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L.A. Noire – 9 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 04/16/2020

Posted in: Microsoft, Microsoft Consoles, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Retro Consoles, Sony, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Playable, Steam Deck Verification, Switch, Xbox 360, Xbox One. Tagged: l.a. noire, la noire, open world, rockstar games, shooter, team bondi, third person shooter, tps. Leave a comment

Publisher: Rockstar Games

Developer: Team Bondi/Rockstar Games

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

Available On

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reviewed On

Syphon Filter 2 – 20 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 01/15/2020

Posted in: PlayStation (PS1), Retro Consoles, Sony. Tagged: 989 studios, eidetic, exclusive, gabriel logan, playstation, ps1, psone, shooter, Sony, syphon filter 2, third person shooter, tps. Leave a comment

Publisher: SCEA

Developer: Eidetic

Release Date: 03/14/2000

Available Exclusively On

Syphon Filter is one of my favorite gaming franchises of all time and one of the top five PS1 series. It was the very first serious “adult” game I ever played and got into. Just the concept of how shooters work was totally alien to me before Syphon Filter. It was a game that I also spent a lot of time with my late father, and we aced each game, learning every enemy spawn point, hidden cache, and level design. We rented this game frequently and spent dozens of hours mastering each game. We probably spent more time on Syphon Filter 2 than any other game in the series, and for good measure, it’s the best game out of the three.

Syphon Filter 2 isn’t just an expansion, despite playing and looking exactly like the first game, as there is a greater and more expanded story, more weapons, new levels, and it’s also a couple of hours longer than the first game coming on two discs. You play as both Gabriel Logan and Lian Xing, as you are fugitives of the US government and are still fighting the agency, so get back the data discs that store the Syphon Filter data. The game picks up right where the last one left off when Gabe crashes into the Colorado Rockies. In the first level, the game introduces new weapons and gameplay elements, such as being able to leap gaps. New weapons include the unsilenced 9mm, H-11 sub-machine gun, silenced HK-5, UA12 auto-shotgun, hand taser, flashlight, teargas launcher, and more. These weapons are just as memorable and awesome as the first games. There are so many new weapons here that it nearly doubles the arsenal.

On top of this, there are other gameplay elements added, such as enemies being able to get a headshot on you. The HUD will flash red, and a headshot text will appear on the screen. You have mere seconds to get out of the way, or you will instantly die. New enemies are introduced, such as full-armored ones that only die with explosions in one level towards the end of the game. There is also a better balance of action and stealth with Lian’s levels in the air force base, which are perfect examples. Agents can be killed, but military MPs cannot. You must sneak around and tase the MPs with your hand taser, but the agents are fair game with silenced weapons. Another level has you sneaking around vents, and night vision automatically kicks in when the area is too dark, which is awesome.

The level design is on point, just like in the first game. Each level is memorable and fun and takes you around the globe. From the Colorado Rockies, the first disc mostly takes place in Moscow nightclubs, Agency bio-labs, and New York sewers. The levels are incredibly well designed, with the perfect balance of stealth and action. The train ride is a fun linear shooting gallery, while the bridge level requires quick thinking, stealth, and mastering enemy movement patterns. You can tell Eidetic has mastered this genre with the second game, and even the voice acting has greatly improved. This is an AAA PS1 game at its finest, and you will be hard-pressed to find anything better on the system.

The visuals didn’t really improve any, but they already pushed the system to its limits and still have plenty of detail, and the game looks great. There is some issue with slowdown here and there, but what PS1 game didn’t have that? There’s also a shoehorned multiplayer mode that I didn’t even care for. 1v1 on maps from both Syphon Filter games just isn’t very fun. If the game allowed 2v2 via a multi-tap, that would have been awesome, but what we have here is something just not very fun, and not to mention half the maps need to be unlocked by finding secrets in the game.

Overall, Syphon Filter 2 shows what the PS1 era of games would do and helps push the third-person shooter genre into what it is today. While it came out very late at the end of the system’s life cycle, a mere week before the launch of the PS2, it still sold incredibly well and showed that the PS1 had staying power even after its successor launched. The story, voice acting, visuals, and overall feeling of the game are fantastic, and there’s nothing else like it on the system. It’s a must-own for any PlayStation fan.

2019 Game of the Year Awards — Genre Awards — Best Shooter

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 12/17/2019

Posted in: 2019, Game of the Year Awards. Tagged: 2019, awards, borderlands 3, call of duty, cod, game of the year, gears 5, goty, modern warfare, rage 2, shooter, the division 2, tom clancy's. Leave a comment

Shooters have crawled their way back out of the depths since 2016 and are just getting better and better. With more sophisticated stories, groundbreaking visuals and tech, and fantastic multiplayer, 2019 was another notch in the shooter genre.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

Call of Duty is the laughing stock of the shooter genre and the gaming industry as a whole. It’s amazing to see what one of the most criticized franchises crawl its way back up to the top spot. All it took was inward thinking and back to basics mentality. Modern Warfare has never been a better example of K.I.S.S. Keep it simple stupid.

Runner-Ups

Gears 5

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Rage 2

Borderlands 3

Tom Clancy’s The Division 2

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 11/20/2019

Posted in: Microsoft Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, Sony Consoles, Xbox One. Tagged: activision, call of duty, cod, first person shooter, fps, infinity ward, modern warfare, online multiplayer, shooter. Leave a comment

Publisher: Activision

Developer: Infinity Ward

Release Date: 10/25/2019

Available On

When you’re desperate to bring a franchise back, what do you do? Well, two things: either reboot the entire series into something new or bring the series back to its roots. Activision chose the latter, and somehow it just brilliantly worked. See, Call of Duty 4 was something groundbreaking and revolutionary in the first-person shooter genre. With a fantastically cinematic campaign, an interesting protagonist (Cpt. Price), and addictive multiplayer that had you grinding for perks and weapon unlocks, it was fast-paced and fluid with well-designed maps. Infinity Ward had created magic that took the world by storm. Of course, what do you do with a franchise that’s this successful? Milk it to death with yearly sequels for over a decade until it kills itself. That’s actually what happened to Call of Duty twice! While the peak of the series was with Black Ops 1, the latest Black Ops 4 was a complete disaster. With every iteration, there was a less than stellar campaign and boring multiplayer. So, all those wonderful memories you had with Call of Duty 4 can now come back as this is a prequel to that game. Keep those memories in mind because we’re going to come back to them later.

Call of Duty has never been well known for its amazing story, but Modern Warfare tries, at least with the game taking place in Russia and the Middle East. You are trying to find out who stole a toxic bioweapon, and you team up with a rebel group in the Middle East to stop the Al-Quatala terrorists from unleashing it on the world. It’s a typical modern terrorist plot, but it’s enough to get the job done. At least the characters are interesting. With you playing Adam, Garrick, and Farah, Adam is part of the US Army, and Garrick is part of the SAS. Farah is the rebel group trying to break her people free from Al-Quatala, and the Russians selling the bioweapons aren’t helping. Each character is actually really good to watch and pay attention to on-screen. Of course, Cpt. Price has this awesome presence that you can’t look away from. His voice acting and motion capture are amazing, and it’s nice that they tried to breathe actual life into these characters. Remember when I said to remember those CoD4 moments of nostalgia? Well, when Cpt. Price comes on screen for the first time or you see the ending, you get goosebumps and can’t help but smile and think, “It’s back!”

The campaign is short but sweet. Running for about 6 hours, each and every level is unique and different, with a ton of scripted cinematic moments. There’s even a level where you play as a child and have to sneak out of your village. Infinity Ward really tried with this game, and the campaign is actually replayable and incredibly fun to go through. The game is familiar to any Call of Duty fan, but you can feel the original’s fingerprint throughout the entire game. From nighttime stealth missions to explosive-bombastic firefights, modern warfare covers every base, the pacing is spot on, and it never gets boring. The shooting itself is very familiar with the first three Modern Warfare games, with various real-world military weapons fine-tuned and balanced just right. There’s a play style here for everybody, from spewing rounds with the PKM to running around corners with an M80 shogun to picking off enemies with a Dragunov sniper rifle. The balance of weapons leads to the feeling of movement and the satisfaction of bringing someone down. The four-way spread of the reticle when you’re hitting an enemy and the sound it makes to let you know you’re on target have changed the way you can now slide around corners and mount walls. It’s a formula that only works in Call of Duty, and it’s never been better than it has been here.

Once you finish the campaign, it’s off to multiplayer, which is where the meat of the game is. This also feels very familiar and brings back old Call of Duty balancing and modes such as Team Deathmatch, Headquarters, and various other modes. This is the first Call of Duty game since Modern Warfare 2 that has had me coming back over and over again for more carnage. The gameplay is perfect, and while the weapons are still being balanced through patches, the expensive map packs are now gone in favor of free maps and a battle pass similar to what Battlefield is doing.

Acquiring new unlocks comes much quicker and more steadily than in previous games. Nearly after every match, I was unlocking something, whether it was a paint job, a perk, or an attachment. There are so many playstyles available for players, and the maps allow them all. Hand back and pick off enemies, set up camp in a sniper position, or run around with a shield and shotgun like a lunatic—it’s all up to you. The Killstreaks and Perks are back to basics, with UAVs, Cluster Strikes, and Apache helicopters raining havoc down, including white phosphorus and the new Juggernaut armored suit. It’s a reason to play better and stay alive, as the best Killstreaks are for the elite players who are the best. The game can also seem frustrating at first, as you will die a lot and not get any kills when you first start out. Modern Warfare has a special feel to it that every player needs to get down. Learn the maps, every nook and cranny, the shortcuts, and how the flow of each map is laid out. That is key.

Speaking of maps, the launch maps are rather generic. While they aren’t designed poorly, they just aren’t that interesting, with just an overall generic feeling to them. While more maps are to come, the 10 maps included just don’t feel as memorable as previous games. With a few maps being specific to Ground War, which is an all-out huge battle to take over choke points, the smaller maps just leave too much room for campers with blind corners and are easy to hide in pockets. Overall, they’re still fun, and I don’t have any other complaints about multiplayer than the map quality. I do enjoy the new cross-play feature, which is a first for Call of Duty. PC, Xbox, and PlayStation players can play together with symbols indicating what system and device the players are using in the lobby before a match starts. It’s a great way to keep longevity alive, as PC activity usually dwindles towards the launch of a new game, but with three combined user bases, the game is sure to stay alive for much longer.

The last thing I want to talk about is the visuals in the game. They are out of this world amazing thanks to a new game engine and implementing RTX Ray Tracing on PC for Nvidia GPU users. The lighting is fantastic, and the engine is so well optimized that I’m able to get triple-digit frames with RTX on and the graphics maxed out in certain scenes. The textures and models look fantastic, and the lighting is just incredible. Running through certain scenes and levels just made my jaw drop, and this is easily one of the biggest technical marvels of the year, hands down. However, that is just for PCs. I did play this on the original Xbox One console, and it looks like garbage with tons of blurring, poor frame rate, and stuttering. I’m sure the PS4 looks the same if now worse, and the Xbox One X and PS4 Pro versions are better performance-wise but don’t hold a candle to the PC version.

Overall, Modern Warfare is one of the best shooters in the last decade and the best in the entire series. It took way too long for the series to get back on track, but it’s here and better than ever. With groundbreaking visuals, an addictive multiplayer suite, and tons of maps to come, there’s not much to not like about this game.

Reviewed On

Control

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 10/10/2019

Posted in: Microsoft Consoles, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Verification, Steam Deck Verified, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S. Tagged: action, control, dlss, remedy entertainment, shooter, third person shooter, tps. Leave a comment

Publisher: 505 Games

Developer: Remedy Entertainment

Release Date: 08/27/2019

Available On

I love Remedy’s games and always have. From the first Max Payne all the way to Quantum Break, there have been ups and downs, but Alan Wake still remains my favorite game from them. Control takes place in the same universe as Alan Wake and even explains what kind of happened down there, as you play as Director Jesse, who has a crazy gun that can transform, and you fight off weird enemies called The Hiss, and your goal…well, I can’t tell you what the end goal is as this is Remedy’s most incoherent story yet, with many plot holes, and even after the credits rolled, I still couldn’t make sense of the story at all.

Let’s start with the exploration. Control takes place solely inside the Federal Bureau of Control and is a generic, boring, and ugly building that is basically a labyrinthine maze that requires a ton of backtracking and is a pain to navigate. There are several floors in this building, and spread throughout are control points, which you use to level up Jesse and fast travel. Even though fast travel is nice, trying to find new areas from those points is a serious pain. Throughout the game, you can find files to read and solve simple puzzles that use your telekinetic powers. Jesse can throw objects as weapons, break off pieces of buildings, and hurl them. This is a key combat mechanic, as you will swap between this and your weapon when either is recharging.

Combat in Control is pretty boring and frustrating. In fact, I would have rather had no combat in this game, and it would have been more enjoyable. Shooting enemies that float in the air, have shields, larger health bars, and some bosses are all fun, but not in Control. The game throws an insane amount of enemies at you at every turn, and there are no cover systems, so you must run around like a bafoon, trying to avoid explosive enemies, bullets, and projectiles. You don’t get to levitate until the last fourth of the game, and I never even got the dodge move or shield, as completing side missions is an absolute chore, and I didn’t care enough to see the level-up system all the way through.

Many times I died because you can’t heal unless an enemy has dropped health, and if you pick it all up, you’re screwed. This is essentially a broken mechanic, and I hated every minute of it. Not once did I enjoy the combat because instead of fun and unique bosses, you get tossed into arenas, gauntlets, and waves of enemies to chew through, and it seriously hinders progression. Not to mention they respawn in certain areas when you’re trying to cut through somewhere. The gun itself isn’t fun to shoot as it requires recharging, and there’s no ammo or reloading. There are various forms, such as a sniper pistol, machine pistol, grenade launcher, shotgun pistol, etc., but I only stuck with a couple of forms throughout the whole game. You can add perks to Jesse and each weapon that can increase health, decrease recharging, reduce energy costs, etc., and these are vital to surviving.

As you explore the game, you will notice Remedy’s signature trippiness as levels twist, turn, and transform. There’s a supernatural aspect to the game, of course, but it’s all for naught. Nothing in the game is ever explained, like why I can pull a string three times and get warped to the Oceanview Motel and have to solve the same stupid puzzles inside. Ring the front desk bell, go into a room, remember the placement of objects, ring the bell again, and move the objects to the next room. It’s stupid and makes no sense. Why is Jesse communicating with this Hadron entity, and who is her brother anyway? What purpose does the director have in all of this, and why does a slide projector harness so much power? Yeah, it makes about as much sense as it sounds, and nothing is ever explained. It’s hard to push through the boring and frustrating combat only to get another confusing cut scene that seems like a random piece from a storyline.

Control-Screenshot-2019.08.25-08.09.26.90.low_

Control looks pretty good, but Nvidia’s DLSS anti-aliasing is awful here, and the game is a blurry mess even with MSAA enabled. The engine is decently optimized, as I got a steady 60FPS through most of the game with RTX on, and it rarely dropped below 45FPS. However, the art style is dull and stale, with concrete hallways and corridors. It doesn’t have a unique identity, and that’s sad, as Remedy is good at this.

Overall, Control is a disappointing follow-up to Remedy’s legacy. With Quantum Break being as disappointing as it was, was Alan Wake their last great game? Control isn’t the game we all wanted, and I honestly won’t remember this game a week from now, and that’s sad as there’s lost potential here with Remedy’s signature touches that just don’t quite connect. The combat is boring and frustrating and very repetitive; there is lots of backtracking, and the confusing mess of a building to explore just doesn’t strike me as fun. If the story was at least solid, it would be worth it, but it makes no sense, and when the credits roll, you just shrug and wonder why you wasted your time.

Reviewed On

Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles – 12 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 08/15/2019

Posted in: Nintendo, PlayStation 3, Retro Consoles, Sony Consoles, Wii. Tagged: capcom, cavia, exclusive, first person shooter, fps, light gun, Nintendo, rail shooter, resident evil, shooter, the umbrella chronicles, wii. Leave a comment

Publisher: Capcom

Developer: Cavia, Inc.

Release Date: 11/13/2007

Available On

Resident Evil is less known for its light-gun arcade games, as these are held in public places that are niche hangout spots. The Wii with its remote and Zapper attachment is just begging to be used as a light-gun, and many of these games followed, and Capcom jumped on the bandwagon. Umbrella Chronicles is one of the more solid light-gun games on Wii, but it must be played co-op or you’re not going to have a good time.

The game has four chapters, with each one following bits and pieces from Resident Evil 0, 1, and 3: Nemesis, respectively, with the final chapter being an exclusively unique section just for this game. Each chapter has three or four sub-chapters and a few side chapters that are shorter and feature an alternate perspective featuring Ada Wong, Albert Wesker, and one Umbrella operative, Hunk. Story-wise, don’t expect to get a comprehensive telling of the Resident Evil series, as the pre-rendered cutscenes are chopped up and it’s not very cohesive or easy to understand. This is more for people who have played the older games before.

Outside of that, the shooting itself is rather solid. There are over a dozen weapons in the game, with your side pistol having unlimited ammo and various other guns like submachines, shotguns, rocket launchers, and handcannons making up the majority of the arsenal, but the ammo for these guns is extremely limited, and that’s the first downfall of this game. Why make an action game based on survival horror and keep the ammo count low? The pistol does very little damage, and you just forget about beating a boss with it. Ammo is incredibly scarce and requires you to have a partner, as some scenarios and waves just can’t be defeated with only the pistol. Hordes of enemies, sometimes over a dozen, will spawn in front of you, and popping them with 8–10 shots each with a pistol is just not feasible. With a second player, it’s possible, but solo is not. After chapter 3, I had to resort to a partner because it just gets too hard and too demanding for one player.

There are a good variety of enemies in the game, with some not appearing until the final chapter, and the bosses are all unique and incredibly challenging and require great reflexes, aim, and actual skill. Bosses are recycled from previous games, but fighting them in a 3D environment is pretty awesome. Some bosses have multiple stages, but these repeat in a cycle and can even include quick-time events that require button presses or a quick waggle. Quick-time events are peppered throughout the game and thankfully not abused, but they don’t appear on-screen long enough, and the waggle ones won’t trigger unless you start waggling the second they appear on the screen. This can lead to frustrating deaths.

Speaking of deaths, if you find a health spray, this acts as an extra life and can resurrect you on the spot, but without one, you start at the last checkpoint. There are herbs lying around for health, ammo, grenades, and barrels just begging to be blown up to take out large groups. This is one of the most difficult light-gun games I have ever played, and sadly, it’s impossible to finish solo without having unlocked the infinite ammo. The first two chapters have a nice difficulty scale, and it just ramps up way too hard on chapters 3 and 4. There’s also an issue with the game feeling too repetitive and not having enough variety, like vehicle scenes similar to other light-gun games. It relies too much on just shooting the same enemies ad nauseum.

Let’s talk about production values. Capcom is never one to skimp on a Resident Evil game, usually, and while Umbrella Chronicles looks fine, it shows it doesn’t push the Wii in the right direction. It looks like a GameCube game at best, with muddy low-resolution textures, but somehow there’s still a slowdown when too much is going on. It really could have looked better, even on the Wii, as there are better-looking games on the system, but what’s here is fine. The menus are pretty ugly, with not much going on, and everything looks so blurry and low-res. I need to redact my GameCube comparison from earlier; it’s more like a Dreamcast port, to be honest.

Overall, Umbrella Chronicles is a decent light-gun game that requires a second player or you won’t get very far. The boss fights are bombastic and fun, and each is unique, but the same enemies repeat over and over, and the scenarios don’t change. You’re just running down hallways or open areas and blasting enemies. The game goes on way longer than it needs to, with each chapter taking about 30-45 minutes to complete if you include the bonus missions. There is a lack of variety when it comes to other stuff to do to make this game even more exciting to play. The extras aren’t worth unlocking as they require S ranks in each chapter, most of the time, and after finishing this game once, there’s no real reason to go back.

Reviewed On

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter – 13 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 08/03/2019

Posted in: Microsoft, PC Reviews, PlayStation 2, Retro Consoles, Sony, Xbox, Xbox 360. Tagged: advanced warfighter, first person shooter, fps, ghost recon, grin, military, red storm, shooter, tom clancy's, ubisoft. Leave a comment

Publisher: Ubisoft

Developer: Grin

Release Date: 05/03/2006

Available On

Ghost Recon has always been a part of my childhood, as it was one of my dad’s favorite games. While we only had the inferior PS2 versions, they were kind of fun to play and really challenging. The slow pace of crawling through enemy territory and deciding the best way to take them all out without dying after 3 shots could sometimes be quite rewarding, especially since this is what the series was popular for. GRAW carries this over to the PC version specifically, while the Xbox 360 version is faster-paced. I personally think this is a much inferior version, and the slower pace feels dated and boring.

After so many Ghost Recon games, it was exciting to get a new game in the series on the brink of brand new technology. While the PC version sure looks great, it uses a slightly different engine and is from a first-person perspective rather than a third, like the Xbox 360 version. Everything just feels completely different, such as enemies not staying tagged with the orange diamonds, and this became a real big problem. You get a drone in this game, but it’s tied to a tactical map rather than viewing it in real-time overhead. You can use basic commands to send squad members to an area and take out enemies, but you’re so blind, and the angle of the camera for the map is really strange and distorts your perspective. Many times my men died because I didn’t know what was ahead, and unless you play at a snail’s pace, you’re going to die a lot.

That also goes for your character. Two or three shots and you die, and the checkpoints are so infrequent and spread apart that it leads to many frustrations. The PC version should have a manual quick save feature, but it doesn’t. The character walks like a geriatric on a crutch or sprints as fast as a turtle. The maps are bland and void of any type of action or ambiance. Just plain walls, silos, warehouses, and blown-up cars. Once I did get a few bad guys tagged, I would send my guys out, but they strayed too far and the tags disappeared, which is really pointless. Just on the training map alone, I died maybe 6 or 7 times because it’s just so hard to see what’s coming up on a large open map. I need something like, I don’t know, my drone’s tags to stay up and I see where every bad guy is and either skip some or avoid certain areas.

At least giving commands is rather simple, as using the mouse wheel or number row tells your guys to stop, follow, attack, or carry out commands set on the map. However, the AI is weird, as sometimes my guys would pop people I never even saw and then not engage on tagged targets I told them to attack. They would just stand there and stare, sometimes get shot up, and tell me that the target wasn’t reachable. With all of this combined, this makes for a buggy and frustrating mess of a game that doesn’t exist on the Xbox 360 version. The snail’s pace alone isn’t fun, is boring and bland, and takes away all the character and amazing pace of the console version. Why Ubisoft tried to make the PC slower is beyond me, as I wanted the 360 version, maybe with better visuals. Even the art style is completely different, despite most of the maps and missions being the same.

Overall, GRAW on PC is a huge letdown, as Ubisoft thinks we want a slower, more boring game. It feels more like Rainbow Six than Ghost Recon, and it carries with it too many of the issues from past Ghost Recon games. Get rid of the slow pace and animations, make the AI better, and stop making up crawl around a massive map trying to pick off targets. It’s just not fun at all. Some people may love this, such as those who actually like boring tactical shooters that play at a crawl, but GRAW on PC just doesn’t cut it and shouldn’t exist when a superior version exists on Xbox 360.

Reviewed On

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 07/02/2019

Posted in: Linux, Mac, Microsoft Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Playable, Steam Deck Verification, Xbox One. Tagged: cyberpunk, deus ex, eidos, mankind divided, montreal, nixxes software, shooter, square enix, stealth, third person shooter, tps. Leave a comment

Publisher: Square Enix

Developer: Nixxes Software/Eidos Montreal

Release Date: 08/23/2016

Available On

Deus Ex is an old, well-loved franchise, and the reboot with Human Revolution was well received despite its many flaws. Mankind Divided is a direct sequel taking place right after the terrorist bombing at the end of the last game, and Adam Jensen is at it again, trying to solve murder mysteries, stop more terrorists, and put an end to the hatred against augmented humans. Dealing with racism, discrimination, classism, and many other dystopian issues, Mankind Divided delivers an atmospheric world to explore with great characters.

The gameplay elements from Human Revolution carry over and feel more polished and nuanced, but this game has its own set of issues. Starting with exploration, Mankind Divided has small areas in Prague you can explore and complete side missions, and sadly, that’s all. You can’t talk to 90% of the characters, and there are only a dozen side missions in the whole game. Prague just feels very cramped and small in scope, and the Deus Ex franchise has enough lore and interesting things going on that it could be an open-world game. Despite the areas being full of NPCs, open buildings, police walking about, etc., it just feels so empty and lonely. The amount of interaction is so little, and there’s no real point in exploring anything except to hack computers to read emails and find ebooks, but even these don’t really give a lot of insight into the surrounding world.

Once you get into a mission, the combat is actually rather versatile. You can go completely stealthy using silenced weapons and takedowns, or augment yourself for combat with powerful melee moves, more health, shields, and more. I went the hacker/stealth route, upgrading all my hacking augs and biocell meters for stealth shields and extra takedowns. Every area has multiple routes to get to the goal by either shooting through all the enemies, hacking your way around turrets, cameras, and security, or just taking everyone down one by one and sneaking through vents. It’s rather satisfying to find your own path, and I rarely had issues in which I didn’t know how to get to a particular area. The shooting is rather satisfying as well, but sadly, the game is designed to use very little of it. I never used anything outside of my silenced pistol, despite holding on to four different weapons through the entire game. You can pick up grenades, software to help hack, and various healing items, but I never really needed most of it.

Outside of shooting, cover mechanics, and various combat abilities, there’s nothing else to the game. The story and characters are interesting enough to keep you going, but it’s mostly forgettable. The overall terrorist plotline is done to death in other games, and I’d rather know more about the surrounding world and how the people live day to day in this dystopian police-state world. That interested me more than anything Adam and his cohorts were working on. I honestly enjoyed the side missions more than the main storyline, which is odd for a video game in general. There are some persuasion dialog mini-games where you must sway a character in your favor, but it’s easy, and the outcomes don’t really affect the overall story.

Thankfully, Mankind Divided is for both action fans and stealth fans despite the game being built for stealth gameplay. There are no bosses this time around, and the game has a lot of technical issues. At launch, the game was nearly unplayable for most people, and now, after many patches, the engine is incredibly unoptimized. Even two video card generations later, the engine struggles to stay at 60FPS with load times for menus! MSAA is nearly impossible to enable, and with frames dipping into single digits, there’s a lot of chugging when turning the camera as well. On anything but the latest GPUs, you’re not going to enjoy this game at all, and it will murder your system. The game looks really good, though, with good lighting, high-res textures, and great character models.

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Overall, Mankind Divided expands on its predecessor but not on the overall series. More interactive areas would have been great, bigger areas to explore, more side missions, and even more insight into the day-to-day lives of the citizens in Prague. With a terribly optimized engine and the fun factor of combat and stealth varying from satisfying to incredibly frustrating within minutes of each other, Deus Ex just needs a reboot before coming back. The story is enough to keep you moving along, but it’s nothing memorable.

Reviewed On

Metro: Exodus

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 03/29/2019

Posted in: Mac, Microsoft Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Verification, Steam Deck Verified, Xbox One. Tagged: 4a games, deep silver, exodus, first person shooter, fps, horror, metro, ray tracing, scary, shooter. Leave a comment

Publisher: Deep Silver

Developer: 4A Games

Release Date: 02/15/2019

Available On

The Metro series is one of my favorites and is on my top 10 first-person shooter lists. It has a lot of flaws, but there’s a lot of heart and love that went into this series, and it showed with each game and even the Redux games. Exodus has been in development for about 5 years now, and I expected a lot from this game. What we got was a lot, but not how I really imagined it would be.

Exodus takes off right after the end of Last Light, with Artyom and Miller and the gang setting out from the metropolis of Moscow to find a clean place to live free of radiation and monsters. The main hub in this game is a train called the Aurora, and instead of being confined to a small linear metro tunnel, there are a few large maps you can freely explore, and the game is much longer than previous ones. The story itself is actually quite good, and the atmosphere plays a big role here, just like in previous entries. The funny thing is that the game almost feels like three parts put into one. The first two large maps are fully explorable with hidden items and side objectives, while the third map seems large and open, but there are no side objectives or things to really find. The last map ends up being a linear tunnel that harkens back to the first two games, with mostly atmospheric storytelling during the last 30 minutes. It’s got great pacing, and this constant change of gameplay kept me interested.

One of the major changes in the crafting system is that it allows you to collect chemicals and scrap metal to craft anything from medicine syringes to filters to certain ammo types. When you finally get a workbench, you can use it to clean your weapons, masks, and craft ammo, as well as equip new pack items such as a compass, motion detector, and even a better charger. Metro is all about survival, so the only thing you can do with your pack on the field is craft medicines, filters, smaller ammo, and throwables, as well as change out your weapon parts. The crafting system is decent enough, and I stuck with one loadout through most of the game, as once you get better parts, there’s no reason to equip weaker ones. There is a large variety of weapon types, and the more you use them, the more they jam up and misfire, just like in previous games.

The shooting is spot on here, and the weapons feel heavy and cumbersome like any junked-together gun would. From pistols to Gatling guns, the weapons are rather unique for the series, and I’m glad the weapon system got a lot of attention here. My first issue occurred with the stealth, though. Just like in previous games, nothing was really fixed. Sometimes I could sneak through an entire compound and kill everyone, and other times the enemies were placed in such odd positions that I got spotted no matter what. I also don’t like how silent weapons and stealth kills can be heard if you’re too close to another enemy. There were several dozen checkpoint restarts made throughout the game to get it right, but thankfully you can quicksave anywhere. Most of the time, sneaking missions turn into shootouts, and dying is quite easy here. A few bullets, and you’re pretty much dead, so keep medicine syringes handy at all times.

I do want to talk about the atmosphere a little. The game is incredibly foreboding, from the empty tundra to the dry desert and lush forests. The game feels empty and alone, and you’re always feeling afraid. Of course, the tensest moments are towards the end when you’re in the tunnels, and when you finally get back on the train or even a safe house, the respite is so relieving. I never played a game where a single light, a rest spot, or another person would feel so nice. You’re constantly on the edge of your seat, whether it’s hiding from monsters, tense shootouts, or sneaking around a bandit camp.

The visuals in Exodus are absolutely fantastic. Some of the best graphics this generation has seen. While I don’t recommend playing this on the original Xbox One or PS4 hardware it looks amazing on my Xbox One X I gave it a whirl on PC with Ray-Tracing enabled and it looks out of this world good. Of course, you need a 2080 or higher to get good frames with RTX on, and sadly, the DLSS is completely broken in this game. The entire game looks blurry and slightly out of focus, which is sad because I got a good 15-20 FPS just from DLSS alone. On Xbox One X, the game looks amazing, and there are only slight differences between it and the PC outside of RTX and some draw distance settings. Of course, the game never reached 60FPS on the One X or PS4 Pro (which the game runs slightly rougher on), but it all plays well. There were some glitches with the game crashing my Xbox and scripted events not activating, causing me to restart at a checkpoint as well.

Overall, Exodus is a fantastic game that is somehow still rough around the edges but still evolves the series with large open maps, varied environments, and mixed-up gameplay ideas, as well as the best story in the series with good characters, but sadly, they aren’t exactly memorable but good enough to push you through it.

Reviewed On

Anthem

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 03/18/2019

Posted in: Microsoft Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, Sony Consoles, Xbox One. Tagged: anthem, bioware, ea game, games as service, online multiplayer, shooter, third person shooter, tps. Leave a comment

Publisher: EA

Developer: BioWare

Release Date: 02/15/2019

Available On

Anthem has been a long time coming, debuting six years ago at E3 and exciting BioWare fans with the teaser. It looked amazing and was said to be as rich and detailed as Mass Effect, but as the years went on, BioWare was very choosy about what was shown, and the final product didn’t look anything like the original teaser. I, for one, had no idea what Anthem was about or what kind of game it was due to BioWare’s cryptic information up until its release. I started to play the game and didn’t understand all the hate, as the first 2 hours are pretty fun as the core mechanics are introduced to you, but after those 2 hours, the game turns into a sluggish, repetitive mess that feels like a chore to get through.

When you start out, you are introduced to pre-rendered 1080p videos that try to explain the story. There’s something called the Anthem, which is a religion, and you’re a javelin, which was used to stop some sort of storm that wiped everyone out. Yeah, it really doesn’t make much sense and isn’t explained very well. The story is more of an afterthought than a front to keep the player engaged. Once you get through the tutorial mission and into the main city, you start understanding how the game plays and just how repetitive everything really gets.

The core mechanics are fine, as the shooting is solid, and the movement is quick and zippy by being able to fly through the air on a dime and maneuver quickly around enemies. The game also looks absolutely fantastic, with beautiful vistas and amazing lighting effects, but that eye candy and flair kind of die off quickly around the 3–4 hour mark. When you fly around in your jet pack, you have a heat meter, and either diving steeply or flying near water will cool it down. Honestly, it’s just really annoying, and there’s almost no point to having this cool-down meter since missions have you flying around an entire map. Second, there aren’t many objectives to actually complete during this loot and shoot cycle; just defend a point, defeat all the enemies, stick smaller stones into bigger stones, and gather smaller orbs to deactivate a storm. It’s fine at first, and the first few missions have an illusion of mission variety, but you witness everything in the first 2 hours.

Let’s take into effect that once you start unlocking all the menus and things you can do, upgrading becomes a grind as most upgrades are locked behind a paywall. Secondly, unless you do a mission with at least one other person online, your chances of surviving get really slim, as most missions are designed for multiple players. There’s also the issue of only exploring one large map that’s cut into smaller pieces. You’re either in an outdoor forest or a cave, and that’s about it. I rarely came across guns or anything that was better than what I already had, and I forgot about purchasing stuff as everything was such a grind and was literally locked away.

Outside of the main missions, you can free roam, but this is dull and boring, and finding X amount of chests or Y amount of items to get this stupid gun you don’t need isn’t my idea of fun. You can also do tomb raids, which literally amount to nothing except a memo to read after acquiring all these items for hours. It’s the most disappointing looter shooter I have ever played. I’m talking about something worse than vanilla Destiny. There are also issues where matchmaking is practically broken where you can quickly play to the end of the game missions and either they are halfway through the mission or just finished and you miss that entire mission. There are also long load times that are quite frequent and ridiculous.

Is there any redeeming quality to Anthem then? Maybe if you play with friends, as I would rather play with AI partners that have personality and add to the story. The game looks amazing but requires a high-end rig to get good FPS. If you’re into boring mindless loot grinding, then this game probably is for you, but even with boring mindless loot grinders, there’s a reward at the end somewhere, and this game just feels like it’s tricking you to the end of its rainbow only to have a turd there instead of treasure. I honestly doubt this game will get better over time like Destiny or The Division did. There’s so much wrong with this game outside of the bugs (I actually had a DirectX crash that said my GPU was magically removed mid-game, by the way).