There are games out there that have a cult following, most of which you presume deserve so as they are hidden gems. Tis could be something like Shadow Warrior (1997), Blood, Get Even, XIII (2003), and what have you. But THIS is lost on me. Why people like this game so much, is something I can't figure out and probably never will. It's not a bad game, but my god is it slow and clunky.

It's an FPS, probably one of the slowest. If I had to describe it, it would be Half-Life, but it's on Mars, it's slower, and the lore and world is way more boring. It takes place in the future where workers of a corporation known as Ultor decide to rebel against them given the incredibly poor working conditions and sickness going around.

In terms of gameplay, it is very much like Half-Life. All the weapons you carry have some kind of secondary like Shadow Warrior (1997), except most are useless.

You have a Baton which is slow, doesn't do much damage, and the secondary, a taser, requires batteries and it guzzles the whole thing before you ever actually stun an enemy. A pistol with a silencer as a secondary that you only have to use once in a stealth section. It nerfs the pistol so badly it will take maybe 6 shots before you kill anything.

There are two assault rifles and snipers. Once you acquire the second of both guns there is no reason to return to the first because they're that much better. To be fair, these are the two most practical in the whole game. The assault rifles fires like normal, but has secondary for more accurate shots at long range. However, this is almost worthless because you get an SMG with an assault rifle secondary that takes the same ammo. (These weapons are a fucking mess.)

A shotgun which functions and looks exactly like the one from Half-Life. A railgun which is a railgun. Then there are the three most useless weapons in the game. The flame thrower and rocket launcher, while not bad weapons, are useless due to how scarce ammo is. Then there's the riot shield. It is so terrible it will take you 13 hits before you kill an enemy. The only reason this weapon seems to exist is because you need it to avoid getting insta-killed by an enemy with a rail gun.

Now one thing I think most people associate Red Faction with is the geo-mod technology which this game is the earliest use of. This is something that allows the player to blow holes in walls, floors and just about anything, allowing some advantages in game. Is what I would say if it did. There is almost no scenario where blowing open a floor or wall gives you some kind of tactically advantage. Technologically impressive, tactically unnecessary.

I keep saying how slow the game and that is very apparent in the movement which feels too slow for the kind of game on display, there is no enemy variety with you fighting the same Ultor enemies over and over again, the level design is pretty flat, and the only thing that keeps the game from being incredibly boring are the two stealth and vehicle sections.

The stealth is poor and the mechanics established are pointless most of the time. It's the most basic stealth in that you wear a disguise, keep your distance from guards and cameras, and keep your pistol holstered to avoid detection. That's basically it. There are only two missions and they're very straight forward. Well, except one.

In the second stealth mission you have to get to Cryptek's secret lab and you need a access card to get through. To get this, you need to get it from the administrator, but you can't get into his office if you just b-line straight to it because the guards will be alerted. It turns out that you have to receive a brain from a room that's out of your way, give it to the surgeon in OR, take it to cryogenics, to which then you can get into the admins office as you need the admins signature. If you don't know about this beforehand then you'll be lost as to what to do.

The vehicle sections are actually not bad and allows you to blow up and kill many enemies. These mostly serve as a way to get somewhere, not that different from the vehicle sections in Half-Life 2. Except these vehicles actually control much better, oddly enough.

If you wanna play a good version of this, just play Half-Life.

This game is supposed to be a reboot of the original Dead to Rights. Not sure why this exist since most never really cared for the original or the DTR franchise in general. I will give this game the benefit in that it has decent voice acting, over-the-top, brutal takedowns, decent graphics for its time (although hasn't aged well), and a decent story that's an improvement over the original. My only complaint is how underdeveloped the characters are, which is shame since they have potential to be good characters.

Unfortunately, that's all I can really say that this reboot does right because this game is worse than the original. As I said, the story is decent and the visuals don't look all that good now, but the gameplay is what really holds this game back from being at least decent.

Where the original was ripping off Max Payne (not just in gameplay but also plot) this reboot decides to be yet another generic third-person shooter from the late 2000s that clearly takes "inspiration" from Gears of Wars. Despite that "inspiration", the combat is very boring, mainly because of how easy it is and how clunky and unbalanced the shooting is since the enemies are bullet-sponges. Funniest thing about the gunplay is how broken the blind fire is since it hits enemies dead on meaning it's more accurate than aiming.

This game also poorly attempts to combine the elements of third-person shooting and beat'em up. This is a combo that the Dead to Rights franchise has been trying to make work since day one, but it never has since previous games would abruptly have you enter an area with no weapons and fight people; I think the one thing that amazes me is the inclusion of a combo list, which isn't necessary since the basic combos do just fine against enemies. The beat'em mechanics also happen at the same time as gun fights, which just showcases how bad the AI is since those with no weapon will run straight towards you allowing you to gun them down and some will stand completely still. I even had some spawn behind me.

There's also some other inconveniences like how there's no grenade indicator or the fact that when you aim down with the sniper, it zooms in on the crossairs instead of switching to a scope view.

Now, one staple of the DTR franchise is bullet time, which has been turned into Focus mode. Focus mode is dull to use in comparison to bullet time since it seems to be nothing more than a crutch for the player since you take less damage, do more damage, and get headshots more easily.

It's not surprising that this game killed this franchise. In fact, what surprises me more is how long this franchise went on for, especially considering how little they improved over each new entry. Dead to Rights: Retribution is bad, and like many reboots that came before, failed to take the franchise to new heights. I have no doubt that this franchise will forever be ingrained as Max Payne's less talented cousin who dreamed of being just as cool as him.

RIP

Anna is a game I found way back in 2012 when I saw the likes of Pewdiepie and Markiplier making Let's Plays on it. When I saw this on PS Now, I somehow remembered it and wondered why no one really talked about it much. After playing it, I can see why.

Anna is a puzzle, horror game. While there are many horror games that have these elements, the game is dedicated to the idea of puzzle more than anything. What I mean is that, this game is more of a puzzle game with horror elements than an actual horror game and not a good one.

This game is probably one of the most boring horror games I've ever played and I have yet to play Ju-On: The Grudge. While it has decent atmosphere, much like Ju-On (a literal haunted house simulator) nothing ever hurts you. Things just change around you, but nothing ever hurts or attacks you. In fact, nothing ever actually poses any sort of threat.

On the puzzle side of things, it's not all bad. Some of the puzzles are actually pretty good like the colored leaves puzzle. However, some are outright confusing mainly because they have no indication on how you would solve them. For example, there's a part where you have to clear dark fog in a room using a lantern, but it isn't pure enough to get rid of it. So, you have to take the two color leaves that you used in the previous puzzle, put them in a mantel, and crushed them up to create electrum dust to make the light more pure. In no way does the game indicate that you can use the leaves again as all the other leaves burned to ash.

I think the stupidest thing about this game is the story. You're suppose to unravel the story as you progress, but it's not worth it. So to summarize as best as I can, the plot is that a man with amnesia goes to a sawmill, where the man remembers killing his real wife after she defiled Anna's statue. At the end of the game he finds the statue, along with dolls of his children, in a small chamber. As the tunnel to the chamber caves in, he realizes that he will stay in the chamber forever, but he does not care because he has "Anna" with him. This isn't some joke, all this happened because a man fell in love with a damn statue, which is probably one of the dumbest plots to any video game. Now this is suppose to be the true ending as the game has eight different endings, but don't worry if you don't want to waste your time, the game isn't long as it takes about half an hour to beat if you know what you're doing.

With that out of the way, let's talk about the other aspects of this game. Graphically the game looks cheap, even on PC and looks like someone turned the resolution of the textures down. The soundtrack is decent and when I played this game, I thought there was only one track that plays, which was the same acoustic track over and over again. Upon further research, I found out that there are 11 tracks it's just that they only play one track while solving puzzles. And while it sounds nice and gives off a warm and calm atmosphere, I'd like to hear more than just that. The movement is sluggish as it feels like the character has three legs. Finally, the sound design is also bad as some sound effects sound too compressed or just a little too loud.

In short, if you want a puzzle horror game that's actually engaging, just play something like Omori, or Witch's House, or Mad Father, or Corpse Party, or any other puzzle-based horror game that's far more interesting than this.