Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2018/02/15/dear-esther-landmark-edition-pc-os-x-linux-ps4-xbone-review/
The phrase “Walking Simulator” gets thrown around a lot when talking about games such as Dear Esther in a derogatory manor since these games have very little in the way of “gameplay”. I do think that stuff consisting of exploring an environment while the plot happens in an unconventional manner does have a place, regardless of popularity, which was originally an unpopular opinion, but has gained a lot of appreciate over the decade or more since the release of Dear Esther.
Dear Esther was originally a first person exploration mod for Half-Life 2 in 2008 by a small group of modders called The Chinese Room. 4 years later, in 2012, the game got remade into it’s own entity on a newer version of the Source engine with significant graphical upgrades. For it’s final version, released in 2017, Dear Esther was ported to the Unity engine with a few extra bills and whistles, and is called Dear Esther: Landmark Edition.
The game is told through narration as the player explores an uninhabited island with the narrator reading from a series of letter fragments to a woman named Esther, who is implied to be the wife of the person writing the letter.
Even though Dear Esther is incredibly linear, certain aspects of it are randomized, allowing for multiple playthroughs. The most obvious randomized part of the game is the narration, with the narrarator giving new information about what happened to the characters involved with the story from their perspective.
Other randomized parts of the game include an underwater highway and several ghosts that appear throughout the game as you make your journey across the island. Some apear off in the distance, others briefly appear in front of you, and one only appears on the beach in the reflection of the water. I’ve played the game twice just to get the general idea of how these segments work.
Although if you’ve played the game once, you’ve pretty much got the gist of the game and have already seen 90% of it. Although I’m pretty sure that most of the audience buying this game know immediately wether or not they like it from the trailer, images, and plot synopsis, so it’s not like most people are goign to wander into this game knowing nothing about it.
The Landmark Edition even comes with developer commentary, explaining the process from when it was first conceived and made a mod to becoming a game. Even if you’re not at all into the type of experience that Dear Esther is, the developer commentary might be a highlight for aspiring developers who want to get into game development or at least want to try something different from what they’ve previously made.
Despite the whole game being drab and grey as well as being set on a depressing and baron island, it is quite beautiful to look at and listen to. The soundtrack is haunting, adding onto the feeling of lonliness that was already there from having to wander such a lonely place. Ironically, what it intends to do it does with flying colors. It’s just that it does little outside of what it presents and could have easily been a bunch of randomized video and audio playing for 30 minutes, and that’s going to be the determining factor for a lot of people.
Dear Esther isn’t pretending to be anything else other than what it clearly is, which is a short experimental narrative game trying to invoke a very specific emotion and atmosphere. It could have easily been a more engaging experience, with more for the player to do. Not necessarily with puzzles, but definately with something else, but that would have gone against what the game is. And I can’t get annoyed at what the game isn’t trying to be.
The game is a love it or hate it experience. If you have no interest in it, I doubt anything will convince you to try it out. And if you’re not interested in it, you’ve probably already played it for yourself and like discussing it’s ideas, or have at least put it in your wishlist for when a sale inevitably comes along. But after playing it, I didn’t find any real depth beyond filling it a few cracks with a story that was already pretty obvious with where it was going.
The phrase “Walking Simulator” gets thrown around a lot when talking about games such as Dear Esther in a derogatory manor since these games have very little in the way of “gameplay”. I do think that stuff consisting of exploring an environment while the plot happens in an unconventional manner does have a place, regardless of popularity, which was originally an unpopular opinion, but has gained a lot of appreciate over the decade or more since the release of Dear Esther.
Dear Esther was originally a first person exploration mod for Half-Life 2 in 2008 by a small group of modders called The Chinese Room. 4 years later, in 2012, the game got remade into it’s own entity on a newer version of the Source engine with significant graphical upgrades. For it’s final version, released in 2017, Dear Esther was ported to the Unity engine with a few extra bills and whistles, and is called Dear Esther: Landmark Edition.
The game is told through narration as the player explores an uninhabited island with the narrator reading from a series of letter fragments to a woman named Esther, who is implied to be the wife of the person writing the letter.
Even though Dear Esther is incredibly linear, certain aspects of it are randomized, allowing for multiple playthroughs. The most obvious randomized part of the game is the narration, with the narrarator giving new information about what happened to the characters involved with the story from their perspective.
Other randomized parts of the game include an underwater highway and several ghosts that appear throughout the game as you make your journey across the island. Some apear off in the distance, others briefly appear in front of you, and one only appears on the beach in the reflection of the water. I’ve played the game twice just to get the general idea of how these segments work.
Although if you’ve played the game once, you’ve pretty much got the gist of the game and have already seen 90% of it. Although I’m pretty sure that most of the audience buying this game know immediately wether or not they like it from the trailer, images, and plot synopsis, so it’s not like most people are goign to wander into this game knowing nothing about it.
The Landmark Edition even comes with developer commentary, explaining the process from when it was first conceived and made a mod to becoming a game. Even if you’re not at all into the type of experience that Dear Esther is, the developer commentary might be a highlight for aspiring developers who want to get into game development or at least want to try something different from what they’ve previously made.
Despite the whole game being drab and grey as well as being set on a depressing and baron island, it is quite beautiful to look at and listen to. The soundtrack is haunting, adding onto the feeling of lonliness that was already there from having to wander such a lonely place. Ironically, what it intends to do it does with flying colors. It’s just that it does little outside of what it presents and could have easily been a bunch of randomized video and audio playing for 30 minutes, and that’s going to be the determining factor for a lot of people.
Dear Esther isn’t pretending to be anything else other than what it clearly is, which is a short experimental narrative game trying to invoke a very specific emotion and atmosphere. It could have easily been a more engaging experience, with more for the player to do. Not necessarily with puzzles, but definately with something else, but that would have gone against what the game is. And I can’t get annoyed at what the game isn’t trying to be.
The game is a love it or hate it experience. If you have no interest in it, I doubt anything will convince you to try it out. And if you’re not interested in it, you’ve probably already played it for yourself and like discussing it’s ideas, or have at least put it in your wishlist for when a sale inevitably comes along. But after playing it, I didn’t find any real depth beyond filling it a few cracks with a story that was already pretty obvious with where it was going.
2007
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2019/10/10/mod-corner-paranoia-half-life-2007-review/
When you have a dedicated fan base that are willing to spend a lot of time making and playing mods for your game, eventually a lot of these mods will eventually push the limits of your game and it’s engine. One of the mods that pushed what the Half-Life modding tools were capable of was Paranoia.
You play the role of a Russian officer of the Secret Service. You are called out on a mission, and your first impressions are that it will just be like any other. But you find yourself facing the dark secret side of military experiments that want to bring the dead back to life. It’s pretty much a horror B-movie, and it does a pretty decent job at being one.
Like a lot of Half-Life mods, Paranoia takes a note from it, and the first ~20-30 minutes of Paranoia is going around a Russian military base, teaching you how the game works and showing people going about their lives before shit hits the fan.
It’s here where you can see how Paranoia really pushes the GoldSRC engine for the time it was released, with all of it’s locations looking incredibly accurate to it’s real world counterpart. The team behind this mod took a ton of references from real world Russian architecture and environments, and it really shows how much work the mod team put into the small details. Every location feels run down, grimy, and gloomy.
The game even adds in a few new shiny visual effects that the GoldSRC engine didn’t have, such as bump mapping and gloss on top if it’s detailed textures as well as better lighting effects, which makes the flashlight more useful than Half-Life’s, really highlighting the incredibly run down and sometimes claustrophibic levels. The team behind this mod, appropriately named Paranoia Team, spent 3 years developing this mod, and it clearly shows.
It does show it’s age a little bit in that a few things have a lower polygon count than more recent games. Especially with other characters faces, which use real peoples faces as the in game faces.
Going into combat does have some strategic elements to it. Your character has a Ballistics Helmet that you can use to protect yourself from getting more easily killed. The down side is that it’s harder to see and you can’t view down the scope on certain weapons. There is also the Gas Mask, but is used twice in the entire mod, and one of those times is to teach you how to use it.
Maybe the developers intended to have it be used more, but didn’t have the time or man power to have more areas use it, so they left it in just to have another bullet point to show off. All of the weapons all look great and sound really satisfying to use. There is also the ability to use iron sights, which was getting popular in games at the time. Hand-to-hand combat isn’t exactly a viable option since enemies could easily kill you if you get too close to them. Although, when you kill your enemies, you can loot ammo and other stuff off of their bodies. This is how you’d get most of your ammo.
Aside from picking up medkits throughout the game that immediately give you health, you pick up Painkillers too, which are an item in your inventory you can activated at any time. On the easiest difficulty there are so many of them that I maxed out the amount i could carry and never ran out of them, but I’m pretty sure on higher difficulties they’re a lot rarer.
The AI enemies and companions are actually a lot better than the ones in Half-Life. Friendly companion AI can actually hold it’s own fairly well. You do get a game over when one of them dies, so you’ll have to take care of them to some extent, but it never feels like you’re babysitting them. The only problem I have with them is waiting for them to get in position, and I was never quite sure if I was the one who was supposed to open a door or they were until one of them moved their way in front of a door. On harder difficulties, the enemy AI is a bit hard for my liking, but I never had any problems with it.
Surprisingly, this mod’s soundtrack was done by a Russian metal band called “Slot” along with their own original music. I’ve never heard of them before, probably because they’re a Russian band, but from what I’ve heard looking them up, they seem to be pretty good. The games mix of dark ambient music for slower atmospheric moments and higher energy tracks when the action gets started really add to the tone that the mod was going for.
Paranoia eventually got a version called “Paranoia: The Game Version”, which runs on something called Xash3D, a reverse engineered version of the GoldSRC engine. This was done so that the people behind this mod didn’t have to continually have to update the mod every time Valve updated Half-Life. Plus it gives the added bonus of not needing Half-Life installed.
Probably the most interesting thing about this mod is that it got a port to the Dreamcast using the leaked unreleased port of Half-Life. I didn’t have the chance to test this myself since I don’t have a Dreamcast, but from the videos I’ve seen, it seems to work pretty well.
Should you play Paranoia? Hell yes. It’s one of the best mods for Half-Life out there, and it even has some of that loveable jank that Russia games tend to have.
When you have a dedicated fan base that are willing to spend a lot of time making and playing mods for your game, eventually a lot of these mods will eventually push the limits of your game and it’s engine. One of the mods that pushed what the Half-Life modding tools were capable of was Paranoia.
You play the role of a Russian officer of the Secret Service. You are called out on a mission, and your first impressions are that it will just be like any other. But you find yourself facing the dark secret side of military experiments that want to bring the dead back to life. It’s pretty much a horror B-movie, and it does a pretty decent job at being one.
Like a lot of Half-Life mods, Paranoia takes a note from it, and the first ~20-30 minutes of Paranoia is going around a Russian military base, teaching you how the game works and showing people going about their lives before shit hits the fan.
It’s here where you can see how Paranoia really pushes the GoldSRC engine for the time it was released, with all of it’s locations looking incredibly accurate to it’s real world counterpart. The team behind this mod took a ton of references from real world Russian architecture and environments, and it really shows how much work the mod team put into the small details. Every location feels run down, grimy, and gloomy.
The game even adds in a few new shiny visual effects that the GoldSRC engine didn’t have, such as bump mapping and gloss on top if it’s detailed textures as well as better lighting effects, which makes the flashlight more useful than Half-Life’s, really highlighting the incredibly run down and sometimes claustrophibic levels. The team behind this mod, appropriately named Paranoia Team, spent 3 years developing this mod, and it clearly shows.
It does show it’s age a little bit in that a few things have a lower polygon count than more recent games. Especially with other characters faces, which use real peoples faces as the in game faces.
Going into combat does have some strategic elements to it. Your character has a Ballistics Helmet that you can use to protect yourself from getting more easily killed. The down side is that it’s harder to see and you can’t view down the scope on certain weapons. There is also the Gas Mask, but is used twice in the entire mod, and one of those times is to teach you how to use it.
Maybe the developers intended to have it be used more, but didn’t have the time or man power to have more areas use it, so they left it in just to have another bullet point to show off. All of the weapons all look great and sound really satisfying to use. There is also the ability to use iron sights, which was getting popular in games at the time. Hand-to-hand combat isn’t exactly a viable option since enemies could easily kill you if you get too close to them. Although, when you kill your enemies, you can loot ammo and other stuff off of their bodies. This is how you’d get most of your ammo.
Aside from picking up medkits throughout the game that immediately give you health, you pick up Painkillers too, which are an item in your inventory you can activated at any time. On the easiest difficulty there are so many of them that I maxed out the amount i could carry and never ran out of them, but I’m pretty sure on higher difficulties they’re a lot rarer.
The AI enemies and companions are actually a lot better than the ones in Half-Life. Friendly companion AI can actually hold it’s own fairly well. You do get a game over when one of them dies, so you’ll have to take care of them to some extent, but it never feels like you’re babysitting them. The only problem I have with them is waiting for them to get in position, and I was never quite sure if I was the one who was supposed to open a door or they were until one of them moved their way in front of a door. On harder difficulties, the enemy AI is a bit hard for my liking, but I never had any problems with it.
Surprisingly, this mod’s soundtrack was done by a Russian metal band called “Slot” along with their own original music. I’ve never heard of them before, probably because they’re a Russian band, but from what I’ve heard looking them up, they seem to be pretty good. The games mix of dark ambient music for slower atmospheric moments and higher energy tracks when the action gets started really add to the tone that the mod was going for.
Paranoia eventually got a version called “Paranoia: The Game Version”, which runs on something called Xash3D, a reverse engineered version of the GoldSRC engine. This was done so that the people behind this mod didn’t have to continually have to update the mod every time Valve updated Half-Life. Plus it gives the added bonus of not needing Half-Life installed.
Probably the most interesting thing about this mod is that it got a port to the Dreamcast using the leaked unreleased port of Half-Life. I didn’t have the chance to test this myself since I don’t have a Dreamcast, but from the videos I’ve seen, it seems to work pretty well.
Should you play Paranoia? Hell yes. It’s one of the best mods for Half-Life out there, and it even has some of that loveable jank that Russia games tend to have.
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2018/01/01/mod-corner-kung-fu-3-0-max-payne-mini-review/
The idea for a mod for Max Payne that adds in the ability for Max to use martial arts to take down his enemies might seem absurd (and it is), but the idea for it makes more sense in context. Max Payne was influenced by two things, the high energy and explosive action scenes of John Woo films, and the bullet time from the original Matrix film, which had only come out a few years beforehand. So being able to fight through Max Payne in hand-to-hand combat just like Neo did in The Matrix makes sense considering it’s influences.
Kung Fu 3.0 (The latest version of the mod) is pretty much everything you’d expect from the title. Wall running and jumping, spinning kicks, slow-motion wire-fu for takedowns, a pole weapon for you to use in hand-to-hand combat. The mod comes with a tutorial on how to use all of it’s features, which is appropriately a Dojo, just like the training scene from the first Matrix.
A mod like this doesn’t seem like much, but it was so significant for the Max Payne modding community that it influenced and was incorporated into several other Max Payne mods, mostly Matrix themed mods, along with mods like Katana and Polar Payne. Kung Fu 3.0 is definitely worth checking out if you’re at all interested in the Max Payne modding scene and don’t mind the absurdity of seeing Max leaping around in the name of getting revenge for his family, and it adds enough variety to the gameplay Max Payne that it makes the game worth replaying if you need yet another reason to replay it.
The idea for a mod for Max Payne that adds in the ability for Max to use martial arts to take down his enemies might seem absurd (and it is), but the idea for it makes more sense in context. Max Payne was influenced by two things, the high energy and explosive action scenes of John Woo films, and the bullet time from the original Matrix film, which had only come out a few years beforehand. So being able to fight through Max Payne in hand-to-hand combat just like Neo did in The Matrix makes sense considering it’s influences.
Kung Fu 3.0 (The latest version of the mod) is pretty much everything you’d expect from the title. Wall running and jumping, spinning kicks, slow-motion wire-fu for takedowns, a pole weapon for you to use in hand-to-hand combat. The mod comes with a tutorial on how to use all of it’s features, which is appropriately a Dojo, just like the training scene from the first Matrix.
A mod like this doesn’t seem like much, but it was so significant for the Max Payne modding community that it influenced and was incorporated into several other Max Payne mods, mostly Matrix themed mods, along with mods like Katana and Polar Payne. Kung Fu 3.0 is definitely worth checking out if you’re at all interested in the Max Payne modding scene and don’t mind the absurdity of seeing Max leaping around in the name of getting revenge for his family, and it adds enough variety to the gameplay Max Payne that it makes the game worth replaying if you need yet another reason to replay it.
2006
This review contains spoilers
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2023/03/12/spoilers_el-matador-2006-review/
It’s not very often that a game comes out that is basically the equivalent of a Direct-To-DVD movie. A lot of games try to be the big blockbuster but rarely do you get something that feels like a movie that was always destined to be on the budget shelf of a big chain of stores. And El Matador is one of those Direct-To-DVD feeling games.
But as it turns out this game has some turns and twists to it. But more about that later.
El Matador follows Victor Corbet, a DEA special agent tasked with taking down drug barons. After a successful raid in the first mission, Victor is soon sent to Colombia to assist the local police in taking down La Valedora Cartel, who were involved in the massacre that killed Victor’s brother. Not long after arriving he is soon given the nickname of Matador for his determination at the way he takes down his enemies.
I would mention the other characters but nobody has a personality beyond the one line used to describe them in the design document and all of them only get a couple minutes each of screen time.
At least the acting is amusingly cheesy, even if it’s pretty obvious that English is not the first language of a lot of the cast, or I hope it isn’t because what dialogue that isn’t campy is stilted and obviously comes across as someone just reading it off a page. The main character even has the line “I need to shoot some scum” to give you an idea of the level of dialogue that we’re dealing with here. The game ends with a “And knowing is half the battle!” message about drugs.
The most noteworthy thing about the game is that it runs on the Max Payne 2 engine. I’m guessing this was done by Rockstar to make up for the low sales of Max Payne 2. And as a result the game comes with the bullet time mechanic from Max Payne 2 but nowhere near as polished. I’m pretty sure it was included in the game just because it was part of the engine. It’s not awful but it does feel rough around the edges, the fact that it’s using the engine of a much more polished game to help make up for it’s low budget and short development time.
The lack of budget really shines through with every boss just being the same as a goon but with more health.
Also I guess the developers were doing Max Payne set in a South American country long before Rockstar dragged Max Payne into a South American country.
Graphically the game looks alright for what it is. There are definitely parts of the game that try to take advantage of the physics engine that Max Payne 2 had by having explosions that through a bunch of crap around or having to shoot out boards nailed to a doorway to move into the next location. You can even jump through partially shot out windows and have glass flying everywhere.
It does have a few graphical glitches, mostly with the Steam version, where shadows don’t work properly, so if you feel the need to check this game out you should buy the GOG version.
It’s also pretty short so it’s more of an easy afternoon game. But it’s an incredibly cheap game even when it’s not on sale so I didn’t feel ripped off when seeing the credits 2 and a half hours and booting up the game.
But there’s more this game than it seems. It turns out that the actual bad guy is a Nazi named Helmet Koch. I don’t know how this game about taking down a drug cartel suddenly had Nazis in it, but there you go.
Surprisingly there is a completely different version of El Matador out there somewhere. When getting released in Germany it obviously got censored like a lot of games do when getting released in that county. Not only were some guns changed, like the MP5 being changed into a tranquilizer gun and the ragdoll physics being removed along with the ability to shoot at corpses along with the removal of blood. The most obvious change were the removal of a bunch of Nazi references
But I wouldn’t be talking about the German version if it was just a censorship change. In the German version the story was rewritten so that the main character was not an official agent of the DEA but a gangster and a double agent. There were numerous new cutscenes made to work around these changes too. So in Germany there exists this bizarro world version of this game.
It’s not very often that a game comes out that is basically the equivalent of a Direct-To-DVD movie. A lot of games try to be the big blockbuster but rarely do you get something that feels like a movie that was always destined to be on the budget shelf of a big chain of stores. And El Matador is one of those Direct-To-DVD feeling games.
But as it turns out this game has some turns and twists to it. But more about that later.
El Matador follows Victor Corbet, a DEA special agent tasked with taking down drug barons. After a successful raid in the first mission, Victor is soon sent to Colombia to assist the local police in taking down La Valedora Cartel, who were involved in the massacre that killed Victor’s brother. Not long after arriving he is soon given the nickname of Matador for his determination at the way he takes down his enemies.
I would mention the other characters but nobody has a personality beyond the one line used to describe them in the design document and all of them only get a couple minutes each of screen time.
At least the acting is amusingly cheesy, even if it’s pretty obvious that English is not the first language of a lot of the cast, or I hope it isn’t because what dialogue that isn’t campy is stilted and obviously comes across as someone just reading it off a page. The main character even has the line “I need to shoot some scum” to give you an idea of the level of dialogue that we’re dealing with here. The game ends with a “And knowing is half the battle!” message about drugs.
The most noteworthy thing about the game is that it runs on the Max Payne 2 engine. I’m guessing this was done by Rockstar to make up for the low sales of Max Payne 2. And as a result the game comes with the bullet time mechanic from Max Payne 2 but nowhere near as polished. I’m pretty sure it was included in the game just because it was part of the engine. It’s not awful but it does feel rough around the edges, the fact that it’s using the engine of a much more polished game to help make up for it’s low budget and short development time.
The lack of budget really shines through with every boss just being the same as a goon but with more health.
Also I guess the developers were doing Max Payne set in a South American country long before Rockstar dragged Max Payne into a South American country.
Graphically the game looks alright for what it is. There are definitely parts of the game that try to take advantage of the physics engine that Max Payne 2 had by having explosions that through a bunch of crap around or having to shoot out boards nailed to a doorway to move into the next location. You can even jump through partially shot out windows and have glass flying everywhere.
It does have a few graphical glitches, mostly with the Steam version, where shadows don’t work properly, so if you feel the need to check this game out you should buy the GOG version.
It’s also pretty short so it’s more of an easy afternoon game. But it’s an incredibly cheap game even when it’s not on sale so I didn’t feel ripped off when seeing the credits 2 and a half hours and booting up the game.
But there’s more this game than it seems. It turns out that the actual bad guy is a Nazi named Helmet Koch. I don’t know how this game about taking down a drug cartel suddenly had Nazis in it, but there you go.
Surprisingly there is a completely different version of El Matador out there somewhere. When getting released in Germany it obviously got censored like a lot of games do when getting released in that county. Not only were some guns changed, like the MP5 being changed into a tranquilizer gun and the ragdoll physics being removed along with the ability to shoot at corpses along with the removal of blood. The most obvious change were the removal of a bunch of Nazi references
But I wouldn’t be talking about the German version if it was just a censorship change. In the German version the story was rewritten so that the main character was not an official agent of the DEA but a gangster and a double agent. There were numerous new cutscenes made to work around these changes too. So in Germany there exists this bizarro world version of this game.
2003
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2018/10/09/manhunt-2003-pc-ps2-xbox-review/
Rockstar Games has received quite a bit of controversy of the years for a lot of their games. While a lot of it is completely unwarranted, probably one of the more infamous games that got a lot of flak was Manhunt. It’s dark and mature content got the game banned in several countries, such as Australia, New Zealand and Germany. Manhunt was released in 2003 for the PlayStation 2, and in 2004 for the PC and Xbox.
In Manhunt, you play as James Earl Cash, a death row inmate who is thought to be dead by everyone after a lethal injection. But Cash finds himself waking up in a locked room with a man known only as “The Director”, played fantastically by Brian Cox (X-Men 2 and The Bourne Identity), speaking to you through an earpiece. “The Director” promises Cash his freedom, but only if Cash follows his instructions.
Soon, Cash finds himself part of a snuff film ring that wants to use him as its newest star, having to kill for the cameras, all for the sick twisted pleasure of the audience. Through the night, he has to make his way through several psychotic gangs who are trying to kill him in the most brutal way possible. The game’s story is pretty dark in nature, which will turn off most people from playing it. The whole concept comes off as “The Running Man” mixed with “8MM”.
The game is the standard Third Person stealth action game that draws from similar games such as Hitman: Codename 47 and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, with the standard trial-and error approach that quite a few standard stealth-based games had at the time. It’s no Thief: The Dark Project, but it was never trying to be. Stay hidden in the shadows, and if someone spots you wandering around, run around until you lose them, and go back to hiding in the shadows. Nothing too complicated.
The bad guys routes are limited to their areas of the map though, so you can’t drag an enemy out to a completely different area. You have to take enemies out in the location that they’re patrolling.
However, Manhunt’s main focus is the way you kill other characters. Since the hand-to-hand combat on the GTA III engine has always been bad, the game had to compensate by having you brutally execute the enemies. There are 3 different levels of execution, Hasty, Violent, and Gruesome, each more violent than the last. The severity of the execution depends on how long you hold the button down.
There’s a chance that while preparing to execute your “victim” (a word I use loosely since the enemies of the game are pretty much pure evil), there is the chance that either another enemy will spot you, or the person you’re following will turn around, causing you to run off, hide in the shadows, and try again when the person loses interest and goes back to patrolling, so you have to be somewhat careful in picking someone off. Thankfully, the game does have a block ability just in case you have to defend yourself, but the melee combat should always be avoided since it’s more frustrating than anything.
Unfortunately, the controls are not the greatest. While the PC version uses the standard WASD keys to move and mouse to look around in third person, but for some reason on the console version, when you use the right thumb stick to look around, your perspective suddenly shifts to First Person, which makes looking around at your surroundings more frustrating. The only way to look around corners in Third Person is to have the character put their back to the wall and have them peek around the corner.
While First Person is a neat addition for observing your surroundings, it could have easily been a button press for when it was needed. The majority of the game can be played with Third Person with no problem, and is always the preferred play style. So making it necessary is quite frustrating.
Unfortunately, the second half of the game implements ranged weapons, making it more run-and-gun oriented. The game’s shooting mechanics aren’t that great either, making this half of the game for frustrating than it should be. It isn’t terrible, but it can get frustrating if you slip up. Guns can cause a lot of damage, resulting in a quicker death if you decided to go up against someone head on rather than stealth, so when stealth is an options, it’s preferable choice.
There is a cover system to compensate for the not so great ranged combat, and it works OK. It is possible to sneak up on someone and get a head shot with a shotgun, or get a lot of damage in with a handgun. So if you plan it out right, gun combat can be alright. But as it goes on, it can feel tedious, losing a lot of what made the early game stand out.
A surprising addition to the game is the use of the USB headset for the PlayStation 2. Instead of banging on the walls while you’re hiding in the shadows to attract the enemies, you can make noise into the headset instead. On top of that, if you’re using the headset, the “Director” speaks to you through the earpiece, like the character in the game, instead of through your TV’s speakers. This feature wasn’t a necessary addition, but it does add this weird sense of immersion to the game, and is a welcome addition.
There are a few bumps along the way that also bring the game down. One level of the game is an escort mission, and while it is manageable in that you can hide the person in the shadows and distract the enemies, it did feel slightly out of place. While the guns and escort missions were added in to have some variety, i just wish they were implemented better.
Graphically, the game uses the same engine as GTA III/Vice City/San Andreas, so it isn’t pushing the limits of the hardware. But because the game uses smaller areas instead of the open world of the GTA III trilogy, the graphics do get a noticeable bump in quality.
The entire game has an 80’s horror movie feel to it, with grungy feeling locations in it, such as old and abandoned buildings, streets cluttered with trash, and dark back alleys, as well as a VHS filter over the whole game, making it feel like you’ve found something that you shouldn’t have on some old cassette tape somewhere.
On top of that, Manhunt’s soundtrack is fantastic, with lot’s of 80’s John Carpenter inspired synth, helping to emphasize the dark and creepy atmosphere, making a lot of the parts where you’re being chased around feel more tense, and the moments where you have to sneak though the shadows feel like you’re about to get seen at any moment.
The sound design in Manhunt is top notch, with guns having a good oompf behind them. And when you’re taking out someone with an execution, you’re getting every last uncomfortable detail. If there is one thing this game really excels at, it’s the presentation.
The game surprisingly also features unlockables, which you can unlock after receiving a certain number of stars out of 5 from each level, which you get from how well you “perform” during a level. Besides the standard Concept Art, you unlock “Bonus Scenes”, with each one having their own objectives, such as killing as many of a specific enemy as possible and seeing how long you can survive waves on enemies.
These unlockables and star ratings add a surprising amount of replayability to the game, and poke at that part of your completionist part of your brain that wants to see 100% of everything the game has to offer, all while perfecting the game while doing it.
Manhunt is clearly not for everyone, with both it’s gruesome violence and dark themes. But with the fantastic presentation and for the small group of people who enjoy the more extreme type of horror this game has, Manhunt is definitely worth checking out.
Rockstar Games has received quite a bit of controversy of the years for a lot of their games. While a lot of it is completely unwarranted, probably one of the more infamous games that got a lot of flak was Manhunt. It’s dark and mature content got the game banned in several countries, such as Australia, New Zealand and Germany. Manhunt was released in 2003 for the PlayStation 2, and in 2004 for the PC and Xbox.
In Manhunt, you play as James Earl Cash, a death row inmate who is thought to be dead by everyone after a lethal injection. But Cash finds himself waking up in a locked room with a man known only as “The Director”, played fantastically by Brian Cox (X-Men 2 and The Bourne Identity), speaking to you through an earpiece. “The Director” promises Cash his freedom, but only if Cash follows his instructions.
Soon, Cash finds himself part of a snuff film ring that wants to use him as its newest star, having to kill for the cameras, all for the sick twisted pleasure of the audience. Through the night, he has to make his way through several psychotic gangs who are trying to kill him in the most brutal way possible. The game’s story is pretty dark in nature, which will turn off most people from playing it. The whole concept comes off as “The Running Man” mixed with “8MM”.
The game is the standard Third Person stealth action game that draws from similar games such as Hitman: Codename 47 and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, with the standard trial-and error approach that quite a few standard stealth-based games had at the time. It’s no Thief: The Dark Project, but it was never trying to be. Stay hidden in the shadows, and if someone spots you wandering around, run around until you lose them, and go back to hiding in the shadows. Nothing too complicated.
The bad guys routes are limited to their areas of the map though, so you can’t drag an enemy out to a completely different area. You have to take enemies out in the location that they’re patrolling.
However, Manhunt’s main focus is the way you kill other characters. Since the hand-to-hand combat on the GTA III engine has always been bad, the game had to compensate by having you brutally execute the enemies. There are 3 different levels of execution, Hasty, Violent, and Gruesome, each more violent than the last. The severity of the execution depends on how long you hold the button down.
There’s a chance that while preparing to execute your “victim” (a word I use loosely since the enemies of the game are pretty much pure evil), there is the chance that either another enemy will spot you, or the person you’re following will turn around, causing you to run off, hide in the shadows, and try again when the person loses interest and goes back to patrolling, so you have to be somewhat careful in picking someone off. Thankfully, the game does have a block ability just in case you have to defend yourself, but the melee combat should always be avoided since it’s more frustrating than anything.
Unfortunately, the controls are not the greatest. While the PC version uses the standard WASD keys to move and mouse to look around in third person, but for some reason on the console version, when you use the right thumb stick to look around, your perspective suddenly shifts to First Person, which makes looking around at your surroundings more frustrating. The only way to look around corners in Third Person is to have the character put their back to the wall and have them peek around the corner.
While First Person is a neat addition for observing your surroundings, it could have easily been a button press for when it was needed. The majority of the game can be played with Third Person with no problem, and is always the preferred play style. So making it necessary is quite frustrating.
Unfortunately, the second half of the game implements ranged weapons, making it more run-and-gun oriented. The game’s shooting mechanics aren’t that great either, making this half of the game for frustrating than it should be. It isn’t terrible, but it can get frustrating if you slip up. Guns can cause a lot of damage, resulting in a quicker death if you decided to go up against someone head on rather than stealth, so when stealth is an options, it’s preferable choice.
There is a cover system to compensate for the not so great ranged combat, and it works OK. It is possible to sneak up on someone and get a head shot with a shotgun, or get a lot of damage in with a handgun. So if you plan it out right, gun combat can be alright. But as it goes on, it can feel tedious, losing a lot of what made the early game stand out.
A surprising addition to the game is the use of the USB headset for the PlayStation 2. Instead of banging on the walls while you’re hiding in the shadows to attract the enemies, you can make noise into the headset instead. On top of that, if you’re using the headset, the “Director” speaks to you through the earpiece, like the character in the game, instead of through your TV’s speakers. This feature wasn’t a necessary addition, but it does add this weird sense of immersion to the game, and is a welcome addition.
There are a few bumps along the way that also bring the game down. One level of the game is an escort mission, and while it is manageable in that you can hide the person in the shadows and distract the enemies, it did feel slightly out of place. While the guns and escort missions were added in to have some variety, i just wish they were implemented better.
Graphically, the game uses the same engine as GTA III/Vice City/San Andreas, so it isn’t pushing the limits of the hardware. But because the game uses smaller areas instead of the open world of the GTA III trilogy, the graphics do get a noticeable bump in quality.
The entire game has an 80’s horror movie feel to it, with grungy feeling locations in it, such as old and abandoned buildings, streets cluttered with trash, and dark back alleys, as well as a VHS filter over the whole game, making it feel like you’ve found something that you shouldn’t have on some old cassette tape somewhere.
On top of that, Manhunt’s soundtrack is fantastic, with lot’s of 80’s John Carpenter inspired synth, helping to emphasize the dark and creepy atmosphere, making a lot of the parts where you’re being chased around feel more tense, and the moments where you have to sneak though the shadows feel like you’re about to get seen at any moment.
The sound design in Manhunt is top notch, with guns having a good oompf behind them. And when you’re taking out someone with an execution, you’re getting every last uncomfortable detail. If there is one thing this game really excels at, it’s the presentation.
The game surprisingly also features unlockables, which you can unlock after receiving a certain number of stars out of 5 from each level, which you get from how well you “perform” during a level. Besides the standard Concept Art, you unlock “Bonus Scenes”, with each one having their own objectives, such as killing as many of a specific enemy as possible and seeing how long you can survive waves on enemies.
These unlockables and star ratings add a surprising amount of replayability to the game, and poke at that part of your completionist part of your brain that wants to see 100% of everything the game has to offer, all while perfecting the game while doing it.
Manhunt is clearly not for everyone, with both it’s gruesome violence and dark themes. But with the fantastic presentation and for the small group of people who enjoy the more extreme type of horror this game has, Manhunt is definitely worth checking out.
2016
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2020/03/03/mod-corner-swat-4-elite-force-swat-4-sketchkov-syndicate/
While SWAT 4 and it’s expansion pack Sketchkov Syndicate had a fantastic premise and a lot of great features that were executed pretty well, it also had a notorious difficulty spike and often annoying unpredictability that made a lot of the later levels a tedious slog to get through. That’s where SWAT: Elite Force comes in, not only adding even more great features to the game, but ironing out some of the problems that I had with the game.
From the get go, the changes are immediate. While the graphics remain the same, the mod still manages to add a few new bells and whistles, such as resolutions that go up to 8K, meaning that you no longer have to deal with the 1600×1200 resolution limit, along with new features such as an FOV slider and mouse smoothing. These might seem like small things, but once they’re there, you can’t imagine playing the game without them.
When you start a Single Player game, there is now the option to play through all of the levels of SWAT 4 and Sketchkov Syndicate together, which is nice for repeated playthoughs if you don’t want to have to switch between the two. If you’re really concerned about the story of the expansion being broken up by the levels from the base game, you can still choose to play them separately.
There are also some new levels that come included with the Elite Force mod. There’s only a few of them, but they fit in perfectly with the rest of the levels. You can also choose to include these levels in your Career or play them separately.
If you’ve played SWAT 4 and it’s expansion so much that the HARD difficulty is a breeze, there are some Premadeath options. Permadeath is exactly what you think it is, in that if you die, you have to start the career all over again, and if your AI permanently die, and they’re out for the rest of the game, meaning if you want to get through the game as easy as possible, you have to make sure your teammates are safe too.
While the difficult from the base game still manages to peak through every now and again, but thankfully it’s been significantly reduced to the mod re-balancing the game by moving around the maps in a new order, easing you into the game and it’s mechanics a lot better.
The AI also got a re-balance. In situations during the base game that I know I would have definitely failed in the base game and have to spend up to an hour on a level, I managed to pass with very few tries, if any, in Elite Force, even if it was by the skin of my teeth.
Throughout any of the missions, the mod now tells you when you complete individual objectives as you complete them, meaning that you no longer have to constantly check what your mission objectives are every couple of minutes by going into the objectives menu. It makes the whole experience feel smoother.
Your fellow SWAT members can still be taken out fairly quickly some times, but nowhere near as much as in the base game. SWAT members didn’t really start getting incapacitated on my play through until at least the 10th mission. Although, SWAT members still seem to get hung up on corners every now and again. I guess that’s a bug that’s baked into the AI.
You can now also order your fellow officers to do some of the stuff that only you could before, such as use grenades, lightsticks, C2, the optiwand, the pepper spray, and even use the door wedge on both closed and open doors. It really does take some of the tedium out of playing with the AI squad mates. The mod even introduces Speech Recognition. I haven’t tested it out myself, but it seems to work from what I’ve heard. This really helps for those who more immersion, and it certainly cuts down on going through menus.
There are also several new weapons, including a SCAR-H, Aks-74u, MP5K PDW, Glock 18 Glock 19, and even the option to carry no weapon at all. I guess that’s for if you know the game so well that you feel up for a challenge and a no-weapon run. Also, there are 2 new armor pieces. The Heavy Kevlar Armor and Heavy Ceramic Armor.
When you’re tired of playing the game by yourself, there is a myriad of new features for the multiplayer, including various new commands and key binds. You can even play though the single player in CO-OP.
This mod even restores content that didn’t make it into the final game due to time constraints during the development, but were left on the disc, along with more than 100 bug fixes throughout the game.
If you’re a fan of SWAT 4, then Elite Force is a must play. It’s amazing what a few tweaks can do to make a game better. If you want to know what every change is, the mod does come with a text file listing every single little detail. It does nothing but improve the game in a lot of ways along with adding a lot of new content for you to play around with. Elite Force is now my preferred way of playing SWAT 4, and I can’t see myself ever playing the game without it.
While SWAT 4 and it’s expansion pack Sketchkov Syndicate had a fantastic premise and a lot of great features that were executed pretty well, it also had a notorious difficulty spike and often annoying unpredictability that made a lot of the later levels a tedious slog to get through. That’s where SWAT: Elite Force comes in, not only adding even more great features to the game, but ironing out some of the problems that I had with the game.
From the get go, the changes are immediate. While the graphics remain the same, the mod still manages to add a few new bells and whistles, such as resolutions that go up to 8K, meaning that you no longer have to deal with the 1600×1200 resolution limit, along with new features such as an FOV slider and mouse smoothing. These might seem like small things, but once they’re there, you can’t imagine playing the game without them.
When you start a Single Player game, there is now the option to play through all of the levels of SWAT 4 and Sketchkov Syndicate together, which is nice for repeated playthoughs if you don’t want to have to switch between the two. If you’re really concerned about the story of the expansion being broken up by the levels from the base game, you can still choose to play them separately.
There are also some new levels that come included with the Elite Force mod. There’s only a few of them, but they fit in perfectly with the rest of the levels. You can also choose to include these levels in your Career or play them separately.
If you’ve played SWAT 4 and it’s expansion so much that the HARD difficulty is a breeze, there are some Premadeath options. Permadeath is exactly what you think it is, in that if you die, you have to start the career all over again, and if your AI permanently die, and they’re out for the rest of the game, meaning if you want to get through the game as easy as possible, you have to make sure your teammates are safe too.
While the difficult from the base game still manages to peak through every now and again, but thankfully it’s been significantly reduced to the mod re-balancing the game by moving around the maps in a new order, easing you into the game and it’s mechanics a lot better.
The AI also got a re-balance. In situations during the base game that I know I would have definitely failed in the base game and have to spend up to an hour on a level, I managed to pass with very few tries, if any, in Elite Force, even if it was by the skin of my teeth.
Throughout any of the missions, the mod now tells you when you complete individual objectives as you complete them, meaning that you no longer have to constantly check what your mission objectives are every couple of minutes by going into the objectives menu. It makes the whole experience feel smoother.
Your fellow SWAT members can still be taken out fairly quickly some times, but nowhere near as much as in the base game. SWAT members didn’t really start getting incapacitated on my play through until at least the 10th mission. Although, SWAT members still seem to get hung up on corners every now and again. I guess that’s a bug that’s baked into the AI.
You can now also order your fellow officers to do some of the stuff that only you could before, such as use grenades, lightsticks, C2, the optiwand, the pepper spray, and even use the door wedge on both closed and open doors. It really does take some of the tedium out of playing with the AI squad mates. The mod even introduces Speech Recognition. I haven’t tested it out myself, but it seems to work from what I’ve heard. This really helps for those who more immersion, and it certainly cuts down on going through menus.
There are also several new weapons, including a SCAR-H, Aks-74u, MP5K PDW, Glock 18 Glock 19, and even the option to carry no weapon at all. I guess that’s for if you know the game so well that you feel up for a challenge and a no-weapon run. Also, there are 2 new armor pieces. The Heavy Kevlar Armor and Heavy Ceramic Armor.
When you’re tired of playing the game by yourself, there is a myriad of new features for the multiplayer, including various new commands and key binds. You can even play though the single player in CO-OP.
This mod even restores content that didn’t make it into the final game due to time constraints during the development, but were left on the disc, along with more than 100 bug fixes throughout the game.
If you’re a fan of SWAT 4, then Elite Force is a must play. It’s amazing what a few tweaks can do to make a game better. If you want to know what every change is, the mod does come with a text file listing every single little detail. It does nothing but improve the game in a lot of ways along with adding a lot of new content for you to play around with. Elite Force is now my preferred way of playing SWAT 4, and I can’t see myself ever playing the game without it.
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2020/02/13/wrestling-with-emotions-2016-review/
No matter who you are, what you do, or what you look like, everyone needs somebody to love, and that includes wrestlers. And the game that looks at how wrestlers look for love is Wrestling With Emotions.
Created by Team LazerBeam, in Wrestling With Emotions, you take on the role of a lonely young wrestler who is coincidentally entering a new league, and is hoping he could find the perfect match. The game starts with you creating your wrestling persona by choosing the way he looks, with a total of 400 different combinations, using the LOL (Look Out Lovers) system.
Once you’ve found the persona that represents you perfectly, you then speed-date 8 different other wrestlers, answering the other wrestlers questions. If you get a match, you then go into the ring and wrestle them to find out if they’re your one true love.
Playing Wrestling With Emotions won’t take you longer than ~10-15 minutes, so it’s a quick experience. But there is some mild replayability in that you can change your wrestlers persona and answering questions differently to see if you can do a better job of finding a match.
There isn’t much to spoil because it’s so short, so you’ll just have to go check it out yourself to see if it’s something that you’d like. I’d recommend Wrestling With Emotions because it is so short, so it doesn’t wear itself out too much.
No matter who you are, what you do, or what you look like, everyone needs somebody to love, and that includes wrestlers. And the game that looks at how wrestlers look for love is Wrestling With Emotions.
Created by Team LazerBeam, in Wrestling With Emotions, you take on the role of a lonely young wrestler who is coincidentally entering a new league, and is hoping he could find the perfect match. The game starts with you creating your wrestling persona by choosing the way he looks, with a total of 400 different combinations, using the LOL (Look Out Lovers) system.
Once you’ve found the persona that represents you perfectly, you then speed-date 8 different other wrestlers, answering the other wrestlers questions. If you get a match, you then go into the ring and wrestle them to find out if they’re your one true love.
Playing Wrestling With Emotions won’t take you longer than ~10-15 minutes, so it’s a quick experience. But there is some mild replayability in that you can change your wrestlers persona and answering questions differently to see if you can do a better job of finding a match.
There isn’t much to spoil because it’s so short, so you’ll just have to go check it out yourself to see if it’s something that you’d like. I’d recommend Wrestling With Emotions because it is so short, so it doesn’t wear itself out too much.
2016
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2019/03/14/maize-2016-review/
It’s not very often I come across a decisive game that seems to completely split the audience down the middle. And after playing Maize, it’s pretty easy to see why that is.
Maize is a comedic First-Person Perspective Adventure Game released in 2016 and was developed and published by Finish Line Games. The playable character awakens on an abandoned farm, with no prior knowledge about how they got there or how they got there in the first place. You quickly find that the seemingly abandoned farm is overrun by sentient talking stalks of corn, along with a small Russian stuffed bear named Vladdy with a bad attitude who has to help you throughout the game, along with a science lab located under said abandoned farm.
From a gameplay perspective, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. What few actual puzzles there are aren’t that difficult, but if you’re not in tune with the games sense of humor, some of those puzzles won’t make much sense to you.
Throughout the game, you’ve got your trusty companion, Vladdy, a stuffed bear with a Russian accent. Vladdy is the biggest make-it-or-break-it part of this game for a lot of people. Most of his dialogue consists of being grumpy and insulting things. I didn’t mind him so much, but it’s really easy to see why so many of the people who play this game end up disliking him. He is very much a one note joke. I guess he’s in this game to break up the sentient corn characters, but almost all of his dialogue can be distilled down to “This is stupid, and you are stupid!” in a Russian accent. Most of the other jokes are absurdist jokes and puns. If the game wasn’t so short, there jokes could easily be even more grating.
Even though Maize has a lot of flaws dragging it down, I can’t help but at least get some enjoyment from the game. This game is a very hate-it-or-love-it game. You’ll either be chuckling at the corny puns and Monty Python-esque humor, or be annoyed at the lame jokes, Vladdy constantly telling you how stupid you are, and just how little this game has to offer. There is no in between. Which makes recommending this game very hard. I’d recommend watching the first 30 or 45 minutes of this game before making a purchase.
It’s not very often I come across a decisive game that seems to completely split the audience down the middle. And after playing Maize, it’s pretty easy to see why that is.
Maize is a comedic First-Person Perspective Adventure Game released in 2016 and was developed and published by Finish Line Games. The playable character awakens on an abandoned farm, with no prior knowledge about how they got there or how they got there in the first place. You quickly find that the seemingly abandoned farm is overrun by sentient talking stalks of corn, along with a small Russian stuffed bear named Vladdy with a bad attitude who has to help you throughout the game, along with a science lab located under said abandoned farm.
From a gameplay perspective, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. What few actual puzzles there are aren’t that difficult, but if you’re not in tune with the games sense of humor, some of those puzzles won’t make much sense to you.
Throughout the game, you’ve got your trusty companion, Vladdy, a stuffed bear with a Russian accent. Vladdy is the biggest make-it-or-break-it part of this game for a lot of people. Most of his dialogue consists of being grumpy and insulting things. I didn’t mind him so much, but it’s really easy to see why so many of the people who play this game end up disliking him. He is very much a one note joke. I guess he’s in this game to break up the sentient corn characters, but almost all of his dialogue can be distilled down to “This is stupid, and you are stupid!” in a Russian accent. Most of the other jokes are absurdist jokes and puns. If the game wasn’t so short, there jokes could easily be even more grating.
Even though Maize has a lot of flaws dragging it down, I can’t help but at least get some enjoyment from the game. This game is a very hate-it-or-love-it game. You’ll either be chuckling at the corny puns and Monty Python-esque humor, or be annoyed at the lame jokes, Vladdy constantly telling you how stupid you are, and just how little this game has to offer. There is no in between. Which makes recommending this game very hard. I’d recommend watching the first 30 or 45 minutes of this game before making a purchase.
2013
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2017/09/19/mod-corner-pirate-doom-doom-ii-hell-on-earth-review/
Pirate games are far and few between, and good pirate games are even fewer, probably few enough to be counted on one hand, maybe two. So when Pirate Doom came along, it was definitely a breath of fresh air.
Released on fourth of September, 2013, the majority of the mod was created by one guy nicknamed Arch AKA Darth. The plot is simple, you find out that someone has stolen your treasure and turned all of the pirates into monsters, and you have to fight your way through hordes of them to get your treasure back.
The mod is heavily influenced by the Monkey Island series, and its pretty obvious, with some of its graphics and music taken from the series. The mod also borrows from several other games, but I’ll let you discover these on your own. They all work together pretty well, so no complaints there.
Enemies have been dressed accordingly, such as the zombies (and the doomguy) wear eye patches, Arch-viles being voodoo doctors, the Revenants shooting parrots instead of rockets, Hell Knights and Barons of Hell having tattoos, and Imps looking like pirates. Even the Arachnotrons have their mechanical parts placed with steampunk technology. There are also a few new enemies, such as pygmy type people.
Graphically, the mod looks good, with levels set in a atmospheric graveyard and fog with the ghosts of dead pirates, a moody sunken ship and its former crew, and a Circus that contains a freak show. The game even has a level where your firing canons on a boat, destroying other boats. It is limited by the engine, but its an addition that adds greatly to the mix. There is a lot of variety in the visuals that prevents it from getting old really quickly.
It also has a lot of small details that add a lot to the game. When you shoot mirrors, they crack, there are a lot of pirate tropes and cliches packed into each level, and when you kill Imps, their tricorne’s are knocked off and float back down to the ground in a comical way.
Levels are well designed, feeling fair with it’s monster placement, even on the higher skill levels. The weapons are also designed accordingly, which include a flint pistol, both a shotgun and double shotgun, fast and slow firing cannons, and even a dynamite launcher, which the BFG equivalent.
Weapons are given out slowly, but when you get your hands on them, you realize they would have made earlier levels a cakewalk.
There is little reason not to try Pirate Doom. Its tongue-in-cheek presentation is top notch, and mixed with Doom’s gameplay, makes for an excellent mix. Pirate Doom is definitely worth downloading.
Pirate games are far and few between, and good pirate games are even fewer, probably few enough to be counted on one hand, maybe two. So when Pirate Doom came along, it was definitely a breath of fresh air.
Released on fourth of September, 2013, the majority of the mod was created by one guy nicknamed Arch AKA Darth. The plot is simple, you find out that someone has stolen your treasure and turned all of the pirates into monsters, and you have to fight your way through hordes of them to get your treasure back.
The mod is heavily influenced by the Monkey Island series, and its pretty obvious, with some of its graphics and music taken from the series. The mod also borrows from several other games, but I’ll let you discover these on your own. They all work together pretty well, so no complaints there.
Enemies have been dressed accordingly, such as the zombies (and the doomguy) wear eye patches, Arch-viles being voodoo doctors, the Revenants shooting parrots instead of rockets, Hell Knights and Barons of Hell having tattoos, and Imps looking like pirates. Even the Arachnotrons have their mechanical parts placed with steampunk technology. There are also a few new enemies, such as pygmy type people.
Graphically, the mod looks good, with levels set in a atmospheric graveyard and fog with the ghosts of dead pirates, a moody sunken ship and its former crew, and a Circus that contains a freak show. The game even has a level where your firing canons on a boat, destroying other boats. It is limited by the engine, but its an addition that adds greatly to the mix. There is a lot of variety in the visuals that prevents it from getting old really quickly.
It also has a lot of small details that add a lot to the game. When you shoot mirrors, they crack, there are a lot of pirate tropes and cliches packed into each level, and when you kill Imps, their tricorne’s are knocked off and float back down to the ground in a comical way.
Levels are well designed, feeling fair with it’s monster placement, even on the higher skill levels. The weapons are also designed accordingly, which include a flint pistol, both a shotgun and double shotgun, fast and slow firing cannons, and even a dynamite launcher, which the BFG equivalent.
Weapons are given out slowly, but when you get your hands on them, you realize they would have made earlier levels a cakewalk.
There is little reason not to try Pirate Doom. Its tongue-in-cheek presentation is top notch, and mixed with Doom’s gameplay, makes for an excellent mix. Pirate Doom is definitely worth downloading.
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2018/12/14/christmas-shopper-simulator-2-black-friday/
The one inevitable thing about Christmas is the shopping for presents. It’s tedious and annoying, with the constant advertising all over the place and having to deal with the crowds depending on how late you left it. So instead of going out to buy your presents, why not just buy everything online. But it’s not the same experience as seeing all of the shitty ads on every store front and obnoxious crowds rushing over and injuring each other to get the best deals, so that’s where Christmas Shopper Simulator has you covered. You can witness the virtual crowds from the safety of your own home.
Christmas Shopper Simulator was developed by an obscure company called Freak Storm Games, who seemed to rename itself Solid Storm Games shortly before being dissolved with the Christmas Shopper Simulator games being the only games under their belt. The game was actually published by the aptly titled video game store GAME, as a way to advertise their stores for, obviously, Christmas, being released December 16, 2014, literally 9 days away from Christmas, just in time for any shoppers leaving it this late.
The game consists of the player character, either a male or female avatar with absolutely no option for customization, which doesn’t really matter because of how short this game is, as they go buy, or steal if the player wants to complete this as quickly as possible, presents for their loved ones.
To know which presents to get, you have to accept missions from a payphone Hotline Miami style, and then wander around a smallish shopping mall finding each present from whatever store has it, such as kicking open crates for a panda mask, avoiding security in a store that hasn’t opened yet for a video game, and jumping over maintenance platforms to obtain a doll.
The whole game feels a little like Goat Simulator, which came out seven months before, as you can use and abuse the game’s physics engine to destroy the games environment. Doing so won’t really get you anything, but to make up for it, the game comes with a bunch of wacky achievements, such as finding bag ladies, trying use the physics to do the splits, and for some reason, fart a bunch.
It’s nowhere near as “polished” as Goat Simulator, it’s clearly not trying to be, as it’s an incredibly simple and really short game simply meant to be a quick advertisement for a game store for the Christmas Season. But it is mildly amusing for what it is for the 5 minutes you’ll play of it before promptly forgetting about it.
Christmas Shopper Simulator, along with the second game, should only take 30 minutes at most combined, offer very little in the way of content, and were only made as Youtuber fodder to help promote the storefront that it was made to promote. The only upsides to this are that it's short and free.
The one inevitable thing about Christmas is the shopping for presents. It’s tedious and annoying, with the constant advertising all over the place and having to deal with the crowds depending on how late you left it. So instead of going out to buy your presents, why not just buy everything online. But it’s not the same experience as seeing all of the shitty ads on every store front and obnoxious crowds rushing over and injuring each other to get the best deals, so that’s where Christmas Shopper Simulator has you covered. You can witness the virtual crowds from the safety of your own home.
Christmas Shopper Simulator was developed by an obscure company called Freak Storm Games, who seemed to rename itself Solid Storm Games shortly before being dissolved with the Christmas Shopper Simulator games being the only games under their belt. The game was actually published by the aptly titled video game store GAME, as a way to advertise their stores for, obviously, Christmas, being released December 16, 2014, literally 9 days away from Christmas, just in time for any shoppers leaving it this late.
The game consists of the player character, either a male or female avatar with absolutely no option for customization, which doesn’t really matter because of how short this game is, as they go buy, or steal if the player wants to complete this as quickly as possible, presents for their loved ones.
To know which presents to get, you have to accept missions from a payphone Hotline Miami style, and then wander around a smallish shopping mall finding each present from whatever store has it, such as kicking open crates for a panda mask, avoiding security in a store that hasn’t opened yet for a video game, and jumping over maintenance platforms to obtain a doll.
The whole game feels a little like Goat Simulator, which came out seven months before, as you can use and abuse the game’s physics engine to destroy the games environment. Doing so won’t really get you anything, but to make up for it, the game comes with a bunch of wacky achievements, such as finding bag ladies, trying use the physics to do the splits, and for some reason, fart a bunch.
It’s nowhere near as “polished” as Goat Simulator, it’s clearly not trying to be, as it’s an incredibly simple and really short game simply meant to be a quick advertisement for a game store for the Christmas Season. But it is mildly amusing for what it is for the 5 minutes you’ll play of it before promptly forgetting about it.
Christmas Shopper Simulator, along with the second game, should only take 30 minutes at most combined, offer very little in the way of content, and were only made as Youtuber fodder to help promote the storefront that it was made to promote. The only upsides to this are that it's short and free.
2005
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2020/07/04/mod-corner-night-at-the-office-half-life-review/
In Night at the Office, you play as a recently hired administration assistant working for a courier company called ‘Parcel Passages’ in their High-rise headquarters office building. One night, while you happen to be working, a group of terrorists attacks the high-rise. You soon find yourself trying to either escape or stop the terrorists, all while trying to survive.
It should be pretty obvious to anyone reading that description that Night at the Office is heavily inspired by the original Die Hard film. But this mod does do enough differently that it feels more like an homage than a complete rehash of the film. Although, it’s probably more likely that the mod team didn’t want to be sued by 20 Century Fox, so did some reworking. But in the end, it does feel like a passionate homage to Die Hard but in the form of a Half-Life mod.
Also, if you want to properly enjoy the story, you’ll need to play this mods equivalent of the Hazard Course, which is recommended before playing the campaign.
The mod even comes with it’s own original voice acting. Sure, it’s all recorded on microphones of varying quality and very obviously done by amateurs, but it adds to the charm of the mod.
While the mod is entirely limited to a high-rise, the mod makes up for it by letting you move freely between the 16 different floors, all connected by a staircase, along with air vents. As a result, the story can be a tad non-linear depending on how you approach it, but it shouldn’t be too much of a problem.
Depending on how you play, you can get one of three different endings that the mod has to offer, so there is a decent amount of replayability.
The terrorists attacking the office building have patrol routes around their respective floors, meaning that you can’t just rush in guns blazing. Plus you wouldn’t want to anyway since you can’t refill your health, so keep those quick save and quick load buttons on standby. I don’t know why there aren’t even the bare minimum of health items, such as a basic medkit located in a kitchen somewhere. As a result, you’ll have to spend time sneaking around, at least for part of the mod, before getting your first weapon, an axe, before eventually having to take out one of the terrorists and getting yourself a machine gun.
Night at the Office does offer something other than the standard First Person Shooting that a lot of mods have. There are some parts of the game that involve finding access to cards to unlock more areas, and the previously mentioned crawling around vents to get from floor to floor and other areas, along with being stealthy enough to avoid some enemies.
Strangely, this mod doesn’t have a crosshair, making aiming a little more difficul than it should. Also, when changing the magazine of your gun, you’ll end up discarding any of the remaining ammunition that is still in it, so be careful to not absently minded reload like in other similar mods and first person shooters from the era.
In a surprising but welcome addition, Night at the Office comes with a bunch of bonus content located in zip files located in the mod folder (where you installed the mod). If you complete the mod, you get the passwords to unzip these files, all of which contain behind the scenes content, including sketches of levels and characters, early drafts of the scrips, images and videos of beta content, and ever more story content. I wasn’t expecting such a small obscure mod to have stuff like this, but it’s much appreciated.
Looking back at Night at the Office, it clearly has some ambition with it’s multiple endings and non-linear story, but unfortunately, it came out the same year as the original release of Afraid of Monsters, so it pretty much ended up being overshadowed by the success of that mod, and unless you were a die hard player of mods at the time, it was pretty clear which one was the one to play. It might be a bit rough to go back to since the standards for Half-Life mods and mods in general have gotten higher, but Night at the Office is still a mod you should go back and play if you’re a fan of the modding scene.
And it’s especially recommended over the official recreation of the film, “Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza”.
In Night at the Office, you play as a recently hired administration assistant working for a courier company called ‘Parcel Passages’ in their High-rise headquarters office building. One night, while you happen to be working, a group of terrorists attacks the high-rise. You soon find yourself trying to either escape or stop the terrorists, all while trying to survive.
It should be pretty obvious to anyone reading that description that Night at the Office is heavily inspired by the original Die Hard film. But this mod does do enough differently that it feels more like an homage than a complete rehash of the film. Although, it’s probably more likely that the mod team didn’t want to be sued by 20 Century Fox, so did some reworking. But in the end, it does feel like a passionate homage to Die Hard but in the form of a Half-Life mod.
Also, if you want to properly enjoy the story, you’ll need to play this mods equivalent of the Hazard Course, which is recommended before playing the campaign.
The mod even comes with it’s own original voice acting. Sure, it’s all recorded on microphones of varying quality and very obviously done by amateurs, but it adds to the charm of the mod.
While the mod is entirely limited to a high-rise, the mod makes up for it by letting you move freely between the 16 different floors, all connected by a staircase, along with air vents. As a result, the story can be a tad non-linear depending on how you approach it, but it shouldn’t be too much of a problem.
Depending on how you play, you can get one of three different endings that the mod has to offer, so there is a decent amount of replayability.
The terrorists attacking the office building have patrol routes around their respective floors, meaning that you can’t just rush in guns blazing. Plus you wouldn’t want to anyway since you can’t refill your health, so keep those quick save and quick load buttons on standby. I don’t know why there aren’t even the bare minimum of health items, such as a basic medkit located in a kitchen somewhere. As a result, you’ll have to spend time sneaking around, at least for part of the mod, before getting your first weapon, an axe, before eventually having to take out one of the terrorists and getting yourself a machine gun.
Night at the Office does offer something other than the standard First Person Shooting that a lot of mods have. There are some parts of the game that involve finding access to cards to unlock more areas, and the previously mentioned crawling around vents to get from floor to floor and other areas, along with being stealthy enough to avoid some enemies.
Strangely, this mod doesn’t have a crosshair, making aiming a little more difficul than it should. Also, when changing the magazine of your gun, you’ll end up discarding any of the remaining ammunition that is still in it, so be careful to not absently minded reload like in other similar mods and first person shooters from the era.
In a surprising but welcome addition, Night at the Office comes with a bunch of bonus content located in zip files located in the mod folder (where you installed the mod). If you complete the mod, you get the passwords to unzip these files, all of which contain behind the scenes content, including sketches of levels and characters, early drafts of the scrips, images and videos of beta content, and ever more story content. I wasn’t expecting such a small obscure mod to have stuff like this, but it’s much appreciated.
Looking back at Night at the Office, it clearly has some ambition with it’s multiple endings and non-linear story, but unfortunately, it came out the same year as the original release of Afraid of Monsters, so it pretty much ended up being overshadowed by the success of that mod, and unless you were a die hard player of mods at the time, it was pretty clear which one was the one to play. It might be a bit rough to go back to since the standards for Half-Life mods and mods in general have gotten higher, but Night at the Office is still a mod you should go back and play if you’re a fan of the modding scene.
And it’s especially recommended over the official recreation of the film, “Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza”.
2018
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.
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/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.
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.
This review contains spoilers
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2019/12/03/die-hard-nakatomi-plaza-2002-review/
Warning: Spoilers for both Die Hard (1988) and Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza (2002). If you haven’t watched the film, go watch it, it’s highly recommended.
It’s that time of the year again! Snow, Christmas Trees, A Festive Dinner, Gift Giving! What a wonderful time of the year! And what other way could you celebrate Christmas other than gunning down terrorists that have your wife hostage? OK, sure, Die Hard just barely scrapes by as a Christmas movie, but I have trouble counting good Christmas films on one hand, let alone Christmas themed video games in general, so a video game based on a film where the only qualification to make it a Christmas film is that it’s set at Christmas will have to do.
You probably already know what the plot of Die Hard is, but let my just sum up for the sake of this review. On Christmas Eve, NYPD detective John McClane arrives in Los Angeles, intending to reconcile with his estranged wife, Holly, at the Christmas party of her employer, the Nakatomi Corporation. Unfortunately, at the same time, a group of terrorists lead by Hans Gruber, take over the tower at the time, intent on stealing $640 million in bearer bonds. Caught in the middle, John McClane does everything to try and save his wife.
Surprisingly, Nakatomi Plaza has a mildly interesting development history, starting out on the Build Engine (Duke Nukem 3D/Shadow Warrior/Blood), before moving onto the GoldSRC engine (Half-Life/Gunman Chronicles), until it landed onto the Lithtech 2.0 engine (No One Lives Forever/Sanity: Aiken’s Artifact/Legends of Might and Magic). I’m surprised it actually got released with that many leaps in game engines. Usually games don’t make that make that many game engine jumps and survive.
The best way to describe Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza is that it’s like the movie, but everything is slightly off. Everything is there, but it’s just not quite the same, which is a shame, because the developers actually seemed to try their best to make it as accurate to the movie as possible. For example, the developers made John McClane left handed, exactly like the actor Bruce Willis. Even John McClane’s footsteps sound like he’s running around barefoot, just like the movie. It’s also pretty neat seeing just how the game tries to connect all of the scenes of the film together by introducing areas inbetween the ones you seen in the film to make it feel more like a real location rather than just mimic everything from the film.
But the whole thing is brought down by a lack of either budget, time, or probably both. It just feels more like an interactive guided tour of the movie than an actual game. You actually have to keep close to the plot points of the film when playing with absolutely no deviation. One instance has you not only collecting items off one of the terrorists like the movie, but checking to see if his shoes fit too, again, just like the movie. I got stuck for 5 minutes trying to figure out what to do, trying to interact with everything in the environment before I noticed that the one body was the one body I had to interact with because it was the only one to not disappear due to engine limitations.
Why wasn’t this a quick cutscene instead of having me do it? I know it what happens in the movie, but it just comes across as confusing in the game, especially when you have to check his body twice instead of the once. Later in the game, one of the scenes in the movie is played out in a cutscene. Either have all of it be cutscenes, or have all of it be in game. At least if all of it is in game, it feels more like a game than a low budget version of Die Hard. Or you could have at least had a prompt come up telling me what to do, even if I was familiar with the film.
Something similar happen not too long after that where you have to defuse bombs that the terrorists planted, but first you have to find some wirecutters. Good like trying to find a small item located on some random terrorists body, all while having to deal with a time limit and shooting at terrorists. Sometimes, you have to either find a small item or interact with something, and it’s not always easy to find or see. You would have to click on anything that even remotely look like something that looks like it can be interacted with.
Probably the best part of the game are the way the levels look. All of the locations look accurate to the film counterparts, and it’s pretty neat that that you can see locations from the film up close and personal. And the menus are a slight problem too. When I load a game and then pause to save it, it immediately brings up the load menu because that was the last menu the game was on, and as a result, I have accidentally loaded a game more than once, losing progress.
There are a few entertaining moments. One of these moments has you avoiding getting sucked into a fan while trying to cut a wire to turn it off, all while one of the terrorists gets sucked into it, but these moments are far and few. Every now and again, you can listen into a terrorists conversation and it is mildly amusing, and is yet another detail that the team behind this game did put in some time and effort.
The whole game plays up the fact that it’s from John McClane’s persepctive The game tries to hide Hans Gruber’s face throughout the game, and that’s because of a scene later the movie and game where John McClane meets Hans Gruber, but doesn’t know it’s him because he’s never seen Hans’s face. It would be a neat twist if not for the fact that you would have to be a fan of the film to even consider buying this game. And I don’t see a lot of people picking up this game if they don’t know what Die Hard is.
Almost none of the actors have returned for this game have, probably because they were both too expensive to hire and they probably had a ton of other stuff to do, except for Reginald VelJohnson, who played LAPD Sgt. Al Powell from Die Hard 1 and 2. He didn’t seem to have much going on around that time and was probably happy to reprise his role for the game.
The other voice actors a mixed bunch, and that’s putting it incredibly nicely. Probably the best ones are John McClane and Hans Gruber, but just barely. If I didn’t know who the voice actors were trying to imitate, I would probably not be able to guess who 90% of the actors were supposed to be playing. One of the terrorists sounded like an Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonator to me. They’re all over the place, most of which are just putting on bad accents.
Weirdly enough, the best strategy when playing this game isn’t running and gunning, but often crouching and peering around corners with one of the lean keys. I assume that this is to make the game feel like you are an average guy caught up in a dangerous situation much like John McClane is, and it adds some minor depth to the gameplay.
Surprisingly, this game tries to expand and diversify it’s arsenal. I never really needed to use these extra guns since I had plenty of MP5 ammo. I get that looking at the same gun could get incredibly boring, but it’s not like there’s much wiggle room here for an expanded arsenal. Also, the MP5 and Beretta share from the same ammunition pool, so I have no idea why you would want to use the Beretta over the MP5.
But the biggest problem with the concept of basing a game on the first Die Hard film is that the film is 2 hours long, and has doesn’t have much wiggle room going on to add new things to the whole experience. In the film, there is 13 terrorists total. To compensate, the game has several times that. One level has as many terrorists as the movie does during it’s entire run time. Which is extra amusing, or annoying depending on your point of view, because they keep the dialogue accurate to the film, which mentions that there are only 13 terrorists at most.
As far as video games based on films go, you could do a hell of a lot worse. But the time you could take to play through this game, you could just have had a double feature of both Die Hard and Die Hard: With a Vengeance, the two best (and only IMO) Die Hard films in the whole franchise. Nakatomi Plaza also had the unfortunate timing to come out the same year as some amazing first person shooters such as No One Lives Forever 2, Unreal Tournament 2003, Metroid Prime, and TimeSplitters 2 just to name a few.
Even the other Die Hard games are a step up from this, most notably “Die Hard Trilogy”, “Die Hard Arcade”, and “Die Hard: Vendetta”. Not a lot of people would have payed attention to this game when it was released, and there was a very good reason for that.
Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza is a mixed bag at the best of times. I don’t see too many people outside of the die hard Die Hard fans, hardcore first person shooter fans that want to play everything in the genre, and people who like to play and/or collect older games playing this game.
Warning: Spoilers for both Die Hard (1988) and Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza (2002). If you haven’t watched the film, go watch it, it’s highly recommended.
It’s that time of the year again! Snow, Christmas Trees, A Festive Dinner, Gift Giving! What a wonderful time of the year! And what other way could you celebrate Christmas other than gunning down terrorists that have your wife hostage? OK, sure, Die Hard just barely scrapes by as a Christmas movie, but I have trouble counting good Christmas films on one hand, let alone Christmas themed video games in general, so a video game based on a film where the only qualification to make it a Christmas film is that it’s set at Christmas will have to do.
You probably already know what the plot of Die Hard is, but let my just sum up for the sake of this review. On Christmas Eve, NYPD detective John McClane arrives in Los Angeles, intending to reconcile with his estranged wife, Holly, at the Christmas party of her employer, the Nakatomi Corporation. Unfortunately, at the same time, a group of terrorists lead by Hans Gruber, take over the tower at the time, intent on stealing $640 million in bearer bonds. Caught in the middle, John McClane does everything to try and save his wife.
Surprisingly, Nakatomi Plaza has a mildly interesting development history, starting out on the Build Engine (Duke Nukem 3D/Shadow Warrior/Blood), before moving onto the GoldSRC engine (Half-Life/Gunman Chronicles), until it landed onto the Lithtech 2.0 engine (No One Lives Forever/Sanity: Aiken’s Artifact/Legends of Might and Magic). I’m surprised it actually got released with that many leaps in game engines. Usually games don’t make that make that many game engine jumps and survive.
The best way to describe Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza is that it’s like the movie, but everything is slightly off. Everything is there, but it’s just not quite the same, which is a shame, because the developers actually seemed to try their best to make it as accurate to the movie as possible. For example, the developers made John McClane left handed, exactly like the actor Bruce Willis. Even John McClane’s footsteps sound like he’s running around barefoot, just like the movie. It’s also pretty neat seeing just how the game tries to connect all of the scenes of the film together by introducing areas inbetween the ones you seen in the film to make it feel more like a real location rather than just mimic everything from the film.
But the whole thing is brought down by a lack of either budget, time, or probably both. It just feels more like an interactive guided tour of the movie than an actual game. You actually have to keep close to the plot points of the film when playing with absolutely no deviation. One instance has you not only collecting items off one of the terrorists like the movie, but checking to see if his shoes fit too, again, just like the movie. I got stuck for 5 minutes trying to figure out what to do, trying to interact with everything in the environment before I noticed that the one body was the one body I had to interact with because it was the only one to not disappear due to engine limitations.
Why wasn’t this a quick cutscene instead of having me do it? I know it what happens in the movie, but it just comes across as confusing in the game, especially when you have to check his body twice instead of the once. Later in the game, one of the scenes in the movie is played out in a cutscene. Either have all of it be cutscenes, or have all of it be in game. At least if all of it is in game, it feels more like a game than a low budget version of Die Hard. Or you could have at least had a prompt come up telling me what to do, even if I was familiar with the film.
Something similar happen not too long after that where you have to defuse bombs that the terrorists planted, but first you have to find some wirecutters. Good like trying to find a small item located on some random terrorists body, all while having to deal with a time limit and shooting at terrorists. Sometimes, you have to either find a small item or interact with something, and it’s not always easy to find or see. You would have to click on anything that even remotely look like something that looks like it can be interacted with.
Probably the best part of the game are the way the levels look. All of the locations look accurate to the film counterparts, and it’s pretty neat that that you can see locations from the film up close and personal. And the menus are a slight problem too. When I load a game and then pause to save it, it immediately brings up the load menu because that was the last menu the game was on, and as a result, I have accidentally loaded a game more than once, losing progress.
There are a few entertaining moments. One of these moments has you avoiding getting sucked into a fan while trying to cut a wire to turn it off, all while one of the terrorists gets sucked into it, but these moments are far and few. Every now and again, you can listen into a terrorists conversation and it is mildly amusing, and is yet another detail that the team behind this game did put in some time and effort.
The whole game plays up the fact that it’s from John McClane’s persepctive The game tries to hide Hans Gruber’s face throughout the game, and that’s because of a scene later the movie and game where John McClane meets Hans Gruber, but doesn’t know it’s him because he’s never seen Hans’s face. It would be a neat twist if not for the fact that you would have to be a fan of the film to even consider buying this game. And I don’t see a lot of people picking up this game if they don’t know what Die Hard is.
Almost none of the actors have returned for this game have, probably because they were both too expensive to hire and they probably had a ton of other stuff to do, except for Reginald VelJohnson, who played LAPD Sgt. Al Powell from Die Hard 1 and 2. He didn’t seem to have much going on around that time and was probably happy to reprise his role for the game.
The other voice actors a mixed bunch, and that’s putting it incredibly nicely. Probably the best ones are John McClane and Hans Gruber, but just barely. If I didn’t know who the voice actors were trying to imitate, I would probably not be able to guess who 90% of the actors were supposed to be playing. One of the terrorists sounded like an Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonator to me. They’re all over the place, most of which are just putting on bad accents.
Weirdly enough, the best strategy when playing this game isn’t running and gunning, but often crouching and peering around corners with one of the lean keys. I assume that this is to make the game feel like you are an average guy caught up in a dangerous situation much like John McClane is, and it adds some minor depth to the gameplay.
Surprisingly, this game tries to expand and diversify it’s arsenal. I never really needed to use these extra guns since I had plenty of MP5 ammo. I get that looking at the same gun could get incredibly boring, but it’s not like there’s much wiggle room here for an expanded arsenal. Also, the MP5 and Beretta share from the same ammunition pool, so I have no idea why you would want to use the Beretta over the MP5.
But the biggest problem with the concept of basing a game on the first Die Hard film is that the film is 2 hours long, and has doesn’t have much wiggle room going on to add new things to the whole experience. In the film, there is 13 terrorists total. To compensate, the game has several times that. One level has as many terrorists as the movie does during it’s entire run time. Which is extra amusing, or annoying depending on your point of view, because they keep the dialogue accurate to the film, which mentions that there are only 13 terrorists at most.
As far as video games based on films go, you could do a hell of a lot worse. But the time you could take to play through this game, you could just have had a double feature of both Die Hard and Die Hard: With a Vengeance, the two best (and only IMO) Die Hard films in the whole franchise. Nakatomi Plaza also had the unfortunate timing to come out the same year as some amazing first person shooters such as No One Lives Forever 2, Unreal Tournament 2003, Metroid Prime, and TimeSplitters 2 just to name a few.
Even the other Die Hard games are a step up from this, most notably “Die Hard Trilogy”, “Die Hard Arcade”, and “Die Hard: Vendetta”. Not a lot of people would have payed attention to this game when it was released, and there was a very good reason for that.
Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza is a mixed bag at the best of times. I don’t see too many people outside of the die hard Die Hard fans, hardcore first person shooter fans that want to play everything in the genre, and people who like to play and/or collect older games playing this game.
2019
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2021/05/11/art-sqool-pc-switch-review/
I think it’s best to let Art Sqool explain itself.
“In ART SQOOL, you are Froshmin, and it’s your freshman year. Create art, explore the beautiful mysterious, sprawling campus and complete tasks given to you by the professor. The professor is a neural network an art-trained A.I., as well as your faculty advisor. He uses his high-tech capabilities to objectively grade your work. The campus is spread over a number of floating islands and filled with bizarrely shaped objects and bizarre plants.” – Official Description.
Art Sqool is meant to help inspire someone who wants to get into doing art to actually follow through by giving them both the tools and inspiration to start drawing. Unfortunately, it comes off as more of a mixed bag at best.
Let’s start with the visuals since it’s the thing that stands out the most. Frankly, I find this art style incredibly obnoxious. The entire game is bright pastel tones with the occasional flickering textures that could cause a migraine at the best of times, and I’m pretty sure might cause a seizure for someone. There’s no real variety in the visuals either, as you’re subjected to the same smallish area to explore.
Mixed with the quirky personality and music that I found incredibly grating, this is going to be the biggest hurdle for anyone wanting to try this out.
Once you’re in the game, you’re introduced to your professor, an A.I. who is going to judge your art, and the game does this by giving you random prompts for you to draw.
The prompts for what to draw are randomized, so no two playthroughs are the same. Due to the randomization, some of the prompts don’t end up making complete sense, such as one suggesting that you redraw something that you’ve previously dawn, but it’s ended up being the first prompt that you have. But this is a minor complaint at best.
After being introduced to the Professor and the concept for the game, you’re dropped into a small area to explore, which consists of the previously mentioned small floating islands. You can jump over to each of the islands by simply tapping the space bar (or whatever key is jump for you) repeatedly to get over to another one of the islands.
And this is where the game introduces the controls. At first I found the controls to be pretty clunky. I had trouble getting my character up some stairs because he was so sluggish and awkward to control, and the camera kept hitting objects in the environment. And having to repeatedly tap the key to make your character ‘fly’ can get pretty annoying pretty fast.
Thankfully there are multiple camera angles to choose from, such as third person being close or far to the character, first person, and isometric. A lot of these alternative camera angles work better to a certain extent, but there is still some clumsiness to the controls.
Another problem is that you have to unlock the various colors and tools for painting by walking around the ‘campus’ the find them. Apparently you can spend an extra $2.99USD on the Switch version to just unlock all of them up front, but that feels a tad scummy. I feel like if you’re trying to inspire people to follow their dreams of doing art, maybe you shouldn’t lock away features that might help with that process.
After drawing whatever the game has suggested to you, or drawing whatever your heart desires, you can either jump off into the void or walking into the buildings (I had trouble recognizing the entrance door to a few of these buildings the first couple of times), and get your painting graded by the A.I. professor.
There seems to be no rhyme or reason on how your art gets rated. Scores ranged from A (best) to F (immediate fail), and it feels like they were given out arbitrarily. Even a slight change or not even changing anything at all could change my grade from a failing one to a passing one and vice versa.
I feel like removing the failing grade would help a lot not only with making the game progress more smoothly, but if the game is trying to get me into art, maybe giving me a failing grade on something so subject as art might turn me off from the whole process. Maybe it’s just commentary on people thinking their subjective opinions are objective, who knows.
I guess the manual that came with the game is pretty neat, and is a short comic about the comic asking his friend about he controls which he jotted down in his notebook. But at this point it feels like I’m stretching a bit to find something to compliment about this game.
At $6.99, it feels like a steep ask for anyone who is on the fence, especially when the aesthetic might be a big turn off for a lot of people. If you’re looking for the inspiration to start finally following your dreams of becoming a professional artist, this might not be the place to start. You could probably go watch a few YouTube videos for free and get a much better experience.
I think it’s best to let Art Sqool explain itself.
“In ART SQOOL, you are Froshmin, and it’s your freshman year. Create art, explore the beautiful mysterious, sprawling campus and complete tasks given to you by the professor. The professor is a neural network an art-trained A.I., as well as your faculty advisor. He uses his high-tech capabilities to objectively grade your work. The campus is spread over a number of floating islands and filled with bizarrely shaped objects and bizarre plants.” – Official Description.
Art Sqool is meant to help inspire someone who wants to get into doing art to actually follow through by giving them both the tools and inspiration to start drawing. Unfortunately, it comes off as more of a mixed bag at best.
Let’s start with the visuals since it’s the thing that stands out the most. Frankly, I find this art style incredibly obnoxious. The entire game is bright pastel tones with the occasional flickering textures that could cause a migraine at the best of times, and I’m pretty sure might cause a seizure for someone. There’s no real variety in the visuals either, as you’re subjected to the same smallish area to explore.
Mixed with the quirky personality and music that I found incredibly grating, this is going to be the biggest hurdle for anyone wanting to try this out.
Once you’re in the game, you’re introduced to your professor, an A.I. who is going to judge your art, and the game does this by giving you random prompts for you to draw.
The prompts for what to draw are randomized, so no two playthroughs are the same. Due to the randomization, some of the prompts don’t end up making complete sense, such as one suggesting that you redraw something that you’ve previously dawn, but it’s ended up being the first prompt that you have. But this is a minor complaint at best.
After being introduced to the Professor and the concept for the game, you’re dropped into a small area to explore, which consists of the previously mentioned small floating islands. You can jump over to each of the islands by simply tapping the space bar (or whatever key is jump for you) repeatedly to get over to another one of the islands.
And this is where the game introduces the controls. At first I found the controls to be pretty clunky. I had trouble getting my character up some stairs because he was so sluggish and awkward to control, and the camera kept hitting objects in the environment. And having to repeatedly tap the key to make your character ‘fly’ can get pretty annoying pretty fast.
Thankfully there are multiple camera angles to choose from, such as third person being close or far to the character, first person, and isometric. A lot of these alternative camera angles work better to a certain extent, but there is still some clumsiness to the controls.
Another problem is that you have to unlock the various colors and tools for painting by walking around the ‘campus’ the find them. Apparently you can spend an extra $2.99USD on the Switch version to just unlock all of them up front, but that feels a tad scummy. I feel like if you’re trying to inspire people to follow their dreams of doing art, maybe you shouldn’t lock away features that might help with that process.
After drawing whatever the game has suggested to you, or drawing whatever your heart desires, you can either jump off into the void or walking into the buildings (I had trouble recognizing the entrance door to a few of these buildings the first couple of times), and get your painting graded by the A.I. professor.
There seems to be no rhyme or reason on how your art gets rated. Scores ranged from A (best) to F (immediate fail), and it feels like they were given out arbitrarily. Even a slight change or not even changing anything at all could change my grade from a failing one to a passing one and vice versa.
I feel like removing the failing grade would help a lot not only with making the game progress more smoothly, but if the game is trying to get me into art, maybe giving me a failing grade on something so subject as art might turn me off from the whole process. Maybe it’s just commentary on people thinking their subjective opinions are objective, who knows.
I guess the manual that came with the game is pretty neat, and is a short comic about the comic asking his friend about he controls which he jotted down in his notebook. But at this point it feels like I’m stretching a bit to find something to compliment about this game.
At $6.99, it feels like a steep ask for anyone who is on the fence, especially when the aesthetic might be a big turn off for a lot of people. If you’re looking for the inspiration to start finally following your dreams of becoming a professional artist, this might not be the place to start. You could probably go watch a few YouTube videos for free and get a much better experience.