Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2022/04/14/pyst-review-retrospective/

Like anything else that gained massive popularity, there were the inevitable parodies of and jokes at Myst. And probably the most infamous parody of Myst takes the form of the creatively bankrupt Pyst. Written by Peter Bergman, one of the co-founders of the Firesign Theatre, and published by Parroty Interactive in 1996 (Get it? Because ‘Parroty’ sounds like parody and they produced nothing but parody games), a whole three years after the release of Myst. And considering how lackluster that this “parody” is, that’s a little late to the party.

There isn’t really a plot to Pyst so much as there are jokes that your dad or uncle would make about something that they’ve only heard about because it was the big thing at the time. Well, I say jokes, but it’s more like a joke, singular, and that one joke is “What if 4 million people actually DID visit the island of Myst?”, which is how many copies that Myst had sold when this “parody” was released. And the incredibly obvious punchline to that incredibly obvious joke is that the island would obviously be trashed by the millions of people who tried Myst because it was popular, got frustrated at the puzzles, and gave up and just started trashing the place.

Apparently Peter Bergman along with the rest of the team at Parroty Interactive thought that this single joke was so incredibly funny that they thought they could press it to a CD and shit out to store shelves for money. And this was long before someone could easily dump their game onto any digital storefront was available at the time, in which you had to actually invest time and money to get your video game out. In any other game, a joke at the expense of Myst would either be a brief joke in an out of the way line of dialogue or note somewhere or a brief section of the game, not making a whole game based on a very limited joke.

The game actually begins with a narrator joking about how he fell into a manhole and accidentally landed onto the island of Pyst. I would assume that this is a reference to Cyan’s previous game called ‘The Manhole’, but considering how the rest of the game is, I’m pretty sure it’s less of a reference and more of a joke that the developers thought was funny.

Once you land on Pyst Island, you’re greeted by a trashed version of the original Myst Island, graffiti covering every surface, trash strewn all over the place and anything that wasn’t bolted down being torn up. There’s even a trailer park filled with trailers and porta-potties along with a giant TV called the ‘Mumbo Jumbo-Tron’ plopped right in the middle of Pyst Island. And the game quickly makes it obvious just how much of a one-note joke the whole thing.

But getting around in Pyst isn’t the same as getting around in Myst. Instead of the Island being presented with still images like in Myst, where you click on certain parts of the screen to explore the game, Pyst presents each image as a postcard and 99% of the “gameplay” is pressing on something and watching an incredibly short “funny” animation.

When you’re not clicking around the screen to see what moves, you can either click the top or bottom of the screen to see a message on the back of the postcard, with each postcard coming with two handwritten messages, one for the top or bottom. And this is where the few jokes that the ‘game’ relies on quickly gets driven into the ground and becomes irritating really quickly, with whoever wrote the message complaining about how hard the puzzles are or how trashed the island is because of it’s popularity. To move from screen to screen, you just click on the right to get to the next postcard and the left to get the previous postcard. Which is extra amusing (or baffling on your point of view) since the first time you move to another area is when you move from the dock to the room with the holographic machine you have to click right despite it being located to the left of you when you first land on Pyst Island.

Each postcard does come with a speaker on the bottom right that has an announcement from the ‘Octoplex Corporation Tour Guide’, with each announcement talking about buying out Pyst Island and changing it into a popular resort, including adding beaches and mini-golf to the Island. I have no idea is this was poking fun at the rumors of Disney making an actual attraction based on the original Myst before it got canned, or just a generic joke about giant companies jumping on trends and riding them until they’ve milked it dry and I’m just retroactively justifying it in my brain and making the game more interesting than it is.

So basically the game is filled to the brim with lowbrow jokes that I’m pretty sure were “edgy” in the 90s, but are so incredibly lame and played out that the only other place that you’re going to hear them is a bad joke book and your uncle who told you a joke once when you were 7 that made you laugh and has been telling you bad jokes ever since because he got that one reaction out of you.

Surprisingly, the game also features Full Motion Video with live action actors just like the original Myst. Honestly, with just how lazy the introduction to the game was, I just assumed that the whole game would have been simple still images.

On the second screen, or postcard, a parody of the room featuring the holographic machine from the original game, we get out first look at the FMV with the three characters parodying the three characters from the original game. This includes Prince Syrrup, who is overwhelmed by the amount of people coming to the island and was entirely based around the world syrup sounding funny, the character named ‘The Prince Formerly Known As Prince’, a self-absorbed stereotype based on musical artist Prince and only here because someone thought the name was ‘The Prince Formerly Known As Prince’ was clever, and King Mattrus, played by, of all people, John Goodman, king of the game and Pyst Island.

You read that right, John Goodman in this game, and he’s the best thing about the game, if only because of his charm and enthusiasm. At least I know where all of the budget went. But the absolute highlight of getting John Goodman to be in this game is that he sings the lyrics to the song “I’m Pyst”, which you can either play by selecting it one of the menus in the game, or by putting it into your CD player. It’s incredibly catchy and I could actually see myself listening to it outside of the game.

And you might ask yourself, “If Pyst is making fun of Myst, then how does it make fun of it’s puzzles?”, and the answer to that question is that it doesn’t. Instead of poking fun at the puzzles in Myst, Pyst instead just makes fun at the people who visited Myst Island finding the puzzles of Myst being too hard. There isn’t even an attempt to make fun of the puzzles of Myst. And everything I described about interacting with the game, clicking on stuff to get an incredibly brief animation, flipping over the postcard to see what the messages are on the back of the card, and them moving on is the entirety of the interaction with the game.

Adventure games aimed at children at the time had more interactivity than this. Just look at any of the games that Humongous Entertainment was putting out. All of the interactivity in Pyst would have been amusing interactive objects in the background of any of Humongous Entertainment’s games. Even Myst, the very game that this was parodying, had more interactivity, and it was criticized heavily by hardcore adventure game fans for “dumbing down the genre”. Myst had a variety of puzzles to solve, where this is just clicking on a few random things and getting a fart joke. Both “Pajama Sam: No Need to Hide When It’s Dark Outside” and “Freddi Fish 2: The Case of the Haunted Schoolhouse” and even Edutainment games like “Logical Journey of the Zoombinis” and “Chill Manon” (the sequel to “I.M. Meen”) were released the same year as Pyst, along with multiple “Putt-Putt” and “Freddi Fish” mini-game collections that have just as much interactivity as this game, and are meant for kinder-gardeners.

That’s right, there is no gameplay to Pyst. If Myst was criticized at the time by dedicated adventure game fans for both dumbing down adventure games so that even your grandmother can enjoy it, then Pyst has no gameplay at all. Sure, you can click on a few things, but that’s not gameplay. And the whole thing takes about an hour at most to get through and has no replay value. It still took me an hour to get through the original Myst when I was replaying it, and that’s with me knowing the solution to all of the puzzles and knowing exactly where to go. And it’s not like the jokes in Pyst were so gut busting that it’s worth playing it a second time.

But then again, if Pyst did have puzzles, they wouldn’t have lead anywhere like the ones in the original Myst because Pyst features Myst Island and ONLY Myst Island. The original game had several places you could visit beyond the initial island. Which means one of three things happened. One, the development team got stuck on these puzzles and just decided to wing it with what they had.

Two, the development team quickly ran out of material before they could make fun of the other areas of the game, and considering that you can’t even visit all of Myst Island, with there only being 10 postcards in total for a place with several locations with multiple screens, is completely embarrassing. And three of these screens are on the back of the box, so you’ve seen a giant chunk of the game even before buying it.

Or three, which is the most likely, the development team just jumped onto whatever was popular at the time, which would become more blatant as Parroty Interactive, the developers who made this game, went on to make more ‘games’.

However there is exactly one good joke in the game, and it’s about the adventure genre as a whole, and that is a joke making fun at how older adventure games used to use words to interact with environment, such as ‘Look’, ‘Use’, and ‘Speak’, and presents it as the building blocks of the language of interaction in video games. And I’m pretty sure it’s entirely accidental considering how the rest of the jokes turned out.

If you’re going to jump on the popularity of something, you could at least make jokes specifically about what you’re making fun of. Imagine if the game made fun of the maze in the Selenitic Age by having something that completely skips over it that somehow everyone missed, or the rotating fortress in the Mechanical Age having an ‘Overkill’ mode that spins it so fast that it makes you puke. Stuff that’s still incredibly obvious and low hanging fruit, but at least interesting and with some variety.

Just like the original Myst, Pyst comes with a “Making Of” video. In the same vein with the game, the making of video is filled with jokes mixed in with a few highlights on how the game was made. It’s neat, but it’s more of a video of the developers having fun while making the game rather than being informative.

And the cherry on top the sundae is the credits, which have more people listed than the original Myst did. That’s right, the original Myst, a game that not only helped the gaming industry move from floppies to the CD-ROM, got more computers into peoples homes, and was more visually impressive, had less people working on it despite having more content. If a couple of people can end up making something like Myst at a time when not only making a video game was a lot more difficult than it is these days but getting it onto shelves, then Pyst is looking pretty shallow in comparison.

There was even going to be a sequel to Pyst called “Driven: The Sequel to Pyst.”, which a demo of it was included on later versions of Pyst. But due to the company going under, for some pretty obvious reasons, so that never came out.

In retrospect, was Pyst good? No, of course not, it was a product meant to jump onto a fad, and even if it had a few things going for it, it’s not really worth visiting unless you’re a hardcore Myst fan. The only thing the game had going for it was that it was $15 when it was released, which clearly shows that even the creators of this game knew how little they had on their hands. We could have had a game poking fun of adventure game tropes as told through a Myst parody and what we got was a few mildly funny jokes quickly worn out.

The creators of Myst seemed to be amused by this game, and they even have a copy of it in their vault over at ‘Cyan, Inc’ so clearly they had no hard feelings about it. So clearly this isn’t worth getting annoyed over.

Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2019/04/22/darkwatch-2005-review/

When I think of the PlayStation 2, First Person Shooters aren’t the first thing that comes to mind, but despite that, the system did have it’s fair share of really decent FPS games. One of those First Person Shooter’s is Darkwatch, a game developed by Blue Moon Studios (formerly Sammy Studios), and weirdly enough, published by Capcom of all companies in 2005 for the PlayStation 2 and original Xbox.

The game starts with Jericho Cross, an outlaw gunfighter in the late 19th-century American Frontier, doing one last job by robbing a train. Unbeknownst to him, the train belongs to the Darkwatch, an ancient organization committed to destroying supernatural evils. The train is not carrying gold or money, but a vampire lord that he accidentally releases named Lazarus Malkoth, resulting in Jericho getting bitten in the process, slowing turning into a vampire for the rest of the game.

Soon, Jericho is conscripted into the Darkwatch despite the uneasiness of the fellow elite operatives having a vampire join their ranks, and he has to defeat Malkoth with the help of his fellow Darkwatch agent Cassidy Sharp, who was murdered shortly after meeting Jericho, and now guides him as a spiritual voice. From there on, it’s pretty much what you’d expect.

The game has a moral system, or at least tries to have one. Throughout the game, you’re often given a choice to save someone in two different ways. The first are hidden damned souls located around every level, and you can choose to either to damn their soul to eternal torment or save their soul from suffering. The other type of moral choice is several times throughout the game, you’re given the choice to save someone from dying or turning into a zombie or ghoul, or turn them yourself. It doesn’t really add up to much. The only appeal of the moral system is that the choices lead to power ups, with both evil and good having their own exclusive powers, all of which you can use for a short period of time when a meter is fully charged. The only real choice that matters is towards the end of the game, and it’s a pretty obvious one.

Good powers include the “Silver Bullet”, which increases damage from firing your guns, “Fear”, causing enemies to run off, “Mystic Armor”, which adds an extra layer to your shields, and “Vindicator”, which causes all enemies in the vicinity to be struck with lightening. Bad powers include “Blood Frenzy”, causing your melee powers to increase their damage, “Turn”, which makes your enemies slaves, “Black Shroud”, causing enemies damage whenever they hit you, and “Soul Stealer”, which sucks out your enemies souls from a distance.

Playing through the game, it was pretty obvious that this was one of the first games that was clearly influenced by the first two Halo games that had come out at that point with a few of their design choices. Your character has a Blood Shield that regenerates when you hide behind cover, just like the shield from Halo. There are also Blood Canteens located around levels that act like Health Packs. But these are few and far between, since getting your health back is mostly done through picking up an enemies energy when they die. The energy you pick up from enemies can also be used to power up the energy bar for your special abilities.

The most annoying enemies are the ones holding barrels of TNT that can sneak up on you every now and again and kill you. At least with something like the Headless Kamikaze enemies in the Serious Sam franchise are screaming at the top of their lungs while running at you, making them easy to spot.

If you ever get a little lost, there is a handy feature called “Blood Vision”, that when you click in the right analog stick, your vision changes to red, and enemies, weapons, and other key elements to glow white, all while zooming in a bit so it makes those things easier to spot.

Thankfully the shooting sections are often broken up by a few other types of gameplay. A couple of times you ride a horse throughout the desert. You’re not really riding a horse through an area so much as you’re just shooting enemies as you’re either getting to your destination or catching up to a train in one of those sections. There is also a turret sections. It’s just OK, which is the best you could hope for with a turret section.

At a certain point in the game, you get to choose which mission you’d like to do next out of a list of missions, which is pointless, since you have to do all of them anyway. Maybe there was a section initially planned where you could walk around the Darkwatch base but it was cut out, but who knows. It also doesn’t let you know that much outside of a brief description of what to do, so picking a weapon for said mission is made more difficult, and you have to guess what to use if you’ve never played the mission before.

There is even a small driving section of the game, and it’s features the smoothest gameplay out of the whole game. The vehicle, named the Darkwatch Coyote (“coincidentally” named like an animal, like Halo’s warthog), also comes with a turret that you use to shoot nearby enemies, or you can run them over if you get bored. It’s a shame that it’s only one part of the game.

The game still looks pretty good for a PlayStation 2 and Xbox game. Nothing amazing, but the games artstyle has a really nice aesthetic, combining horror, western, and steampunk, on top the whole game generally looking pretty decent, especially the weapons.

Checkpoints are plentiful throughout the game, so when you die, you’re never sent back too far. And when you die, you don’t have to reload the entire level. The game thankfully just drops you back to the last checkpoint, which makes the game flow much better.

Probably the biggest downside of this game are the controls. The controls have those stiff feeling controls that a lot of PS2 and Xbox games had. It’s not awful, but I can see it turning a lot of people away who are more used to more modern gaming sensibilities. Despite that, all of the guns sound powerful and feel good to use.

You can also shoot off parts of an enemy, including their arms and heads, adding another satisfying layer to the shooting, as well as giving some indication that you’re damaging your enemies. There is also dynamite and a PlayStation 2 exclusive Splitter Grenade that explodes on impact, both sending enemies flying with ragdoll physics.

There are some unlockables that allow for some replayability. The best unlockable is the Gunslinger Mod, in which you can go back and play any of the chapters of the story mode that you’ve unlocked and play as either good or evil Jericho, and try to get high scores, such as the amount of enemies killed and weapon percentage accuracy. Getting good scores will unlock other things such as movies and concept art.

Like a lot of First Person Shooters of the time, Darkwatch came with a multiplayer component. It comes with some standard stuff, like Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Capture the Flag, but it does have a somewhat unique mode called “Soul Hunter” in which you fight to collect Blood Clouds and be the first to to fill your Blood Bar, and “Team Soul Hunter”, which is similar, but you have to fill your teams Blood Bar.

Weirdly enough, each version of the game has a few differences. The Xbox version let you play the game over Xbox live. Unfortunately, the PlayStation 2 version is a bit more limited, only letting you play splitscreen or co-op mode. This was probably because the multiplayer component of the PlayStation 2 was an optional part of the console where as the multiplayer of the Xbox version was already integrated into the console, and was probably easier to develop for.

Back when the game was being released, it had a pretty big promotional campaign and was planned to be the first installment of a new media franchise, but unfortunately its sequel got canceled in 2007, the only thing left is a phone recording of a brief concept trailer, and the planned film adaptation never got released. Which is a shame, because another game on a more modern system could have been neat to see.

I wish that Darkwatch could get a re-release on modern consoles and PC. It’s a really solid First Person Shooter stuck under a few limitations as a result of the time it was released, and smoothing out some of those issues, such as the controls and the multiplayer not being around any more, could really help this game.

Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2020/01/26/paperbark-2018-pc-ios-android-review/

Australia’s wild life and scenic nature is a wonderful sight to behold, and it’s very rare to see such a unique ecosystem represented in video game form, so getting a game that shows it off is something of a rare treat, and thankfully Paperbark came along to show the outback off.

The game was released in early 2018 for iPads and iPhones, and later the same year for PC’s through Steam.

Paperbark follows a sleepy wombat as it explores the Australian bush during a very hot Australian summer. What starts as a regular day for the wombat as it spends it’s time foraging for food soon turns into the wombat trying to find a new home as the Australian summer turns deadly.

The game has you rummaging through the Australian Outback as a wombat as it’s looking for food to eat. While the game might be a bit slow, it’s also short, which is preferred with a game like Paperbark, since not only any longer and it would have overstayed it’s welcome, it would completely ruin the children’s storybook tone that it’s going for.

The game’s art style is gorgeous, using the watercolor style to great effect. Obviously taking inspiration from Australian storybooks such as Blink Bill, Diary of a Wombat, and Possum Magic, along with Australian landscape artists such as Arthur Streeton, Arthur Boyd, and Eugene von Guerard, just to name a few. It also made me feel nostalgic for the ‘furry friends’ chocolate that Cadbury put out.

Despite only not only having a narrow view in camera perspective but also in the whole picture of what Australia’s flora and fauna can look like, it really shows off just how beautiful Australia’s native wild life really looks.

Along with the art style, the game also puts the sound of the Australian wildlife to great use, and as a native Australian, it sounds exactly like how Australia sounds, hearing kookaburra’s in the distance, insects flying around, and the sounds of the Wombat rummaging through the bust looking for food.

It took me about 45 minutes on my first playthough, but that was me ignoring all of the small collectables, which could easily double the length. I’d say for younger audiences, it could easily take them 3-4 hours.

If you have children who love animals, or are someone who loves the Australian outback, then this is a definite recommend.

Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2021/06/05/stop-stress-a-day-of-fury-wii-wiiware-2009-review/

Jack is having a bad day. From the ever annoying alarm waking him up for yet another day of work to the inevitable traffic jam and having to put up with your obnoxious boss, Jack has had it with his daily life. So what does Jack do? Jack picks up the nearest object and turns it into a weapon, taking his fury out on everything and everyone around him.

Basically the plot of “Stop Stress: A Day of Fury” is like the movie Falling Down was told in a more comical over-the-top way.

And if anything, this game has made me feel even more stressed after playing it. The entire game might only be half an hour long, 45 minutes at most, but you’re going to be swinging your Wiimote and Nunchuck around the entire time, which can be tiring. If anything, you might get a small work out from this game with just how much swinging around of the Wiimote and Nunchuck you do.

The controls work pretty well, but the controls aren’t trying to be accurate like some other Wii games, instead using a simple motion for the characters actions, like using a a quick swing off the Wiimote to swing at an enemy.

To move around, you move the Wiimote to turn your character around like other first person games on the wii, but instead of using the analog stick to move your character forward or back, you move to one of the nearby highlighted spots by pressing one of the directional keys on the Wiimote.

This also removes an of the awkward First Person controls that most First Person games on the console had. It’s not great, but I would rather these controls than another game on the Wii with awkward First Person controls

There is some mild replayability to the game, but only to the extent of topping your own score either on the same difficulty or on a higher difficulty, and I don’t see a lot of people doing that once they’ve experience the little content that this game has.

And while the concept for the game was enough of an excuse to justify the game, it wore pretty thin by the end of it, which I’m pretty sure the developers knew because like I said earlier, it’s only half an hour to 45 minutes at most and is a small downloadable title.

I don’t know if I would recommend this game, even as a curiosity. While it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome, it’s still kinda annoying and the comedy doesn’t really make up for it’s other shortcomings, making the whole thing mediocre. And to top it all off, it was a whopping $8 when it was initially released. There’s no way I would have paid that much for it back when it came out.

Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2021/03/14/relicta-2020-pc-ps4-xbone-stadia-review/

The game is set in 2120 aboard a station on the moon where an artifact known as the Relicta has been discovered, and scientific experiments are being done in secret to discover what properties it holds. You play as Dr. Angelica Patel – a physicist on the Chandara base, who is testing a new device that allows the use to manipulate gravity and magnetism.

The moon base is soon involved in an accident involving the Relicta, separating all of the members of the crew, including Kira, Angelica’s daughter. Angelica finds herself having to save the rest of the crew at the base, all while having to worry about the Relica and the secrets that it holds.

There is quite a bit of story here that I can’t include here, but I don’t want to ruin a lot of it by revealing too much, but just be warned that this is a dialogue heavy puzzle game.

Relicta is a first-person physics-based puzzle game where the main gameplay mechanic is using magnetism and gravity to solve all of it’s puzzles. While Relicta is obviously a portal clone, there are also comparisons that can be made to Magrunner: Dark Pulse, which also heavily uses magnets for it’s puzzles and is another Portal clone. But Relicta is more involved with it’s magnetic puzzles.

The puzzles of Relicta focus around magnetic cubes where you can switch between a negative and positive charge, indicated by them turning either red or blue, or having no charge at all, which is controlled with the gloves that your character has as part of her suit.

Puzzles contain the obvious game mechanics, such as making the cubes attract or repel each other, and using them on pressure plates to open up doors or turn off conveniently colored energy fields, purple only allowing the player to go through, green only allowing cubes, and yellow preventing both from coming through.

But like I mentioned earlier, the cubes have an anti-gravity field too. Sometimes you’ll have to use the cubes to activate a button that is located on a wall or the ceiling, or guide them through a level using magnetic places located on walls, some of which you can change yourself, and even ride them to get to the location that you need to be at.

Unfortunately, there were a few times where I was stuck solving a puzzle, only to find out that the game had introduced a new mechanic that I had no idea was there and I had to eventually cave in and look up a walkthrough just to figure out what I had to do. After that, the puzzles weren’t too bad, it’s just the initial not knowing what to do that was frustrating.

This makes the game more tedious that it should be. Some sort of audio cue indicating what I should do would have been helpful, whether it something coming from what I’m supposed to be paying attention to, or have my character briefly mention something after a while of being stuck in a certain area. I had no clue what the game wanted me to look at, and it took me way too long to figure out a piece of the puzzle.

There were even a few instances where I was looking for one of the magnetic boxes required to finish a puzzle only to find out that it was somewhere that I didn’t think to look. Some slight telegraphing would have significantly improved this game.

Also, the length in between autosaves is a little too long. There have been times where I was half way through a puzzle, had to close the game for whatever reason, and come back to it and have to spend 5 minutes catching up to where I was last just so I could continue. Even if the game didn’t include more autosaves, I would have loved the option for a manual save, but I don’t know if there was a technical reason it couldn’t have been included or it was just the way that the developers designed the game.

These few minor changes would have made the game a much smoother experience.

Also, some of the dialogue is a bit awkward, such as one character calling another an “Orbi-Boomer” and having sarcasm for every other line, for at least the first half of the game, or having PDAs and dialogue filled with references to other media. The game is aware of the kind of story that it wrote for itself in the latter half, It gets a little tedious after awhile, especially with how self-aware it is.

The visuals are pretty solid, even it’s pretty obvious that areas are designed to be more like rooms than actual locations. It is nice to see off into the distance beyond the areas that you’re in and seeing some nice looking locations, which there is a variety off.

As you’re solving puzzles and trying to figure out what is going on, you have to move in between domes, which contain a range of biomes of Earth-based terrains, which range from a large dense forest and nice blue sky, to snowy wasteland with icy caves, and even a seemingly endless desert. This does a lot to separate itself from something like Portal, instead of having dull tech filled room after room, you have another vista to look at, which is only separated by a few moments of the sci-fi aesthetic of a moon base.

The games visuals are so nice that it comes with a photo mode, where you can take photos of the surrounding environment, and the photo mode comes with Instagram like filters, so you can have fun customizing your pictures to your hearts content. This is one of those features that you wonder why it isn’t in more games with nice looking art styles and graphics.

Relicta is quite a lengthy game, and I feel like that being a good or a bad thing is going to be up to the player. Some might want more of the game, but there just wasn’t enough variety in the gameplay and by the end of the game I was getting a little exhausted. If you’re going to play, maybe take a few breaks while playing and go do something else.

Despite a lot of my complaints with Relicta and the fact that it’s not a game that I would go immediately to with recommending first person puzzle games, there is still something to be enjoyed here. And anyone who is looking for their fix of something that only a Portal-like game can fill, it’s certainly worth checking out, but unfortunately, it’s a lukewarm recommendation from me.

Despite my negativity, I would like to see it’s developer ‘Mighty Polygon’ continue just to see something more polished from them.

Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2020/07/05/press-x-to-not-die/

You wake up to find your town in chaos. Everyone has gone crazy and is just attacking each other! Your friend gives you a cryptic message before he is killed. The secret to survival– Press X to not die!

Looking at the trailer and reading the description for this game, it’s pretty obvious that this game is pretty much a one joke game, and if you’re not into that joke, you’re definitely not going to be into this game.

I will give the game some credit, there is some replayability here. The game has multiple difficulties, which has the button combinations that you have to press be more complex the higher the difficulty. The game also has multiple dialogue choices throughout out the game, meaning that even though the game only has ~35 minutes of footage tops, the game requires at least a second play through to see most of it. Plus there are neat extras such as behind the scenes images, bloopers, and a “1994 Mode” that pixelated the screen to look like a mid-90s game, even if it’s not accurate.

There’s even a “Special Edition” DLC pack for the Steam version that comes with a prototype for the game that is a proof of concept with stuffed toys. While the whole experience is incredibly limited in what it has to offer, there was some effort and thought put into this game.

It’s obvious that the people behind this game were having fun making it, and it comes across. But when it comes down to it, you’re essentially watching a group of friends having fun making a dumb game with dumb jokes.

If the title or even the trailer don’t peak your interest, don’t even bother checking it out. If it weren’t for the fact that this game cost 75 cents when I bought it, which was the price while it was on sale at the time. Unfortunately, I don’t know if I can recommend it. Not unless you like similar “gimmick” games such as “Goat Simulator” or “Mother Simulator”.

Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2020/03/09/soldier-of-fortune-ii-double-helix-review-pc-xbox/

Due to the success of Soldier of Fortune, Raven Software soon started working on a sequel, and a mere 2 years later, Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix was released on May 20th, 2002. It was later ported to the original Xbox by Gratioutous Games. Considering how I feel about the PC version, I don’t know how SoFII would have done in the limitations of the original Xbox.

John Mullins returns, both the fictionalized character from the first game, and the real life John Mullins who was the main inspiration for said character who was brought on to consult and help have the game have a certain amount of accuracy. Considering that the second game is a lot more down to Earth and realistic, I’d say that a tad more of his advice and experience was used for this game than the last one.

The story starts in Prague in a prologue that takes place during the early years in John’s career. He is sent to Prague to get Dr. Piotr Ivanovich, one of the Soviet Union’s top biopreparat scientists who wants to defect in fear of his life and is willing to give up information in exchange for protection from the Soviet Union. After leaving the hotel they met in and escaping in an exciting car chase, the manage to get out of the country. 10 years later, and Mullins is now working for “The Shop” much like the last game.

With the information from Dr. Ivanovich, who now also works with “The Shop”, you are sent on a mission to prevent the usage of bio-chemical weapons that Dr. Ivanovich had been working on before he defected. The rest of the story is written like a pulpy Tom Clancy novel, filled with all of the clichés and plot points that you’d expect. You probably won’t remember a whole lot of it after you’ve finished, but is entertaining in the same way a so good it’s bad ’90s action film is as you’re watching it.

This time around the voice acting is not as enjoyably cheesy as the first games, with everyone being incredibly wooden and forgettable. However, a lot of the same actors have returned, which is nice.

The game runs of “ID Tech 3”, which is the Quake 3 engine, and the whole thing looks a bit like a mixed bag. Levels range from OK to decent at times. It doesn’t quite have something as appealing to look at like the giant castle which had a secret laboratory or the Tokyo skyline, but it still looks good for the most part. A lot of the levels have some pretty weather effect, such as rain, and levels do take place all over the world, so there is some great variety. Yet again Raven Software has taken an ID Software engine and made something alright for the most part. Except for one thing, the character models

Character models look a bit weird, but especially with their faces. When the characters are talking, their faces go into weird shapes that look like they’re going to tear apart at the seam. Half-Life did something similar back in 1998, fours years before SoF II. Maybe it’s because it looked simpler, but after the HD pack was released with Half-Life: Blue Shift the year before SoF II, which had better facial animation, SoF II just ends up looking weird.

Much like the first game, SoF II does come with the GHOUL damage system, but now upgraded to GHOUL 2.0, in which you can shoot the heads, arms, and legs off of enemies. Like the first game, I did come across a glitch in which after a bad guy got his head blown to pieces, but the guy was still running around trying to kill me. It was an unintentional piece of black humor.

The game also tries to flesh out the stealth sections by including mechanics where you can unlock doors with a lock-pick or cut tripwires, but it boils down to just pressing and holding E for a random amount of time that the game just decides on however it feels at that point in the game.

Some of the things that I complained about the first game have been improved. You can pick up health kits and it automatically replenishes your health just like the armor. Instead of an inventory, you can select certain items you are holding with the number keys. I’d still rather have specific keys for certain items that you;re holding, like G for grenades and N for the night vision. Overall, it’s better, which is nice. Speaking of items, you have Binoculars, Night Vision, and Thermal Vision.

SoF II comes with a stealth mechanic, although it’s borderline pointless. If you alert someone, an alarm goes off, and it stays on the entire section of the game that it’s used in, which means the enemies are constantly on alert for you. Since it’s incredibly easy to trip the alarm, the stealth is rendered completely pointless. There was only one level that it worked, and that in the prologue where you have to sneak Ivanovich out of the country.

Probably the biggest new feature is the Random Mission Generator, which generates a randomly generated map. Obvious, I know. The mode does come with a good variety of options to choose on, including the type of mission (escape, infiltration, assassination, and demolition), time of day, type of terrain (hills, snow, jungle, or desert), difficulty, and the ability to choose what items you want, or get whatever the mode decides to give you. The randomness is based on a random seed generator, so if you just so happened to like a level, you can save it for later. The levels end up looking a little bland, but that’s just because they’re randomly included.

SoF II comes with your standard arsenal for a First Person Shooter. You have your melee weapon with the Combat Knight. They can be thrown at enemies if you’re trying to stealth your way through a level, or are running low on ammo for your other weapons. They can be picked back up so you don’t have to run out of them. I’ve never really had low ammo, but then again I was playing on the lower difficulties because of how insanely difficult this game is. There are two handguns, two SMGs, three assault rifles, a grenade launcher, a rocket launcher, and 2 machine guns, one of which can also be found mounted in some levels.

Rounding out the arsenal are the grenades, which include the flashbang, smoke grenade, an incendiary grenade, and your regular grenades. A lot of the weapons come with add-ons that include things like laser sights and bayonets. It’s a nice, varied, and quite extensive selection of weapons. Sure, there are tons of inaccuracies that would send a gun nut up the wall, such as the way the grenade launcher reloads, but Soldier of Fortune was never really about being realistic, it was only about putting up the appearance of being realistic. The last game had a cyber ninja for fucks sake.

But by far, bot the most interesting and the most annoying weapon in the entire game is the “XM 29 SABR OICN”, which is supposed to be a long range weapon with an airburst grenade launcher with integrated night vision. Trying to switch between it being a grande launcher and automatic rifle is frustrating and is now worth using since you can just use the M4A1 with the night vision in your inventory.

Now comes the games major problems. Some of the earlier levels in the Single Player take place in Columbia, and they’re borderline impossible. The level is filled with foliage, and it’s difficult to see a lot of the enemies when they’re standing, and impossible when they’re crouching. The enemies are incredibly accurate with their aim, even if you’re trying to hide behind the same foliage that they are. The only way to hide is behind something solid, like a tree or a wall.

The enemies also frequently throw grenades, and the don’t seem to run out of them. This is also the only level with tripwires, so you have to deal with those taking off big chunks of your health, or even killing you if you’re low on health if you accidentally activate them. You could either cut them, or just jump over them. Just memorizing where they are and jumping over them is much quicker.

If the level wasn’t hard enough, there is also a helicopter that follows you around the level too, firing on you in scripted evens, and the only way to destroy it is at the end of one point during this section of the game. The entire section is having to deal with getting killed from every direction. The was one of the levels in the demo, and I wouldn’t have blamed people for this level putting them off from buying this game completely. If you can get passed this level without breaking your keyboard in frustration, then you deserve a medal. And some therapy.

The second half of the Columbia section has you meeting up with a team of marines, which brings up a whole new slew of problems. If you get too far away from them, either too far ahead or behind them, one of them yells “Execute him!”, and you die instantly. Sometimes, you don’t even hear a gunshot. I guess the in-universe reason is that the terrorists aren’t alerted to their and your presence, but it’s still obnoxious. The friendly characters aren’t very smart, but if you sit behind something and let them take out the enemies, it makes the level easier, but it also makes the level incredibly tedious.

There is another mission where you have to fight a helicopter, much like the first game, but only with the difficult cranked up to 11. You have to shoot the panels on the sides of the winds, exposing the engine in side. The helicopter can do tons of damage, so you’ll be constantly dying and quick loading. The team behind this game must have thought it was amazing, or had run out of time or budget, because the last level is also a helicopter fight, yet even more balls to the wall difficult.

Finally, there is the airport level. Years before Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2’s infamous airport scene, there was Soldier of Fortune 2. On this level, terrorists have taken over an airport in Switzerland, and because of this, there are civilians running around the level. If one of the civilians dies, game over, and you have to either start the level over again, or start from your last save.

That doesn’t sound so bad until you find out that when your enemies try and kill you, their AI is so bad that they will accidentally shoot through the civilians to try and kill you, resulting a game over. And the civilian AI is the worst of the bunch, as they keep getting in the way of the terrorists.

Couldn’t Raven Software come up with a reason to not have the civilians running around like chickens with their heads cut off? The game could have had the civilians locked in a room at the end of the level with the terrorists protecting the room, threatening to kill them, they could be hiding somewhere around the level, out of the way of both you and the enemies.

A Gold Edition of this game came out, and along with the typical bug fixes, it includes new content for the multiplayer, which is always a nice bonus.

This is going to be a lukewarm recommendation from me. While the fact that it’s a pretty good game, it’s insanely unfair difficulty makes it off-putting in a lot of ways. They didn’t even change the AI when patching the game. If there was one thing that I would change with this game, it would be the bullshit AI.

Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2019/11/17/soldier-of-fortune-payback-pc-ps3-360-review/

If you’re one of the few who has ever wondered what ever happened to the Soldier of Fortune franchise, your question has been answered in the most disappointing way possible. It’s sad to see a series go from reasonably high profile for time it was released to bargain bin trash in 5 years. The previous entries I reviewed here and here.

Soldier of Fortune: Payback was developed by Cauldron LTD, which put out the mediocre and forgettable game Chaser, which I previously reviewed, as well as going on to make a bunch of Cabela hunting games and a couple of games for the History Channel, and was published by Activision Value, which was the Activision subsidiary that put out budget title games, which is already a great sign for Payback’s quality.

Payback’s story has very little to do with the previous installments other than the fact that you play as a gun for hire. John Mullins, both the character and real life person, are nowhere to be found in the game itself or the development of the game. Instead, Payback’s main character is freelance mercenary Thomas Mason, a name so forgettable that I had to copy and paste it just so I wouldn’t forget it in the 3 seconds I had to look up from the plot description to type it in.

When the game starts, we find Mason on a routine escort mission shortly before it goes tits up, as the other freelancer who you were on the mission with suddenly kills the person you were sent in to extract, and also turns on you. I also forgot this other characters name, as I did with every other character in the game.

None of the characters have much of a personality, all of them being incredibly cliched, and all of which you’ve seen done a million times in a million other things and done a million times better. The only other character you spend a decent amount of time with other than the one you play as is Cassandra Dekker, which is only slightly less generic than Thomas Mason. She briefs you between missions, updating you on your mission goals.

The story is completely forgettable. I don’t know if I would say that it rips off Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, but both were published by Activision, with Payback coming out a little over a week after Modern Warfare, so I have to assume that when Modern Warfare was being made, Payback was rushed out the door as a budget title to ape off Call of Duty, but for those who couldn’t afford it but still wanted to play something like it.

It’s so much like the modern military era of games that plagued the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 generaion of consoles that when I search for Soldier of Fortune: Payback, it just recommends those games to me when I search for Soldier of Fortune: Payback in Google. I know this is technically a spoiler, but the game ends on a terrible cliched plot twist and cliffhanger. I don’t know if someone behind the scenes was expecting this game to do well, but I do wish I had that optimism.

The series defining series returns, being able to blow limbs and heads off of the enemies. This feature is mildly amusing, especially in the sea of games that were starting to become lazily cinematic and linear at this time. I guess it would be enough to sell a budget game, but at this point in video games, it’s not really impressive. And it doesn’t really help that the last two games from 5 or more years ago did it better.

This was apparently enough to get the game censored in Australia and banned in Germany. Which is extra hilarious in retrospect, because Australia got an R18+ rating a few years later in 2013 and the game would have totally passed with that rating, and the fact that it’s not even that realistic to begin with, which begs the question of how it even got banned to begin with. But I doubt that Activision would be bothered to re-release it in Australia, but it can be bought on GOG.

However, the series second (unofficial) feature makes a return, with the enemies that are unfairly accurate. Apparently, this is a series staple. But unlike the first two games, I’m assuming that this has to do with the fact that this game cost nothing to make and had to be rushed out the door rather than a group of people allegedly (by me) hating their audience.

It also doesn’t help that the game features several boss fights where the boss is just a bullet sponge, and the boss just looks like one of the regular bad guys. When mixed with the unfair difficulty, these fights just come across as way to difficult. On top of that, the game spawns in enemies when your fighting said bosses. Prepare to trial and error your way through these sections for about 45 minutes to an hour per boss battle. Who knows, you might luck out and manage to get the boss stuck and kill them in a minute or two.

Also, like every FPS from this time period, it comes with regenerating health, so health packs and armor are no longer needed. I can’t really complain since I never really liked the health packs and armor from the last games. It helps streamline the game, making it quicker. Also, they finally made the G key throw grenades. It took a while for that to finally happen, but better late than never.

For some reason, enemies can grab you and turn you around to face them. The only thing that this did the first time this happened was confuse the fuck out of me when it happened. I guess it was to confused the player for a moment and add extra difficulty, but since the rest of the game is unfairly difficult, and this was just annoying, this really feels like an unnecessary gameplay feature.

Another good feature that this game has is the option to choose your load out of weapons before going into a mission. There’s a pretty decent selection guns, including several smaller firearms that can be dual wielded except for two. A couple of them come with an optional silencer, which are pretty useless. There a bunch of SMGs, two of which can be dual wielded, and they all come with optional scopes and silencers.

There are several assault rifles, and these guns come with the most optional add-ons, including various scopes, one having an optional silencer, another having a hand grip, and even one that has an attachable grenade launcher, which not only makes it the best and most effective addition, but it’s incredibly fun firing it into a group of people and watching their bodies, body parts, and blood fly around a room as the physics do their thing. There are also 4 shotguns, and one comes with an optional scope. I don’t know why a shotgun needs a scope, but OK.

On the more destructive side, there is a grenade launcher and rocket launcher. And just like the attachable grenade launcher for one of the assault rifles, running into a room and having random arms, legs, and torso shaped pieces strewn across the room is pretty fun.

Most of these guns feel exactly the same. They don’t have much recoil, but at least their as accurate as the enemy guns are. Finally, there is the selection of grenades, which include a hand grenade, a smoke grenade, and the Phosphorous Grenade, which is exclusive to the multiplayer. Since nobody is playing the multiplayer anymore, you’re probably never going to use this.

But for some bizarre unknown reason, a lot of these guns are exclusive to the console versions of Payback, and are only accessible on the PC through mods for the game. I don’t know why this is the case. I assume that the PC version was an afterthought and these guns had to be cut due to not being able to be finished in time. But thankfully they’re still in the game’s files.

Graphically, the game is OK look, but lacking in some areas. It has the browns you’d come to expect from “realistic” FPS games from that era. The game was actually developed on Cauldron’s in-house engine, much like Chaser, called the CloakNT engine.

Like the previous games, the game goes globe hopping, but this time all of the locations look a lot more samey because it the overuse of the brown filter. You have the deserts of Al Qa’im and Eshkashem, and the jungles of Mogaung, to not so interesting locations, like a brothel, a garage, and a night club. Aside from the mostly browns and muted greens, there are lots of samey looking building interiors. It really is a step down from the last two games.

Surprisingly, the game came with multiplayer, and on launch, it was actually mildly active. it came with the standard game modes that you would expect, such as Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Capture the Flag, but there were two other game modes, such as Demolition, which was a lot like Counter-Strike in that one team tries to plant a bomb, and the other team tries to prevent them from doing that, and Infiltration, in which one team has to get into the other team’s base to steal a briefcase and leave without the other team stopping them.

Soldier of Fortune: Payback is actually OK for a $5 – $10 bargain bin game, but I can’t recommend this to a whole lot of people, yet again, for it’s bullshit difficulty, now made worse by the fact it’s nowhere near as polished as the last two games. And the only ones who would be interested in this are fans of the Soldier of Fortune franchise and more obscure First Person Shooter fans who are morbidly curious.

Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2019/01/12/late-shift-2016-review/

You would think that in the age of high definition quality video and more money to spend developing games, that the few FMV (Full Motion Video) games that show up would have the same level of bizarre creativity that they did in the 90’s when CD’s became the hot new item. But it feels like that each and every FMV game is just taking advantage of the fact that they could copy movies and television to create something that just feels like anything else you could stream or rent online, which is a shame.

Our main protagonist is Matt, a college student who is working as a parking lot attendant as one night, he finds himself dragged into the criminal world of London when he is forced to work with a group of armed robbers looking to steal a valuable item that has gone up for auction. He ends up befriending one of the members of the group, a woman named May-Ling.

As a movie, Late Shift looks like your standard film. It doesn’t look terrible, but there’s nothing amazing to look at. It’s all well shot for what it is. The plot is bare bones, and it kinda has to be so the “choose-your-own-adventure” style choice system wouldn’t get too complicated. There isn’t any real gameplay to speak of. Every now and again a choice will pop up giving you 2 to 3 options to choose from that progress the game. Depending on your choices, this will lead to one of several endings.

Let’s face it, if this was just released as a movie, it wouldn’t do too well. It’s too by the numbers in terms of acting, plot, and everything else. It would be that film that would appear every now and again in someones “Recommended For You” feed on their streaming service of choice but not a lot of people would click on.

I don’t hate Late Shift. But when I can go back to the gold era of FMV’s and get something crazy, weird, and out there even if it’s a so-bad-it’s-good. And considering that some of those games even had other things, like actual gameplay in between the FMV, such as puzzles and action, the FMV felt more like a neat bonus, or hindrance on who you ask, rather than the focus of the game. And considering that the TV series Black Mirror has come out with it’s own choose-your-own-adventure with “Bandersnatch”, Late Shift can’t really hold a candle. Unfortunately, all this game does is fall into mediocrity, only to be forgotten hours after playing it.

https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2021/10/01/infliction-extended-cut-review/

Explore a home plagued by tragedy and uncover the heartbreaking secrets hidden within messages, artwork, household objects, and other vestiges of domestic life. Uncover clues and use items to unlock new paths and make discoveries while doing everything possible to avoid the malevolent presence inhabiting the residence. Hide under tables or beneath beds and harness light sources like camera flashes to stun the spirit and momentarily elude its pursuit.

From the first frame of the game, it’s incredibly obvious that Infliction is yet another P.T. clone in the vast tsunami of P.T. clones after the popularity of that demo spiked. And once you know that, you know exactly what to expect from the game. Looping rooms, a ghost woman, and blatantly obvious hints as to what the twist of the game is. I don’t even have to expand on what the game is about because P.T. clones have become such a cliche at this point, like with the the Amnesia and Slenderman: The 8 Pages clones before it. But let’s take a dive into the game anyway, shall we.

Unfortunately, Infliction comes with a lot of small niggling problems. At one point I assumed that I had to move a hospital gurney to get into a vent, since it was clearly in the way of an open vent. But I actually had to move some boxes in another room that were completely covering a vent that I didn’t even know as there until I looked up a walkthrough. The ghosts/monsters/demons that appear throughout the game can’t actually kill you. You either die and respawn, possibly wasting your time with trying to get passed them depending on how you’re doing at the game, or one of them kills you to progress the story.

There have been a few times where merely opening a door knocked me into the wall, disorienting me for a few seconds before I realized what had happened and reorienting myself. I also got stuck in another area where I thought that I had to click the interact button with a pair of doors, but I had to walk through them. I don’t know how the game expected me to suddenly know to push up against the door to open them instead of just pressing the interact button.

Plus the walking speed feels like walking through molasses. I’m not expecting a Olympic sprinter, but being able to walk faster than an arthritic 80 year old would be nice.

All of these tiny problems add up and take what would have been a thoroughly tedious but forgettable experience and make it feel annoying and like you’re wasting your time.

But the game is not without some good qualities, as the game received a huge update to the game called “Inflicted: The Extended Cut” (which is the version that I played). It adds New Game+ that makes the game harder by increasing the amount of times the ghost appears and her difficulty, changes up the puzzles and adds new ones, and even adds another area to explore, and even a chapter select for players to jump into an area and replay it.

It also adds bonus content which includes concept art and videos of unused content that never made it into the game. It’s nice to see some of the behind the scenes stuff for the game, since it’s such a thing for games is a rarity, but even that doesn’t do much for the game.

There is an alternate ending, but I felt no need to go back and play through the game again on New Game+.

This is equivalent to one of those Direct-To-DVD or Made For TV movies that jump on a popular trend, but are poorly made generic. I’m so sick of P.T. inspired games with slow walking, looping rooms, and predictable plot filled with predictable scares. The only good thing that I can say about Inflicted is that I’ve played worse games. I know that’s and incredibly backhanded compliment, but it pretty much sums up my experience with the game.

Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2018/04/16/mod-corner-katana-max-payne-review/

Katana is an ambitious mod for the first Max Payne, introducing a world and characters that are surprisingly fleshed out. Obviously inspired by the likes of The Matrix, Ghost In The Shell, Blade Runner, and Akira, so much so that the mod uses the soundtrack from Akira directly, as well as audio from several other sources, Despite that, the mod manages to feel like it’s own world.

The story is pretty thorough, so much so that the mod comes with a PDF explaining the story and characters in depth. The mod feels like it takes place in the middle of a story already in progress, so even though the PDF isn’t necessary to enjoy the mod, it gives the mod a lot of context.

But to summarize it the best i can, you play as an unnamed character who was raised as nobility, and is a trained soldier who became an assassin. His real memories were replaced by false ones by a shady organization called “The Order”. Our main character is now on the run from “The Order”, who has it’s eyes everywhere, and is now being hunted by them. As he makes his escapes, he comes across characters who seem to know a lot more than they’re letting on. All of this story was way more than was either necessary or expected for a small project like this, but is gladly appreciated.

Since the mod is called Katana, it’s pretty obvious that one of the new weapons for this mod is a Katana. To show it off, the mod implements another mod, which is Kung Fu 3.0. This means that hand-to-hand combat features a lot of acrobatic moves, such as running up walls and leaps. The only time hand-to-hand combat is a problem is with boss battles. The first boss requires melee combat, and takes away your guns during it. I’m pretty sure it does that to show off the combat.

And when the boss hits you, he takes off huge chunks of your health. You’ll be using up your pills pretty quickly, and will probably have to reload quite a bit. Thankfully, the rest of the boss battles let you use your guns. While this does make the bosses bullet sponges and easier to defeat, I’d rather that then having to reload a thousand times, wasting hours of my life.

Graphically, the whole mod is pretty impressive for a tiny team of modders. Most of the levels have lots of smaller details scattered around them, along with the odd easter egg. Some of the set pieces in the mod stand out and are fun to experience.

For some reason, cutscenes are unskippable, which means if you have to reload, you have to re-watch it over. And if you’re having difficulty with an enemy or forgot to save in a while, it’s going to get incredibly tedious. The base game lets you skip the cutscenes, so i don’t know why this mod doesn’t give you the ability to do it.

Katana surprisingly comes with voice acting, and it’s pretty amateurish and clearly recorded on several microphones of varying quality by several people who aren’t professional voice actors. But for a mod that came out around 2003, there wasn’t much to compete with, and it makes for a nice addition, especially when other mods at the time didn’t have it.

With a mix of unique ambition and a surprisingly high quality execution, Katana is definitely worth checking out. If this mod had been picked up and was done by a professional team, it could have been something interesting. But since it remains a relatively unknown mod for Max Payne that has a “To Be Continued…” ending, it’s probably going to fade off into obscurity. Considering that Max Payne is relatively cheap on Steam and pretty easy to get working on modern systems, this mod is definitely worth checking out.

Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2018/01/21/mod-corner-mi-new-dawn-2005-max-payne-2-the-fall-of-max-payne-review/

Throughout the history of video games, there have been a metric fuckton of video games based on films. From infamous companies like LJN flooding the market on the NES/SNES, to the terrible budget games you’d see on the Wii and PC, and numerous cheaply made ad-filled “games” taking up the Android and Apple online stores. There are hundreds of them, and 90% of them are trash pumped out either in time to meet the movies release date or just to have a brands name slapped onto a product. So the 2005 Max Payne 2 mod, M:I – New Dawn, being one of the better ones despite being a fan made project is depressing.

Mission: Impossible – New Dawn, or M:I – New Dawn for short, is a mod for Max Payne 2, that was released in 2005. M:I – New dawn tells it’s own story, but it’s pretty obviously based on the Mission: Impossible films starring Tom Cruise that were incredibly popular at the time.

After an F-16 crashed over Utah, everything looks like an accident at first, but as the wreck is recovered, it is discovered that the pilot is gone, and the new generation of warhead that was on the F-16 is gone with him. Ethan Hunt is sent in to figure out where the man and warhead have disappeared to, and prevent said warhead from getting into the wrong hands. Soon, Ethan finds himself in the middle of something bigger than he first thought and has no one he can trust or turn to. The plot is pretty much a generic early 2000’s action movie, but it’s good enough to get the mod going and keep you paying attention.

For the most part, the gameplay is the same as Max Payne 2, but the character does have an ability called Gun Kata. Take from another mod called House of Mirrors, based on the film Equilibrium, which is where the ability comes from, and is that movies excuse to have slick action scenes by combining guns and martial arts. You have to go out of you way to select it and it only work on the dual MP5Ks, so there really isn’t a reason to use it.

My only real complaint is some of the level design, such as one area in a level having you run towards enemies shooting at you so you can get to a subway station, which comes across as counter-intuitive. This only happens once in the entire mod, so it’s not that big of a problem. Also, for some reason, sometimes the dialogue of a cutscene will play even though you skipped the cutscene. It seems like it happens when you skip a cutscene too quickly, but it happens at random.

M:I – New Dawn is about 2 hours at most, depending on player skill and difficulty, so it won’t take much longer than an afternoon. Plus it’s a free quality mod, so it’s not going to cost you anything other than your time.

Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2019/12/11/daze-before-christmas-review/

Much like there is a lot of Christmas themed media, such as movies, books, music, there was bound to be some Christmas themed video game to try and make bank off of the holiday. And one of those games was Daze before Christmas. And already I have a complaint. Why isn’t is called “The Daze Before Christmas”? Because I just naturally call it that anyway and it just sounds nicer. But I digress, let’s jump into the game.

Our story follows Santa Claus, right as December rolls around, and Louse the Mouse has dastardly plans to prevent Christmas from happening. So Louse the Mouse gets help from his motley crew of creatures, which features Mr. Weather, The TimeKeeper, and the Evil Snowman (amazingly original names, I know), as they execute their plans when Santa is asleep. The Evil Snowman scared the all of the elves away, and The TimeKeeper stole parts from all of Santa’s machines. But that wasn’t enough for Louse the Mouse, as he stole all of the kids presents, and curse them all with a spell. When Santa wakes up, he finds that everything is not right, and has to spend the next 24 days before Christmas making everything right.

The manual puts it a little more eloquently as a rhyming poem.

Bizarrely, the Mega Drive/Genesis version was exclusive to Australia of all countries, and the SNES version had exactly one person porting it over to that console to get it released on time, and that version was exclusive to both Australia and Europe. You would think that something as specific and niche as a Christmas themed platformer would be released in more countries so it could recoup the cost the development of something so specific, but alas, only Australia and Europe were blessed with the release of Daze Before Christmas. From what I hear, America was going to get the SNES version, but the U.S. Division of Sunsoft was shut down before they could release it.

The whole game is pretty short. Sure, there might be 24 levels to represent the 24 days that it takes for Santa to save Christmas, but each is only 2 or 3 minutes at most, and that’s if you don’t screw up, which is rare. Screwing up is kinda difficult to do in this game since the whole game is pretty easy. The boss battles are a little more difficult, since it requires memorizing a pattern unique to easy boss, but those are pretty easy too. The harder difficulties aren’t too hard in terms of difficulty either. That’s probably because it’s aimed at children, so I can’t really complain about the difficulty.

The game comes with all of your standard sidescroller elements from the time. You have a health bar, represented by 5 Santa hats, lives, represented by Santa’s Face, and points, which you can get by picking up Blue Presents, throwing presents into children’s chimneys (I’ll be talking about this specifically later on), and defeating enemies.

There are some power-ups that you can collect too. The Lightning Bolt that let’s you throw fire, which can be used in snow filled levels to help your reindeer escape. However, the most noteworthy powerup is the Tea, which lets you transform into the Anti-Claus. I’ve also seen it referred to as a “potion” in the manual along with it being called a tea, as well as a coffee, so I’ll be using those interchangeably.

Apparently you can destroy all of the presents that Santa created when you’re the Anti-Claus, preventing you from getting more points, and the children from getting their presents. Although I never really used the Anti-Claus that much since regular Santa has a more useful (albeit short) ranged attack.

The camera feels way too zoomed in, and I’ve accidentally jumped on something in the level that hurts you or into a void that straight up kills you and takes a life away, or accidentally getting in the way of an enemies attack or running into an enemy because I couldn’t see where I was jumping or running.

There is a two-player option, although isn’t not all that fun. It’s kind of similar to that of the original Super Mario Bros for the NES. Each player takes over every other level, or if you die. Unless you had no other games at the time, I don’t see anyone playing this mode. And since it’s incredibly easy to find a lot of the classic sidescrollers from the time with a 2-player mode, I imagine it’s very hard to convince anyone that they should play Daze Before Christmas over anything else.

The game comes with infinite continues, making dying a bit pointless. The only thing it effects are the points, resetting it to zero when you lose all of your lives, so unless you’re the type of person who wants to try and get the highest score possible, it shouldn’t matter too much.

There are a few mildly amusing things found throughout the game, such as a present wrapping machine that you go through that wraps Santa in a box and wrapping, and a few of the loading for screens have some nice and funny pixel art. It adds some nice flourish to the game, but it doesn’t really save the rest of the game from being underwhelming.

The music ranges from forgettable and mediocre to actually kinda catchy, but you’re not going to remember it outside of playing the game. Probably the best music is when you play as Anti-Claus. It’s all upbeat and jazzy.

Weirdly enough, every couple of levels are broken up by a section where you have to drop presents that you’ve collected in the last couple of levels into the chimneys of all the good boys and girls, all while having to avoid whatever happens to flying through the air. While it’s not weird that Santa does this, it’s weird that this is not near the end of the game where, you know, it would be Christmas Eve, and an appropriate time for Santa to be doing this. It just make it seem like he’s dropping off presents all through December instead of just on Christmas Eve. It’s a fun section to play, and the developers were probably just using it to break up the levels, but I feel like that’s what the boss levels should be for.

The best part of the game is that some of the sprite work can be quite nice, and the best of it can be seen as the intro screen to each of the levels.

Daze Before Christmas might have some decent ideas and a nice sense of humor, but it can’t escape the fact that it’s just an average sidescroller. Considering how few good Christmas games there are, there’s not much choice for something to play around the holidays, with most games just having a Christmas coat of paint that only appear when it actually gets close Christmas, and that’s if you’re lucky. So if you’re in the mood to play something jolly and festive for the holidays, then you could a lot worse than Daze Before Christmas.

Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2019/04/29/swat-4-the-stetchkov-syndicate-2006-game-review/

SWAT 4 must have sold pretty well upon it’s release, because less than a year later, an expansion pack called The Stetchkov Syndicate was released.

Unlike the base game, Sketchkov Syndicate has a single storyline tying all of the missions together. In this expansion, you’ll be tracking down the Eastern European crime family known only as The Stetchkov Syndicate, a mob of arms dealers. Throughout the campaign, you’ll be moving from people who’ve bought the weapons and drugs labs to dealing with the cartel themselves. It’s certainly nice to see some larger scale crimes being tackled instead of just small individual ones.

The gameplay for The Stetchkov Syndicate is pretty much the game as the base game. Picking up guns as evidence, taking down bad guys, handcuffing everyone you come across, and reporting it all back to HQ. The key difference between the base game and the expansion is several new types of equipment for you to take into a mission, but for some reason, they’re only usable in the expansion and not the base game.

Rounding out the new arsenal includes the 5.7x28mm Sub machine Gun, Colt Accurized Rifle, 5.66mm Light Machine Gun, and 40x46mm Grenade Launcher. The Grenade Launcher comes with the Triple Baton Round, which ejects three interlocking batons constructed of polymerized rubber, as well as projectile versions of the grenades, such as CS Gas Grenade Round, a Flashbang Round, and a Stinger Grenade Round.

Secondary weapons include the 9mm Machine Pistol and Mark 18.50 Semiautomatic Pistol, along with the Cobra Stun Gun, which is a new and improved version of the stun gun, and can hold two electrodes at the same time instead of the one.

The new Tactical Equipment includes the Ammo Pouch and Lightstick. Along with new Protection Equipment that includes Night Vision Goggles and the option to have no armor, which allows the player to be able to do things quicker, such as basic movement along with being able to do things such as lock-picking, door wedging, restraining people, etc, faster.

The Stetchkov Syndicate also introduces a new multiplayer mode, Smash & Grab. The suspects must collect the briefcase and take it to the exit before the timer runs out. The officers must stop the suspects from reaching the exit with the briefcase. If a suspect is arrested, 30 seconds are deduced from the game clock; if a suspect is killed or arrested carrying the briefcase, the case stays where it is dropped. Officers cannot pick up the briefcase.

Co-op has a few new additions too, you can run on custom missions and with up to ten players per game, which can further be split into two completely separate teams (red and blue) with a leader each. This is not similar to single player teams where an element leader controls both teams.

Since I couldn’t mention everything in the SWAT 4 review since it’s over 2,500 words long and it was already way too long for me to add even more too it, I’ll briefly go over some minor things here. The fake ads located around the levels are actually pretty funny if you take a second to look at them. The environmental detail is so good, that even the computers located around a level do stuff, like go to a screensaver if you’re in a level long enough, or blue screen if they’re near enough to an explosion or take bullet damage.

Unfortunately, just like the base game, Stetchkov Syndicate has a lot of the exact same problems as SWAT 4 does. SWAT members being taken out incredibly easily, accidentally killing a civilian when trying to fire upon a terrorist, enemies clipping through a wall and being able to kill you. There is even a level with bombs and a count down timer like SWAT 4.

It’s a bit disappointing that a lot of these problems weren’t fixed or smoothed over at all with patches or with the expansion pack. Maybe I wouldn’t be so angry at the level filled with bombs on timers if the entire game wasn’t ball-bustingly hard.

The amount of levels this expansion adds shows just how few levels the base game had, and that most of it’s length was entirely due to the previously mentioned difficulty. I just wish this expansion pack could have added some difficulty beyond the points required to finish a level.

If you liked SWAT, then Stetchkov Syndicate is definitely for you. But if the engagingly inconsistent AI of literally everyone makes you want to hit a hole into your monitor like the first game did, maybe give this a skip.