Yultimona
2011
In all earnestness, I do not believe there is a more significant example of why mobile games are the way they are now than this. There are several things that factor into it—the success of Clash of Clans and the addictive nature of Flappy Bird; the fact that the law allowed the unwashed, genital-shaped homunculuses posing as humans at King to trademark a single word from the English dictionary and get away with it; the failure many big-name developers ran into trying to translate some of their biggest IPs onto a relatively new platform with an eager audience; I could go on. Among this trash heap of inevitable nostalgia serving as blinds stands Infinity Blade and its two successors. A veritable trilogy of Fantasy epics that took advantage of the hardware instead of trying to accommodate for it, there's a good reason one of the three games in this series was legendary enough to earn a coveted 10/10 from IGN.
At least, in theory.
In all honesty, I have never played any of these games. I know of their status and the nostalgia that many have for them. But even if I wanted to, a roadblock stands in the way: all three games were delisted in 2018. So what? Why don't I just emulate them?
You can't. Perhaps that's putting it into layman's terms; you probably can, but the reason I've never heard of anyone doing it is probably the same reason PS4 emulation only made headlines recently. If you want to, it might be within reach, but with such difficulty that it'd probably be best to avoid it. And this is nothing to say of the fact that, even if you manage to set something like that up, it's likely that it's not something that'll even work out the way you want it to. I'm putting this here just so nobody writes a comment that begins with "Actually,", but I swear to god, I've never seen a single person talk about emulating an iPhone game.
If the game were on Android, this would probably be a different story. Old Android games do have their own fair share of quirks that can make emulating them a pain, but it's been proven that there's a workaround for even the most stubborn of APKs. Spoiler alert: all three of these games are/were Apple exclusive.
Here you have this actual fossil. Maybe it doesn't have as much value as it did back then in our current market, but that's the thing about old games: even if flawed, they help you appreciate the new. Just recently, I turned my Xbox One on for the first time in almost a year to play a game on it, and it was for a game on the Xbox 360 that was made backward compatible. I wound up playing that game, the first Saints Row, Grand Theft Auto IV, and TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, and I had somewhat of a good time. Dated in a few ways, timeless in others, kept in between both camps is an appreciation for what I'm able to have now. In a word, it's history. If I hooked up my Xbox to find that ninety percent of the backward-compatible games I bought on there couldn't be played, and that the remaining physical copies of them had mysteriously disintegrated, my perception of Xbox as a brand would suffer significantly. It's not even that it helps brand recognition all that much; if you treat gaming as fast-food, you're more likely to have less regard and appreciation for what it does best.
Apple's decision to lock everything down lest you tinker with everything they've given you behind their backs is utterly dystopic for a multitude of reasons, and that's why I've never had much loyalty for the slop they keep pumping out. But ultimately, it's this that puts a nail in the coffin: they do nothing to preserve their back catalog. Say what you will about the botched ports of games before the iPhone came along; even the jankiest JME games can be played today. Unless you're willing to pay exorbitant fees to play ten-to-twelve-year-old games on devices that have them pre-installed, you just can't play games like Infinity Blade nowadays, and the medium of video games is worse off for it.
At least, in theory.
In all honesty, I have never played any of these games. I know of their status and the nostalgia that many have for them. But even if I wanted to, a roadblock stands in the way: all three games were delisted in 2018. So what? Why don't I just emulate them?
You can't. Perhaps that's putting it into layman's terms; you probably can, but the reason I've never heard of anyone doing it is probably the same reason PS4 emulation only made headlines recently. If you want to, it might be within reach, but with such difficulty that it'd probably be best to avoid it. And this is nothing to say of the fact that, even if you manage to set something like that up, it's likely that it's not something that'll even work out the way you want it to. I'm putting this here just so nobody writes a comment that begins with "Actually,", but I swear to god, I've never seen a single person talk about emulating an iPhone game.
If the game were on Android, this would probably be a different story. Old Android games do have their own fair share of quirks that can make emulating them a pain, but it's been proven that there's a workaround for even the most stubborn of APKs. Spoiler alert: all three of these games are/were Apple exclusive.
Here you have this actual fossil. Maybe it doesn't have as much value as it did back then in our current market, but that's the thing about old games: even if flawed, they help you appreciate the new. Just recently, I turned my Xbox One on for the first time in almost a year to play a game on it, and it was for a game on the Xbox 360 that was made backward compatible. I wound up playing that game, the first Saints Row, Grand Theft Auto IV, and TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, and I had somewhat of a good time. Dated in a few ways, timeless in others, kept in between both camps is an appreciation for what I'm able to have now. In a word, it's history. If I hooked up my Xbox to find that ninety percent of the backward-compatible games I bought on there couldn't be played, and that the remaining physical copies of them had mysteriously disintegrated, my perception of Xbox as a brand would suffer significantly. It's not even that it helps brand recognition all that much; if you treat gaming as fast-food, you're more likely to have less regard and appreciation for what it does best.
Apple's decision to lock everything down lest you tinker with everything they've given you behind their backs is utterly dystopic for a multitude of reasons, and that's why I've never had much loyalty for the slop they keep pumping out. But ultimately, it's this that puts a nail in the coffin: they do nothing to preserve their back catalog. Say what you will about the botched ports of games before the iPhone came along; even the jankiest JME games can be played today. Unless you're willing to pay exorbitant fees to play ten-to-twelve-year-old games on devices that have them pre-installed, you just can't play games like Infinity Blade nowadays, and the medium of video games is worse off for it.
TBD
The best way I can describe the ongoing development of Karlson is this:
When I was around eight or nine years old, my older brother came home with a burned CD he obtained from a birthday party he went to for his one of friends. On that CD wasn't music, but a few games that his friend had actually made. They were all created in Multimedia Fusion 2, all used stock assets that the program handed to you, one of them featured the song Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple in all of its bit-crushed .wmv glory, and one of the games was just straight up the tutorial project. And it was glorious. As a child, there's this impression that creation is an imaginary thing. While the adults in front of your house are tinkering with the family car, you're reading a book about a car that can fly, has a swimming pool in it, and can go underwater. In reality, flying cars are a liability at best, and would count as a human rights violation if a pool was ever involved. Reality is disappointment; if the car in front of your house could fly, you'd take it to see your cousins halfway across the state all the time. Otherwise, the closest ones are about a six-hour drive, and the ones that live in another state are nine hours away—and this is nothing of the stops to use the restroom, eat, or panic about a flat tire. So when you step away from the finely crafted luxury of Mario and Goldeneye 007 and Pajama Sam and see disappointment for what it is—a bunch of aesthetically clashing assets on backgrounds that consist of solid colors put into levels with no cohesion whatsoever—a thought comes to mind.
I can do it. I can do it!
My own experiences with creating games are nothing to write home about; it's mostly a bunch of failed attempts to capture ideas outside of my range of talent. Joining the Backloggd Discord server, I was surprised to find a small, niche community on there set about making their own games. Most of the projects I've seen from that so far are visual novels, and I don't think it takes the most literate genius in the world to know why. A cliche in game development spaces is "I know how to program, I just wish that I had an artist as a friend." When you're good at art and writing but don't have a friend who can program, where else do you go? Removed from the Fish Game I played to death as a child, or the series of strange games my older brother wound up making in the same class and on the same engine that I would end up working on in the year or two to follow, the reality of game development isn't working on a car with an instruction manual in your hand. Reading the manual for any given programming language will teach you what words work, but much like a dictionary, won't tell you which one will most effectively solve your problem. And so you get stuck in this endless cycle: I want to make a spaceship move, but every time I tell it to enter a building, I start to smell the stench of ash. I spend hours looking for the single line of code that's causing this and fix it. Great, onto the next car fire.
If I was a child in 2020 hearing about Karlson, perhaps my expectations would be different. It's one thing to be given a CD with games that have already been made on it. To see the sausage getting made in all of its frustrating glory is an entirely different beast. And on top of that, to have the sausage be wrapped in a Magic School Bus-like casing makes it go from feeling like a job to a passion. Or a passion that can be turned into a job, or a skill set that will set you up for later on in life. I know that, had Dani been around when I was a child, I would have tried learning how to use Unity. I would have failed and given up because, as explicitly stated in a dev diary for this game, a single ten-minute video can constitute months of hard work and problem-solving. As an adult, I see that and say, "yeah, I get you." As a child? What the fuck even is problem-solving? I'm still trying to figure out what fractions are while the class we're next to is learning about the periodic table of elements, something that I will only learn in high school because everything is fucked.
I'm conflicted on whether or not to say that it's inspirational in the same way that knowing Who Killed Captain Alex? was made on a shoestring budget of 200 dollars is inspiring. Does it speak to the long-dormant voice inside me that wants my creative voice to be heard, or am I being deceived because the entertaining wrapper around it is focused on packaging the process of creation as a hero's journey of sorts? I suppose it varies from person to person; trying to learn Unity as a kid would have fucked me up, but for somebody else, it probably would have led to much greener pastures somewhere in the future. And in the midst of it all, I think of that CD; reality is disappointment. But who's to say compromise is always a bad thing?
When I was around eight or nine years old, my older brother came home with a burned CD he obtained from a birthday party he went to for his one of friends. On that CD wasn't music, but a few games that his friend had actually made. They were all created in Multimedia Fusion 2, all used stock assets that the program handed to you, one of them featured the song Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple in all of its bit-crushed .wmv glory, and one of the games was just straight up the tutorial project. And it was glorious. As a child, there's this impression that creation is an imaginary thing. While the adults in front of your house are tinkering with the family car, you're reading a book about a car that can fly, has a swimming pool in it, and can go underwater. In reality, flying cars are a liability at best, and would count as a human rights violation if a pool was ever involved. Reality is disappointment; if the car in front of your house could fly, you'd take it to see your cousins halfway across the state all the time. Otherwise, the closest ones are about a six-hour drive, and the ones that live in another state are nine hours away—and this is nothing of the stops to use the restroom, eat, or panic about a flat tire. So when you step away from the finely crafted luxury of Mario and Goldeneye 007 and Pajama Sam and see disappointment for what it is—a bunch of aesthetically clashing assets on backgrounds that consist of solid colors put into levels with no cohesion whatsoever—a thought comes to mind.
I can do it. I can do it!
My own experiences with creating games are nothing to write home about; it's mostly a bunch of failed attempts to capture ideas outside of my range of talent. Joining the Backloggd Discord server, I was surprised to find a small, niche community on there set about making their own games. Most of the projects I've seen from that so far are visual novels, and I don't think it takes the most literate genius in the world to know why. A cliche in game development spaces is "I know how to program, I just wish that I had an artist as a friend." When you're good at art and writing but don't have a friend who can program, where else do you go? Removed from the Fish Game I played to death as a child, or the series of strange games my older brother wound up making in the same class and on the same engine that I would end up working on in the year or two to follow, the reality of game development isn't working on a car with an instruction manual in your hand. Reading the manual for any given programming language will teach you what words work, but much like a dictionary, won't tell you which one will most effectively solve your problem. And so you get stuck in this endless cycle: I want to make a spaceship move, but every time I tell it to enter a building, I start to smell the stench of ash. I spend hours looking for the single line of code that's causing this and fix it. Great, onto the next car fire.
If I was a child in 2020 hearing about Karlson, perhaps my expectations would be different. It's one thing to be given a CD with games that have already been made on it. To see the sausage getting made in all of its frustrating glory is an entirely different beast. And on top of that, to have the sausage be wrapped in a Magic School Bus-like casing makes it go from feeling like a job to a passion. Or a passion that can be turned into a job, or a skill set that will set you up for later on in life. I know that, had Dani been around when I was a child, I would have tried learning how to use Unity. I would have failed and given up because, as explicitly stated in a dev diary for this game, a single ten-minute video can constitute months of hard work and problem-solving. As an adult, I see that and say, "yeah, I get you." As a child? What the fuck even is problem-solving? I'm still trying to figure out what fractions are while the class we're next to is learning about the periodic table of elements, something that I will only learn in high school because everything is fucked.
I'm conflicted on whether or not to say that it's inspirational in the same way that knowing Who Killed Captain Alex? was made on a shoestring budget of 200 dollars is inspiring. Does it speak to the long-dormant voice inside me that wants my creative voice to be heard, or am I being deceived because the entertaining wrapper around it is focused on packaging the process of creation as a hero's journey of sorts? I suppose it varies from person to person; trying to learn Unity as a kid would have fucked me up, but for somebody else, it probably would have led to much greener pastures somewhere in the future. And in the midst of it all, I think of that CD; reality is disappointment. But who's to say compromise is always a bad thing?
2020
What happens when you let Twitter come up with a game idea for you?
Wonky movement controls, worse shooting, and a goofy update on Frogger.
Basically a kusoge with physics, for what it's worth. Two stars because I don't see much novelty in it besides the inherently silly premise of asking your audience of impressionable children to come up with design ideas for you. But hey, if all a game has to do to make you laugh is shove a bunch of ragdolls in your face, I guess this has value?
Wonky movement controls, worse shooting, and a goofy update on Frogger.
Basically a kusoge with physics, for what it's worth. Two stars because I don't see much novelty in it besides the inherently silly premise of asking your audience of impressionable children to come up with design ideas for you. But hey, if all a game has to do to make you laugh is shove a bunch of ragdolls in your face, I guess this has value?
2020
hey guys hey guys im writing about this weird game that all of the niche microcelebrity writers i follow are writing about, am i famous now?
game kinda blows ngl lol
game kinda blows ngl lol
1993
Context matters. If Michael Meyers died with a single shot to the head after five minutes of screentime in the first Halloween , you'd probably write his death off as lackluster. It's the contemplation of what the ramifications of such an action would be after twelve movies where he was the villain that makes such an idea cathartic; "stay dead, asshole." Within the medium of cinema, context is somewhat straightforward. If the filmmaker wants to bend it into whatever shape they desire, that isn't a decision the audience is in on.
Video games like The Sims beg a certain type of question: what exactly happens when the audience is in control? The answer is a million stories per day about shady business ventures, fathers locked in rooms with fires, and Duke Nukem operating outside his zone of comfort. The deliberately flexible framework allows for a preposterous deluge of absurd scenarios to botched degrees that rarely fail to entertain. Calling The Sims a dollhouse is reductionist. Most dollhouses don't contain half the chaos that a single story can produce.
This is only what happens outside of the black box the developers have created for you. Once you catch a glimpse of what's in that black box, all hell breaks loose. The reason being able to fly with Blink by spamming it in Dishonored makes me laugh isn't because it's funny for traditional reasons. The developers never intended for you to have such power, as it would break the balance of the game instantly, thus they never considered what would happen if a player was able to do it. The result is stages that resemble some of Bethesda's greatest work in style but play more like Neon White in function, and it's adorable. Bethesda's greatest works, which can also be exploited in really funny ways, too. The Fat Man only has twelve Mini-Nukes for it scattered across 8.5k Square Miles of land in Fallout: New Vegas , but the second you hit the tilde key, that doesn't matter. Run faster, jump higher; Benny never knew what hit him and neither do I. I've been asked in the past why exactly I find humor in completely borking the context of the games I'm playing, but I don't believe I need to explain myself because the explanation lies within the footage itself.
Both inside and outside of that box is Shadow President , a presidential simulator made for MS-DOS with earnest intent. Where other games about the Cold War go for all-out action, Shadow President is a more strategic affair that punishes poor decision-making with a heavy hand. It's for this reason that I'd consider it an underdog of the genre in our current climate of Paradox Interactive keeping projects alive by drip-feeding hastily thrown-together expansion packs with aplomb. It's for this reason that it's also one of the funniest games I've ever played.
Ignore how serious this game tries to make your actions seem for a second and it's impossible to take seriously. What starts as a more cold and calculated version of Risk soon devolves into a game where you try to end the Cold War by arming rebels in Canada and trying to overthrow the government of Sweden because you think it's funny. These attempts almost never succeed, but unless you've done something on the level of launching 5,000 nukes at Norway, you can keep trying. The game's solution for getting you to reconsider your actions is a board of advisors you can resort to if you're ever unsure of how a certain action is going to play out in your situation. The game will have these advisors killed or even resign from their positions if you play your hand badly enough, but once "I just nuked Mexico and started a nuclear winter in my own country for shits and giggles" is out of the bag, this hardly comes off as a punishment. Why not nuke China while you're at it, try to invade Russia, or promote human rights in North Korea? The context necessitates that you're playing it seriously with deep consideration for your actions, but outside of it, this may well be the dumbest game I've ever played, and brother, I am here for it.
The beauty of video games is this: had this kind of experience been translated to film, its content outweighing its context would have been a boondoggle for its talented cast and crew. As a game, it can be a total failure and still manage to be one of the most entertaining pieces of entertainment I've borne witness to. Because I'm in charge, I'm making the stupid decisions. And because I'm making those decisions, I can laugh at them without hesitation.
I would love to see a more modern take on this because, as is, I can't get its sequel to work on DOSBox. But as it stands, Shadow President is delightful to look back on.
Video games like The Sims beg a certain type of question: what exactly happens when the audience is in control? The answer is a million stories per day about shady business ventures, fathers locked in rooms with fires, and Duke Nukem operating outside his zone of comfort. The deliberately flexible framework allows for a preposterous deluge of absurd scenarios to botched degrees that rarely fail to entertain. Calling The Sims a dollhouse is reductionist. Most dollhouses don't contain half the chaos that a single story can produce.
This is only what happens outside of the black box the developers have created for you. Once you catch a glimpse of what's in that black box, all hell breaks loose. The reason being able to fly with Blink by spamming it in Dishonored makes me laugh isn't because it's funny for traditional reasons. The developers never intended for you to have such power, as it would break the balance of the game instantly, thus they never considered what would happen if a player was able to do it. The result is stages that resemble some of Bethesda's greatest work in style but play more like Neon White in function, and it's adorable. Bethesda's greatest works, which can also be exploited in really funny ways, too. The Fat Man only has twelve Mini-Nukes for it scattered across 8.5k Square Miles of land in Fallout: New Vegas , but the second you hit the tilde key, that doesn't matter. Run faster, jump higher; Benny never knew what hit him and neither do I. I've been asked in the past why exactly I find humor in completely borking the context of the games I'm playing, but I don't believe I need to explain myself because the explanation lies within the footage itself.
Both inside and outside of that box is Shadow President , a presidential simulator made for MS-DOS with earnest intent. Where other games about the Cold War go for all-out action, Shadow President is a more strategic affair that punishes poor decision-making with a heavy hand. It's for this reason that I'd consider it an underdog of the genre in our current climate of Paradox Interactive keeping projects alive by drip-feeding hastily thrown-together expansion packs with aplomb. It's for this reason that it's also one of the funniest games I've ever played.
Ignore how serious this game tries to make your actions seem for a second and it's impossible to take seriously. What starts as a more cold and calculated version of Risk soon devolves into a game where you try to end the Cold War by arming rebels in Canada and trying to overthrow the government of Sweden because you think it's funny. These attempts almost never succeed, but unless you've done something on the level of launching 5,000 nukes at Norway, you can keep trying. The game's solution for getting you to reconsider your actions is a board of advisors you can resort to if you're ever unsure of how a certain action is going to play out in your situation. The game will have these advisors killed or even resign from their positions if you play your hand badly enough, but once "I just nuked Mexico and started a nuclear winter in my own country for shits and giggles" is out of the bag, this hardly comes off as a punishment. Why not nuke China while you're at it, try to invade Russia, or promote human rights in North Korea? The context necessitates that you're playing it seriously with deep consideration for your actions, but outside of it, this may well be the dumbest game I've ever played, and brother, I am here for it.
The beauty of video games is this: had this kind of experience been translated to film, its content outweighing its context would have been a boondoggle for its talented cast and crew. As a game, it can be a total failure and still manage to be one of the most entertaining pieces of entertainment I've borne witness to. Because I'm in charge, I'm making the stupid decisions. And because I'm making those decisions, I can laugh at them without hesitation.
I would love to see a more modern take on this because, as is, I can't get its sequel to work on DOSBox. But as it stands, Shadow President is delightful to look back on.
Homefront: The Revolution released in the same year that Donald Trump got elected after a year of controversial headlines made him public enemy number one with everyone but his most fervent supporters, where Hillary Clinton said during a speech that young people should "Pokemon GO to the polls" to vote, where outrage content masquerading as commentary proved lucrative on YouTube and No Man's Sky was the most disappointing release of all-time. It's notable for two things: for one, dodgy reception. It was released unfinished and broken, and even if it were playable, it wouldn't have blown anyone's mind. James Stephanie Sterling hated it, Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw of Zero Punctuation was less kind, and it practically topped both of their year-end "worst" lists (1) (2). The other thing it's famous for? Having the entirety of TimeSplitters 2 hidden both in its world and behind a combination of buttons so obtuse that the developer who programmed it in there only managed to see other players access it after encouraging them to reverse-engineer the damn thing by forgetting it.
The climate it was released in, its technical polish at release, and nostalgic discussions around TimeSplitters 2 belie what a lot of Homefront: The Revolution's strengths actually are. Once you get past the inherently silly premise of North Korea taking over all of America, it's a fairly immersive title with visuals that hold up pretty well. Combat, while unrefined in some areas and not what you'd expect out of it in others, has some solidly unique twists. Weapon customization, for one, adds a lot of depth. The crazy weapon combinations (like turning a machine gun into a flamethrower) add a lot of character that wouldn't be there if you simply bought the guns you needed from a source and moved on. Jank as it may be, it's not a game made without soul, as reflected in Fluppywhiffle's fantastic review of the game from almost two years ago.
In other words, it would have been the perfect budget game at the time if it didn't cost sixty dollars.
Budget games are a dying breed at this point. They're made to be cheap, easy to consume, and given to children and teenagers alike who won't complain when their mother decides to treat them with a five-dollar PC game she found while walking around Wall-Mart. The main difference between a shovelware game and a budget game is its developer and what their intent is. Shovelware is an unrestrained slew of budget games haphazardly thrown together without thought or care. Think more along the lines of Country Justice than Peggle. In-between both camps is the bargain bin, where uninteresting games live out the rest of their life. Not terrible enough to buy for your friend as a joke nor fascinating enough to buy on your own, these are games that pollute the shelves of your local Goodwill because a nearby Target didn't want them on clearance. Think about twenty-or-so stacks of Guitar Hero: Live on Wii U months after the servers shut down, or in this case, Homefront: The Revolution on either of its targetted platforms.
The thing about games like Homefront is this: they're not great. Kind of hokey, actually. But I'd like to think of it like I thought of Halloween when I first saw it in a film class with my dad a few years ago, but slightly inverse: if it's your first exposure to gaming or one of your first, it's pretty good for what it is. It's only when you start to get into the games that directly inspired it that you realize how derivative it actually is. If its purpose is to sit on a shelf for somebody who's getting into gaming to pick up for five dollars, maybe it's not so bad after all.
Enter Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 , another derivative Open World game that was released for far too much money, was too derivative to be notable for anything other than its shortcomings, was Zero Punctuation's worst game of the year it released, and, as a final round to a Jeopardy question that nobody will ever guess, also ran on Cryengine. AND, both Ghost Warrior 3 and Homefront released within less than a year of each other. With the stop gap between the spitting distance both games had from each other removed, the only thing that differentiates them is intent. Homefront: The Revolution was meant to be a sequel to the game series that would save THQ from bankruptcy, shortly before they filed for bankruptcy. THQ auctioned it off to Deep Silver, who, in collaboration with the Crytek studio formerly known as Free Radical, tried in vain to get something fresh off the ground. After the Crytek office in charge of development neglected to pay their employees, several employees outright refused to continue working on the project, let alone work at all. After folding and being restructured into a studio that Deep Silver could have in its pocket, it was rushed out the door to meet a 2016 release date after a couple of delays. The developers went through hell and back to ensure that it was released at all, and in a sense, I can respect it, even if I don't love it. Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3, on the other hand, was its developer's push from developing shovelware, to budget games, to something that could be considered AAA and Next-Gen.
Part of the reason I've gone on for so long without actually talking about the game I'm writing about is because once you actually get down to it, there's not a lot of nuance to be found. Ghost Warrior 3 is this unholy marriage between Sniper Elite and Far Cry, with none of the touches that makes Far Cry interesting. Up to its release, it was arguably the best game in its series, but that's because the other two games were developed by a company that was moving on from the budget market on PC and trying to find a new home on consoles. The challenge that comes with writing about a game like this comes down to this: how do you even talk about it? Where do you start? If you've played any Open World game released after the year 2010, you've probably played this before, and unlike Homefront, there really is nothing here to differentiate it from the pile of games that influenced it. At most, I can probably write about the story, although that's no Bueno, either. I haven't played enough to gauge whether or not it's bad, but your brother immediately gets kidnapped after the game gives you a quote about being deceived. I bet you five dollars that there's a big bad villain who hunts you throughout the campaign that the game screams isn't your brother, only to scream that it is last second.
However, however... this still isn't bad as a bargain bin game. If you paid five dollars for this and you'd played nothing else like it, then this was probably not a bad game for you. While all of its systems and mechanics just kind of blend into each to the point where I didn't know I was picking up materials for crafting until the game told me I could craft ammunition, the first word of its title, being a sniper, is actually kind of fun—sort of. It has a lot more depth than, 'point gun at head, shoot, guy dead.' You have to account for the height you're aiming at and from, as well as the direction and velocity of the wind to land your shots. On paper, this is pretty neat and leads to some satisfying kills. In execution, you're either left to figure out how to land shots through trial-and-error because the game never adequately explains its mechanics to you, or you're left to play on easy mode where the intended trajectory for your shots is always shown to you. However, whether or not you have that blow softened for you, there's still a lot of fun to be had in finding the exact spots to take aim, watching your targets from afar, and then taking the shot when the time is right. There's a slow-motion bullet cam in here that's somewhat reminiscent of what's been in the Sniper Elite games since V2 , minus the X-Ray cams that let you see Hitler's testicles explode. Replacing that is a gloriously silly ragdoll system that doesn't feel entirely out of place, but isn't crutched on so much that it loses its novelty after five minutes. And then there's the art style which is surprisingly solid. It's not the prettiest game I've ever played, but the developer's use of Cryengine stands out, and as a result, there's the occasional sight or two in here that makes me want to keep playing just so I can see more of it. The use of puddles in certain areas is a pretty neat touch that grounds the setting in a way that the flimsy dialog and hit-and-miss shooting mechanics outside of sniping do.
In truth, I don't hate games like this and Homefront. I sure don't love them, but if enough people who would have had no exposure to gaming prior to them pick up on one of my favorite hobbies because of them, then I don't mind checking out the same game but with a different coat of paint every now and then. As a celebration of the bargain bin game, I am proudly giving Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 my highest honor:
Two stars.
The climate it was released in, its technical polish at release, and nostalgic discussions around TimeSplitters 2 belie what a lot of Homefront: The Revolution's strengths actually are. Once you get past the inherently silly premise of North Korea taking over all of America, it's a fairly immersive title with visuals that hold up pretty well. Combat, while unrefined in some areas and not what you'd expect out of it in others, has some solidly unique twists. Weapon customization, for one, adds a lot of depth. The crazy weapon combinations (like turning a machine gun into a flamethrower) add a lot of character that wouldn't be there if you simply bought the guns you needed from a source and moved on. Jank as it may be, it's not a game made without soul, as reflected in Fluppywhiffle's fantastic review of the game from almost two years ago.
In other words, it would have been the perfect budget game at the time if it didn't cost sixty dollars.
Budget games are a dying breed at this point. They're made to be cheap, easy to consume, and given to children and teenagers alike who won't complain when their mother decides to treat them with a five-dollar PC game she found while walking around Wall-Mart. The main difference between a shovelware game and a budget game is its developer and what their intent is. Shovelware is an unrestrained slew of budget games haphazardly thrown together without thought or care. Think more along the lines of Country Justice than Peggle. In-between both camps is the bargain bin, where uninteresting games live out the rest of their life. Not terrible enough to buy for your friend as a joke nor fascinating enough to buy on your own, these are games that pollute the shelves of your local Goodwill because a nearby Target didn't want them on clearance. Think about twenty-or-so stacks of Guitar Hero: Live on Wii U months after the servers shut down, or in this case, Homefront: The Revolution on either of its targetted platforms.
The thing about games like Homefront is this: they're not great. Kind of hokey, actually. But I'd like to think of it like I thought of Halloween when I first saw it in a film class with my dad a few years ago, but slightly inverse: if it's your first exposure to gaming or one of your first, it's pretty good for what it is. It's only when you start to get into the games that directly inspired it that you realize how derivative it actually is. If its purpose is to sit on a shelf for somebody who's getting into gaming to pick up for five dollars, maybe it's not so bad after all.
Enter Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 , another derivative Open World game that was released for far too much money, was too derivative to be notable for anything other than its shortcomings, was Zero Punctuation's worst game of the year it released, and, as a final round to a Jeopardy question that nobody will ever guess, also ran on Cryengine. AND, both Ghost Warrior 3 and Homefront released within less than a year of each other. With the stop gap between the spitting distance both games had from each other removed, the only thing that differentiates them is intent. Homefront: The Revolution was meant to be a sequel to the game series that would save THQ from bankruptcy, shortly before they filed for bankruptcy. THQ auctioned it off to Deep Silver, who, in collaboration with the Crytek studio formerly known as Free Radical, tried in vain to get something fresh off the ground. After the Crytek office in charge of development neglected to pay their employees, several employees outright refused to continue working on the project, let alone work at all. After folding and being restructured into a studio that Deep Silver could have in its pocket, it was rushed out the door to meet a 2016 release date after a couple of delays. The developers went through hell and back to ensure that it was released at all, and in a sense, I can respect it, even if I don't love it. Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3, on the other hand, was its developer's push from developing shovelware, to budget games, to something that could be considered AAA and Next-Gen.
Part of the reason I've gone on for so long without actually talking about the game I'm writing about is because once you actually get down to it, there's not a lot of nuance to be found. Ghost Warrior 3 is this unholy marriage between Sniper Elite and Far Cry, with none of the touches that makes Far Cry interesting. Up to its release, it was arguably the best game in its series, but that's because the other two games were developed by a company that was moving on from the budget market on PC and trying to find a new home on consoles. The challenge that comes with writing about a game like this comes down to this: how do you even talk about it? Where do you start? If you've played any Open World game released after the year 2010, you've probably played this before, and unlike Homefront, there really is nothing here to differentiate it from the pile of games that influenced it. At most, I can probably write about the story, although that's no Bueno, either. I haven't played enough to gauge whether or not it's bad, but your brother immediately gets kidnapped after the game gives you a quote about being deceived. I bet you five dollars that there's a big bad villain who hunts you throughout the campaign that the game screams isn't your brother, only to scream that it is last second.
However, however... this still isn't bad as a bargain bin game. If you paid five dollars for this and you'd played nothing else like it, then this was probably not a bad game for you. While all of its systems and mechanics just kind of blend into each to the point where I didn't know I was picking up materials for crafting until the game told me I could craft ammunition, the first word of its title, being a sniper, is actually kind of fun—sort of. It has a lot more depth than, 'point gun at head, shoot, guy dead.' You have to account for the height you're aiming at and from, as well as the direction and velocity of the wind to land your shots. On paper, this is pretty neat and leads to some satisfying kills. In execution, you're either left to figure out how to land shots through trial-and-error because the game never adequately explains its mechanics to you, or you're left to play on easy mode where the intended trajectory for your shots is always shown to you. However, whether or not you have that blow softened for you, there's still a lot of fun to be had in finding the exact spots to take aim, watching your targets from afar, and then taking the shot when the time is right. There's a slow-motion bullet cam in here that's somewhat reminiscent of what's been in the Sniper Elite games since V2 , minus the X-Ray cams that let you see Hitler's testicles explode. Replacing that is a gloriously silly ragdoll system that doesn't feel entirely out of place, but isn't crutched on so much that it loses its novelty after five minutes. And then there's the art style which is surprisingly solid. It's not the prettiest game I've ever played, but the developer's use of Cryengine stands out, and as a result, there's the occasional sight or two in here that makes me want to keep playing just so I can see more of it. The use of puddles in certain areas is a pretty neat touch that grounds the setting in a way that the flimsy dialog and hit-and-miss shooting mechanics outside of sniping do.
In truth, I don't hate games like this and Homefront. I sure don't love them, but if enough people who would have had no exposure to gaming prior to them pick up on one of my favorite hobbies because of them, then I don't mind checking out the same game but with a different coat of paint every now and then. As a celebration of the bargain bin game, I am proudly giving Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 my highest honor:
Two stars.
2015
Editor's note: the following is a revision of a review I wrote earlier this year because I reread it and had issues. Once again, I've archived that review in case anyone's curious enough to seek it out. I don't expect anyone to care about this, but I feel like disclosing this is necessary on some level.
///
Lucius II, separated from the context in which it was created.
Describing Lucius II as hilariously broken is charitable. This is the kind of 'so-bad-it's-good' game that legends are made of. Had this not been a niche indie title sold for twenty dollars on Steam and nowhere else, I honestly believe it would have the same notoriety that Ride to Hell does.
This isn't a sandbox game; it's a compromise. The original Lucius was a low-budget adventure inspired by horror greats that its gothic exploitation film turned playable stylings inevitably fail. Above all else, it stands out because of how egregiously linear it is. It's a game that opens up on a tutorial that spends a not insignificant amount of time telling you there's a skill meter in the corner, only for each kill scene to play out in exactly one way. Lucius II opens with the developers pitching you on a version of their debut title without the roadblocks they enforced on the player. "What if," they say in a commanding voice, "you could have poisoned the maid with a box of doughnuts without us telling you to?" At first, it's somewhat enticing. Imagine a version of Postal 2 that's not only more overt with pushing the player to kill everyone in sight, but gives you tools to do it in more devilish ways. On paper, that's what Lucius II is.
In execution?
There's a level in this game where, on one corner of the map, surgeons are operating on a patient's heart. The door is locked. You could use your powers to get in and find ways of picking off each of the surgeons until you've widdled it down to one terrified medical professional and a corpse with a gaping hole in its chest... or, you can pick up an acidic blood bag that's conveniently nearby, and use it to replace the one that the surgeons are using, and watch as everybody in the rooms dies in a way that's almost reminiscent of the often-forgotten Warp. You technically don't have to do this, but you're missing out if you pass on it, nudge nudge (there's an achievement for doing this) nudge nudge.
All of the creativity you'd hope for in a sandbox is replaced with inventory puzzles so streamlined that the items you need for them are typically right next to each other. Creativity outside of what the developers reeeeeeeally want you to do typically boils down to waiting for an NPC to be in the spot you want them to be, and then interacting with something that launches a projectile that kills them immediately. Most of the time, you won't be doing this. To say that the sandbox mechanics in Lucius II are unrefined is an understatement. In a game about systemically killing your way through sprawling environments, the only thing about the NPCs that differentiates them, apart from their scripting, voice acting, and jaw-droppingly stupid AI, is a name and biography that appears above their head. Otherwise, they all have the same preferences for food, can barely hold their pee in, are all addicted to cigarettes, are all thieves who steal wallets, and hold an affinity for caffeinated beverages and coffee. The game might tell you that somebody's personality veers in one direction, and then show you the complete opposite of that when it suits your needs. Whether it's thirst or hunger, they feel it as soon as you hand them something to eat or drink. What ends up happening is thus: you are locked out of an area you need to be in, and somebody halfway across the map has the key. There is another person who has a key that is blocking your access to this person. How do you solve this confounding puzzle? By poisoning the same box of doughnuts and throwing it twice. I swear to god, the poisoned doughnut method is not just a meme. It's so effective that the items required for it almost become ammunition. If the NPC you threw the doughnuts at acts scared? Simply mind control them so they eat them. If you can't find doughnuts around you, check for sandwiches. Failing that, coffee is an acceptable substitute. Rinse and repeat as much as you need in the five levels to come. But compared to the other busted methods of progression in Lucius II, the doughnuts only stand out because they represent this game's most immediate flaws. Should you choose to upgrade the mind control ability and find an axe in the level you're in, you'll soon discover this game's other immediate flaws. Killing people while mind-controlling them rewards you with Mana, you need Mana to keep using mind control, and nobody has enough situational awareness to actually defend themselves. Add onto this the fact that there's a bug that will let you pick up a fire axe to pull out whenever you need a large gathering dead, and hilarity (plus monotony) ensues. This lack of a self-defense mechanism for the AI also comes into play when you pull a nail gun that can instantly kill whoever gets shot with it, and when a ton of people near them start mysteriously walking into a giant fire and killing themselves for no apparent reason. This game is a sandbox not because it encourages dynamic, emergent gameplay in an environment the players are encouraged to search to the nth degree, but because the developers insist on it.
And yeah, the presentation kinda blows, too. Whenever somebody gets scared, the same stock sound effect plays. Whenever you're in front of a stereotypical patient in an asylum, they play an even worse sound. It gets annoying
very fast. The music's not bad, even if it lacks the character that some of the whacker tracks in the first game had, leaving only a slew of generic, unimpressive songs to fill the roster. Voice acting somehow manages to be worse than the fake Irish accent they used in the first game. I know that cr1tikal is a funny guy and all, but when he's the only voice actor that's noteworthy, that says a lot. At least the voice actor for McGuffin is slightly better than his predecessor, but that's not saying much. Blood particles can look neat, but gore often looks blocky and unnatural. Character models and environments weren't fantastic in the first game, but at least they felt hand-crafted there. Here, everything feels painted on artificially. The most awe-inspiring sight is a chunk of a town that has half the detail that The Dante Manor had despite hosting just as many residents. And let me get another elephant out of the room while I'm on this note: in Lucius II, Lucius does not hold objects in his hand. For some reason, he levitates them right next to his hand. In many instances, this is impractical. But hey, it allows you to break an elevator by throwing a can at it, so that's... something, I guess?
Two gay men have sex in a bathroom you can unlock and they're both portrayed as insane people. That's not relevant at all to this discussion, I just find it a little odd that that's in there. Oh, and in Lucius III, another character is implied to perform satanic rituals because he's gay. You know, I'm starting to believe that the movies these developers are inspired by could use to be just a little bit newer...
On that note, the narrative is just as much of a nothingburger. Stylistically, it's definitely a step down from the overly cinematic, kinetic violence of the first game. But in its place is something that holds almost as much, if not just as much, value. Instead of using in-engine cutscenes, the developers opted to tell their story by making everything look like it was cut out of cardboard. This looks neat and definitely makes up for the fact that the substance of those cutscenes doesn't hold up as well. Lucius II is a pulpy, gore-laden adventure with horror-themed elements about a sibling rivalry. While that description might make this seem worth trying, the brother you're going after rarely shows up, doesn't have much of a presence, and doesn't feel like a threat. Lucius is never knocked down and rarely faces adversity. His character is just as bland and generic as it was in the first game, except here the lack of notes means he has less than nothing to actually say. The story is just a thinly veiled excuse for you to get to one location after the other, and outside of that, exists only so the developers could make their other dream game.
If you want to laugh at Lucius II's myriad technical issues and design oversights, like how forcing somebody who has an item that you need down an elevator makes the item fall with them, this is a hoot and a half. But if you're looking to play this out of curiosity, don't.
2012 was a rough year.
It almost feels like punching down to say that this absurdly unfinished, overly ambitious murder sandbox developed by only five people off the meager savings they earned from their first game after their publisher gave them a cut is unquestionably not good.
Although I have no real insight into the development of this game, I'm willing to say that I can theorize about what happened behind the scenes. Five developers making a sandbox game with over a hundred named NPCs that you can kill is already somewhat of a red flag. Five inexperienced developers? Now come on, that's unfair. But the killing blow is this: this game is made on Unity, and released less than three years after the first game. The first Lucius ran on Esenthel, a game engine so niche that its creators have to resort to using screenshots from Lucius just to market the thing. It uses C++, has a UI that, from what eyewitness accounts I could find, is "butt ugly," and is so different from Unity that almost all of Lucius's assets are uncompressed. If you want to, you can find developer notes that were never deleted a few directories away from its .exe file. Unity uses C# and Javascript, and has a completely different UI. On top of having to learn all of that in two years' time, the developers also had to model entire locations, props, and characters without reusing any of the assets they made for their other game. They had to deal with sound design and voice acting. And the cherry on top, they had to design a game that was open-ended enough to cater the same critics who derided their previous effort for railroading its players while also maintaining some DNA from that previous work so what they were making could technically be considered a sequel.
Does it really come as a surprise to you that the poisoned doughnuts always work?
Don't get me wrong, I do not like this game. I have a strange obsession with this series, but not because any of the games are good. They all teach a really specific, hard-hitting truth that should hit home for any creative out there looking to follow their dreams. There is a divide between the worlds of the imagined and reality. Imagination says that all of the work you've done is great, no matter the progress you've made because the destination will be worth it. Reality is the fucking journey. Throughout all three games in the Lucius trilogy, you can see time and time again what these developers were trying to get at. Something to be cherished by horror aficionados the world over, a cinematic mark for the genre in gaming. The first game got close, but not close enough. It needed more of its wrinkles ironed out and a more concise vision to give its head-splitting violence more than the mark of a passing novelty. For two games, they chased that high with dwindling budgets. As fewer and fewer people bought their games, they found themselves forced to release their worst work to date just to make ends meet. They haven't released another game since then.
As somebody who likes to see the critical side of people because the insight fascinates them, the only praise I have to give to Lucius II is a back-handed compliment. But as somebody who wants to live much of the same dream, and ride the coattails of success I know is never coming... I pity it. I feel genuinely sad, disheartened even, that anybody that was even remotely like me was put in this position. It's unenviable, to say the least. But for as heartbreaking as it all is, there's a silver lining, a sliver of optimism.
Dreams do come true.
(If you would like to see how I feel about the other games in this series, please feel free to check out my list ranking them from best to worst).
///
Lucius II, separated from the context in which it was created.
Describing Lucius II as hilariously broken is charitable. This is the kind of 'so-bad-it's-good' game that legends are made of. Had this not been a niche indie title sold for twenty dollars on Steam and nowhere else, I honestly believe it would have the same notoriety that Ride to Hell does.
This isn't a sandbox game; it's a compromise. The original Lucius was a low-budget adventure inspired by horror greats that its gothic exploitation film turned playable stylings inevitably fail. Above all else, it stands out because of how egregiously linear it is. It's a game that opens up on a tutorial that spends a not insignificant amount of time telling you there's a skill meter in the corner, only for each kill scene to play out in exactly one way. Lucius II opens with the developers pitching you on a version of their debut title without the roadblocks they enforced on the player. "What if," they say in a commanding voice, "you could have poisoned the maid with a box of doughnuts without us telling you to?" At first, it's somewhat enticing. Imagine a version of Postal 2 that's not only more overt with pushing the player to kill everyone in sight, but gives you tools to do it in more devilish ways. On paper, that's what Lucius II is.
In execution?
There's a level in this game where, on one corner of the map, surgeons are operating on a patient's heart. The door is locked. You could use your powers to get in and find ways of picking off each of the surgeons until you've widdled it down to one terrified medical professional and a corpse with a gaping hole in its chest... or, you can pick up an acidic blood bag that's conveniently nearby, and use it to replace the one that the surgeons are using, and watch as everybody in the rooms dies in a way that's almost reminiscent of the often-forgotten Warp. You technically don't have to do this, but you're missing out if you pass on it, nudge nudge (there's an achievement for doing this) nudge nudge.
All of the creativity you'd hope for in a sandbox is replaced with inventory puzzles so streamlined that the items you need for them are typically right next to each other. Creativity outside of what the developers reeeeeeeally want you to do typically boils down to waiting for an NPC to be in the spot you want them to be, and then interacting with something that launches a projectile that kills them immediately. Most of the time, you won't be doing this. To say that the sandbox mechanics in Lucius II are unrefined is an understatement. In a game about systemically killing your way through sprawling environments, the only thing about the NPCs that differentiates them, apart from their scripting, voice acting, and jaw-droppingly stupid AI, is a name and biography that appears above their head. Otherwise, they all have the same preferences for food, can barely hold their pee in, are all addicted to cigarettes, are all thieves who steal wallets, and hold an affinity for caffeinated beverages and coffee. The game might tell you that somebody's personality veers in one direction, and then show you the complete opposite of that when it suits your needs. Whether it's thirst or hunger, they feel it as soon as you hand them something to eat or drink. What ends up happening is thus: you are locked out of an area you need to be in, and somebody halfway across the map has the key. There is another person who has a key that is blocking your access to this person. How do you solve this confounding puzzle? By poisoning the same box of doughnuts and throwing it twice. I swear to god, the poisoned doughnut method is not just a meme. It's so effective that the items required for it almost become ammunition. If the NPC you threw the doughnuts at acts scared? Simply mind control them so they eat them. If you can't find doughnuts around you, check for sandwiches. Failing that, coffee is an acceptable substitute. Rinse and repeat as much as you need in the five levels to come. But compared to the other busted methods of progression in Lucius II, the doughnuts only stand out because they represent this game's most immediate flaws. Should you choose to upgrade the mind control ability and find an axe in the level you're in, you'll soon discover this game's other immediate flaws. Killing people while mind-controlling them rewards you with Mana, you need Mana to keep using mind control, and nobody has enough situational awareness to actually defend themselves. Add onto this the fact that there's a bug that will let you pick up a fire axe to pull out whenever you need a large gathering dead, and hilarity (plus monotony) ensues. This lack of a self-defense mechanism for the AI also comes into play when you pull a nail gun that can instantly kill whoever gets shot with it, and when a ton of people near them start mysteriously walking into a giant fire and killing themselves for no apparent reason. This game is a sandbox not because it encourages dynamic, emergent gameplay in an environment the players are encouraged to search to the nth degree, but because the developers insist on it.
And yeah, the presentation kinda blows, too. Whenever somebody gets scared, the same stock sound effect plays. Whenever you're in front of a stereotypical patient in an asylum, they play an even worse sound. It gets annoying
very fast. The music's not bad, even if it lacks the character that some of the whacker tracks in the first game had, leaving only a slew of generic, unimpressive songs to fill the roster. Voice acting somehow manages to be worse than the fake Irish accent they used in the first game. I know that cr1tikal is a funny guy and all, but when he's the only voice actor that's noteworthy, that says a lot. At least the voice actor for McGuffin is slightly better than his predecessor, but that's not saying much. Blood particles can look neat, but gore often looks blocky and unnatural. Character models and environments weren't fantastic in the first game, but at least they felt hand-crafted there. Here, everything feels painted on artificially. The most awe-inspiring sight is a chunk of a town that has half the detail that The Dante Manor had despite hosting just as many residents. And let me get another elephant out of the room while I'm on this note: in Lucius II, Lucius does not hold objects in his hand. For some reason, he levitates them right next to his hand. In many instances, this is impractical. But hey, it allows you to break an elevator by throwing a can at it, so that's... something, I guess?
Two gay men have sex in a bathroom you can unlock and they're both portrayed as insane people. That's not relevant at all to this discussion, I just find it a little odd that that's in there. Oh, and in Lucius III, another character is implied to perform satanic rituals because he's gay. You know, I'm starting to believe that the movies these developers are inspired by could use to be just a little bit newer...
On that note, the narrative is just as much of a nothingburger. Stylistically, it's definitely a step down from the overly cinematic, kinetic violence of the first game. But in its place is something that holds almost as much, if not just as much, value. Instead of using in-engine cutscenes, the developers opted to tell their story by making everything look like it was cut out of cardboard. This looks neat and definitely makes up for the fact that the substance of those cutscenes doesn't hold up as well. Lucius II is a pulpy, gore-laden adventure with horror-themed elements about a sibling rivalry. While that description might make this seem worth trying, the brother you're going after rarely shows up, doesn't have much of a presence, and doesn't feel like a threat. Lucius is never knocked down and rarely faces adversity. His character is just as bland and generic as it was in the first game, except here the lack of notes means he has less than nothing to actually say. The story is just a thinly veiled excuse for you to get to one location after the other, and outside of that, exists only so the developers could make their other dream game.
If you want to laugh at Lucius II's myriad technical issues and design oversights, like how forcing somebody who has an item that you need down an elevator makes the item fall with them, this is a hoot and a half. But if you're looking to play this out of curiosity, don't.
2012 was a rough year.
It almost feels like punching down to say that this absurdly unfinished, overly ambitious murder sandbox developed by only five people off the meager savings they earned from their first game after their publisher gave them a cut is unquestionably not good.
Although I have no real insight into the development of this game, I'm willing to say that I can theorize about what happened behind the scenes. Five developers making a sandbox game with over a hundred named NPCs that you can kill is already somewhat of a red flag. Five inexperienced developers? Now come on, that's unfair. But the killing blow is this: this game is made on Unity, and released less than three years after the first game. The first Lucius ran on Esenthel, a game engine so niche that its creators have to resort to using screenshots from Lucius just to market the thing. It uses C++, has a UI that, from what eyewitness accounts I could find, is "butt ugly," and is so different from Unity that almost all of Lucius's assets are uncompressed. If you want to, you can find developer notes that were never deleted a few directories away from its .exe file. Unity uses C# and Javascript, and has a completely different UI. On top of having to learn all of that in two years' time, the developers also had to model entire locations, props, and characters without reusing any of the assets they made for their other game. They had to deal with sound design and voice acting. And the cherry on top, they had to design a game that was open-ended enough to cater the same critics who derided their previous effort for railroading its players while also maintaining some DNA from that previous work so what they were making could technically be considered a sequel.
Does it really come as a surprise to you that the poisoned doughnuts always work?
Don't get me wrong, I do not like this game. I have a strange obsession with this series, but not because any of the games are good. They all teach a really specific, hard-hitting truth that should hit home for any creative out there looking to follow their dreams. There is a divide between the worlds of the imagined and reality. Imagination says that all of the work you've done is great, no matter the progress you've made because the destination will be worth it. Reality is the fucking journey. Throughout all three games in the Lucius trilogy, you can see time and time again what these developers were trying to get at. Something to be cherished by horror aficionados the world over, a cinematic mark for the genre in gaming. The first game got close, but not close enough. It needed more of its wrinkles ironed out and a more concise vision to give its head-splitting violence more than the mark of a passing novelty. For two games, they chased that high with dwindling budgets. As fewer and fewer people bought their games, they found themselves forced to release their worst work to date just to make ends meet. They haven't released another game since then.
As somebody who likes to see the critical side of people because the insight fascinates them, the only praise I have to give to Lucius II is a back-handed compliment. But as somebody who wants to live much of the same dream, and ride the coattails of success I know is never coming... I pity it. I feel genuinely sad, disheartened even, that anybody that was even remotely like me was put in this position. It's unenviable, to say the least. But for as heartbreaking as it all is, there's a silver lining, a sliver of optimism.
Dreams do come true.
(If you would like to see how I feel about the other games in this series, please feel free to check out my list ranking them from best to worst).
2010
An exercise in maximalizing a minimalistic gameplay loop. Super Crate Box almost feels like a breath of fresh air, as the arcade experience it's so clearly inspired by has vanished into the backs of movie theaters, Chuck-E-Cheeses, and cheap mini-golf hang-out spots across America. Outside of the context of it being in a machine designed specifically to fleece you out of your quarters, this gets tedious after just one level. Inside one of them, I'm sure this is pretty solid.
No real rating for this one because honestly, I don't feel like it.
No real rating for this one because honestly, I don't feel like it.
2017
When I was much younger, TimeSplitters 2 was among my all-time favorite games. Future Perfect was and still is up there for similar reasons. And I loved watching my older brother play Unreal Tournament 2004 against bots. I would spend hours in Garry's Mod shooting at the same enemies. I loved pitting fifteen Barneys with guns they couldn't use versus twenty Combine with shotguns and watching the chaos unfold like it was a duel between gladiators. One of my few remaining memories of when I played Garry's Mod with my cousins is one time when the middle one wanted to play on his computer. I wouldn't let up, so he spawned in an absurd number of Combine Elite soldiers and then told me to kill them all as part of an "extreme challenge." The game ran at sub-fifteen Frames Per Second before it inevitably crashed, but goddamn it, I tried.
I have an inkling that Ravenfield would have been so far up my alley that if it came out back when I demanded to play TimeSplitters with every person who stepped in our house that I be giving it five stars right now.
Ravenfield is pure botmatch. If you love playing with bots, that's all Ravenfield has to offer. Bots with guns on big maps, and some squad mechanics but not many, and slow-motion. And honestly, I don't know if I can say I truly like it or not. It's funny that I brought up Garry's Mod in my opening paragraph because your enjoyment of this game varies greatly. The base game demands you to mod it less than Garry's Mod does, but it's not entertaining enough to be more than a quick novelty that wears thin fast.
With mods, here are some of the things you can do in Ravenfield:
- Pit fifty Shreks versus Roblox characters who all use weapons from the movie Aliens, while you access to an entire arsenal of weapons that features such gems as the Fat Man from Fallout.
- Play a round of Ravod 9-11 from the game Phantom Forces with approximately 80 more players than can reasonably fit on it at any given time.
- Wonder which of the weapon packs you need to disable for bots because one allows them to drop surgical nukes on you in maps so small that the aftermath of such a decision has long-lasting consequences.
- Blaming the fact that you can't drive the giant, golden Jeep in Jeep Island for why the map is so bad, instead of considering the alternative of "a child probably made this in an afternoon."
- Turning Normandy beach into a recreation of a medieval battlefield by only arming the bots with swords and crossbows.
- Playing rounds of Gun Game that are unbeatable because some of the modded weapons in rotation don't work.
- Pitting fifteen red astronauts from the video game Among Us against an onslaught of Xenomorphs who can only use the Minigun from Team Fortress 2 in Bikini Bottom.
And so on.
All of this sounds like a lot of fun, and it is. But, again, this is botmatch. No matter how crazy you try to make everything, no matter how many stupid combinations you try or how many mods you install that supposedly change the game... it all plays out the same. I love that I can cause all of this chaos and laugh at it, but honestly, it gets kind of boring after about a half hour.
If you're more committed to silly, dumb shit than I am, please get Ravenfield, it's worth buying.
ALSO: they tried to make Ravenfield multiplayer a thing and it sucked balls. Somebody yelled at me on Steam for insinuating that mods should have been integrated into the experience because, without them, it's bland and has so little riding on its bones that its biggest competition is Roblox. I'm still a little salty about that because they were fucking wrong. Imagine playing Garry's Mod online, but none of the servers let you use Add-Ons. I mean, if you want to die on that hill while being insufferable to anyone who questions it, go ahead. But that is a strange hill to die on, to say the least.
I have an inkling that Ravenfield would have been so far up my alley that if it came out back when I demanded to play TimeSplitters with every person who stepped in our house that I be giving it five stars right now.
Ravenfield is pure botmatch. If you love playing with bots, that's all Ravenfield has to offer. Bots with guns on big maps, and some squad mechanics but not many, and slow-motion. And honestly, I don't know if I can say I truly like it or not. It's funny that I brought up Garry's Mod in my opening paragraph because your enjoyment of this game varies greatly. The base game demands you to mod it less than Garry's Mod does, but it's not entertaining enough to be more than a quick novelty that wears thin fast.
With mods, here are some of the things you can do in Ravenfield:
- Pit fifty Shreks versus Roblox characters who all use weapons from the movie Aliens, while you access to an entire arsenal of weapons that features such gems as the Fat Man from Fallout.
- Play a round of Ravod 9-11 from the game Phantom Forces with approximately 80 more players than can reasonably fit on it at any given time.
- Wonder which of the weapon packs you need to disable for bots because one allows them to drop surgical nukes on you in maps so small that the aftermath of such a decision has long-lasting consequences.
- Blaming the fact that you can't drive the giant, golden Jeep in Jeep Island for why the map is so bad, instead of considering the alternative of "a child probably made this in an afternoon."
- Turning Normandy beach into a recreation of a medieval battlefield by only arming the bots with swords and crossbows.
- Playing rounds of Gun Game that are unbeatable because some of the modded weapons in rotation don't work.
- Pitting fifteen red astronauts from the video game Among Us against an onslaught of Xenomorphs who can only use the Minigun from Team Fortress 2 in Bikini Bottom.
And so on.
All of this sounds like a lot of fun, and it is. But, again, this is botmatch. No matter how crazy you try to make everything, no matter how many stupid combinations you try or how many mods you install that supposedly change the game... it all plays out the same. I love that I can cause all of this chaos and laugh at it, but honestly, it gets kind of boring after about a half hour.
If you're more committed to silly, dumb shit than I am, please get Ravenfield, it's worth buying.
ALSO: they tried to make Ravenfield multiplayer a thing and it sucked balls. Somebody yelled at me on Steam for insinuating that mods should have been integrated into the experience because, without them, it's bland and has so little riding on its bones that its biggest competition is Roblox. I'm still a little salty about that because they were fucking wrong. Imagine playing Garry's Mod online, but none of the servers let you use Add-Ons. I mean, if you want to die on that hill while being insufferable to anyone who questions it, go ahead. But that is a strange hill to die on, to say the least.
2008
In a way, Far Cry 2 feels somewhat like the first film of a famous filmmaker that you only ever watch out of curiosity. If it weren't for Moonrise Kingdom, I wouldn't have any interest in watching Bottle Rocket and so on. Outside of attempts to ape the success of the original Far Cry on the original Xbox and then later to the 360 and Wii, Far Cry 2 is the first proper game that Ubisoft made with the brand name, and it shows. It's almost shocking that the game that came after this was Far Cry 3. Case in point, there isn't a mini-map here. Your character has to be physically holding the map in their hands for you to read it, and if you're playing on PC, the key you press to access the map is next to all of the ones you use to pull out guns. The general impression here isn't that Ubisoft was attempting to push ambition through a giant world map. Through your experience within much smaller and more detailed spaces, you're given the idea that technology was at the forefront of the experience. While the phrase "tech demo" might cross your mind, it belies the rest of the experience. Looking beyond what must have wowed people in 2008, there's a solid game in here with lots of tension that often gets overlooked in terms of discussions surrounding enemy camps, character upgrades, and all of the water-cooler talk that later games in this series embraced. There's still a lot of fun to be had here, even if it isn't driving a car with C4 on its side into a fortress you're trying to conquer. That might make this game seem less interesting, and it almost is. But it's this absence of bombast that sets it apart as the most unique game in the series. Had Far Cry followed in the footsteps of this instead of throwing a lot of its bullet points out for more emergent systems, I'm certain we would talk about the series differently nowadays.
What ultimately holds this experience back, even with those expectations, is that its narrative is about as dry as its color palette. Aside from its imposing world, there isn't much to pull you in. The introduction does you no favors, either, and made me realize how much I've taken Skyrim's opening cart ride for granted over the years. You can see the bones of what would end up being Vaas in Far Cry 3 through the opening scene with The Jackal, but the set-up for meeting him and the actual voice performance feel cookie-cutter at best. And then you step out into the world, and it's... eh. Oh, sure, there's artistic intent. It makes the world feel less welcoming and more hostile to the player. But so did Shadow of Chernobyl, and that game had some fucking color in it. I'm unashamed to admit that I installed an ENB as soon as I decided to start replaying this again because I just really don't find grey and brown to be that pleasing to the eyes. Combined with an upscaled texture pack, it looks slightly better; although all ENBs tend to have the issue that character model mods in Bethesda games have where their improvements can start to feel artificial past a certain threshold. Still, it works for what it is and has helped me to appreciate Far Cry 2 for what it is a little more. Whether or not that's the recommended experience depends on how much you mind the threshold I mentioned. If you believe post-processing takes away from the experience, by all means, skip it. I do recommend the texture pack, though. It's not a massive, 4K, "night and day" improvement, but it's only about two gigs in total and gives the world a little more clarity.
My impressions so far are this: this is the kind of game that would benefit from a remake the most. Not because my mini-map-obsessed gamer-brain needs constant UI pop-ups to be satisfied, but because the envelope could absolutely be pushed further with newer technology. And also because it would mean the narrative could be given another chance to be interesting, I dunno. Sadly, a proper remake would mean the project would have to be handed to a studio that doesn't tell its employees that "women don't sell" and fixate over seedy trenchcoat monetization practices that wouldn't be out of place behind the barren dentist's office you frequented as a youngling. If it ever does happen, Bloober Team better not be behind it.
I'll say that, in terms of first attempts, Far Cry 2 is more reminiscent of Reservoir Dogs than Bottle Rocket. It still holds up without knowing that its developers would go on to develop bigger, more interesting projects. All of the trademarks that you would later see in those projects are here in small and subtle ways, so you're not missing much, and a lot of what isn't carried over is genuinely fascinating to mull over. Is it the black sheep of its series? Do I care? It's unique, and I don't love it, but I also kind of do. It deserves slightly more recognition than it's gotten over the years, but anyone who tells me that they've bounced off of it for all of the things that could be addressed with hindsight has understandable reasons to do so.
What ultimately holds this experience back, even with those expectations, is that its narrative is about as dry as its color palette. Aside from its imposing world, there isn't much to pull you in. The introduction does you no favors, either, and made me realize how much I've taken Skyrim's opening cart ride for granted over the years. You can see the bones of what would end up being Vaas in Far Cry 3 through the opening scene with The Jackal, but the set-up for meeting him and the actual voice performance feel cookie-cutter at best. And then you step out into the world, and it's... eh. Oh, sure, there's artistic intent. It makes the world feel less welcoming and more hostile to the player. But so did Shadow of Chernobyl, and that game had some fucking color in it. I'm unashamed to admit that I installed an ENB as soon as I decided to start replaying this again because I just really don't find grey and brown to be that pleasing to the eyes. Combined with an upscaled texture pack, it looks slightly better; although all ENBs tend to have the issue that character model mods in Bethesda games have where their improvements can start to feel artificial past a certain threshold. Still, it works for what it is and has helped me to appreciate Far Cry 2 for what it is a little more. Whether or not that's the recommended experience depends on how much you mind the threshold I mentioned. If you believe post-processing takes away from the experience, by all means, skip it. I do recommend the texture pack, though. It's not a massive, 4K, "night and day" improvement, but it's only about two gigs in total and gives the world a little more clarity.
My impressions so far are this: this is the kind of game that would benefit from a remake the most. Not because my mini-map-obsessed gamer-brain needs constant UI pop-ups to be satisfied, but because the envelope could absolutely be pushed further with newer technology. And also because it would mean the narrative could be given another chance to be interesting, I dunno. Sadly, a proper remake would mean the project would have to be handed to a studio that doesn't tell its employees that "women don't sell" and fixate over seedy trenchcoat monetization practices that wouldn't be out of place behind the barren dentist's office you frequented as a youngling. If it ever does happen, Bloober Team better not be behind it.
I'll say that, in terms of first attempts, Far Cry 2 is more reminiscent of Reservoir Dogs than Bottle Rocket. It still holds up without knowing that its developers would go on to develop bigger, more interesting projects. All of the trademarks that you would later see in those projects are here in small and subtle ways, so you're not missing much, and a lot of what isn't carried over is genuinely fascinating to mull over. Is it the black sheep of its series? Do I care? It's unique, and I don't love it, but I also kind of do. It deserves slightly more recognition than it's gotten over the years, but anyone who tells me that they've bounced off of it for all of the things that could be addressed with hindsight has understandable reasons to do so.
2021
I've gone back and forth between saying "I recommend Intravenous," and, "I recommend Intravenous, BUT..." internally for quite a while now, so I've decided to rewrite my old review without a score. Considering how controversial this game seems to be, I figure this review would be better off without one.
What you should know about Intravenous is this: it's an idea that came to the developer after he made an example mod for his other game that let you drive to the HQ of a rival company and shoot it up. Yes, this is real, and at one point, he was marketing the game's mod support with it. That trailer is no longer on the game's Steam store page, and I don't think it boggles the mind to wonder why. As opposed to other, reprehensible games about similar subjects, this was done because the developer thought it was funny. If you manage to find the developer's personal YouTube channel, a lot more is put into perspective about what he finds funny (MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE LAST OF US PART II, and if that description worries you, it should.).
It's apparent that this developer has a very clear brand of edgy, 4Chan-esq humor that you're either okay with or find repugnant. It's to the point where a disclaimer had to be patched in before the game begins, wherein the developer spells out that he didn't think very much of his writing through, so don't be too harsh on him, you guys. Aside from that, this game also makes liberal usage of homophobic and ableist slurs. It's more offensive than regressive, and its attempts to offend offer more eye-rolls than outright ire. If that doesn't sound exhausting for you to deal with, and you're fine ignoring most of the context behind your actions, this is a surprisingly good time.
I really like Intravenous. This is probably one of the biggest "BUT"s I'll ever do in my pretend career as a hobbyist reviewer for games online, but I stand by my decision to mark this as my GOTY for 2021. My excuse for this is that my runner-up was Life is Strange: True Colors, which I still haven't finished yet. I didn't play a lot of new games in 2021. What made Intravenous stand out that much to me, though, is that looking that past the woefully jaunty "80s-revenge thriller through the filter of HD-era grit and mid-2010s internet culture" approach, this is a pretty solid stealth game! It can be basic at times, and the level design isn't always perfect (See: Smooth Operator), but the foundation for something truly fantastic is in here. It helps that there's a lot of replayability here, too. There's more than one way to approach any given level, which might encourage you to do something whacky like beating the entire game with only your fists, which the game's achievements encourage. Custom difficulty modes and mutators can make any level in this game as needlessly brutal or downright silly as you want it to be, and it's glorious. If you want to, you can even play this game like Hotline Miami, but be forewarned: it's not designed to be played that way. The AI is pretty smart and will crush you if you go in thinking the top-down angle automatically makes this a twitch shooter.
If the narrative had been handled by a writer more aware of the implications of their work and had the levels had a more focused design, this could totally be something that I would easily recommend to a lot more people. As it stands, it's a game that I still really like, BUT..., and that's about the saddest thing I could say about any game that I enjoy. The developer is working on a sequel, but I wouldn't hold out hope that the narrative is any more aware of itself unless he seriously took notes.
If I had to give this a score, I'd stick with about three stars to three and a half. I've given this up to four and a half in the past, but I didn't consider how others might take that, and I didn't pay too much mind to the story because it was all edgy nonsense, anyway.
What you should know about Intravenous is this: it's an idea that came to the developer after he made an example mod for his other game that let you drive to the HQ of a rival company and shoot it up. Yes, this is real, and at one point, he was marketing the game's mod support with it. That trailer is no longer on the game's Steam store page, and I don't think it boggles the mind to wonder why. As opposed to other, reprehensible games about similar subjects, this was done because the developer thought it was funny. If you manage to find the developer's personal YouTube channel, a lot more is put into perspective about what he finds funny (MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE LAST OF US PART II, and if that description worries you, it should.).
It's apparent that this developer has a very clear brand of edgy, 4Chan-esq humor that you're either okay with or find repugnant. It's to the point where a disclaimer had to be patched in before the game begins, wherein the developer spells out that he didn't think very much of his writing through, so don't be too harsh on him, you guys. Aside from that, this game also makes liberal usage of homophobic and ableist slurs. It's more offensive than regressive, and its attempts to offend offer more eye-rolls than outright ire. If that doesn't sound exhausting for you to deal with, and you're fine ignoring most of the context behind your actions, this is a surprisingly good time.
I really like Intravenous. This is probably one of the biggest "BUT"s I'll ever do in my pretend career as a hobbyist reviewer for games online, but I stand by my decision to mark this as my GOTY for 2021. My excuse for this is that my runner-up was Life is Strange: True Colors, which I still haven't finished yet. I didn't play a lot of new games in 2021. What made Intravenous stand out that much to me, though, is that looking that past the woefully jaunty "80s-revenge thriller through the filter of HD-era grit and mid-2010s internet culture" approach, this is a pretty solid stealth game! It can be basic at times, and the level design isn't always perfect (See: Smooth Operator), but the foundation for something truly fantastic is in here. It helps that there's a lot of replayability here, too. There's more than one way to approach any given level, which might encourage you to do something whacky like beating the entire game with only your fists, which the game's achievements encourage. Custom difficulty modes and mutators can make any level in this game as needlessly brutal or downright silly as you want it to be, and it's glorious. If you want to, you can even play this game like Hotline Miami, but be forewarned: it's not designed to be played that way. The AI is pretty smart and will crush you if you go in thinking the top-down angle automatically makes this a twitch shooter.
If the narrative had been handled by a writer more aware of the implications of their work and had the levels had a more focused design, this could totally be something that I would easily recommend to a lot more people. As it stands, it's a game that I still really like, BUT..., and that's about the saddest thing I could say about any game that I enjoy. The developer is working on a sequel, but I wouldn't hold out hope that the narrative is any more aware of itself unless he seriously took notes.
If I had to give this a score, I'd stick with about three stars to three and a half. I've given this up to four and a half in the past, but I didn't consider how others might take that, and I didn't pay too much mind to the story because it was all edgy nonsense, anyway.
2020
The "objective review" does not exist.
There's an ongoing debate about whether or not the current cycle of praise for Cyberpunk 2077 is blatant revisionism or valid. Either the game was always good or it was always sucked. The game's in a better state, no doubt. But it's still unpolished in really small ways that add up to a greater whole. There are still no gender-neutral options, and while the one trans character in here is well-written, the in-game ads are still a bit tasteless to anyone not comfortable with that line being crossed. If you want to spark a divisive conversation with your friends, talk about Cyberpunk 2077. If this review brings those same responses out of the woodwork, so be it.
I really, really like Cyberpunk 2077. About a year ago, I called it a diamond in the rough; "the best damn 7/10 I've ever played." The issue with that statement is that it's misleading. If review scores are subjective, what good is a 7/10 if the game you're giving it to is something that's earning high praise from you? Cyberpunk 2077 is a diamond in the rough, no doubt. But it's the kind of scratched-up jewel that still holds beauty to me.
Underscoring its bleak world and grim atmosphere, there's a beating heart inside Cyberpunk 2077. For a game that has most of its side-quests involve killing people, it's a game that treats the individuals at its core like people. Whereas most games of this sort would cut the fluff and get straight to the killing, there are several side-stories here that just involve... talking. Two out of my three siblings practically dropped this game because they got sick of skipping dialog, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Pyramid Song, the quest where you uncover a sentient vending machine, hell, the five minutes you spend fixing a roller coaster in Pacifica so you can ride it are among some of my favorite gaming memories from the past five years or so, and those are all small fish in comparison to the much larger questlines stuffed in here. Most of it is, at the very least, intriguing. As for the quests that involve fighting people, I actually enjoy the combat here. I love the way Double Barrels knock people on their asses, the feeling of a rip-roaring machine gun in my hands, piercing through walls with a charged shot to deliver a killing blow, and slicing and dicing my way through a crowd with a katana. I love the dynamic that hacking brings to the party and all of the unique ways you can play the game just by saving your money to chrome up. Double jumping around Night City is the sort of fun very few games capitalize on. Seriously, try turning off your mini-map so you can get to your objectives by jumping around. It's a delight that rarely gets old. I swear to god, I'm not bootlicking here. I just really can't get enough of how much fun this game is to play.
And yes, it is buggy. The police system is barely there. You can chalk that up to the hilariously absurd solution they have cooked for that in there currently. But while I've praised this for being a very fun time, its mild GTA-flavoring belies that a lot of what's adjacent in here feels like it's been included out of obligation and not desire. The police system is a great example of that, but I'd also argue that the ability to steal cars is also indicative of this. Unlike GTA, you almost always have a car in your possession that you can have spawned right next to you at any time. You can technically level your specs high enough to steal some of the most debonair cars in the city, but by that point, you've probably unlocked a few of those from sidequests. Likewise, while I'd argue that unlocking the cars of certain characters by doing quests related to them is a delicate touch, the fact that you can't customize any of the cars you own makes it so a few of the cars you unlock feel obsolete past a certain point. But the kicker is this: if you want a decent example of what this game succeeds at, it's the gigs. They can start to feel like a case of quantity over quality at a certain point. But a majority of them stress the far less linear aspects of this game to the point where they almost make this feel like it's as much of an immersive sim as it is an Open World Crime Game in the Wake of Grand Theft Auto III™. I wouldn't say it excels at being an immersive sim; owing to the linearity of its main quest and a few areas where the player's agency is reduced outside of it, going into Cyberpunk expecting Deus Ex will only yield disappointment. But it apes the basics successfully enough for me to say that the bulk of what makes this a great experience outside of the story-centric quests are those gigs. It's a bummer that that's not the exact impression many had going into this, and it's a huge stinker that that's the way they marketed this, but that's that. I hear they're patching this to include a better police system and drive-by mechanics, which is neat enough for me to maybe reconsider my stance on this when it drops. Until then, though, don't think of Cyberpunk as a Grand Theft Auto and Blade Runner crossover if you want to value your experience with it.
However long it takes for CD Projekt Red to make a sequel, I will try my hardest to be here. As long as the developers are treated right and the game isn't rushed out the door in a questionable state, and they hone in on the very obvious immersive sim inspirations more, Cyberpunk 2 could have some serious heat attached to it.
And yeah, I thought Edgerunners was cool.
There's an ongoing debate about whether or not the current cycle of praise for Cyberpunk 2077 is blatant revisionism or valid. Either the game was always good or it was always sucked. The game's in a better state, no doubt. But it's still unpolished in really small ways that add up to a greater whole. There are still no gender-neutral options, and while the one trans character in here is well-written, the in-game ads are still a bit tasteless to anyone not comfortable with that line being crossed. If you want to spark a divisive conversation with your friends, talk about Cyberpunk 2077. If this review brings those same responses out of the woodwork, so be it.
I really, really like Cyberpunk 2077. About a year ago, I called it a diamond in the rough; "the best damn 7/10 I've ever played." The issue with that statement is that it's misleading. If review scores are subjective, what good is a 7/10 if the game you're giving it to is something that's earning high praise from you? Cyberpunk 2077 is a diamond in the rough, no doubt. But it's the kind of scratched-up jewel that still holds beauty to me.
Underscoring its bleak world and grim atmosphere, there's a beating heart inside Cyberpunk 2077. For a game that has most of its side-quests involve killing people, it's a game that treats the individuals at its core like people. Whereas most games of this sort would cut the fluff and get straight to the killing, there are several side-stories here that just involve... talking. Two out of my three siblings practically dropped this game because they got sick of skipping dialog, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Pyramid Song, the quest where you uncover a sentient vending machine, hell, the five minutes you spend fixing a roller coaster in Pacifica so you can ride it are among some of my favorite gaming memories from the past five years or so, and those are all small fish in comparison to the much larger questlines stuffed in here. Most of it is, at the very least, intriguing. As for the quests that involve fighting people, I actually enjoy the combat here. I love the way Double Barrels knock people on their asses, the feeling of a rip-roaring machine gun in my hands, piercing through walls with a charged shot to deliver a killing blow, and slicing and dicing my way through a crowd with a katana. I love the dynamic that hacking brings to the party and all of the unique ways you can play the game just by saving your money to chrome up. Double jumping around Night City is the sort of fun very few games capitalize on. Seriously, try turning off your mini-map so you can get to your objectives by jumping around. It's a delight that rarely gets old. I swear to god, I'm not bootlicking here. I just really can't get enough of how much fun this game is to play.
And yes, it is buggy. The police system is barely there. You can chalk that up to the hilariously absurd solution they have cooked for that in there currently. But while I've praised this for being a very fun time, its mild GTA-flavoring belies that a lot of what's adjacent in here feels like it's been included out of obligation and not desire. The police system is a great example of that, but I'd also argue that the ability to steal cars is also indicative of this. Unlike GTA, you almost always have a car in your possession that you can have spawned right next to you at any time. You can technically level your specs high enough to steal some of the most debonair cars in the city, but by that point, you've probably unlocked a few of those from sidequests. Likewise, while I'd argue that unlocking the cars of certain characters by doing quests related to them is a delicate touch, the fact that you can't customize any of the cars you own makes it so a few of the cars you unlock feel obsolete past a certain point. But the kicker is this: if you want a decent example of what this game succeeds at, it's the gigs. They can start to feel like a case of quantity over quality at a certain point. But a majority of them stress the far less linear aspects of this game to the point where they almost make this feel like it's as much of an immersive sim as it is an Open World Crime Game in the Wake of Grand Theft Auto III™. I wouldn't say it excels at being an immersive sim; owing to the linearity of its main quest and a few areas where the player's agency is reduced outside of it, going into Cyberpunk expecting Deus Ex will only yield disappointment. But it apes the basics successfully enough for me to say that the bulk of what makes this a great experience outside of the story-centric quests are those gigs. It's a bummer that that's not the exact impression many had going into this, and it's a huge stinker that that's the way they marketed this, but that's that. I hear they're patching this to include a better police system and drive-by mechanics, which is neat enough for me to maybe reconsider my stance on this when it drops. Until then, though, don't think of Cyberpunk as a Grand Theft Auto and Blade Runner crossover if you want to value your experience with it.
However long it takes for CD Projekt Red to make a sequel, I will try my hardest to be here. As long as the developers are treated right and the game isn't rushed out the door in a questionable state, and they hone in on the very obvious immersive sim inspirations more, Cyberpunk 2 could have some serious heat attached to it.
And yeah, I thought Edgerunners was cool.
2020
I can't attest to the state the game is currently in. But speaking as someone who got fleeced out of 40 bucks when this came out, XIII may very well represent the worst that this industry's fetishization of remakes has to offer. The original XIII is a rare case where I honestly believe a sequel would have been a better opportunity to improve the original. The original XIII is far from a perfect game; if you want an excellent example of style over substance, it's ripe fruit for picking. Underneath its stylistic sheen and comic book influences are... another generic shooter. Once you step outside of the story sections that drag on, the actual meat and potatoes of XIII are paced pretty damn well for a game that came out in 2003. There's a solid understanding of level-based gimmicks that never feel bombastic enough to make for set pieces, but never feel thrown aside enough to be the left-over bullet points on a mid-2010s Call of Duty announcement video. Trying to do it all over again misses the point that, while the good parts of XIII certainly aren't going anywhere, they're stagnant without proper iteration.
XIII, as the remake I knew it as, showed little interest in upping the ante. If you ignore how this thing launched for a moment, you might find that it's a retread without a quarter of the original's soul. The art style, for one, still bears little resemblance to the original, favoring a more modernized, cartoony vibe. But even if you look past that, only the bare minimum has been done to add onto a game that's approaching its twentieth anniversary. Unlike the original, you don't have to install a fan patch to get it to be less clunky on modern operating systems... and that's it.
But let me talk about that technical state for a moment. The easiest way to describe how bad this thing was when it first released is this: in the original XIII, when you move around, the characters talking to you track your position with their heads. That a feature this basic in 2003 wasn't put into its 2020 remake should ring massive alarm bells. But that's hardly the tip of the iceberg. You want to know what that is? They remade all of the cutscenes in this... except for the first one. If I wanted to sound pretentious, I'd say watching a cutscene through osmosis is an innovative use of second-person gameplay. But it doesn't add anything. You're staring at a generic NPC as he stares at a wall, and you almost have to wonder: if they didn't have the talent to remake all of the cutscenes, why bother? The answer to that is that this remake had one of the most mismanaged, tumultuous developments of any to have come out so far this decade—worse than Cyberpunk. You think Bluepoint is bad? "Oh, Demon's Souls misses the artistic intent of the original"—when this came out, shooting didn't work. AI didn't work. The sound design was busted to shit, and you better believe that this thing was littered with more miscellaneous bugs than what we know of the pre-historic era. God, I wish Bluepoint made this instead of some yokel who thought he could harang success out of underpaid, overworked, and still-in-training interns. Fucking... imagine if CD Projekt Red did that. And Cyberpunk is the posterchild for rushed development now? Fuck me, man.
This might be better now, but honestly? I'm not going to bother with this again, and I don't think you should, either.
XIII, as the remake I knew it as, showed little interest in upping the ante. If you ignore how this thing launched for a moment, you might find that it's a retread without a quarter of the original's soul. The art style, for one, still bears little resemblance to the original, favoring a more modernized, cartoony vibe. But even if you look past that, only the bare minimum has been done to add onto a game that's approaching its twentieth anniversary. Unlike the original, you don't have to install a fan patch to get it to be less clunky on modern operating systems... and that's it.
But let me talk about that technical state for a moment. The easiest way to describe how bad this thing was when it first released is this: in the original XIII, when you move around, the characters talking to you track your position with their heads. That a feature this basic in 2003 wasn't put into its 2020 remake should ring massive alarm bells. But that's hardly the tip of the iceberg. You want to know what that is? They remade all of the cutscenes in this... except for the first one. If I wanted to sound pretentious, I'd say watching a cutscene through osmosis is an innovative use of second-person gameplay. But it doesn't add anything. You're staring at a generic NPC as he stares at a wall, and you almost have to wonder: if they didn't have the talent to remake all of the cutscenes, why bother? The answer to that is that this remake had one of the most mismanaged, tumultuous developments of any to have come out so far this decade—worse than Cyberpunk. You think Bluepoint is bad? "Oh, Demon's Souls misses the artistic intent of the original"—when this came out, shooting didn't work. AI didn't work. The sound design was busted to shit, and you better believe that this thing was littered with more miscellaneous bugs than what we know of the pre-historic era. God, I wish Bluepoint made this instead of some yokel who thought he could harang success out of underpaid, overworked, and still-in-training interns. Fucking... imagine if CD Projekt Red did that. And Cyberpunk is the posterchild for rushed development now? Fuck me, man.
This might be better now, but honestly? I'm not going to bother with this again, and I don't think you should, either.
I should clarify something before I make the bold, sweeping statement that I'm about to make: I really, really like Rocketbirds 2. In fact, I'd go as far as to call it shockingly underrated. I get why the first Rocketbirds isn't to everyone's liking; it's clearly a homage to much older genre efforts that can feel impenetrable to a modern audience. But Rocketbirds 2 is a joy to play from the moment it starts. Each of the weapons feels unique and awesome to use, and although platforming is never too much of a challenge, the movement feels buttery smooth. As a sequel, Rocketbirds 2 manages to improve on its predecessor in almost every conceivable way. As a twin-stick shooter with platforming mechanics, it's one of the best of its kind alright, I guess (I have an issue with hyperbole; I am aware). Put simply, Rocketbirds 2 has never been shown the love it rightfully deserves.
And as much as it bums me out to say this, I get why.
So, a little trivia about myself: I adore the PlayStation Vita almost as much as I adore this game. To cut a long story short, unfortunately, the only reason the Vita had an extended lifetime at all is that it was a better platform for indies than the 3DS was. Sure, 3DS developers tried, but who in their right mind was going to buy a Circle Pad Pro to play Hotline Miami? This meant the Vita was the platform of choice for those seeking out new, independent titles for a time. Now that other, better options have presented themselves and Sony is eyeing the "shut down PSN servers" button like a pin-up model, there's a chunk of the Vita's history that will soon be lost to time.
Enter Limited Run Games. There's a lot that could be said about them. Shoddy customer service, damaged packages, and extended shipping times that will test even the most patient of gaming enthusiasts is only the tip of a much larger iceberg that puts their company name into question. But when they're the only ones who have a consistent selection of Vita titles that vendors are reselling on eBay after the purchase window ends, where else are you going to turn to when you want to start collecting? Although all of the reports I've listed are legitimate and should be taken into consideration before making any purchases with this company, I can tell you a different story. Eight out of the nine LRG products I own are pretty decent, and although I don't go near them nearly as much as I should, I don't regret buying them.
The ninth game is a different story.
Imagine this hypothetical scenario: you're a Limited Run Games consumer. You buy a copy of Rocketbirds 2 for the PlayStation Vita, wait months if not a year to get it in your hands, and by the time you've finally had the opportunity to play it, something is off. The ID on your cartridge doesn't match the ID the digital storefront has for the game, which only seems to confirm any speculation on your part. By the time you've received your package, you're stuck with a cartridge of the 1.0 version of the game and can't download any of the more recent updates the game's been getting. The LRG copy you purchased doesn't come with a key for a digital copy. The version you paid far too much money for, waited far too long for, and could barely wait to try is inferior in every way.
The original version of Rocketbirds 2 is mostly the same as the game I know now, but it's different. Its crosshair doesn't have the same distinctive look and blends into some backgrounds, making shooting—the bread and butter of this game—feel cumbersome in certain areas. AIm assist isn't even an option. Considering how precise this game wants your shooting to be at times, this is an inconvenience at best if you're not on the Vita. If you are on the Vita, the small thumbsticks make aim assist downright necessary in certain situations, and not having it makes the game unnecessarily difficult to work with. Using the inventory menu doesn't pause the action, and using said inventory menu is a hassle beyond words due to functionality that simply wasn't polished enough for a full release. It feels clunkier to move down and pick up items, and worst of all, the already bad performance that updated versions of the port suffer from is horrendous. And as a cherry on top, a neat little garnish, Co-Op is locked to this version of the game. AdHoc doesn't work; I have more than one hacked Vita, I tried. Rocketbirds 2, as it was released in 2016, lives up to its tepid critical reception.
So what does this say about how it's going to be preserved? Well, if I'm being completely honest with it, it's looking pretty fucking bleak. At least the PlayStation 4 version that they also released has local Co-Op. Performance is probably better and, as somebody who's obsessed over this game to the point where I've played it on all three platforms with the aid of PlayStation Plus, I can say that this is a game that controls the best with a DualShock 4/DualSense in your hands. But if it's anything like the downgraded version I was handed in the mail, don't get your hopes up. I'm not going to say that I was totally fleeced, because as far as I can tell, the LRG Vita copy of Rocketbirds 2 is the only way you can play the 1.0 release without too many compromises. Preserving different versions of games is an entirely different conversation, and it helps me to appreciate what I have elsewhere. But when I won't have the best versions of this game in 20 years, it's only going to leave a sour taste in my mouth.
In short: Rocketbirds 2 is fucking fantastic, but don't waste your money by chasing a physical copy of it as I did. Like piss in the wind, my money is...
And as much as it bums me out to say this, I get why.
So, a little trivia about myself: I adore the PlayStation Vita almost as much as I adore this game. To cut a long story short, unfortunately, the only reason the Vita had an extended lifetime at all is that it was a better platform for indies than the 3DS was. Sure, 3DS developers tried, but who in their right mind was going to buy a Circle Pad Pro to play Hotline Miami? This meant the Vita was the platform of choice for those seeking out new, independent titles for a time. Now that other, better options have presented themselves and Sony is eyeing the "shut down PSN servers" button like a pin-up model, there's a chunk of the Vita's history that will soon be lost to time.
Enter Limited Run Games. There's a lot that could be said about them. Shoddy customer service, damaged packages, and extended shipping times that will test even the most patient of gaming enthusiasts is only the tip of a much larger iceberg that puts their company name into question. But when they're the only ones who have a consistent selection of Vita titles that vendors are reselling on eBay after the purchase window ends, where else are you going to turn to when you want to start collecting? Although all of the reports I've listed are legitimate and should be taken into consideration before making any purchases with this company, I can tell you a different story. Eight out of the nine LRG products I own are pretty decent, and although I don't go near them nearly as much as I should, I don't regret buying them.
The ninth game is a different story.
Imagine this hypothetical scenario: you're a Limited Run Games consumer. You buy a copy of Rocketbirds 2 for the PlayStation Vita, wait months if not a year to get it in your hands, and by the time you've finally had the opportunity to play it, something is off. The ID on your cartridge doesn't match the ID the digital storefront has for the game, which only seems to confirm any speculation on your part. By the time you've received your package, you're stuck with a cartridge of the 1.0 version of the game and can't download any of the more recent updates the game's been getting. The LRG copy you purchased doesn't come with a key for a digital copy. The version you paid far too much money for, waited far too long for, and could barely wait to try is inferior in every way.
The original version of Rocketbirds 2 is mostly the same as the game I know now, but it's different. Its crosshair doesn't have the same distinctive look and blends into some backgrounds, making shooting—the bread and butter of this game—feel cumbersome in certain areas. AIm assist isn't even an option. Considering how precise this game wants your shooting to be at times, this is an inconvenience at best if you're not on the Vita. If you are on the Vita, the small thumbsticks make aim assist downright necessary in certain situations, and not having it makes the game unnecessarily difficult to work with. Using the inventory menu doesn't pause the action, and using said inventory menu is a hassle beyond words due to functionality that simply wasn't polished enough for a full release. It feels clunkier to move down and pick up items, and worst of all, the already bad performance that updated versions of the port suffer from is horrendous. And as a cherry on top, a neat little garnish, Co-Op is locked to this version of the game. AdHoc doesn't work; I have more than one hacked Vita, I tried. Rocketbirds 2, as it was released in 2016, lives up to its tepid critical reception.
So what does this say about how it's going to be preserved? Well, if I'm being completely honest with it, it's looking pretty fucking bleak. At least the PlayStation 4 version that they also released has local Co-Op. Performance is probably better and, as somebody who's obsessed over this game to the point where I've played it on all three platforms with the aid of PlayStation Plus, I can say that this is a game that controls the best with a DualShock 4/DualSense in your hands. But if it's anything like the downgraded version I was handed in the mail, don't get your hopes up. I'm not going to say that I was totally fleeced, because as far as I can tell, the LRG Vita copy of Rocketbirds 2 is the only way you can play the 1.0 release without too many compromises. Preserving different versions of games is an entirely different conversation, and it helps me to appreciate what I have elsewhere. But when I won't have the best versions of this game in 20 years, it's only going to leave a sour taste in my mouth.
In short: Rocketbirds 2 is fucking fantastic, but don't waste your money by chasing a physical copy of it as I did. Like piss in the wind, my money is...
Jabroni Brawl is a messy and inconsistent joy ride that I adore. In its current state, it's entirely possible to find yourself on a map and gamemode suited to eight people max on a server with over thirty. The map variety is expansive enough that it's also possible to have rounds of gun game and other fast-paced modes on maps so large that the pace of the game is affected severely. Capture the Flag is probably one of the worst modes on offer; a consistent bore-fest where you die quickly, respawn slowly, and can't rely on your arsenal when you spawn in. The most entertaining aspect of it, in my opinion, is waiting for another mode to be chosen. There isn't any way to sort servers by the gamemode being played, either, so it can be a crapshoot if you land on one you like or not.
For a mega-mod that's been in development for nearly a decade, it can be frustrating when not all of the pieces click. When they do, however, it's apparent just how much passion's been put into this. Jabroni Brawl, at its best, is wonderfully chaotic. While there are a couple of modes that require a slower pace, most modes are blisteringly fast-paced affairs that have more in common with the elk of arena shooter that the original Half-Life based its engine on. Thankfully, the rush of a typical Jabroni round is never too tiring thanks to an exhaustive amount of creative and rewarding gamemodes and maps. One look at the scope of this project and its inspirations is all you need to know that the long wait was absolutely worth it.
BTW, you have to go prone and aim your chainsaw at the ground while using it go fast in Rat Race. Thank me later.
For a mega-mod that's been in development for nearly a decade, it can be frustrating when not all of the pieces click. When they do, however, it's apparent just how much passion's been put into this. Jabroni Brawl, at its best, is wonderfully chaotic. While there are a couple of modes that require a slower pace, most modes are blisteringly fast-paced affairs that have more in common with the elk of arena shooter that the original Half-Life based its engine on. Thankfully, the rush of a typical Jabroni round is never too tiring thanks to an exhaustive amount of creative and rewarding gamemodes and maps. One look at the scope of this project and its inspirations is all you need to know that the long wait was absolutely worth it.
BTW, you have to go prone and aim your chainsaw at the ground while using it go fast in Rat Race. Thank me later.