Hyperion96
32 reviews liked by Hyperion96
Devil May Cry
2001
"Devil May Cry's a Rockin, don't come a knockin baby yeah!"
So for a long time this was my favourite game ever and was the start of my solidification into a hardcore Capcom fan which has continued to this day. When this came out I was around 18 and a friend had bought it. We played it together and seeing a leather clad biker girl smash through a bar, a gothic castle and uppercutting a marionette with a sword then juggling it with dual wielding pistols was, at the time, the coolest thing ever. I knew this game inside and out speed running it, learning every move, or collecting over a million red orbs because I could. One weekend when I had the house to myself that same friend came and stayed over playing all night by setting up two PlayStation 2's next to two TVs so we could both play Devil May Cry on our own saves hunting S ranks until we had every one on every difficulty level including Dante Must Die. I loved it.
The thing is I'd never played a game like this before. It's roots starting as Resident Evil 4 before changing into it's own series are pretty evident in aspects of it's design. The gothic horror atmosphere slightly underlining it's occasionally camp and over the top exterior gelled for an extremely unique experience. I've seen a lot of reviews on here being pretty negative about it and you know what? I get it, I do. The static camera angle and controls built around it for people who having not played it during that era wouldn't care for or have the patience to learn would feel dated. The thing is though, the game is built around it fundamentally when you learn how to use it on it's terms. Enemies even off screen give audio attack cues, the controls are built around directions and angles in relation to the camera but are also designed for angle changes when you know how. It's a clever game for it's time and the mixture of basic exploration, puzzles and scattered battle arenas was just a fun mix as the game understands the importance of downtime.
It's also an impressive looking and sounding game. Remember this came out only a year after the PS2 launch and has these large levels, detailed character and enemy models and insane boss fights in which each feels like a real event to behold. I love the enemy designs such as shadow cats that launch spikes, incorporeal grim reapers and giant lava spiders. Though the boss fights do repeat they are such big spectacles and some of the hardest challenges in the game with some insane music. Speaking of which whilst the later soundtracks went a lot more metal with vocal tracks the original game has this mixture of gothic haunting melodies that could easily be in a horror game to sort of electronic rock tracks and just stands out a lot more from it's later sequels due to it.
Coming back to this in 2012 for the remaster and all the trophies then playing it again now and I still love it. Yes it's terribly cheesy with laughable lip synching, yes it's fixed camera can make the action feel unwieldly and yes it's probably one of those games you had to be there for....
....but it's the best Devil May Cry game though.
+ Horror and action roots mixed.
+ Combat and boss battles are exciting.
+ Great music and visuals.
+ Sometimes funny, sometimes intentionally.
- Fixed camera angle can take getting used to.
So for a long time this was my favourite game ever and was the start of my solidification into a hardcore Capcom fan which has continued to this day. When this came out I was around 18 and a friend had bought it. We played it together and seeing a leather clad biker girl smash through a bar, a gothic castle and uppercutting a marionette with a sword then juggling it with dual wielding pistols was, at the time, the coolest thing ever. I knew this game inside and out speed running it, learning every move, or collecting over a million red orbs because I could. One weekend when I had the house to myself that same friend came and stayed over playing all night by setting up two PlayStation 2's next to two TVs so we could both play Devil May Cry on our own saves hunting S ranks until we had every one on every difficulty level including Dante Must Die. I loved it.
The thing is I'd never played a game like this before. It's roots starting as Resident Evil 4 before changing into it's own series are pretty evident in aspects of it's design. The gothic horror atmosphere slightly underlining it's occasionally camp and over the top exterior gelled for an extremely unique experience. I've seen a lot of reviews on here being pretty negative about it and you know what? I get it, I do. The static camera angle and controls built around it for people who having not played it during that era wouldn't care for or have the patience to learn would feel dated. The thing is though, the game is built around it fundamentally when you learn how to use it on it's terms. Enemies even off screen give audio attack cues, the controls are built around directions and angles in relation to the camera but are also designed for angle changes when you know how. It's a clever game for it's time and the mixture of basic exploration, puzzles and scattered battle arenas was just a fun mix as the game understands the importance of downtime.
It's also an impressive looking and sounding game. Remember this came out only a year after the PS2 launch and has these large levels, detailed character and enemy models and insane boss fights in which each feels like a real event to behold. I love the enemy designs such as shadow cats that launch spikes, incorporeal grim reapers and giant lava spiders. Though the boss fights do repeat they are such big spectacles and some of the hardest challenges in the game with some insane music. Speaking of which whilst the later soundtracks went a lot more metal with vocal tracks the original game has this mixture of gothic haunting melodies that could easily be in a horror game to sort of electronic rock tracks and just stands out a lot more from it's later sequels due to it.
Coming back to this in 2012 for the remaster and all the trophies then playing it again now and I still love it. Yes it's terribly cheesy with laughable lip synching, yes it's fixed camera can make the action feel unwieldly and yes it's probably one of those games you had to be there for....
....but it's the best Devil May Cry game though.
+ Horror and action roots mixed.
+ Combat and boss battles are exciting.
+ Great music and visuals.
+ Sometimes funny, sometimes intentionally.
- Fixed camera angle can take getting used to.
Guardians of the Galaxy has to be one of the most dynamic and awesome IP's in the Marvel catalog, but something's been nagging me about the franchise:
Both the movies and this game have jam-tastic 80's music that ties the atmosphere together, but how does that translate to comic form? Are we supposed to imagine 80's music when reading the comics, or are the comics entirely different than the animated mediums? This question was brought to you by a guy who's never read a comic before.
Anyway, this game is pretty great! It took a while to get accustomed and effective to the combat system, but it eventually reaches a point of perfectly balanced difficulty. The music was perfect, obviously, and the story really surprised me as well! I always enjoy these characters, and they are very well acted this time around, and have some truly hilarious banter. We probably could've used some more character development for Gamora and Groot, but considering that anyone who's played this game has also probably seen the movie trilogy (tetralogy?), you can have so much fun with these characters without the need of extensive background info. Also, I think it would be really nice to leave this game without any sort of sequel or tie-in. It's a really good experience that shouldn't be tainted by a larger story.
Both the movies and this game have jam-tastic 80's music that ties the atmosphere together, but how does that translate to comic form? Are we supposed to imagine 80's music when reading the comics, or are the comics entirely different than the animated mediums? This question was brought to you by a guy who's never read a comic before.
Anyway, this game is pretty great! It took a while to get accustomed and effective to the combat system, but it eventually reaches a point of perfectly balanced difficulty. The music was perfect, obviously, and the story really surprised me as well! I always enjoy these characters, and they are very well acted this time around, and have some truly hilarious banter. We probably could've used some more character development for Gamora and Groot, but considering that anyone who's played this game has also probably seen the movie trilogy (tetralogy?), you can have so much fun with these characters without the need of extensive background info. Also, I think it would be really nice to leave this game without any sort of sequel or tie-in. It's a really good experience that shouldn't be tainted by a larger story.
Haunting Ground
2005
A must play for people who consider themselves fans of the horror genre, as creative in it’s approach to the gameplay as it is terrifying, its a real test of mettle and how much you can handle, it tosses away conventional regular enemies to instead focus on a posse of stalker enemies who chase you around as you try to desperately advance through various levels, speaking of those, it’s amazing the amount of interesting environment you can pack with such a simple setting, some later levels are just jaw-dropping in terms of atmosphere and detail. It’s a true spiritual successor to RE1, but you’re not playing a person capable of being able to shoot any threat that comes their away, quite the opposite in fact, Fiona can and will succumb to the stress placed upon her by enemies which leads to a variety of panicked states, she only has her wits and some piss poor attacks to maneuver or defend herself, the German Shepard she rescues, Hewie, does the real carrying but even then he can only temporarily stop enemies and not permanently incapacitate them, add to that the fact that the stalkers in this game don’t have a habit of giving up easily on chasing you and you have a great basis for some truly terrifying moment to moment gameplay.
Oh yeah, the story is also interesting and holds it’s own quite well, Fiona might not say much but her expressions show a sea of emotions, seriously the facial animations for the game are pretty fucking good and they add a lot to the cutscenes, one of the most terrific scenes is pretty dependent on em! As for other aspects I really like how an act of unwarranted kindness from Fiona, even in the depths of hell, is what ends up saving her, I think it’s a neat way to shine a light on an aspect of Fiona’s personality.
Oh yeah, the story is also interesting and holds it’s own quite well, Fiona might not say much but her expressions show a sea of emotions, seriously the facial animations for the game are pretty fucking good and they add a lot to the cutscenes, one of the most terrific scenes is pretty dependent on em! As for other aspects I really like how an act of unwarranted kindness from Fiona, even in the depths of hell, is what ends up saving her, I think it’s a neat way to shine a light on an aspect of Fiona’s personality.
Death by Degrees
2005
You would probably get more dopamine from putting your hand in boiling water than playing this shit.
"ichiban you are like a dragon to me"
"Kiryu i'll never forget your infinite wealth"
"Kiryu i'll never forget your infinite wealth"
Final Fantasy VIII
1999
One of the finest in the series and a quality evolution. Squall is such a dick but you can't help relating. Maybe it was the FMVs, that unforgettable opening cinematic. Maybe it was the way it took the best FF ideas from previous games and improved on them in every way (howls of protest ensue but I don't care.) Whatever it was it worked. Wonderfully.
Two of my favourite platformers remastered together in a nice bundle. I'll never get tired of returning to these. When will we ever get Klonoa 3? :(
Resident Evil
2014
For all the survival horror that I've dabbled with over the past few years, this is the title that made me the most cognizant of the "survival" aspect. It’s this elaborate balancing act of juggling every limited resource at your disposal: ammo for bosses and enemies, kerosene to burn necessary corpses after downing zombies to secure routes, health items as fail safes, ink ribbons to save when deemed necessary, and most importantly, inventory space to minimize backtracking with the bare minimum (knowing what you’re likely to use up as you progress so you have enough room to forage). What’s key to all of this is that it’s often worthwhile not downing zombies at all to not only conserve ammo, but also prevent the possibility of a more dangerous Crimson Head when kerosene is not only limited but requires further planning for refueling and additional inventory slots (lighter + flask). It’s punishing, but in the best way possible; damage and death become instruments of observation to properly plan out backtracking and understanding exactly what goes where. Perhaps my favorite example of this in action was abusing the various doors in a room connecting the shed corridor with a safe room; by quickly going in and out of the entrances, I could not only reset a Hunter’s awareness and spawn, but also place myself in a position where I could immediately run at the Hunter to proc an attack and slip past every time. It certainly helps, regardless, that there’s plenty of leeway for careful experimentation, thanks to all of the scattered health items about the mansion (granted, often requiring careful planning to optimize grounded herbs in rooms and keeping enough inventory space open for trips). It’s also fairly firm at setting its boundaries by telegraphing enemy placement far in advance with rattling doors/windows to signify enemy shifts, background moaning when a zombie is present in the room, and even environmental noises like crunching fallen glass to make up for the lack of vision with fixed camera angles.
That doesn’t mean, however, that the horror has been neglected. If anything, I found this game far more unsettling beyond sudden surprises. It’s not so much the fear of the unexpected, but rather, the lingering fear of waiting for the other shoe to drop while you’re expecting the unexpected. They're scripted events, sure, but they're well disguised thanks to every room often acting as its own isolated microcosm without the presence of the protagonist (not to mention that it's pretty easy to get caught up in the middle of things and forget about each individual room, which makes it all the more viscerally shocking) and there's still a feeling of player control with careful planning and routing. This fits perfectly alongside its core philosophy of risk versus reward, the existential dread of having to backtrack through several zombie infested corridors when you realize you forgot an inventory key and having to constantly and deliberately throw yourself into tight situations just to save another trip across the map. It’s what makes this such an ideal speedrunning game: not necessarily because of satisfying movement or combat, but because Resident Evil is really a game about time management. Every second wasted tromping through another passageway is time that could contribute to a zombie reviving as a Crimson Head or another second spent replaying if you’re not willing to use that extra ink ribbon. The primal fear arising from guaranteed safety as a fleeting resource lends perfectly to the need for optimization; in that sense, pressuring players into constantly checking the map to avoid confrontations and getting lost goes hand in hand with spending as little time as possible, for nothing is more terrifying than having to rewind the simulations in your head for another go.
I can’t help but feel that every detail of this game was thought down to the bone, even the original tank control scheme. That’s right, I’m actually defending tank controls for once in my life… how the turns have tabled. Dodging enemies can seem tougher, but most are conveniently placed near corners and more open areas to give you the room necessary to dodge with a backstep/quick burst to the side if you’re willing to wait and bait committal attacks. More importantly, using tank controls lets you maintain your direction and momentum while running through different camera angles of a room. With alternate controls, you most likely have to hold down the joystick to maintain velocity and upon a new camera angle, will have to quickly retap to keep the intended direction with each new angle. This becomes paramount in tighter chase sequences, where even slight moments of stagnation can lead to damage/death, as well as one timed puzzle where I had to press a button and then quickly run through several fixed angles to get into position to push a statue. In addition, I found it rather difficult to reliably walk (as opposed to running full-time) with alternate controls over tank controls, which can absolutely backfire during an end-game sequence where running for a prolonged period can trigger an explosion during nitro delivery. Therefore, the circumstances created by the environment not only are doable with tank controls, but in fact necessitate the usage of such controls.
Everything just comes together as this tightly designed package. Puzzles have fairly evident tells and can be figured out with careful observation of the surroundings while facilitating the inventory scramble that plays so heavily to the game’s survival elements. The lore never feels overbearing or excessive, and does a great job weaving in hints for crafting approaches and figuring out exactly what has to be accomplished. There’s never an explicit timer on screen outside of the final ending segment, yet the game is great at creating circumstances where you’re forced to make decisions on the fly from environmental stressors and considering the mansion not just on a per room basis, but as a sum of its parts. I genuinely don’t think I have any gripes; it was more than happy to beat me down, but understanding its parameters to scale up against its challenges was an incredibly fulfilling experience. I’d damn well say that REmake is the most focused and cohesive survival horror experience I’ve ever played. Not just a perfect remake, but perhaps a practically perfect game.
That doesn’t mean, however, that the horror has been neglected. If anything, I found this game far more unsettling beyond sudden surprises. It’s not so much the fear of the unexpected, but rather, the lingering fear of waiting for the other shoe to drop while you’re expecting the unexpected. They're scripted events, sure, but they're well disguised thanks to every room often acting as its own isolated microcosm without the presence of the protagonist (not to mention that it's pretty easy to get caught up in the middle of things and forget about each individual room, which makes it all the more viscerally shocking) and there's still a feeling of player control with careful planning and routing. This fits perfectly alongside its core philosophy of risk versus reward, the existential dread of having to backtrack through several zombie infested corridors when you realize you forgot an inventory key and having to constantly and deliberately throw yourself into tight situations just to save another trip across the map. It’s what makes this such an ideal speedrunning game: not necessarily because of satisfying movement or combat, but because Resident Evil is really a game about time management. Every second wasted tromping through another passageway is time that could contribute to a zombie reviving as a Crimson Head or another second spent replaying if you’re not willing to use that extra ink ribbon. The primal fear arising from guaranteed safety as a fleeting resource lends perfectly to the need for optimization; in that sense, pressuring players into constantly checking the map to avoid confrontations and getting lost goes hand in hand with spending as little time as possible, for nothing is more terrifying than having to rewind the simulations in your head for another go.
I can’t help but feel that every detail of this game was thought down to the bone, even the original tank control scheme. That’s right, I’m actually defending tank controls for once in my life… how the turns have tabled. Dodging enemies can seem tougher, but most are conveniently placed near corners and more open areas to give you the room necessary to dodge with a backstep/quick burst to the side if you’re willing to wait and bait committal attacks. More importantly, using tank controls lets you maintain your direction and momentum while running through different camera angles of a room. With alternate controls, you most likely have to hold down the joystick to maintain velocity and upon a new camera angle, will have to quickly retap to keep the intended direction with each new angle. This becomes paramount in tighter chase sequences, where even slight moments of stagnation can lead to damage/death, as well as one timed puzzle where I had to press a button and then quickly run through several fixed angles to get into position to push a statue. In addition, I found it rather difficult to reliably walk (as opposed to running full-time) with alternate controls over tank controls, which can absolutely backfire during an end-game sequence where running for a prolonged period can trigger an explosion during nitro delivery. Therefore, the circumstances created by the environment not only are doable with tank controls, but in fact necessitate the usage of such controls.
Everything just comes together as this tightly designed package. Puzzles have fairly evident tells and can be figured out with careful observation of the surroundings while facilitating the inventory scramble that plays so heavily to the game’s survival elements. The lore never feels overbearing or excessive, and does a great job weaving in hints for crafting approaches and figuring out exactly what has to be accomplished. There’s never an explicit timer on screen outside of the final ending segment, yet the game is great at creating circumstances where you’re forced to make decisions on the fly from environmental stressors and considering the mansion not just on a per room basis, but as a sum of its parts. I genuinely don’t think I have any gripes; it was more than happy to beat me down, but understanding its parameters to scale up against its challenges was an incredibly fulfilling experience. I’d damn well say that REmake is the most focused and cohesive survival horror experience I’ve ever played. Not just a perfect remake, but perhaps a practically perfect game.
This review contains spoilers
Kane and Lynch: Dead Men? More like getting canned, lynched and dead brain cells after playing this game!
I should start this review by letting you know that I’ve gone through Kane and Lynch franchise backwards having already played the sequel K&L 2: Dog Shit™ prior to this game. As you might guess - I don’t think very fondly of it. You can find my full thoughts on the sequel here: https://www.backloggd.com/u/DarkDante14/review/299070/
Now, why would I go out of my way to play the K&L: Dead Men if my experience with the sequel was so negative? Simply put - I wanted to see where it all started. I want to make it clear that I didn’t go into this game with the intention of hating it, quite the opposite, in fact. I gave it the most benefit of doubt humanly possible. SURELY it can’t be as bad as Dog Days? SURELY the first game must have been good enough that it warranted a sequel. After all, Dog Days is quite notorious and the reception for Dead Men was generally more positive, albeit still somewhat mixed from what I’ve seen. Oh, how wrong I was…
A fair warning that this review WILL contain spoilers, including explicit details about the ending.
I’ll start with the positives, since it won't take long. Unlike K&L2, the initial story set-up and character motivations in Dead Men actually are somewhat decent for a typical crime drama. While nothing original, I, at the very least, didn’t find the story to be nonsensical drivel, unlike the sequel.
Another positive aspect is the soundtrack. One of the game’s composers is Jesper Kyd, who’s best known for his work on the earlier entries in both Hitman and Assassin’s Creed franchises. Kyd has a very particular style and his dark, suspenseful and melancholic arrangements go together quite well with games about murders.
Easily the most redeeming aspect in this otherwise incompetent slog is the level design. The levels are quite varied in their locations, type and scale. Rather than being stuck in your typical rectangle shaped shooting galleries that look and feel artificial, Dead Men’s environments actually feel like a believable part of the world. From a densely packed nightclub, a skyscraper office building and streets of Tokyo to a military compound in the middle of jungle. It’s a globetrotting adventure and levels do a great job of reflecting that. The design itself - from shoot-out sightlines, verticality, cover placement and general flow of direction was also mostly solid with a couple of exceptions.
Now that the pleasantries are out of the way, let’s get down to the meat of the matter.
This game fucking sucks.
It continues to impress me IO Interactive - a studio which made great games before and after the Kane and Lynch entries somehow managed to make not just one but TWO incompetent third-person shooters released during the heyday of the genre (2007 and 2010). How could they possibly screw up the shooting mechanics, you know, THE most important aspect of the genre, THIS badly? The game uses an antiquated way of handling aiming. Rather than your bullets actually going where you’re aiming with the crosshair, they simply spread around randomly. Unless you’re shooting a worn-out rifle with badly adjusted sights, the first bullet should always go directly where your aim is. Missing shots should only be a factor after the recoil kicks in, should you fail to adjust to it. Well, that’s not how Kane and Lynch works. Instead, the first 3–4 bullets will always go around the cross-hair in a somewhat random pattern before a single bullet goes even near where you intended.
This sucked in Dog Days and it sucked here. Arguably even more so here given the scale of the environments. The level design itself might be good, but it’s ruined by simply having an enemy positioned more than 10 meters away from the player.
I cannot stress enough how much this artificial baked-in bullet spread RUINS the entire game. It never stops being an issue. People who say that it “adds to the realism” clearly have never seen a gun in real life, or heck - have even the most basic cursory understanding of how modern projectile weapons work. The way guns behave in Kane and Lynch simply goes against common sense and physics of this world.
Next issue is the AI system. The game features an AI partner system with the ability to issue commands to them but I never really felt like I had to engage with it. That is, until half-way through the game where the unique levels are abruptly exchanged for your typical brown modern military setting. This is the turning point when the game went from bad to worse. You are forced, yes - forced to have a squad of blind, deaf and braindead AI squadmates who, I swear, are trying to get you and themselves killed. By the way, if they die it’s a game over for you. Having to baby sit these incompetent chuckle fucks made the game 10 times harder and 100 times more infuriating. I would have much rather dealt with the entire army of enemies on my own.
The only way of getting past this miserable part is to slowly and meticulously clear out the enemies while continuously yelling at your mentally handicapped squadmates to sit in a corner somewhere out of sight, out of mind. HOWEVER, this very same level features the most ruthless enemies in the entire game and a helicopter that can basically just one-shot you dead. Essentially, if you get unlucky and accidentally get in the line of fire of either the passing chopper or an enemy machine gunner - your squadmates might be too far to revive you in time and you will die faster than you can slam a fist through your monitor.
I’m at the age where I’ve generally mellowed out and don’t really get angry at video games anymore but this game made me yell, swear and bash my table like I was 13 years old again. The word “infuriating” does not even begin to describe the sheer anger I felt towards this poor joke of a game.
So how does this train wreck end? With multiple-choice endings, of course. There’s two to be exact and they both suck. You get a simple choice - after rescuing Kane’s daughter from the main villains, you can either leave your braindead squadmates to die in the middle of the jungle and get in a chopper with your daughter while Lynch is screeching at you for being a traitor bitch OR you can play an additional level and go on a rescue mission. The choice here is obvious - ROLL THE CREDITS AND TURN THIS SHIT OFF! This is how I felt at that moment and jokes aside, after seeing how much worse the “good” ending was, I am convinced that I made the better choice initially.
The common practice in video game design dictates that players who put in the extra effort and/or do additional content should be rewarded with a more satisfying conclusion to the story.
Kane and Lynch on the other hand, is just “built different”. If you choose to actually go through a yet another tedious level, you essentially get spat on as not only Kane fails to save a single soul, his daughter that you just spent the entire game rescuing ends up dying. Thus, it was all for nothing, once again making the “traitor” choice a more satisfying one.
Listen, I get it. The writers of Kane and Lynch keep trying to emphasize how there are no “lived happily ever after” endings. The world is a horrible place and K&L universe even more so. But the way it’s handled is poorly done, essentially betraying the player's expectations and not in a compelling or clever way. Writing a subversive crime drama is not easy, I get that, but the writers behind both Dead Men and Dog Days are simply not as good as they presumably think they are. Perhaps it’s the trash gameplay that sours my opinion of the story, but after playing both Dog Days and Dead Men, it’s clear to me that the writers of both games are simply incapable of creating a truly mature story besides throwing some gratuitous end edgy scenes sprinkled with a load of obscenities.
There is a reason why Kane and Lynch franchise is dead and forgotten and quite frankly, it should remain that way.
I should start this review by letting you know that I’ve gone through Kane and Lynch franchise backwards having already played the sequel K&L 2: Dog Shit™ prior to this game. As you might guess - I don’t think very fondly of it. You can find my full thoughts on the sequel here: https://www.backloggd.com/u/DarkDante14/review/299070/
Now, why would I go out of my way to play the K&L: Dead Men if my experience with the sequel was so negative? Simply put - I wanted to see where it all started. I want to make it clear that I didn’t go into this game with the intention of hating it, quite the opposite, in fact. I gave it the most benefit of doubt humanly possible. SURELY it can’t be as bad as Dog Days? SURELY the first game must have been good enough that it warranted a sequel. After all, Dog Days is quite notorious and the reception for Dead Men was generally more positive, albeit still somewhat mixed from what I’ve seen. Oh, how wrong I was…
A fair warning that this review WILL contain spoilers, including explicit details about the ending.
I’ll start with the positives, since it won't take long. Unlike K&L2, the initial story set-up and character motivations in Dead Men actually are somewhat decent for a typical crime drama. While nothing original, I, at the very least, didn’t find the story to be nonsensical drivel, unlike the sequel.
Another positive aspect is the soundtrack. One of the game’s composers is Jesper Kyd, who’s best known for his work on the earlier entries in both Hitman and Assassin’s Creed franchises. Kyd has a very particular style and his dark, suspenseful and melancholic arrangements go together quite well with games about murders.
Easily the most redeeming aspect in this otherwise incompetent slog is the level design. The levels are quite varied in their locations, type and scale. Rather than being stuck in your typical rectangle shaped shooting galleries that look and feel artificial, Dead Men’s environments actually feel like a believable part of the world. From a densely packed nightclub, a skyscraper office building and streets of Tokyo to a military compound in the middle of jungle. It’s a globetrotting adventure and levels do a great job of reflecting that. The design itself - from shoot-out sightlines, verticality, cover placement and general flow of direction was also mostly solid with a couple of exceptions.
Now that the pleasantries are out of the way, let’s get down to the meat of the matter.
This game fucking sucks.
It continues to impress me IO Interactive - a studio which made great games before and after the Kane and Lynch entries somehow managed to make not just one but TWO incompetent third-person shooters released during the heyday of the genre (2007 and 2010). How could they possibly screw up the shooting mechanics, you know, THE most important aspect of the genre, THIS badly? The game uses an antiquated way of handling aiming. Rather than your bullets actually going where you’re aiming with the crosshair, they simply spread around randomly. Unless you’re shooting a worn-out rifle with badly adjusted sights, the first bullet should always go directly where your aim is. Missing shots should only be a factor after the recoil kicks in, should you fail to adjust to it. Well, that’s not how Kane and Lynch works. Instead, the first 3–4 bullets will always go around the cross-hair in a somewhat random pattern before a single bullet goes even near where you intended.
This sucked in Dog Days and it sucked here. Arguably even more so here given the scale of the environments. The level design itself might be good, but it’s ruined by simply having an enemy positioned more than 10 meters away from the player.
I cannot stress enough how much this artificial baked-in bullet spread RUINS the entire game. It never stops being an issue. People who say that it “adds to the realism” clearly have never seen a gun in real life, or heck - have even the most basic cursory understanding of how modern projectile weapons work. The way guns behave in Kane and Lynch simply goes against common sense and physics of this world.
Next issue is the AI system. The game features an AI partner system with the ability to issue commands to them but I never really felt like I had to engage with it. That is, until half-way through the game where the unique levels are abruptly exchanged for your typical brown modern military setting. This is the turning point when the game went from bad to worse. You are forced, yes - forced to have a squad of blind, deaf and braindead AI squadmates who, I swear, are trying to get you and themselves killed. By the way, if they die it’s a game over for you. Having to baby sit these incompetent chuckle fucks made the game 10 times harder and 100 times more infuriating. I would have much rather dealt with the entire army of enemies on my own.
The only way of getting past this miserable part is to slowly and meticulously clear out the enemies while continuously yelling at your mentally handicapped squadmates to sit in a corner somewhere out of sight, out of mind. HOWEVER, this very same level features the most ruthless enemies in the entire game and a helicopter that can basically just one-shot you dead. Essentially, if you get unlucky and accidentally get in the line of fire of either the passing chopper or an enemy machine gunner - your squadmates might be too far to revive you in time and you will die faster than you can slam a fist through your monitor.
I’m at the age where I’ve generally mellowed out and don’t really get angry at video games anymore but this game made me yell, swear and bash my table like I was 13 years old again. The word “infuriating” does not even begin to describe the sheer anger I felt towards this poor joke of a game.
So how does this train wreck end? With multiple-choice endings, of course. There’s two to be exact and they both suck. You get a simple choice - after rescuing Kane’s daughter from the main villains, you can either leave your braindead squadmates to die in the middle of the jungle and get in a chopper with your daughter while Lynch is screeching at you for being a traitor bitch OR you can play an additional level and go on a rescue mission. The choice here is obvious - ROLL THE CREDITS AND TURN THIS SHIT OFF! This is how I felt at that moment and jokes aside, after seeing how much worse the “good” ending was, I am convinced that I made the better choice initially.
The common practice in video game design dictates that players who put in the extra effort and/or do additional content should be rewarded with a more satisfying conclusion to the story.
Kane and Lynch on the other hand, is just “built different”. If you choose to actually go through a yet another tedious level, you essentially get spat on as not only Kane fails to save a single soul, his daughter that you just spent the entire game rescuing ends up dying. Thus, it was all for nothing, once again making the “traitor” choice a more satisfying one.
Listen, I get it. The writers of Kane and Lynch keep trying to emphasize how there are no “lived happily ever after” endings. The world is a horrible place and K&L universe even more so. But the way it’s handled is poorly done, essentially betraying the player's expectations and not in a compelling or clever way. Writing a subversive crime drama is not easy, I get that, but the writers behind both Dead Men and Dog Days are simply not as good as they presumably think they are. Perhaps it’s the trash gameplay that sours my opinion of the story, but after playing both Dog Days and Dead Men, it’s clear to me that the writers of both games are simply incapable of creating a truly mature story besides throwing some gratuitous end edgy scenes sprinkled with a load of obscenities.
There is a reason why Kane and Lynch franchise is dead and forgotten and quite frankly, it should remain that way.
Dead Space 3
2013
Where to even start with this one good lord.
From the game being boring as sin to it glitching the fuck out at least for me my partner seemed to be fine for the most part to some asshole literally spitting fax over the radio in chapter 14 yelling FACT every 5 minutes or so in FACT I'll structure this just like that dip shit did.
FACT : This game somehow manages to look way worse than it's predecessor from 2 years ago the visuals in general are extremely boring except at the very end where it starts to get semi competent only for it to end.
FACT: If I wasn't playing this in CO-OP I would have never finished this shit. It really stress tests the "everything is fun with friends" to the limit.
FACT : The glitches holy shit they were everywhere from ha ha funny ones to me being banished to the final boss' asshole during the fight and having to reset to us getting fucking scammed at some point at a bench where we used all our resources only for the game to shit itself and disconnect saving the FACT that it took our resources but not what we bought with them THANK YOU EA.
speaking of thanking EA fuck their app you can't even invite people for some ungodly reason and even connecting to each other takes 10-15 minutes every time we start this trashfire.
FACT: I ran out of shit to say just wanted to say FACT one more time.
One final FACT : If you are playing this trash find a co-op partner it's way more tolerable that way or you know just don't fucking play it period.
From the game being boring as sin to it glitching the fuck out at least for me my partner seemed to be fine for the most part to some asshole literally spitting fax over the radio in chapter 14 yelling FACT every 5 minutes or so in FACT I'll structure this just like that dip shit did.
FACT : This game somehow manages to look way worse than it's predecessor from 2 years ago the visuals in general are extremely boring except at the very end where it starts to get semi competent only for it to end.
FACT: If I wasn't playing this in CO-OP I would have never finished this shit. It really stress tests the "everything is fun with friends" to the limit.
FACT : The glitches holy shit they were everywhere from ha ha funny ones to me being banished to the final boss' asshole during the fight and having to reset to us getting fucking scammed at some point at a bench where we used all our resources only for the game to shit itself and disconnect saving the FACT that it took our resources but not what we bought with them THANK YOU EA.
speaking of thanking EA fuck their app you can't even invite people for some ungodly reason and even connecting to each other takes 10-15 minutes every time we start this trashfire.
FACT: I ran out of shit to say just wanted to say FACT one more time.
One final FACT : If you are playing this trash find a co-op partner it's way more tolerable that way or you know just don't fucking play it period.