. This is just a downright ugly game, but the story and characters keep your head out of that. Overall, this is worth every dime and all your time invested.

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Clive Barker’s Jericho – 8 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 12/28/2015

Posted in: Microsoft, PC Reviews, PlayStation 3, Retro Consoles, Sony, Xbox 360. Tagged: 360, clive barker, fps, horror, jericho, Microsoft, pc, playstation, ps3, Sony, xbox. Leave a comment

Publisher: Codemasters

Developer: Mercury Steam

Release Date: 10/23/2007

Available On

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.

Reviewed On

Far Cry 4

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 05/24/2015

Posted in: Microsoft, Microsoft Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Retro Consoles, Sony, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Playable, Steam Deck Verification, Xbox 360, Xbox One. Tagged: far cry 4, Microsoft, open world, playstation, ps3, ps4, Sony, ubisoft, xbone, Xbox 360, xbox one. 2 Comments

Publisher: Ubisoft

Developer: Ubisoft Montreal

Release Date: 11/18/2014

Available On

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 by 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. It 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.

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, including 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.

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, and completing some side quests, only to continue getting distracted from the main story. This is usually a good thing, but FC4’s world feels sterile, 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.

The graphics are actually quite fantastic and show off the power of next-gen consoles; however, they’re not much different-looking than FC3. In the end, after completing the story, I felt overwhelmed by the vast amount of things needed 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, which feels more important with less filler content. Honestly, this series needs a reboot or a complete overhaul to justify its existence.

Reviewed On

Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 03/23/2015

Posted in: Linux, Mac, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Retro Consoles, Sony, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Verification, Steam Deck Verified, Switch. Tagged: hotline miami 2, playstation, ps3, ps4, vita, wrong number. Leave a comment

Publisher: Devolver Digital

Developer: Dennaton

Release Date: 3/10/2015

Available On

Hotline Miami was one of my favorite games in 2013. It was violent, fast-paced, had tight controls, and rocked a retro 8-bit art style like no other game has. The music was fantastic as well, but the best part was the “just one more level” appeal. Hotline Miami 2 brings back epic music, great art, violence, and, well, some other things we didn’t really want.

Wrong Number starts out by giving us some backstory. Well, it tries and miserably fails at it. The story does not make one lick of sense because you are being flip-flopped between time periods and so many different characters. Each level just starts, and the story is just there. There’s some dialog with no connection to the previous scene. It’s frustrating and makes you want the storyless original back. However, and it pains me to say this, the story isn’t the worst thing in Miami 2. The game is excruciatingly difficult. Miami 1 was hard, but satisfying. It had great replay value because it was the perfect challenge. Miami 2 is a near-frustrating mess of endless restarts and trial-and-error.

You could say it’s a worse-level design, but that’s not the case; I feel it’s more like poor enemy placement. There are so many enemies in each level, and I mean tons. They all have a variety of guns and melee weapons, and a few can only be taken down with certain weapons. I feel the placement is haphazard; we used strategies in the last game that were way overused here and ended up being used to exploit the game to advance, which is not fun at all. Enemies will see you if you can see them; this is how Hotline Miami works. If you can pan the camera further away, you can get a quick sniper shot at them and a free hit, but for fewer points. One good strategy is to move in and out of a doorway really quickly, let some enemies see you, duck back into a corner, and slice everyone up as they enter the doorway or around a corner. That was an infrequent strategy in Miami 1, but in Miami 2, this has to be done to just get partway through one area. Miami 2 is also full of long-winded levels that seem to never end.

Abusing Miami’s strategies is a crying shame here since this game could have had so much potential for more enemies and new strategies. After halfway through the game, the levels become large and hard to navigate with traditional Hotline Miami controls and gameplay. It’s almost like the game tried to go in a new direction but didn’t evolve its gameplay for it. Miami 2 is also twice as long as the first game, but it overstays its welcome after the second act. I literally felt like the game had become a chore and just wanted it to end.

However, that’s not to say the whole “one more level” thing is gone. I was hooked, and the constant trial and error had me restarting levels dozens and dozens of times to try a new strategy, but it wasn’t really an enjoyable “one more level” feeling. A lot of times I had to exploit the enemy AI. Only certain levels can really be completed one way, and if you start a level with the wrong weapon, kill the wrong guy first, or even kill all the enemies in the wrong order, you’re pretty much screwed. More often than not, I was restarting a level not because my strategy wasn’t sound, but because the enemy AI screwed everything up because he wasn’t patrolling the correct corridor or left a room he’s normally in and blindsided me when I least expected it. Usually, this is a good thing, but not when you’re forced to kill enemies in a certain way due to poor enemy placement being overwhelming.

With that said, I hate to say that there’s really no reason to come back to this game after you finish. Do I want to spend an entire week restarting level after level again and again? Of course not. I’d rather re-download the first game and enjoy the excellent Miami-ness without all the hair-pulling. All in all, Miami 2 is not really a must-play, even for fans. If you end up never playing this, you’re probably better off sticking with the first game.