2001
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2019/01/08/mod-corner-poke646-half-life-2001-review/
Note: I’m Reviewing the Anniversary Edition.
Back before Half-Life 2 was was even close to being released to the general public and adoring Half-Life fans (curse you Valve Time), there were several mods made over the years that tried to continue the story of the first Half-Life, showing just how desperate the fans were for a continuation for their favorite video game franchise. One of these mods was Poke646.
Set 13 months after the incident at Black Mesa, The Black Mesa Research Facility has been shut down. The rest of the nation (along with the rest of the world) never knew of the experiments that happened there. As a result of the accident, the government founded a new organization to handle another incident. It was called Poke646.
A few days ago, the scientists noticed alarming signals coming from the Xen home world, and it looks like the aliens are planning to invade by opening a massive amount of portals in a certain city. Thankfully, the Poke646 Tech Labs were prepared, as they have developed a huge generator that is able to close hundreds of portals at once with an energy beam. Four of these generators are about to be installed at the edges of the city.
You play the role of Damien Reeves, the technical assistant of Dr. Fuller, who gets accidentally knocked out during the construction of one of these generators. When you wake up a couple of hours later, you soon find out that aliens are appearing all around the city, and through communications with Dr. Fuller, you soon find out that you’re the only one left and the only one who can close the portals.
The majority of the mod is running around the city trying to activate the four generators trying to survive the alien invasion. You get your objects throughout the mod from Dr. Fuller by using IU Devices that you find througout the mods. You’ll usually know when you’re nearby one of these things because a message pops up telling you to connect to one of these things.
Where you have to go is not always clear, and I know that’s a result of most video mods of the time, but it feels slightly more difficult the know where you’re going than some of the mods around the same time. It wasn’t necessarily the biggest problem, but I thought it was worth making a note of.
There are notes you come across around the environment that can tell you were keys or 4 digit codes are to help you unlock doors. They aren’t exactly highlighted for you, but once you know what you’re looking for, they’re easy to spot.
Poke464 comes with a new range of variants on the standard First Person Shooter firing range. The Melee weapon is a pipe, and whenever you swing it, your character gets tired. It’s easy to get around this by simply switching weapons, but after a while of trying to get through smashing a couple of crates to get ammo and weapons, it can be a little tedious. I don’t know why you would add stamina to what is supposed to be your last line of defense.
Other weapons include 2 different nailguns, one with a slow firing rate, and a second one with a higher firing rate that can hold more nails. There’s also the Pipebomb, which takes some getting used to when you’re trying to use to it, a Double Barreled Shotgun, and a CM-LW Bow Rifle for long range combat.
And the most unique one out of all of them is the Xen Squasher, a small alien creature that must be fed a certain brand of candy so it can shoot acid. The thing is pretty adorable depending on the way you look at it. The mod comes with a Training Course to get you all up to speed on the weapons and mechanics so you don’t end up getting killed a thousand times over in the same spot early on.
The mod got released as an “Anniversary Edition”, essentially updated to work on the modern version of Half-Life along with a bunch of bugfixes. I only seemed to have one major mod breaking glitch near the end of the mod, but it seem to be fine when i simply reloaded the mod.
Poke646 is surprisingly good, and lasts for a good 4 hours at most depending on the difficulty and how well you know the most. And it’s free, so it costs nothing but a free afternoon.
Note: I’m Reviewing the Anniversary Edition.
Back before Half-Life 2 was was even close to being released to the general public and adoring Half-Life fans (curse you Valve Time), there were several mods made over the years that tried to continue the story of the first Half-Life, showing just how desperate the fans were for a continuation for their favorite video game franchise. One of these mods was Poke646.
Set 13 months after the incident at Black Mesa, The Black Mesa Research Facility has been shut down. The rest of the nation (along with the rest of the world) never knew of the experiments that happened there. As a result of the accident, the government founded a new organization to handle another incident. It was called Poke646.
A few days ago, the scientists noticed alarming signals coming from the Xen home world, and it looks like the aliens are planning to invade by opening a massive amount of portals in a certain city. Thankfully, the Poke646 Tech Labs were prepared, as they have developed a huge generator that is able to close hundreds of portals at once with an energy beam. Four of these generators are about to be installed at the edges of the city.
You play the role of Damien Reeves, the technical assistant of Dr. Fuller, who gets accidentally knocked out during the construction of one of these generators. When you wake up a couple of hours later, you soon find out that aliens are appearing all around the city, and through communications with Dr. Fuller, you soon find out that you’re the only one left and the only one who can close the portals.
The majority of the mod is running around the city trying to activate the four generators trying to survive the alien invasion. You get your objects throughout the mod from Dr. Fuller by using IU Devices that you find througout the mods. You’ll usually know when you’re nearby one of these things because a message pops up telling you to connect to one of these things.
Where you have to go is not always clear, and I know that’s a result of most video mods of the time, but it feels slightly more difficult the know where you’re going than some of the mods around the same time. It wasn’t necessarily the biggest problem, but I thought it was worth making a note of.
There are notes you come across around the environment that can tell you were keys or 4 digit codes are to help you unlock doors. They aren’t exactly highlighted for you, but once you know what you’re looking for, they’re easy to spot.
Poke464 comes with a new range of variants on the standard First Person Shooter firing range. The Melee weapon is a pipe, and whenever you swing it, your character gets tired. It’s easy to get around this by simply switching weapons, but after a while of trying to get through smashing a couple of crates to get ammo and weapons, it can be a little tedious. I don’t know why you would add stamina to what is supposed to be your last line of defense.
Other weapons include 2 different nailguns, one with a slow firing rate, and a second one with a higher firing rate that can hold more nails. There’s also the Pipebomb, which takes some getting used to when you’re trying to use to it, a Double Barreled Shotgun, and a CM-LW Bow Rifle for long range combat.
And the most unique one out of all of them is the Xen Squasher, a small alien creature that must be fed a certain brand of candy so it can shoot acid. The thing is pretty adorable depending on the way you look at it. The mod comes with a Training Course to get you all up to speed on the weapons and mechanics so you don’t end up getting killed a thousand times over in the same spot early on.
The mod got released as an “Anniversary Edition”, essentially updated to work on the modern version of Half-Life along with a bunch of bugfixes. I only seemed to have one major mod breaking glitch near the end of the mod, but it seem to be fine when i simply reloaded the mod.
Poke646 is surprisingly good, and lasts for a good 4 hours at most depending on the difficulty and how well you know the most. And it’s free, so it costs nothing but a free afternoon.
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2021/09/16/wreckless-the-yakuza-missions-jp-double-s-t-e-a-l-gcn-ps2-xbox-review/
For everyone, there is that one game that you played as a kid, a game that only you seem to remember. The one game that remains at the back of your mind, laying dormant, until it pops up randomly out of nowhere as a distant memory that you could swear is a fever dream, but after some searching online, you find out that it wasn’t a fever dream, but an actual game that got released, and no one else seems to have heard of it besides you. For me, one of those games is ‘Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions’. Or as it’s called in Japan, ‘Double S.T.E.A.L.’, but for the sake of consistency, I’ll be calling the game Wreckless since an English audience is going to be the ones reading it anyway.
Set in Hong Kong, you either play as a pair of police women who are part of the corrupt Hong Kong Police Force, called the Flying Dragons, attempting to crack down on rival Yakuza operations, or a pair of spies hired to take down the Tiger Takagi, the head of the Hong Kong Yakuza, along with trying to uncover the links between the mafia and the police and helping to stop the Yakuza stranglehold of Hong Kong.
The funniest thing that I could find about the plot to this game though comes from the official Nintendo website, in which the two police characters that you play are described as “But they’re more like Inspector Clouseau than Robocop.” If that doesn’t set the tone, I don’t know what will.
Not that it matters all that much since I could probably count the amount of cutscenes of this game on one hand, all of them less taking up less than 5 minutes total combined. The characters are dumb caricatures and they don’t even get enough screen time to even be 1 dimensional, let alone get more character development than the two sentence description that they all had that were more of a vague concept that a character description. They’re fun to watch, but you’re not going into Wreckless: for the in-depth characters. They’re more there to help give the game it’s comedic tone. The best way that I could describe Wreckless is that it’s like ‘You’re Under Arrest!’ and ‘Tank Police’ had a baby and that baby came out through an explosion.
To give an indication of just how silly the game’s plot is, there is one mission in the Police campaign where the bad guy is on top of a skyscraper and the two female cops are in a helicopter, with the car, for convenient reasons, in the helicopter with them. The bad guy then shoots out of the sky, and somehow both characters and their car land safely on top of the skyscraper. And at this point the bad guy gets the good idea to know you and your vehicle off the skyscraper wit his car, which came up on the same elevator that he did.
I’ll briefly mention it here that Xbox version and the PlayStation 2 and GameCube versions are different. I’ll focus on the Xbox version for now, but I’ll come back to these differences later. Each ‘Campaign’ has 10 missions each, with 20 missions total. The missions range from taking blood packs from a crashed ambulance to a hospital without taking too many hits from the Yakuza or running into walls before getting to the hospital, to smashing more Dim Sum stands than the Yakuza can, to saving a kidnapped Feng Shui Professor who has been tied to the front of a monstrous dump truck. And to save the Feng Shui professor, you have to driving into the dump truck off a higher ledge, causing explosions due to the dump truck being filler with dangerous explosive barrels.
It can get pretty weird and funny with it’s objectives.
But a lot of these objectives can be more difficult than they need to be simply because of the way the cars control. I don’t know how to describe the driving other than it feels like a mix of trying to control a car while it’s driving on ice and trying to control a beach ball. Once I got used to it, it wasn’t the worst driving that I’ve ever experience, but it’s still feels a little bit slippery.
There were a few times where I either flipped the car and had to wait for the game to respawn my car back upright or got stuck on geometry and it took a while for the game to notice that I was stuck, both requiring me to restart the mission because the time was now too low to complete the mission. The amount of times that I’ve had to listen to one of the characters over the radio talk about taking the blood packs to the hospital or having to save the Fung Shui Expert have been drilled into my mind and I’m pretty sure when I’m 80 and reminded of this game, those quotes are going to come back up and haunt me.
And on top of that, every mission is timed. That doesn’t sound to bad, but the time limit is so low that you’re practically completing missions by the skin of your teeth half the time. But then if you screw up at specific points in some missions, the time limit resets to whatever it was when it sets you back, just giving you enough time to complete the mission I had one mission cut time off the time limit. Why would you give me that time limit if you were just going to take time away from me? I have no idea if this happened at other points of the game because I was too focused on trying to complete the mission in the time frame.
One of the most annoying missions is one where you’re playing as the spies and you have to take photos of someone. But instead of just driving around to take photos from certain angles, that simply require you to just drive to where you need to get the photos from as quickly as possible, you have to not only drive around a pier, which is narrow and has tight turns, but also requires you to jump over openings in the pier, one of which requires you to barrel roll. And that’s if you don’t know that you can just drive around. Which way to do you want to waste precious seconds, trying to perfect the barrel roll, or having to drive the long way? I’m pretty sure the PS2/XBOX/CGN Grand Theft Auto games had more reliable physics than this game.
It also doesn’t help that you have to manually save the game if you want to keep your progress. It doesn’t even bother to autosave the game after you’ve completed a mission, a feature that a lot of games had at this point. I found this out the hard way after completing a couple of missions and turning my console off, only to turn it back on again to find out that all of my progress had gone.
The game also has a variety of unlockable cars. Some of which you can unlock by simply completing missions, but others are located throughout levels and you have to go out of your way to not only find them and hit them with your current car, but also continue and complete your mission, which is going to take a lot of retrying with just how tight the game is with it’s time limit. These cars can range from a Monster Truck to a rip-off of the Delorean from ‘Back to the Future’ to a tank, which can actually fire rounds. When I used the tank, my time for the first mission went from just over 2 minutes to complete to just over 30 seconds, shaving off a whole minute and a half. It’s not quite as effective or all missions though.
That doesn’t sound too bad except for the previously mentioned floaty controls timed missions, causing a close shave, meaning you’re going to have to get really good at this game if you want to unlock those cars. And you don’t really have anyone to show them to since the Xbox version of ‘Wreckless’ is a Single Player game only, unless you have some friends around or posting proof on the internet and want to brag to them about some obscure game.
Also, I had some problems with the pause menu. For some reason, the ‘Retire’ button, which takes you back to the main menu, is right at the top of the menu, and it’s the button that the game highlights when you pause the game, for some reason. The ‘Return’ button that would take you right back into the game is right down at the bottom of the menu. Not even right under the ‘Retire’ button. Instead, the button under the button under the ‘Retire’ button is the ‘Restart’ button, which restarts the whole mission.
Which has resulted in me accidentally pressing the ‘Retire’ and ‘Restart’ button more times than I should have because I was rushing to press the controller buttons to get back into the game due to years of muscle memory from games having their return to game buttons at the top of the menu and being highlighted. You can also press the ‘back’ button and the ‘start’ button to also get back in the game, which means that there is three ways to get back into the game and all of them are the most annoying way to get back into the game.
The game also looks pretty good on a technical level for an Xbox game, with lots of destructible objects, bloom, great lighting (even if some of the shadows looked a little off at points), and the cars even having good looking damage models. There were a few moments that the screen was a little too cluttered and too many things were going on, but the game does look good.
And I guess this is a good time to transition over to comparing the Xbox version of the game to the PS2 and GCN versions of the game. The PS2 and CGN versions weren’t just a simple port job, as those versions of the game were developed by ‘Stealth Studios’, with the original being developed by ‘Bunkasha’, resulting in quite a few differences between the versions. The most obvious being the graphics.
The PS2 and CGN posts look downright awful to the Xbox, and even look bad for their respective consoles. There are a lot less things to destroy, random stuff like characters and a few vehicles look weirdly shiny for no reason, and all of the models are textures are so low quality, with a lot of the textures being blurry. And just because these consoles didn’t have the horsepower like the original Xbox did, that didn’t mean they weren’t capable of good looking games, such as other open world games like ‘Jak II’, ‘Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction’, and ‘Spider-Man 2’. It’s like night and day.
Also, the cutscenes in the Xbox version are in real time, while the cutscenes in the PS2 and GCN versions take the cutscenes in the Xbox version and present them as pre-rendered videos in the PS2 and GCN versions. Maybe the studio that ported the game just didn’t have the time, money, or both to properly port the cutscenes and this was the best that they could do. The PS2 and GCN versions also came with a myriad of technical performance issues, such as slow down, which pretty much confirms that it was a rush job.
The reason that the Xbox version looks so much better, technical limits notwithstanding, is that ‘Wreckless’ was originally designed for the Xbox from the ground up, resulting in a more polished experience, with the ports probably being after thought since they were ported by a different company. As a result, those versions are a worse looking and performing game, not only resulting in a worse looking game, but resulting in a game that had more glitches and slowdowns than the Xbox version despite looking worse.
And to top it all off, the driving feels so much worse. I know that I complained about how the driving in the original Xbox version felt slippery, but I could get used to the driving in that version. In the PS2 and CGN versions, the driving somehow feels both stiff and slippery at the same time. I don’t know how else to describe it. Although in this version, I can pull off drifting better.
But despite a lot of the game feeling rushed, there are some nice additions to the PS2 and GCN version of the game, even if it doesn’t make up for the downgrade in graphics and gameplay.
Firstly, there is an adrenaline feature that slows down time for a brief period along with a limited supply of short range missiles. I felt these additions were a little pointless and that they were added to make up for the way the cars control, but it’s nice that they’re here.
Missions are now ranked based on not only how quickly you complete them, with Gold, Silver, and Bronze medals to indicate you on how well you did, but the game has secondary objectives to complete as well, such as destroying a certain amount of traffic or objects in a mission. If you complete one of these objectives on Hard Mode, you can unlock a bonus mission. If you earn Gold, you can also unlock one of the cheat codes, such as low gravity or unlimited time on missions.
There are also now twice as many missions as the Xbox version, with 40 instead of 20. It’s hard to complain about new content. But weirdly, the missions that were ported over are now in a completely different order. It’s not super important, but I thought I should mention it anyway.
The PS2 and GCN versions also come with two new multiplayer modes exclusive to these consoles. The first one has one player chasing after the second, where the objective is the first player has to destroy the second players car as quickly as possible. But for some reason the mode has only one camera instead of being split screen, with the camera following the player who has to destroy the other player’s car. I imagine this is probably due to the time limits imposed on the development team.
The other multiplayer mode is a racing mode, which is pretty self-explanatory.
The game also comes with a free drive mode too, allowing you to drive through the city in a more relaxed casual manner, taking in the views of the city. I wish the original Xbox version has this, as it would have been nice to see the city with the better graphics without having to destroy Yakuza cars or take something somewhere.
Also, in the Xbox version the pedestrians run out of the way, while in the PS2 and CGN versions, you can hit the pedestrians, flinging them into the sky. So at least those versions have that going for it.
So when it comes down to it, you have to either pick between a better looking and better controlling game, or a game with more content, but controls worse, looks worse, and has more technical issues. I hope that down the line someone remasters this game with the Xbox graphics and controls with the PS2 and CGN content added in.
Would I recommend ‘Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions’? I know that I spent a large portion of this review complaining, but I would be lying if I said that I hated this game. Sure, the wonky physics are going to turn a lot of people away from this game, but I still enjoyed my time with this game, specifically the Xbox version, and I know that someone else is going to get something out of it.
It would be a lukewarm recommendation, since the only people who would probably play this are people who love finding weird obscure games, but it’s still a recommendation all the same.
For everyone, there is that one game that you played as a kid, a game that only you seem to remember. The one game that remains at the back of your mind, laying dormant, until it pops up randomly out of nowhere as a distant memory that you could swear is a fever dream, but after some searching online, you find out that it wasn’t a fever dream, but an actual game that got released, and no one else seems to have heard of it besides you. For me, one of those games is ‘Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions’. Or as it’s called in Japan, ‘Double S.T.E.A.L.’, but for the sake of consistency, I’ll be calling the game Wreckless since an English audience is going to be the ones reading it anyway.
Set in Hong Kong, you either play as a pair of police women who are part of the corrupt Hong Kong Police Force, called the Flying Dragons, attempting to crack down on rival Yakuza operations, or a pair of spies hired to take down the Tiger Takagi, the head of the Hong Kong Yakuza, along with trying to uncover the links between the mafia and the police and helping to stop the Yakuza stranglehold of Hong Kong.
The funniest thing that I could find about the plot to this game though comes from the official Nintendo website, in which the two police characters that you play are described as “But they’re more like Inspector Clouseau than Robocop.” If that doesn’t set the tone, I don’t know what will.
Not that it matters all that much since I could probably count the amount of cutscenes of this game on one hand, all of them less taking up less than 5 minutes total combined. The characters are dumb caricatures and they don’t even get enough screen time to even be 1 dimensional, let alone get more character development than the two sentence description that they all had that were more of a vague concept that a character description. They’re fun to watch, but you’re not going into Wreckless: for the in-depth characters. They’re more there to help give the game it’s comedic tone. The best way that I could describe Wreckless is that it’s like ‘You’re Under Arrest!’ and ‘Tank Police’ had a baby and that baby came out through an explosion.
To give an indication of just how silly the game’s plot is, there is one mission in the Police campaign where the bad guy is on top of a skyscraper and the two female cops are in a helicopter, with the car, for convenient reasons, in the helicopter with them. The bad guy then shoots out of the sky, and somehow both characters and their car land safely on top of the skyscraper. And at this point the bad guy gets the good idea to know you and your vehicle off the skyscraper wit his car, which came up on the same elevator that he did.
I’ll briefly mention it here that Xbox version and the PlayStation 2 and GameCube versions are different. I’ll focus on the Xbox version for now, but I’ll come back to these differences later. Each ‘Campaign’ has 10 missions each, with 20 missions total. The missions range from taking blood packs from a crashed ambulance to a hospital without taking too many hits from the Yakuza or running into walls before getting to the hospital, to smashing more Dim Sum stands than the Yakuza can, to saving a kidnapped Feng Shui Professor who has been tied to the front of a monstrous dump truck. And to save the Feng Shui professor, you have to driving into the dump truck off a higher ledge, causing explosions due to the dump truck being filler with dangerous explosive barrels.
It can get pretty weird and funny with it’s objectives.
But a lot of these objectives can be more difficult than they need to be simply because of the way the cars control. I don’t know how to describe the driving other than it feels like a mix of trying to control a car while it’s driving on ice and trying to control a beach ball. Once I got used to it, it wasn’t the worst driving that I’ve ever experience, but it’s still feels a little bit slippery.
There were a few times where I either flipped the car and had to wait for the game to respawn my car back upright or got stuck on geometry and it took a while for the game to notice that I was stuck, both requiring me to restart the mission because the time was now too low to complete the mission. The amount of times that I’ve had to listen to one of the characters over the radio talk about taking the blood packs to the hospital or having to save the Fung Shui Expert have been drilled into my mind and I’m pretty sure when I’m 80 and reminded of this game, those quotes are going to come back up and haunt me.
And on top of that, every mission is timed. That doesn’t sound to bad, but the time limit is so low that you’re practically completing missions by the skin of your teeth half the time. But then if you screw up at specific points in some missions, the time limit resets to whatever it was when it sets you back, just giving you enough time to complete the mission I had one mission cut time off the time limit. Why would you give me that time limit if you were just going to take time away from me? I have no idea if this happened at other points of the game because I was too focused on trying to complete the mission in the time frame.
One of the most annoying missions is one where you’re playing as the spies and you have to take photos of someone. But instead of just driving around to take photos from certain angles, that simply require you to just drive to where you need to get the photos from as quickly as possible, you have to not only drive around a pier, which is narrow and has tight turns, but also requires you to jump over openings in the pier, one of which requires you to barrel roll. And that’s if you don’t know that you can just drive around. Which way to do you want to waste precious seconds, trying to perfect the barrel roll, or having to drive the long way? I’m pretty sure the PS2/XBOX/CGN Grand Theft Auto games had more reliable physics than this game.
It also doesn’t help that you have to manually save the game if you want to keep your progress. It doesn’t even bother to autosave the game after you’ve completed a mission, a feature that a lot of games had at this point. I found this out the hard way after completing a couple of missions and turning my console off, only to turn it back on again to find out that all of my progress had gone.
The game also has a variety of unlockable cars. Some of which you can unlock by simply completing missions, but others are located throughout levels and you have to go out of your way to not only find them and hit them with your current car, but also continue and complete your mission, which is going to take a lot of retrying with just how tight the game is with it’s time limit. These cars can range from a Monster Truck to a rip-off of the Delorean from ‘Back to the Future’ to a tank, which can actually fire rounds. When I used the tank, my time for the first mission went from just over 2 minutes to complete to just over 30 seconds, shaving off a whole minute and a half. It’s not quite as effective or all missions though.
That doesn’t sound too bad except for the previously mentioned floaty controls timed missions, causing a close shave, meaning you’re going to have to get really good at this game if you want to unlock those cars. And you don’t really have anyone to show them to since the Xbox version of ‘Wreckless’ is a Single Player game only, unless you have some friends around or posting proof on the internet and want to brag to them about some obscure game.
Also, I had some problems with the pause menu. For some reason, the ‘Retire’ button, which takes you back to the main menu, is right at the top of the menu, and it’s the button that the game highlights when you pause the game, for some reason. The ‘Return’ button that would take you right back into the game is right down at the bottom of the menu. Not even right under the ‘Retire’ button. Instead, the button under the button under the ‘Retire’ button is the ‘Restart’ button, which restarts the whole mission.
Which has resulted in me accidentally pressing the ‘Retire’ and ‘Restart’ button more times than I should have because I was rushing to press the controller buttons to get back into the game due to years of muscle memory from games having their return to game buttons at the top of the menu and being highlighted. You can also press the ‘back’ button and the ‘start’ button to also get back in the game, which means that there is three ways to get back into the game and all of them are the most annoying way to get back into the game.
The game also looks pretty good on a technical level for an Xbox game, with lots of destructible objects, bloom, great lighting (even if some of the shadows looked a little off at points), and the cars even having good looking damage models. There were a few moments that the screen was a little too cluttered and too many things were going on, but the game does look good.
And I guess this is a good time to transition over to comparing the Xbox version of the game to the PS2 and GCN versions of the game. The PS2 and CGN versions weren’t just a simple port job, as those versions of the game were developed by ‘Stealth Studios’, with the original being developed by ‘Bunkasha’, resulting in quite a few differences between the versions. The most obvious being the graphics.
The PS2 and CGN posts look downright awful to the Xbox, and even look bad for their respective consoles. There are a lot less things to destroy, random stuff like characters and a few vehicles look weirdly shiny for no reason, and all of the models are textures are so low quality, with a lot of the textures being blurry. And just because these consoles didn’t have the horsepower like the original Xbox did, that didn’t mean they weren’t capable of good looking games, such as other open world games like ‘Jak II’, ‘Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction’, and ‘Spider-Man 2’. It’s like night and day.
Also, the cutscenes in the Xbox version are in real time, while the cutscenes in the PS2 and GCN versions take the cutscenes in the Xbox version and present them as pre-rendered videos in the PS2 and GCN versions. Maybe the studio that ported the game just didn’t have the time, money, or both to properly port the cutscenes and this was the best that they could do. The PS2 and GCN versions also came with a myriad of technical performance issues, such as slow down, which pretty much confirms that it was a rush job.
The reason that the Xbox version looks so much better, technical limits notwithstanding, is that ‘Wreckless’ was originally designed for the Xbox from the ground up, resulting in a more polished experience, with the ports probably being after thought since they were ported by a different company. As a result, those versions are a worse looking and performing game, not only resulting in a worse looking game, but resulting in a game that had more glitches and slowdowns than the Xbox version despite looking worse.
And to top it all off, the driving feels so much worse. I know that I complained about how the driving in the original Xbox version felt slippery, but I could get used to the driving in that version. In the PS2 and CGN versions, the driving somehow feels both stiff and slippery at the same time. I don’t know how else to describe it. Although in this version, I can pull off drifting better.
But despite a lot of the game feeling rushed, there are some nice additions to the PS2 and GCN version of the game, even if it doesn’t make up for the downgrade in graphics and gameplay.
Firstly, there is an adrenaline feature that slows down time for a brief period along with a limited supply of short range missiles. I felt these additions were a little pointless and that they were added to make up for the way the cars control, but it’s nice that they’re here.
Missions are now ranked based on not only how quickly you complete them, with Gold, Silver, and Bronze medals to indicate you on how well you did, but the game has secondary objectives to complete as well, such as destroying a certain amount of traffic or objects in a mission. If you complete one of these objectives on Hard Mode, you can unlock a bonus mission. If you earn Gold, you can also unlock one of the cheat codes, such as low gravity or unlimited time on missions.
There are also now twice as many missions as the Xbox version, with 40 instead of 20. It’s hard to complain about new content. But weirdly, the missions that were ported over are now in a completely different order. It’s not super important, but I thought I should mention it anyway.
The PS2 and GCN versions also come with two new multiplayer modes exclusive to these consoles. The first one has one player chasing after the second, where the objective is the first player has to destroy the second players car as quickly as possible. But for some reason the mode has only one camera instead of being split screen, with the camera following the player who has to destroy the other player’s car. I imagine this is probably due to the time limits imposed on the development team.
The other multiplayer mode is a racing mode, which is pretty self-explanatory.
The game also comes with a free drive mode too, allowing you to drive through the city in a more relaxed casual manner, taking in the views of the city. I wish the original Xbox version has this, as it would have been nice to see the city with the better graphics without having to destroy Yakuza cars or take something somewhere.
Also, in the Xbox version the pedestrians run out of the way, while in the PS2 and CGN versions, you can hit the pedestrians, flinging them into the sky. So at least those versions have that going for it.
So when it comes down to it, you have to either pick between a better looking and better controlling game, or a game with more content, but controls worse, looks worse, and has more technical issues. I hope that down the line someone remasters this game with the Xbox graphics and controls with the PS2 and CGN content added in.
Would I recommend ‘Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions’? I know that I spent a large portion of this review complaining, but I would be lying if I said that I hated this game. Sure, the wonky physics are going to turn a lot of people away from this game, but I still enjoyed my time with this game, specifically the Xbox version, and I know that someone else is going to get something out of it.
It would be a lukewarm recommendation, since the only people who would probably play this are people who love finding weird obscure games, but it’s still a recommendation all the same.
2019
Layers of Fear 2 is a first person psychological horror game that follows a Hollywood actor who heeds the call of an enigmatic director to take on the lead role in a film shot aboard an ocean liner. Along the way you explore the story of a girl named Lily and her little brother James as they try to hide on the boat and escape from it’s crew.
Initially, Layers of Fear 2 seems to take the gameplay concepts and presintation from the first and refine them, but it doubles down on everything that made the first game tedious.
The gameplay mechanic of opening doors by having to turn their handles manually, like the first game had and had taken from Amnesia back when that game was all the rage, but it’s made worse by the fact that some sections now have you rushing to try and get away from a creature chasing you, just like Amnesia. It worked in Amnesia because that game gave you ample space to get away from creatures most of the time, but in Layers of Fear 2, it just feels clunky because every space is a small space that can lead you to easily be caught by the monster the first time since it often takes you by surprise.
Layers of Fear 2 also brings a whole host of new neat graphical tricks that give it a distinct visual flair from the first game, but since the game is much longer than the first one, even the new visuals get tiresome by the end of the game.
The game actually references several popular and well known films, shorts, and music videos. But instead of just having those references be either brief scenes, shout-outs, or simple references in the form of a poster or as a brief visual gag, they’re just lifted wholesale. These movies include Metropolis (1927), The Wizard of Oz (1939), and The Shining (198), short film A Trip to the Moon (1902), short film and music video Rubber Johnny (2005), and a whole section dedicated to the movie Se7en (Seven) (1995).
They’re so blatant that you don’t even have to have seen some those films to know what they’re referencing.
The only compliment that I can give this game is that it has actor Tony Todd, who plays the titular director of the game, and I can’t get enough of Tony Todd and his amazing voice.
The best way that I can describe Layers of Fear 2 is that it’s more of the same from the first game, just with a new coat of paint. And while that might be appealing to fans of the first game, it still has little to offer beyond a few neat visual tricks buried deep within a tedious gameplay loop and mediocre story.
Initially, Layers of Fear 2 seems to take the gameplay concepts and presintation from the first and refine them, but it doubles down on everything that made the first game tedious.
The gameplay mechanic of opening doors by having to turn their handles manually, like the first game had and had taken from Amnesia back when that game was all the rage, but it’s made worse by the fact that some sections now have you rushing to try and get away from a creature chasing you, just like Amnesia. It worked in Amnesia because that game gave you ample space to get away from creatures most of the time, but in Layers of Fear 2, it just feels clunky because every space is a small space that can lead you to easily be caught by the monster the first time since it often takes you by surprise.
Layers of Fear 2 also brings a whole host of new neat graphical tricks that give it a distinct visual flair from the first game, but since the game is much longer than the first one, even the new visuals get tiresome by the end of the game.
The game actually references several popular and well known films, shorts, and music videos. But instead of just having those references be either brief scenes, shout-outs, or simple references in the form of a poster or as a brief visual gag, they’re just lifted wholesale. These movies include Metropolis (1927), The Wizard of Oz (1939), and The Shining (198), short film A Trip to the Moon (1902), short film and music video Rubber Johnny (2005), and a whole section dedicated to the movie Se7en (Seven) (1995).
They’re so blatant that you don’t even have to have seen some those films to know what they’re referencing.
The only compliment that I can give this game is that it has actor Tony Todd, who plays the titular director of the game, and I can’t get enough of Tony Todd and his amazing voice.
The best way that I can describe Layers of Fear 2 is that it’s more of the same from the first game, just with a new coat of paint. And while that might be appealing to fans of the first game, it still has little to offer beyond a few neat visual tricks buried deep within a tedious gameplay loop and mediocre story.
1996
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2019/03/14/alien-incident-1996-review/
It’s nice coming across a lesser known adventure game. People always talk about the heavyweights such as Sierra’s and Lucas Art’s library of games, or even Telltale Games, along with stuff like 7th Guest, Myst, Zork, and Broken Sword. But every now and again when I’m looking through websites hosting obscure games, I come across a hidden gem not a lot of people seem to know about. One of these games is Alien Incident.
Released in 1996 after 2 years of delays, and originally known as Muukalaisten Yö (Finnish for “Night of the Aliens”), Alien Incident was developed by a small team called Bloodhouse before they merged with Housemarque, and was published by GameTek for MS-DOS in 1996, which was getting a little late for MS-DOS games to still be released. There was going to be an Amiga 1200 version, but that got cancelled.
The game takes place on Halloween, and Benjamin Richards is at his uncle’s mansion to bear witness to his newest invention, the “Worm Hole Spawner.” But at the moment it’s turned on, it is hit by lightening, accidentally creating a wormhole in space that brings an alien spaceship who happens to be chasing another alien species through into our solar system. The aliens kidnap Benjamin’s uncle to know why they were brought here, while Benjamin, you, have to rescue as well as stopping the alien threat.
Getting this game to work isn’t too bad, since it’s a DOS game. Just the usual mild fiddling with DOSBox, nothing too difficult. However the game did crash one me once or twice, and that lead me to discovering a great little unique feature that the game has when it crashes. When you re-open the game, it loads right back to just before when it crashed, preventing a major loss in progress.
This might initially sound annoying, but the game is actually pretty stable and rarely ever crashes. It’s like the original (anti-crash) checkpoint before checkpoints became a gaming staple, and it’s a nice addition to have for an adventure game. It certainly prevents the save scumming that a lot of old point-and-click adventure games needed just to be tolerable.
Even if the game didn’t have this feature, the games world isn’t that big, so backtracking to find something or just to explore isn’t that much of a problem. Thankfully the game isn’t Sierra hard, and every puzzle makes sense or can be easily be solved with a bit of thought and exploration. Which makes this good for a younger audience.
I have two gripes with this game. They’re not major, but they still stand out. The first gripe is that there is one part of the game that can screw you over, and you don’t see it coming and it can set you back to however long ago your last save was. It doesn’t require going back and replaying most of the game, so it shouldn’t take you too long to catch up to this section if you’ve remembered the adventure game mantra “Save Early, Save Often.”
The second gripe I have is that another part of the game has a short maze. It’s not the worst maze I’ve seen in an adventure game in that once you’ve memorized the route, you can get through it faster on multiple playthroughs, but it’s still annoying when you do it for the first time and incredibly tedious on multiple playthroughs.
I’ll never why some adventure games decided to have mazes in their games. Mazes are annoying in the best of games. Thankfully, when you reach the end of the maze, you don’t have to backtrack through it, with the game kindly teleporting you back to the beginning of it. Even the developers knew how annoying that would have been, which begs the question of why they even put it here in the first place.
Pretty much everything else is minor nitpicks, such as there being one or two things that you need to interact with that blend into the background. Thankfully the game has some text when you highlight an object, so it’s not too hard to find something, you just to sometimes sweep the mouse cursor across the screen.
The pathfinding for the main character is a bit wonky, but it’s a minor gripe. There will be a time where he’s walking or you click to going in a direction, only for him to be briefly turned around before going where you want him to go. I don’t know if that’s a bug with the game or the way I’ve got the game setup, but it isn’t a major issue, just a mildly annoying glitch.
Alien Incident isn’t perfect, but it’s definitely worth checking out for fans of adventure games who haven’t yet played this game yet and are looking for something to fulfill that adventure game shaped hole in their heart, of adventure game veterans who want to go back and play it for the first time in years.
On top of that, the game’s humor is actually pretty amusing. It’s pretty obvious that English wasn’t the developers first language, but most of the jokes land despite that.
It’s nice coming across a lesser known adventure game. People always talk about the heavyweights such as Sierra’s and Lucas Art’s library of games, or even Telltale Games, along with stuff like 7th Guest, Myst, Zork, and Broken Sword. But every now and again when I’m looking through websites hosting obscure games, I come across a hidden gem not a lot of people seem to know about. One of these games is Alien Incident.
Released in 1996 after 2 years of delays, and originally known as Muukalaisten Yö (Finnish for “Night of the Aliens”), Alien Incident was developed by a small team called Bloodhouse before they merged with Housemarque, and was published by GameTek for MS-DOS in 1996, which was getting a little late for MS-DOS games to still be released. There was going to be an Amiga 1200 version, but that got cancelled.
The game takes place on Halloween, and Benjamin Richards is at his uncle’s mansion to bear witness to his newest invention, the “Worm Hole Spawner.” But at the moment it’s turned on, it is hit by lightening, accidentally creating a wormhole in space that brings an alien spaceship who happens to be chasing another alien species through into our solar system. The aliens kidnap Benjamin’s uncle to know why they were brought here, while Benjamin, you, have to rescue as well as stopping the alien threat.
Getting this game to work isn’t too bad, since it’s a DOS game. Just the usual mild fiddling with DOSBox, nothing too difficult. However the game did crash one me once or twice, and that lead me to discovering a great little unique feature that the game has when it crashes. When you re-open the game, it loads right back to just before when it crashed, preventing a major loss in progress.
This might initially sound annoying, but the game is actually pretty stable and rarely ever crashes. It’s like the original (anti-crash) checkpoint before checkpoints became a gaming staple, and it’s a nice addition to have for an adventure game. It certainly prevents the save scumming that a lot of old point-and-click adventure games needed just to be tolerable.
Even if the game didn’t have this feature, the games world isn’t that big, so backtracking to find something or just to explore isn’t that much of a problem. Thankfully the game isn’t Sierra hard, and every puzzle makes sense or can be easily be solved with a bit of thought and exploration. Which makes this good for a younger audience.
I have two gripes with this game. They’re not major, but they still stand out. The first gripe is that there is one part of the game that can screw you over, and you don’t see it coming and it can set you back to however long ago your last save was. It doesn’t require going back and replaying most of the game, so it shouldn’t take you too long to catch up to this section if you’ve remembered the adventure game mantra “Save Early, Save Often.”
The second gripe I have is that another part of the game has a short maze. It’s not the worst maze I’ve seen in an adventure game in that once you’ve memorized the route, you can get through it faster on multiple playthroughs, but it’s still annoying when you do it for the first time and incredibly tedious on multiple playthroughs.
I’ll never why some adventure games decided to have mazes in their games. Mazes are annoying in the best of games. Thankfully, when you reach the end of the maze, you don’t have to backtrack through it, with the game kindly teleporting you back to the beginning of it. Even the developers knew how annoying that would have been, which begs the question of why they even put it here in the first place.
Pretty much everything else is minor nitpicks, such as there being one or two things that you need to interact with that blend into the background. Thankfully the game has some text when you highlight an object, so it’s not too hard to find something, you just to sometimes sweep the mouse cursor across the screen.
The pathfinding for the main character is a bit wonky, but it’s a minor gripe. There will be a time where he’s walking or you click to going in a direction, only for him to be briefly turned around before going where you want him to go. I don’t know if that’s a bug with the game or the way I’ve got the game setup, but it isn’t a major issue, just a mildly annoying glitch.
Alien Incident isn’t perfect, but it’s definitely worth checking out for fans of adventure games who haven’t yet played this game yet and are looking for something to fulfill that adventure game shaped hole in their heart, of adventure game veterans who want to go back and play it for the first time in years.
On top of that, the game’s humor is actually pretty amusing. It’s pretty obvious that English wasn’t the developers first language, but most of the jokes land despite that.
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2018/01/18/the-vanishing-of-ethan-carter-2014-2015-pc-xbox-one-ps4-review/
Over the years, video games that have a lot of walking around and exploring an interesting or beautiful environment with minimal gameplay were given the nickname of “walking simulators”. While a few of them might the deserve the title, quite a few of them just use exploration as a way of getting to what gameplay and story there is. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter might look like another “walking simulator” from afar, but it has a lot more going for it than just it’s nice looking environment.
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a horror adventure game developed and published by The Astronauts. It was originally released in 2014 for PC on the Unreal 3 Engine, and was re-released in 2015 as the Redux version, updating the game to the Unreal 4 Engine, and was released on the PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Switch.
You play as Paul Prospero, an occult minded detective who receives a disturbing letter from a boy named Ethan Carter. Thinking that Ethan could be in trouble, Paul goes to Ethan’s hometown of Red Creek Valley to check on him only to discover that a supernatural force in the town has take over the minds of Ethan’s family, and that Ethan may be in worse danger than he first thought.
Beyond the initial premise, the game doesn’t hold your hand, making you figure out the story on your own at your own pace by giving you access to several areas in Red Creek Valley, along with a puzzle in each area to solve that gives you story and clues as to what is going on that are solvable in any order for you to solve. Which means that if you get stuck solving a puzzle in one area, you can go to another area and solve another puzzle and come back to the puzzle you were stuck on.
None of the puzzles feel unfair, and at worse, are a little tedious. Which is most pronounced in one section where you have to go through an abandoned mine collecting several things, and what you’re collecting blends into the surroundings, making it more frustrating than it should.
Graphically, the game is gorgeous. During the games development, the development team used a process called photogrammetry in to create the look of the game, a process in which several photographs are taken of a real world object and are used to make the in-game object look like the real-world counterpart. The result is that the environment looks borderline photo-realistic (pun intended), and i really feels like you’re walking through a small almost forgotten American town.
Almost every part of the game is wallpaper worthy. I don’t think there will be or has been a user that won’t take a screenshot from the game or from online, and not put it as their wallpaper after playing this game. The only thing bringing it down are the character models. While not looking bad, they do look out of place in the game environment, but they weren’t bad enough to destroy the aesthetic of the game.
On the audio side, the game is just as pleasant to listen to as to look at. Walking through Red Creek Valley’s locations is very calming, with trees and grass rustling, wind blowing, and streams flowing. The game’s soundtrack only adds to this. Apparently the developers agree, because the Xbox One and possibly PC versions are getting a “free roam” mode in which you can just walk around Red Creek Valley.
The year after the release of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, a updated version of the game called The Vanishing of Ethan Carter Redux came out, moving the game from Unreal Engine 3 to Unreal Engine, coming with a lot of new graphical bells and whistles that the new engine had. The content remains the same, but it comes with a better autosave feature, saving your progress after you find each clue instead of saving the game after finishing whole parts of the game, making the game much easier to jump back in to after quitting, and it also makes backtracking better late into the game, making the Redux version the version of the game to get.
There is also VR DLC, released for $10. I haven’t checked it out, but from everything I’ve seen, it seemed to get a mixed to positive response. I imagine it would be quite nice to see some of these environments up close and in detail.
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is about 6 hours long, maybe a bit longer for the more experienced, but it’s definitely a highly polished game that’s beautiful visually and sound wise, has great puzzles, and a mystery that’s engaging from beginning to end. This game is highly recommended.
Over the years, video games that have a lot of walking around and exploring an interesting or beautiful environment with minimal gameplay were given the nickname of “walking simulators”. While a few of them might the deserve the title, quite a few of them just use exploration as a way of getting to what gameplay and story there is. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter might look like another “walking simulator” from afar, but it has a lot more going for it than just it’s nice looking environment.
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a horror adventure game developed and published by The Astronauts. It was originally released in 2014 for PC on the Unreal 3 Engine, and was re-released in 2015 as the Redux version, updating the game to the Unreal 4 Engine, and was released on the PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Switch.
You play as Paul Prospero, an occult minded detective who receives a disturbing letter from a boy named Ethan Carter. Thinking that Ethan could be in trouble, Paul goes to Ethan’s hometown of Red Creek Valley to check on him only to discover that a supernatural force in the town has take over the minds of Ethan’s family, and that Ethan may be in worse danger than he first thought.
Beyond the initial premise, the game doesn’t hold your hand, making you figure out the story on your own at your own pace by giving you access to several areas in Red Creek Valley, along with a puzzle in each area to solve that gives you story and clues as to what is going on that are solvable in any order for you to solve. Which means that if you get stuck solving a puzzle in one area, you can go to another area and solve another puzzle and come back to the puzzle you were stuck on.
None of the puzzles feel unfair, and at worse, are a little tedious. Which is most pronounced in one section where you have to go through an abandoned mine collecting several things, and what you’re collecting blends into the surroundings, making it more frustrating than it should.
Graphically, the game is gorgeous. During the games development, the development team used a process called photogrammetry in to create the look of the game, a process in which several photographs are taken of a real world object and are used to make the in-game object look like the real-world counterpart. The result is that the environment looks borderline photo-realistic (pun intended), and i really feels like you’re walking through a small almost forgotten American town.
Almost every part of the game is wallpaper worthy. I don’t think there will be or has been a user that won’t take a screenshot from the game or from online, and not put it as their wallpaper after playing this game. The only thing bringing it down are the character models. While not looking bad, they do look out of place in the game environment, but they weren’t bad enough to destroy the aesthetic of the game.
On the audio side, the game is just as pleasant to listen to as to look at. Walking through Red Creek Valley’s locations is very calming, with trees and grass rustling, wind blowing, and streams flowing. The game’s soundtrack only adds to this. Apparently the developers agree, because the Xbox One and possibly PC versions are getting a “free roam” mode in which you can just walk around Red Creek Valley.
The year after the release of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, a updated version of the game called The Vanishing of Ethan Carter Redux came out, moving the game from Unreal Engine 3 to Unreal Engine, coming with a lot of new graphical bells and whistles that the new engine had. The content remains the same, but it comes with a better autosave feature, saving your progress after you find each clue instead of saving the game after finishing whole parts of the game, making the game much easier to jump back in to after quitting, and it also makes backtracking better late into the game, making the Redux version the version of the game to get.
There is also VR DLC, released for $10. I haven’t checked it out, but from everything I’ve seen, it seemed to get a mixed to positive response. I imagine it would be quite nice to see some of these environments up close and in detail.
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is about 6 hours long, maybe a bit longer for the more experienced, but it’s definitely a highly polished game that’s beautiful visually and sound wise, has great puzzles, and a mystery that’s engaging from beginning to end. This game is highly recommended.
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.
2006
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2021/09/16/you-are-empty-pc-review/
I’m just going to say this up front, ‘You Are Empty’ is a very “love it or hate it” game. If it doesn’t look or sound interesting to you, nothing about it is going to win you over. It it looks like it’s right up your alley, you’re probably going to get a lot out of it.
‘You are Empty’ was developed by Ukrainian developers ‘Mandel ArtPlains’ and ‘Digital Spay Studios’ and was published by ‘1C Company’ in 2006, with the English version published by ‘Atari’ in 2007.
You are Empty takes plane in an alternate universe Soviet Union in the year 1955, where Joseph Stalin still reigns. In an attempt to ensure the global victory of Communism, the government has constructed a massive psychic antenna to broadcast a reality-altering signal designed to transform the population of the Soviet Union into supermen. You play as a mid-rank military officer who is involved in an accident at his job and is knocked unconscious. You wake up later in a hospital and find yourself attack by mutants and people who have gone mad all while the world has fallen into ruin in. You now must survive by fighting your way through these hordes of monsters, all while stumbling into the mystery of what is going on.
A lot of the story is kind of vague. I know that a lot of it is going to be lost in translation since it’s a small studio that probably could afford a proper English translation and probably wasn’t made for anyone outside of Russia. There a clearly parts of the game that get across their intended effect, such as when you begin playing the game, if you look out the window, you can see one of the monsters attacking a person in the building across the street, and it’s moments like that that really add to the game.
But by the end of the game I got a pretty good picture of what was going on even if it was out there. There are notes scattered throughout the game that do explain parts of the plot, so you probably should watch out for those.
Jumping right into the game, the gameplay feels weird. I don’t know how to explain the characters movement other than it feels like the character is constantly trying to walk through water. And there is no run key either, which means that if you’re backtracking to pick up some health or ammo, it can end up being a bit of a chore simply because of how slop you are. If the apocalypse was actually happening, you would think that it would be such an emergeny that it would make the character want to speed himself up a bit.
I’m pretty sure that the bad character movement is tied to the framerate, because the moment that I changed the refresh rate of my graphics card from 60hz to 144hz, all of a sudden my character moved much more smoothly. When the framerate occasionally dipped, the dodgy movement returned. So that’s another thing to keep in mind.
Also, I put the game on easy because I was constantly worried that the game would end up crashing at the best of times an I didn’t want to be constantly set back. Thankfully, the game does come with an autosave system and it never crashed on me once. Also, probably due to the game either not having the budget or time to get beta testers, there is a difficulty spike that comes out of nowhere and the game becomes hard all of a sudden.
Now that’s out of the way, let’s get into the game.
‘You are Empty’ comes with an oppressive atmosphere that I’m pretty sure is ingrained into anything set in Russia or comes out of Russia. It feels like a mix of Silent Hill and Half-Life. It even has the “sexy” nurses from Silent Hill 2. I know that since Half-Life 2 is set in an Eastern European country with Cyrillic writing and a lot of those locations can look the same, but I’m not just talking about the locations, I’m also talking about the art style of the Half-Life games too, not only the stuff that made it into the Half-Life games, but a lot of the concept art too. It’s like the team saw what Valve was doing and took inspiration from it. A lot of it fits the game well and has it’s own distinct spin on it, so I didn’t really mind.
Considering that 2006 was when a lot of graphically impressive games were coming out, like Gears of War, Black, Resistance: Fall of Man, and Just Cause, but the game really stands on it’s own by having an oppressive atmosphere. I know that it can look dull at times and doesn’t appeal to everyone, but the people who like their depressing looking media are probably going to get something out of this game. And even though it might grey, at least it wasn’t one of those annoying games who thinks that slapping a filter onto it to make it look grey despite the fact that it looks awful, and it’s actually part of the art style.
On a technical front, the game is surprisingly graphically impressive, but not for the way you think. The game doesn’t actually have proper lighting or shader effects, instead getting it’s look through great texture work to give off the impression of lighting, with all of the shadows being part of the textures. So despite the fact it wasn’t cutting edge and probably had a small team behind it, it shows what creativity can do when you’re a small limited team and you have to work around your limitations.
There is also some actually pretty decent level design. While the whole game is pretty linear, it doesn’t feel like the game is guiding you through some pre-determined hallway. You actually feel like you’re going through an actual location. There was only one time where I had trouble knowing where to go because the door I had to go through blended into the rest of the environment and it didn’t look different to any other door that I couldn’t access.
The game’s soundtrack also adds to the whole depressing atmosphere of the game, with a mix of IDM for it’s soundtrack that range from droning ambiance to industrial to dance, and even some classical Russian music mixed in.
The English acting though, that’s another story. I have no idea what the Russian acting was like since I didn’t listen to it, but I’m pretty sure that the way that the English acting turned out was completely by accident. From what I can tell, every single character in the English dub is done by one man, and he doesn’t even try to put on an accent let alone hide his British accent, and it really clashes with both the tone that the game is going for and the location of the game. The notes are also narrated in English too. There was even one time where he is narrating a propaganda film and it sound like he remembers that he has to have an accent half way through. The guy is clearly trying his best with what he’s been dealt.
But the worst dub, and by worst, I mean most offensive, is a flamboyant stage actor who opens a door for you, talks to you for about 30 seconds, was completely unnecessary to the plot, and immediately gets killed after he’s finished his dialogue.
On top of that, the lip sync doesn’t match what the characters are saying, and I’m willing to bet that counts for the Russian dub too despite never even hearing it, because the character movements, both actions and lip movements, are over exaggerated, adding onto the weirdness, and this is the one thing that I’m not sure was intentional or not. To watch and listen to these characters is an experience all in of it’s own. There was one character who I’m pretty sure was speaking frenetically since their performance is way off.
But the weakest part of the game is the gameplay. It’s not bad by any means, it’s just a bit awkward in places. For example, your health points only go up to 99. I don’t know if it was an engine limitation, an intentional design choice, or by that point in the development the team couldn’t change it to 100 so they were stuck with it and released it like that.
The enemies all fit the aesthetic perfectly, even if they’re heavily Silent Hill inspired. You have the previously mentioned “sexy” nurse zombies, crazed patients in straight jackets, firefighters, various zombies who range from people in military uniforms to farmers (I think), mutants, and the average people who are just trying to survive and see you as a threat. One of the enemies looks like the homeless version of Mr. Bean. It’s a weird bunch, but none of it felt out of place. Then you have the more creative enemies, like the guy who has a rotor on his back that lets him fly and the giant mutant chickens that appear out of nowhere. Yeah, it’s that type of weird.
The worst enemy in the game is the one with the flamethrower, and thank god there was only one of them. He does a lot damage really quickly. But thankfully pretty much all of the enemies have the same guns as you, so any time you’re in company with someone or something with a gun, it actually feels like a fair fight.
Thankfully there is some enemy infighting, so there are times where you can save on ammo by simply waiting for enemies to kill each other and you can pick off the ones that are left due to their depleted health.
You should also watch out for some of the cars that are scattered around some areas because they aren’t just scenery that you can hide behind. Not only do they react to being shot, but after enough hits they can explode, and can hurt you. They can hurt the enemies too, so there could end up being some situations where you might want to use the cars to your advantage.
There were also a few times where I jumped down to a lower point and I got injured despite the fact that the fall shouldn’t or even wouldn’t injure you, or at least as not as badly as the game would lead you to believe, so you might want to watch out for a few jumps that look like you can make it.
The weapon selection is a mix of guns that you would see in most First Person Shooters an a few more unique ones. You have your melee weapon, which is the wrench, your standard pistol, sub machine gun, bolt action rifle, double barrel shotgun, Flamethrower, and grenade and molotov-cocktails. Nothing that you haven’t seen before and all work pretty well. The more unique ones include the Nailgun, and the Electrogun, which is just OK.
But for some reason there are two weapon slots assigned to the exact same rifle, the only difference being that one has a scope and one doesn’t. And it’s not like the scope is useful as all, since a lot of the other guns are also effective at exactly the same range, an it takes so long to get in and out of using the scope that the enemy can either run up to you or take you by surprise, seriously injuring you or even killing you in the time you stop using the scope.
Apparently the “medicine” you pick up during the game is 95% medical grade alcohol, so throughout the game I was wondering if the whole game was happening of it was just the main character was hallucinating from chugging 190 proof alcohol.
‘You Are Empty’ seemed to have received a mostly poor reception when it was first released, at least overseas. GameSpot gave it a 1.5, which is a score associated with the word ‘Abysmal’, straight up calling it a rip-off of other shooters as Doom, Serious Sam, and Painkiller. I don’t know if I would either call this game abysmal, or a rip-off of any of the games that the review mentioned, since this game is more slow paced and focuses more on atmosphere and story than those games. It would compare it more to Silent Hill and Half-Life, which I’ve previously mentioned in this review.
Other reviews also seem to compare it games like Doom, Serious Sam, and Painkiller too, with GameSpy calling it a “mindless kill-festival”. It’s gameplay might be basic, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. Common complaints include the fact that the game is ugly and runs like shit. This game came out the same year as the infamous 2006 Sonic game, was released. I know that they’re not exactly comparable, but I can guarantee that ‘You Are Empty’ got closer to what it intended than what ‘Sonic the Hedgehog got to’.
And I know that I’m playing this 15 years after it’s release with a patched version, but I still wouldn’t call it bad by any stretch. Maybe ‘rough around the edges’, but certainly not as terrible as it’s reputation will lead you to believe. It’s certainly not a game for everyone, and it definitely has problems, but it’s an enjoyable experience.
To top it all off, this game is pretty hard to find. And even if you do find it, it has some pretty intrusive DRM, preventing it from being played on more modern systems and is hard to remove. But like I mentioned earlier, thankfully someone has uploaded the game without the DRM and patched applied to it to make it more stable as well as making it easy to get up and running.
Apparently there is even a remake happening, but I’m skeptical about it though, but I have no idea if it is even ever going to come out. It would be neat to see a version of the game that is more stable and works on more modern systems. Plus it could add in the alternate ending that was cut from the final game or even some of the content that are still in the files of the game, such as enemies, weapons, and even whole levels, but never made it into the final release of the game.
‘You Are Empty’ is quite a unique experience that you would be hard pressed to find anywhere else, so if it the concept looks appealing to you and you don’t mind a game that’s rough around the edges, I would highly recommend giving it a try.
I’m just going to say this up front, ‘You Are Empty’ is a very “love it or hate it” game. If it doesn’t look or sound interesting to you, nothing about it is going to win you over. It it looks like it’s right up your alley, you’re probably going to get a lot out of it.
‘You are Empty’ was developed by Ukrainian developers ‘Mandel ArtPlains’ and ‘Digital Spay Studios’ and was published by ‘1C Company’ in 2006, with the English version published by ‘Atari’ in 2007.
You are Empty takes plane in an alternate universe Soviet Union in the year 1955, where Joseph Stalin still reigns. In an attempt to ensure the global victory of Communism, the government has constructed a massive psychic antenna to broadcast a reality-altering signal designed to transform the population of the Soviet Union into supermen. You play as a mid-rank military officer who is involved in an accident at his job and is knocked unconscious. You wake up later in a hospital and find yourself attack by mutants and people who have gone mad all while the world has fallen into ruin in. You now must survive by fighting your way through these hordes of monsters, all while stumbling into the mystery of what is going on.
A lot of the story is kind of vague. I know that a lot of it is going to be lost in translation since it’s a small studio that probably could afford a proper English translation and probably wasn’t made for anyone outside of Russia. There a clearly parts of the game that get across their intended effect, such as when you begin playing the game, if you look out the window, you can see one of the monsters attacking a person in the building across the street, and it’s moments like that that really add to the game.
But by the end of the game I got a pretty good picture of what was going on even if it was out there. There are notes scattered throughout the game that do explain parts of the plot, so you probably should watch out for those.
Jumping right into the game, the gameplay feels weird. I don’t know how to explain the characters movement other than it feels like the character is constantly trying to walk through water. And there is no run key either, which means that if you’re backtracking to pick up some health or ammo, it can end up being a bit of a chore simply because of how slop you are. If the apocalypse was actually happening, you would think that it would be such an emergeny that it would make the character want to speed himself up a bit.
I’m pretty sure that the bad character movement is tied to the framerate, because the moment that I changed the refresh rate of my graphics card from 60hz to 144hz, all of a sudden my character moved much more smoothly. When the framerate occasionally dipped, the dodgy movement returned. So that’s another thing to keep in mind.
Also, I put the game on easy because I was constantly worried that the game would end up crashing at the best of times an I didn’t want to be constantly set back. Thankfully, the game does come with an autosave system and it never crashed on me once. Also, probably due to the game either not having the budget or time to get beta testers, there is a difficulty spike that comes out of nowhere and the game becomes hard all of a sudden.
Now that’s out of the way, let’s get into the game.
‘You are Empty’ comes with an oppressive atmosphere that I’m pretty sure is ingrained into anything set in Russia or comes out of Russia. It feels like a mix of Silent Hill and Half-Life. It even has the “sexy” nurses from Silent Hill 2. I know that since Half-Life 2 is set in an Eastern European country with Cyrillic writing and a lot of those locations can look the same, but I’m not just talking about the locations, I’m also talking about the art style of the Half-Life games too, not only the stuff that made it into the Half-Life games, but a lot of the concept art too. It’s like the team saw what Valve was doing and took inspiration from it. A lot of it fits the game well and has it’s own distinct spin on it, so I didn’t really mind.
Considering that 2006 was when a lot of graphically impressive games were coming out, like Gears of War, Black, Resistance: Fall of Man, and Just Cause, but the game really stands on it’s own by having an oppressive atmosphere. I know that it can look dull at times and doesn’t appeal to everyone, but the people who like their depressing looking media are probably going to get something out of this game. And even though it might grey, at least it wasn’t one of those annoying games who thinks that slapping a filter onto it to make it look grey despite the fact that it looks awful, and it’s actually part of the art style.
On a technical front, the game is surprisingly graphically impressive, but not for the way you think. The game doesn’t actually have proper lighting or shader effects, instead getting it’s look through great texture work to give off the impression of lighting, with all of the shadows being part of the textures. So despite the fact it wasn’t cutting edge and probably had a small team behind it, it shows what creativity can do when you’re a small limited team and you have to work around your limitations.
There is also some actually pretty decent level design. While the whole game is pretty linear, it doesn’t feel like the game is guiding you through some pre-determined hallway. You actually feel like you’re going through an actual location. There was only one time where I had trouble knowing where to go because the door I had to go through blended into the rest of the environment and it didn’t look different to any other door that I couldn’t access.
The game’s soundtrack also adds to the whole depressing atmosphere of the game, with a mix of IDM for it’s soundtrack that range from droning ambiance to industrial to dance, and even some classical Russian music mixed in.
The English acting though, that’s another story. I have no idea what the Russian acting was like since I didn’t listen to it, but I’m pretty sure that the way that the English acting turned out was completely by accident. From what I can tell, every single character in the English dub is done by one man, and he doesn’t even try to put on an accent let alone hide his British accent, and it really clashes with both the tone that the game is going for and the location of the game. The notes are also narrated in English too. There was even one time where he is narrating a propaganda film and it sound like he remembers that he has to have an accent half way through. The guy is clearly trying his best with what he’s been dealt.
But the worst dub, and by worst, I mean most offensive, is a flamboyant stage actor who opens a door for you, talks to you for about 30 seconds, was completely unnecessary to the plot, and immediately gets killed after he’s finished his dialogue.
On top of that, the lip sync doesn’t match what the characters are saying, and I’m willing to bet that counts for the Russian dub too despite never even hearing it, because the character movements, both actions and lip movements, are over exaggerated, adding onto the weirdness, and this is the one thing that I’m not sure was intentional or not. To watch and listen to these characters is an experience all in of it’s own. There was one character who I’m pretty sure was speaking frenetically since their performance is way off.
But the weakest part of the game is the gameplay. It’s not bad by any means, it’s just a bit awkward in places. For example, your health points only go up to 99. I don’t know if it was an engine limitation, an intentional design choice, or by that point in the development the team couldn’t change it to 100 so they were stuck with it and released it like that.
The enemies all fit the aesthetic perfectly, even if they’re heavily Silent Hill inspired. You have the previously mentioned “sexy” nurse zombies, crazed patients in straight jackets, firefighters, various zombies who range from people in military uniforms to farmers (I think), mutants, and the average people who are just trying to survive and see you as a threat. One of the enemies looks like the homeless version of Mr. Bean. It’s a weird bunch, but none of it felt out of place. Then you have the more creative enemies, like the guy who has a rotor on his back that lets him fly and the giant mutant chickens that appear out of nowhere. Yeah, it’s that type of weird.
The worst enemy in the game is the one with the flamethrower, and thank god there was only one of them. He does a lot damage really quickly. But thankfully pretty much all of the enemies have the same guns as you, so any time you’re in company with someone or something with a gun, it actually feels like a fair fight.
Thankfully there is some enemy infighting, so there are times where you can save on ammo by simply waiting for enemies to kill each other and you can pick off the ones that are left due to their depleted health.
You should also watch out for some of the cars that are scattered around some areas because they aren’t just scenery that you can hide behind. Not only do they react to being shot, but after enough hits they can explode, and can hurt you. They can hurt the enemies too, so there could end up being some situations where you might want to use the cars to your advantage.
There were also a few times where I jumped down to a lower point and I got injured despite the fact that the fall shouldn’t or even wouldn’t injure you, or at least as not as badly as the game would lead you to believe, so you might want to watch out for a few jumps that look like you can make it.
The weapon selection is a mix of guns that you would see in most First Person Shooters an a few more unique ones. You have your melee weapon, which is the wrench, your standard pistol, sub machine gun, bolt action rifle, double barrel shotgun, Flamethrower, and grenade and molotov-cocktails. Nothing that you haven’t seen before and all work pretty well. The more unique ones include the Nailgun, and the Electrogun, which is just OK.
But for some reason there are two weapon slots assigned to the exact same rifle, the only difference being that one has a scope and one doesn’t. And it’s not like the scope is useful as all, since a lot of the other guns are also effective at exactly the same range, an it takes so long to get in and out of using the scope that the enemy can either run up to you or take you by surprise, seriously injuring you or even killing you in the time you stop using the scope.
Apparently the “medicine” you pick up during the game is 95% medical grade alcohol, so throughout the game I was wondering if the whole game was happening of it was just the main character was hallucinating from chugging 190 proof alcohol.
‘You Are Empty’ seemed to have received a mostly poor reception when it was first released, at least overseas. GameSpot gave it a 1.5, which is a score associated with the word ‘Abysmal’, straight up calling it a rip-off of other shooters as Doom, Serious Sam, and Painkiller. I don’t know if I would either call this game abysmal, or a rip-off of any of the games that the review mentioned, since this game is more slow paced and focuses more on atmosphere and story than those games. It would compare it more to Silent Hill and Half-Life, which I’ve previously mentioned in this review.
Other reviews also seem to compare it games like Doom, Serious Sam, and Painkiller too, with GameSpy calling it a “mindless kill-festival”. It’s gameplay might be basic, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. Common complaints include the fact that the game is ugly and runs like shit. This game came out the same year as the infamous 2006 Sonic game, was released. I know that they’re not exactly comparable, but I can guarantee that ‘You Are Empty’ got closer to what it intended than what ‘Sonic the Hedgehog got to’.
And I know that I’m playing this 15 years after it’s release with a patched version, but I still wouldn’t call it bad by any stretch. Maybe ‘rough around the edges’, but certainly not as terrible as it’s reputation will lead you to believe. It’s certainly not a game for everyone, and it definitely has problems, but it’s an enjoyable experience.
To top it all off, this game is pretty hard to find. And even if you do find it, it has some pretty intrusive DRM, preventing it from being played on more modern systems and is hard to remove. But like I mentioned earlier, thankfully someone has uploaded the game without the DRM and patched applied to it to make it more stable as well as making it easy to get up and running.
Apparently there is even a remake happening, but I’m skeptical about it though, but I have no idea if it is even ever going to come out. It would be neat to see a version of the game that is more stable and works on more modern systems. Plus it could add in the alternate ending that was cut from the final game or even some of the content that are still in the files of the game, such as enemies, weapons, and even whole levels, but never made it into the final release of the game.
‘You Are Empty’ is quite a unique experience that you would be hard pressed to find anywhere else, so if it the concept looks appealing to you and you don’t mind a game that’s rough around the edges, I would highly recommend giving it a try.
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.
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.
2000
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2019/05/11/soldier-of-fortune-2000-pc-ps2-dreamcast/
It was the year 2000, and it was a fantastic year in First Person Shooters. It was the year of The Operative: No One Lives Forever, Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force, Perfect Dark, Timesplitters, Medal of Honor: Underground, and Counter-Strike got it’s first boxed release to the public. Among these classics is Raven Software’s Soldier of Fortune.
Developed by Raven Software and published by Activision, Soldier of Fortune was released on February 29th, 2000 on the PC, and was later released for the PlayStation 2 and Dreamcast, as well as being ported to Linux by Loki Software. The game was named after the magazine with the same name, which was aimed at actual mercenaries, with it’s last issue being released on April, 2016. Leading up to it’s demise, it was but a shell of it’s former self due to several controversies, including multiple people placing “GUN FOR HIRE” ads in the magazine for the actual assassinations and murders of people. How multiple people managed to get multiple personal ads for actual real world assassination through, let alone one to begin with, I still have no idea. You would have thought the wording would have triggered a closer inspection of the ad. But I digress.
The main character of Soldier of Fortune is John Mullins, based on the real life John Mullins, who is a Vietnam vet and former mercenary, and was brought in as a consultant to make the game more authentic. Although I don’t know what parts of the game were made authentic, because it goes with an over-the-top 80s and 90s action movie style instead of being a more realistic game like SWAT 3/4 or Rainbow Six. Although, in a video interview that came with the Platinum Edition of the game, John Mullins said that there are small parts of the story that mirror his real life, which makes me hope that he fought a psychopath in a highly advanced cyber suit at some point his life.
In the game, Mullins gets his contracts from a cloak & dagger anti-terrorism outfit called “The Shop”. The current contract that “The Shop” has given to Mullins involves the theft of four nuclear weapons stolen by a Afrikaner Neo-Nazi group based in Germany, led by a man called Sergei Dekker. They plan to sell the four nuclear weapons to various nations, and you’re the guy entrusted to stop them.
Helping you with your contract is your partner Aaron “Hawk” Parsons, who also works for “The Shop”, joins you in a few of your missions on the ground. Sam Gladstone, the other other person who works for “The Shop and is another friend, helps you by debriefing you on your contracts before you leave on your mission.
Surprisingly, Soldier of Fortune has a pretty famous voice cast behind it, including Michael Clarke Duncun (The Green Mile), Earl Boen (The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgement Day), Brian Thompson (The Terminator, Cobra), Michael De Santo (The English dub of the 1995 Ghost in the Shell movie), and John Mullins himself is played by Tod Sussman (The Taking of Pellam 123, Beverly Hills Cop II). At lot of the voice acting is pretty cheesy, but it’s definitely on the entertaining side of being cheesy, and is pretty solid and fun.
The plot takes you all over the world, from NYC, Iraq and Japan to Germany, Sudan and Siberia, which means that the areas you visit are diverse to say the least, ranging from snowy mountains to jungles to deserts to the high tech city of Japan, meaning that you won’t just get the generic browns and grey of the modern shooters. Its pretty refreshing compared to the Call of Duty’s and Battlefield’s of today. There is even one level taking place in a slaughter house and is one of the highlights of the game.
Graphically, the game holds up fairly well for a game from it’s era, running on a modified Quake II engine. It does help that the game features a variety of locations so nothing gets visually stale. But the highlight of the game is the GHOUL damage model for the enemies which was made for this game, which is appropriately title for being a bit ghoulish, since it allows you allows you to blow the arms, legs, and hands off of your enemies with your shotgun, or blow them into small gibs with your rocket launcher.
Enemies react to where you shoot them. Shoot someone in the hand or leg, and they’ll clutch onto it out of pain. All of this adds a layer to the game that I guess makes it more realistic. It certainly makes the game stand out at least. There was one instance of a funny glitch where I blew the legs off of a guy and he still fell over like he still had them. The weapons also have some good sound design it, with the shotgun standing out, having some kick to it.
This GHOUL damage engine was what brought the previously mentioned controversy to the game. After the game was released, it received a complaint from a member of the public about the extreme violence to the British Columbia Film Classification Office, who then investigated the game. The BCFCO decided that the acts of violence and gore were not suitable for persons under the age of 18. In a controversial decision, the game was labeled as an “adult motion picture” and was rated as a pornographic film. In Germany, the game was placed on the Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons index. As you can tell, it got quite the extreme reaction.
If you look at the game today, the game doesn’t seem as violent compared to some of the games released these days games, such as Mortal Kombat 11 and Doom: Eternal, or even something like Manhunt which came out 3 years after this game, especially when games have been getting more realistic in the 14 years since the game came out. On the other hand, I wouldn’t exactly call it tame either, since it’s still pretty extreme in the violence department.
But the game does come with an option to disable all of the gore and password protect the option from younger people. There even was a version of the game with the gore permanently locked-out, titled “Soldier of Fortune: Tactical Low-Violence Version”, specifically made for Wal-Mart. You can pretty much buy the game uncensored these days through places like Steam and GOG, so it’s not much of an issue these days.
Gameplay wise, the game plays pretty much like your standard First Person Shooter. You run and gun your way through a series of corridors, gunning down the bad guys as you go. However, there are a few other things on top of this.
There is an inventory, but it isn’t all that great. You get your standard grenades and explosives with C4 Explosives and M24 Frag Grenades.They work exactly the same away and you have to go through the inventory to select each one, so there is no point to having the C4 Explosives. There are also Flashbangs, which you can use to blind your enemies, which i never used outside of just the once just to see how effective it was.
There are also First Aid Pack’s that you can pick up, which are frustrating to use because you have to use it the same way you use other items in your inventory. I don’t know why you couldn’t just pick it up to replenish your health the same way you pick up Bulletproof Vests to replenish your armor. Finally, there are Night Vision Goggles, which I’ve never had to use. Ever. So really, the inventory is completely useless since items could have been left our and whatever is left could have just been associated with a key, like G for grenades or N for Night Vision.
The weapons are what you’d expect for a FPS for the most part. You have two handguns, the 9mm Handgun and .44 Magnum, a Combat Shotgun, a Sniper Rifle, a sub-machine Gun, a Silenced SMG, a Heavy Machine Gun, and a Rocket Launcher. There’s also the Combat Knife, which you can throw at enemies but are limited. You can pick up off the floor or pull them out of your enemies when they’re dead. Finally there is the H-24 Slugthrower, which can take out almost everyone immediately, and a Flamethrower that I also never used but works well.
The one gun that stands out however is the Microwave Pulse Gun, which i guess is one of the liberties that Raven Software took when John Mullins was consulting for them. Before you go on your mission, you can select what weapons and equipment you want to take with you. By default, i took the Bulletproof Vest and Health Kits because a few of the enemies are a little difficult to get past. I also take the Heavy Machine Gun because enemies drop the most amount of ammo for it and its generally the most effective against enemies.
The enemies are on the more difficult side but aren’t too bad. My only major complaint with the difficulty is about the final boss of the game. He’s not only a complete bullet sponge, but he has an overpowered gun that can pretty much kill you in one shot. There are also automated turrets during the boss battle that can kill you within seconds.
You pretty much have to get in a place he can’t reach, strafe left and right to avoid his one shot kills, and continually hit him with your most powerful gun, the Microwave Pulse Gun. It feels like such a cheap way to end the game.
The game also comes with a multiplayer component that a lot of other FPS games at the time. It comes with your standard fare, like Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag, but it has some good variety in it’s other game modes. Realistic Deathmatch is more difficult, and has you carry only one weapon, increased weapon damage, and a fatigue meter.
Arsenal is another variant of Deathmatch, but you get all of the weapons, and you get one kill with each of them to win the match. Assassin has you chasing after a specific target, whom you have to kill, all while someone is trying to assassinate you. You can only kill these two people, or you will lose points. Finally, there is Conquer the Bunker, in which there are capture points all around the map but touching easily identifiable by flags. The longer you hold down these capture points, the more points you get. The more capture points you have, the quicker you get those points. It’s pretty much Domination from Unreal Tournament.
The game is very easy to get working on modem systems. If you own a physical copy, there is a mod out there called SoFplus for people who already own the game, and it helps a lot. Not only does it get it running on modern systems, but it comes with a bundle of other features, including widescreen support, FOV, fixes, a multitude of new graphical features that made it easier on the eyes, and the ability to play online without GameSpy.
Unfortunately, the company who now owns the rights to the game seems to have taken down the website for SoFPlus, but it is included in the “Community Edition” mod, which adds significant improvements to Soldier of Fortune along with adding community maps for the multiplayer.
Looking back at Soldier of Fortune, it does hold up fairly well and there is certainly a lot of fun to be had here if you’re a die hard retro First Person Shooter fan.
It was the year 2000, and it was a fantastic year in First Person Shooters. It was the year of The Operative: No One Lives Forever, Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force, Perfect Dark, Timesplitters, Medal of Honor: Underground, and Counter-Strike got it’s first boxed release to the public. Among these classics is Raven Software’s Soldier of Fortune.
Developed by Raven Software and published by Activision, Soldier of Fortune was released on February 29th, 2000 on the PC, and was later released for the PlayStation 2 and Dreamcast, as well as being ported to Linux by Loki Software. The game was named after the magazine with the same name, which was aimed at actual mercenaries, with it’s last issue being released on April, 2016. Leading up to it’s demise, it was but a shell of it’s former self due to several controversies, including multiple people placing “GUN FOR HIRE” ads in the magazine for the actual assassinations and murders of people. How multiple people managed to get multiple personal ads for actual real world assassination through, let alone one to begin with, I still have no idea. You would have thought the wording would have triggered a closer inspection of the ad. But I digress.
The main character of Soldier of Fortune is John Mullins, based on the real life John Mullins, who is a Vietnam vet and former mercenary, and was brought in as a consultant to make the game more authentic. Although I don’t know what parts of the game were made authentic, because it goes with an over-the-top 80s and 90s action movie style instead of being a more realistic game like SWAT 3/4 or Rainbow Six. Although, in a video interview that came with the Platinum Edition of the game, John Mullins said that there are small parts of the story that mirror his real life, which makes me hope that he fought a psychopath in a highly advanced cyber suit at some point his life.
In the game, Mullins gets his contracts from a cloak & dagger anti-terrorism outfit called “The Shop”. The current contract that “The Shop” has given to Mullins involves the theft of four nuclear weapons stolen by a Afrikaner Neo-Nazi group based in Germany, led by a man called Sergei Dekker. They plan to sell the four nuclear weapons to various nations, and you’re the guy entrusted to stop them.
Helping you with your contract is your partner Aaron “Hawk” Parsons, who also works for “The Shop”, joins you in a few of your missions on the ground. Sam Gladstone, the other other person who works for “The Shop and is another friend, helps you by debriefing you on your contracts before you leave on your mission.
Surprisingly, Soldier of Fortune has a pretty famous voice cast behind it, including Michael Clarke Duncun (The Green Mile), Earl Boen (The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgement Day), Brian Thompson (The Terminator, Cobra), Michael De Santo (The English dub of the 1995 Ghost in the Shell movie), and John Mullins himself is played by Tod Sussman (The Taking of Pellam 123, Beverly Hills Cop II). At lot of the voice acting is pretty cheesy, but it’s definitely on the entertaining side of being cheesy, and is pretty solid and fun.
The plot takes you all over the world, from NYC, Iraq and Japan to Germany, Sudan and Siberia, which means that the areas you visit are diverse to say the least, ranging from snowy mountains to jungles to deserts to the high tech city of Japan, meaning that you won’t just get the generic browns and grey of the modern shooters. Its pretty refreshing compared to the Call of Duty’s and Battlefield’s of today. There is even one level taking place in a slaughter house and is one of the highlights of the game.
Graphically, the game holds up fairly well for a game from it’s era, running on a modified Quake II engine. It does help that the game features a variety of locations so nothing gets visually stale. But the highlight of the game is the GHOUL damage model for the enemies which was made for this game, which is appropriately title for being a bit ghoulish, since it allows you allows you to blow the arms, legs, and hands off of your enemies with your shotgun, or blow them into small gibs with your rocket launcher.
Enemies react to where you shoot them. Shoot someone in the hand or leg, and they’ll clutch onto it out of pain. All of this adds a layer to the game that I guess makes it more realistic. It certainly makes the game stand out at least. There was one instance of a funny glitch where I blew the legs off of a guy and he still fell over like he still had them. The weapons also have some good sound design it, with the shotgun standing out, having some kick to it.
This GHOUL damage engine was what brought the previously mentioned controversy to the game. After the game was released, it received a complaint from a member of the public about the extreme violence to the British Columbia Film Classification Office, who then investigated the game. The BCFCO decided that the acts of violence and gore were not suitable for persons under the age of 18. In a controversial decision, the game was labeled as an “adult motion picture” and was rated as a pornographic film. In Germany, the game was placed on the Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons index. As you can tell, it got quite the extreme reaction.
If you look at the game today, the game doesn’t seem as violent compared to some of the games released these days games, such as Mortal Kombat 11 and Doom: Eternal, or even something like Manhunt which came out 3 years after this game, especially when games have been getting more realistic in the 14 years since the game came out. On the other hand, I wouldn’t exactly call it tame either, since it’s still pretty extreme in the violence department.
But the game does come with an option to disable all of the gore and password protect the option from younger people. There even was a version of the game with the gore permanently locked-out, titled “Soldier of Fortune: Tactical Low-Violence Version”, specifically made for Wal-Mart. You can pretty much buy the game uncensored these days through places like Steam and GOG, so it’s not much of an issue these days.
Gameplay wise, the game plays pretty much like your standard First Person Shooter. You run and gun your way through a series of corridors, gunning down the bad guys as you go. However, there are a few other things on top of this.
There is an inventory, but it isn’t all that great. You get your standard grenades and explosives with C4 Explosives and M24 Frag Grenades.They work exactly the same away and you have to go through the inventory to select each one, so there is no point to having the C4 Explosives. There are also Flashbangs, which you can use to blind your enemies, which i never used outside of just the once just to see how effective it was.
There are also First Aid Pack’s that you can pick up, which are frustrating to use because you have to use it the same way you use other items in your inventory. I don’t know why you couldn’t just pick it up to replenish your health the same way you pick up Bulletproof Vests to replenish your armor. Finally, there are Night Vision Goggles, which I’ve never had to use. Ever. So really, the inventory is completely useless since items could have been left our and whatever is left could have just been associated with a key, like G for grenades or N for Night Vision.
The weapons are what you’d expect for a FPS for the most part. You have two handguns, the 9mm Handgun and .44 Magnum, a Combat Shotgun, a Sniper Rifle, a sub-machine Gun, a Silenced SMG, a Heavy Machine Gun, and a Rocket Launcher. There’s also the Combat Knife, which you can throw at enemies but are limited. You can pick up off the floor or pull them out of your enemies when they’re dead. Finally there is the H-24 Slugthrower, which can take out almost everyone immediately, and a Flamethrower that I also never used but works well.
The one gun that stands out however is the Microwave Pulse Gun, which i guess is one of the liberties that Raven Software took when John Mullins was consulting for them. Before you go on your mission, you can select what weapons and equipment you want to take with you. By default, i took the Bulletproof Vest and Health Kits because a few of the enemies are a little difficult to get past. I also take the Heavy Machine Gun because enemies drop the most amount of ammo for it and its generally the most effective against enemies.
The enemies are on the more difficult side but aren’t too bad. My only major complaint with the difficulty is about the final boss of the game. He’s not only a complete bullet sponge, but he has an overpowered gun that can pretty much kill you in one shot. There are also automated turrets during the boss battle that can kill you within seconds.
You pretty much have to get in a place he can’t reach, strafe left and right to avoid his one shot kills, and continually hit him with your most powerful gun, the Microwave Pulse Gun. It feels like such a cheap way to end the game.
The game also comes with a multiplayer component that a lot of other FPS games at the time. It comes with your standard fare, like Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag, but it has some good variety in it’s other game modes. Realistic Deathmatch is more difficult, and has you carry only one weapon, increased weapon damage, and a fatigue meter.
Arsenal is another variant of Deathmatch, but you get all of the weapons, and you get one kill with each of them to win the match. Assassin has you chasing after a specific target, whom you have to kill, all while someone is trying to assassinate you. You can only kill these two people, or you will lose points. Finally, there is Conquer the Bunker, in which there are capture points all around the map but touching easily identifiable by flags. The longer you hold down these capture points, the more points you get. The more capture points you have, the quicker you get those points. It’s pretty much Domination from Unreal Tournament.
The game is very easy to get working on modem systems. If you own a physical copy, there is a mod out there called SoFplus for people who already own the game, and it helps a lot. Not only does it get it running on modern systems, but it comes with a bundle of other features, including widescreen support, FOV, fixes, a multitude of new graphical features that made it easier on the eyes, and the ability to play online without GameSpy.
Unfortunately, the company who now owns the rights to the game seems to have taken down the website for SoFPlus, but it is included in the “Community Edition” mod, which adds significant improvements to Soldier of Fortune along with adding community maps for the multiplayer.
Looking back at Soldier of Fortune, it does hold up fairly well and there is certainly a lot of fun to be had here if you’re a die hard retro First Person Shooter fan.
2016
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2017/06/28/mod-corner-ancient-aliens-doom-ii-hell-on-earth/
Are aliens really out there, somewhere in the universe? Do they ever visit out ancestors hundreds if not thousands of years ago? Did they influence mythology or legends? Do they keep visiting us? And why do they keep abducting cows and giving people anal probes? We may never know. But in the mean time, lets look at a mod that might give us an answer.
Ancient Aliens’ basic plot setup has you going on a very tounge-in-cheek mission to investigate if aliens do exist, and is quite obviously poking gun at how silly a lot of conspiracy theories are at trying to shove aliens into every even slightly unanswered question of history. The story is simply the through line of the mod, but it delivers some amusing fluff to a mod that would have otherwise been a themed map pack otherwise.
All of the maps are pretty solid and well designed. It uses a mix of the earth tones of Mesoamerica for Earth levels and bright purples, teals, and pinks for the the out there alien architectures. It’s all hermetically pleasing and definitely gives the visuals some variety. The only downside is that the whole mod is on the more difficult side of things, with the mod having a ton of monsters on the later levels. While it doesn’t feel unfair, there are going to be a few more deaths for more casual Doom fans.
A few of the monsters from Doom have received a visual makeover to fit the aesthetic of the mod, and their new looks do a good job of mixing the original designs with what the mod is going for. There are a few new ones too, such as a fast moving invisible guy in a robotic looking suit who only appears when he’s shooting at you, and a hexahedron looking monster with faces on each side that shoots rockets.
Another thing this mod has is an original soundtrack that fits the mood of the mod, fitting the bizarre fever dream that is this mod, and is currently on sale for only a few bucks over on the composers Bandcamp.
Amongst all of these compliments, i have only one real complaint, and that is the mod does get a tad bit hard in the second half. All in all, Ancient Aliens gets a recommendation.
Are aliens really out there, somewhere in the universe? Do they ever visit out ancestors hundreds if not thousands of years ago? Did they influence mythology or legends? Do they keep visiting us? And why do they keep abducting cows and giving people anal probes? We may never know. But in the mean time, lets look at a mod that might give us an answer.
Ancient Aliens’ basic plot setup has you going on a very tounge-in-cheek mission to investigate if aliens do exist, and is quite obviously poking gun at how silly a lot of conspiracy theories are at trying to shove aliens into every even slightly unanswered question of history. The story is simply the through line of the mod, but it delivers some amusing fluff to a mod that would have otherwise been a themed map pack otherwise.
All of the maps are pretty solid and well designed. It uses a mix of the earth tones of Mesoamerica for Earth levels and bright purples, teals, and pinks for the the out there alien architectures. It’s all hermetically pleasing and definitely gives the visuals some variety. The only downside is that the whole mod is on the more difficult side of things, with the mod having a ton of monsters on the later levels. While it doesn’t feel unfair, there are going to be a few more deaths for more casual Doom fans.
A few of the monsters from Doom have received a visual makeover to fit the aesthetic of the mod, and their new looks do a good job of mixing the original designs with what the mod is going for. There are a few new ones too, such as a fast moving invisible guy in a robotic looking suit who only appears when he’s shooting at you, and a hexahedron looking monster with faces on each side that shoots rockets.
Another thing this mod has is an original soundtrack that fits the mood of the mod, fitting the bizarre fever dream that is this mod, and is currently on sale for only a few bucks over on the composers Bandcamp.
Amongst all of these compliments, i have only one real complaint, and that is the mod does get a tad bit hard in the second half. All in all, Ancient Aliens gets a recommendation.
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.
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”.
1995
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2018/02/08/torins-passage-1995-pc-mac-review/
It was 1994, and video game designer Al Lowe, who was responsible for the Leisure Suit Larry series, was watching Mrs Doubtfire with his daughter in a movie theater with a crowd people. As he was watching the movie, he noticed that there was two groups of people the crowd. Children, who were laughing at the slapstick happening to the characters, and adults, who were laughing at the jokes that passed right over the heads of the children that they were with. When he noticed this, he asked himself: “Why isn’t there a computer game that my 9-year-old daughter an I could play like this?” And thus, the idea of Torin’s Passage was born.
Torin’s Passage was released on October 31st, 1994 despite it not being that spooky, and it was developed and published by Sierra On-Line. It was released for MS-DOS, Windows 3.1 and 95, and Mac. It was written by Al Lowe, who had previously written and was famous for Leisure Suit Larry, as well as Freddy Pharkas Frontier Pharmacist. Although, this wasn’t Al Lowe’s first kids game, previously working on The Black Cauldron, Mickey’s Space Adventure, and Donald Duck’s Playground.
The game begins on a dark and stormy night, as an evil warlock acts out his plan to kill thie king, queen, and their baby while they’re all sleeping. While he successfully manages to kill the king and queen, the baby manages to escape with it’s nursemaid, who happened to be taking care of it after it had woken up in the middle of the night.
15 years later, we find our protagonist, Torin Fahrman (buh dum tss), living on a farm with his parents. After his father sends him off on an errand, his parents get kidnapped by an evil sorceress, who he learns about after talking with a passer by, who happened to see the whole thing. The passerby tells him about how this evil sorceress is located in the worlds below, a series of worlds that are nested inside of each other inside of the planet, like a Russian nesting doll. Torin embarks on a quest with his sidekick, a pink dog-looking shapeshifting creature named Boogle, to save his parents.
The game’s story is pretty simple, but good enough to get the game going. For adults, it might be a bit simple to properly enjoy their attention, but there are plenty of jokes in their that an adult would get something out of. Probably the least funny part of the game are The Bitternuts in the second world. They’re a parody of 1950’s sitcoms, and the laugh track playing after every joke gets pretty old and annoying real quick.
And if Torin’s voice sounds familiar to any fans of 90’s First Person Shooters, that’s because he’s voiced by Mike Shapiro, who voiced Barney and G-Man from Half-Life. I guess he’s accidentally had a place in my childhood across both games.
Unfortunately, the game’s simple story is the result of the developers intending to have four sequels, which was supposed to chronicle the rest of Torin’s life, from his marriage to Princess Leena and assumption of the throne in the second game, up to his death in the fifth game. With Ken Williams (company founder) departure from Sierra and disappointing sales, along with the eventual buyout of the company prevented this from ever happening. It’s still nice to get a glimpse into what could have been.
Visually, Torin’s Passage is a fantastic looking game for it’s time, and has aged well, with it’s Disney inspired graphics, despite the fact it had a limited 256-color palette. The backgrounds are all hand-painted and look gorgeous, the game knows it because the interface came with a ‘Scroll Handle’ that let’s you look at any part of some screens that contain a large piece of art for it’s background, both horizontally and vertically. And it worked because every now and again I would just scroll to look at the background art.
The game also features 3D objects too. They’re a bit low detailed from today’s perspective, but between that and the highly stylized art style, it actually works well with the rest of the games aesthetic. The soundtrack is also pretty solid, done by 3-time Academy Award winner Michel LeGrand. Those 3 awards were for ‘Summer of ’42’ (1971), ‘Yentl’ (1983), and the original song “The Windmills of your Minds” from the ‘Thomas Crown Affair’ (1968). I don’t exactly think of these when I think of Torin’s Passage, but that’s one hell of a resume.
During the game, you can pick between Torin’s inventory and Boogle’s inventory. This is because, like I mentioned earlier, Boogle has the ability to change into varying objects. I feel like Boogle could have made a fun toy, but I guess this games low sales prevented that, but I digress. The middle of the inventory has a platform where you can view anything in your inventory in 3D. This only comes in handy 2 times in the whole game where you can actually interact with an item, but for 1995, this was incredibly neat being able to see your inventory up close and in 3D.
Unfortunately, a few parts of the game really bring down the experience. In chapter 4, there is a giant lava maze that’s difficult to navigate to find an item that sparkles, but only every couple of seconds. Apparently it was designed by Al Lowe’s daughter, while is absolutely adorable and is an incredibly nice thing to do, but is not exactly the best art of the game. I genuinely feel bad criticizing the drawing abilities of a child. The chapter right after has a slope you have to try and climb, but you have to click on very specific parts of it, and it’s practically pixel hunting, all while the slope tells you what parts you can actually click on in a high pitched voice. All for the sake of the pun “slippery slope”.
The game does come with a hint feature represented by an hourglass with a question mark that pops up if you’re having a bit of trouble, which is useful for the younger players who might have trouble with some of the more difficult puzzles of the game.
While Torin’s Passage might not be a classic point-and-click game for either Sierra or the genre as a whole, it still has a ton of Sierra’s charm and polish, and is definitely worth checking out for any massive point-and-click adventure game fan.
It was 1994, and video game designer Al Lowe, who was responsible for the Leisure Suit Larry series, was watching Mrs Doubtfire with his daughter in a movie theater with a crowd people. As he was watching the movie, he noticed that there was two groups of people the crowd. Children, who were laughing at the slapstick happening to the characters, and adults, who were laughing at the jokes that passed right over the heads of the children that they were with. When he noticed this, he asked himself: “Why isn’t there a computer game that my 9-year-old daughter an I could play like this?” And thus, the idea of Torin’s Passage was born.
Torin’s Passage was released on October 31st, 1994 despite it not being that spooky, and it was developed and published by Sierra On-Line. It was released for MS-DOS, Windows 3.1 and 95, and Mac. It was written by Al Lowe, who had previously written and was famous for Leisure Suit Larry, as well as Freddy Pharkas Frontier Pharmacist. Although, this wasn’t Al Lowe’s first kids game, previously working on The Black Cauldron, Mickey’s Space Adventure, and Donald Duck’s Playground.
The game begins on a dark and stormy night, as an evil warlock acts out his plan to kill thie king, queen, and their baby while they’re all sleeping. While he successfully manages to kill the king and queen, the baby manages to escape with it’s nursemaid, who happened to be taking care of it after it had woken up in the middle of the night.
15 years later, we find our protagonist, Torin Fahrman (buh dum tss), living on a farm with his parents. After his father sends him off on an errand, his parents get kidnapped by an evil sorceress, who he learns about after talking with a passer by, who happened to see the whole thing. The passerby tells him about how this evil sorceress is located in the worlds below, a series of worlds that are nested inside of each other inside of the planet, like a Russian nesting doll. Torin embarks on a quest with his sidekick, a pink dog-looking shapeshifting creature named Boogle, to save his parents.
The game’s story is pretty simple, but good enough to get the game going. For adults, it might be a bit simple to properly enjoy their attention, but there are plenty of jokes in their that an adult would get something out of. Probably the least funny part of the game are The Bitternuts in the second world. They’re a parody of 1950’s sitcoms, and the laugh track playing after every joke gets pretty old and annoying real quick.
And if Torin’s voice sounds familiar to any fans of 90’s First Person Shooters, that’s because he’s voiced by Mike Shapiro, who voiced Barney and G-Man from Half-Life. I guess he’s accidentally had a place in my childhood across both games.
Unfortunately, the game’s simple story is the result of the developers intending to have four sequels, which was supposed to chronicle the rest of Torin’s life, from his marriage to Princess Leena and assumption of the throne in the second game, up to his death in the fifth game. With Ken Williams (company founder) departure from Sierra and disappointing sales, along with the eventual buyout of the company prevented this from ever happening. It’s still nice to get a glimpse into what could have been.
Visually, Torin’s Passage is a fantastic looking game for it’s time, and has aged well, with it’s Disney inspired graphics, despite the fact it had a limited 256-color palette. The backgrounds are all hand-painted and look gorgeous, the game knows it because the interface came with a ‘Scroll Handle’ that let’s you look at any part of some screens that contain a large piece of art for it’s background, both horizontally and vertically. And it worked because every now and again I would just scroll to look at the background art.
The game also features 3D objects too. They’re a bit low detailed from today’s perspective, but between that and the highly stylized art style, it actually works well with the rest of the games aesthetic. The soundtrack is also pretty solid, done by 3-time Academy Award winner Michel LeGrand. Those 3 awards were for ‘Summer of ’42’ (1971), ‘Yentl’ (1983), and the original song “The Windmills of your Minds” from the ‘Thomas Crown Affair’ (1968). I don’t exactly think of these when I think of Torin’s Passage, but that’s one hell of a resume.
During the game, you can pick between Torin’s inventory and Boogle’s inventory. This is because, like I mentioned earlier, Boogle has the ability to change into varying objects. I feel like Boogle could have made a fun toy, but I guess this games low sales prevented that, but I digress. The middle of the inventory has a platform where you can view anything in your inventory in 3D. This only comes in handy 2 times in the whole game where you can actually interact with an item, but for 1995, this was incredibly neat being able to see your inventory up close and in 3D.
Unfortunately, a few parts of the game really bring down the experience. In chapter 4, there is a giant lava maze that’s difficult to navigate to find an item that sparkles, but only every couple of seconds. Apparently it was designed by Al Lowe’s daughter, while is absolutely adorable and is an incredibly nice thing to do, but is not exactly the best art of the game. I genuinely feel bad criticizing the drawing abilities of a child. The chapter right after has a slope you have to try and climb, but you have to click on very specific parts of it, and it’s practically pixel hunting, all while the slope tells you what parts you can actually click on in a high pitched voice. All for the sake of the pun “slippery slope”.
The game does come with a hint feature represented by an hourglass with a question mark that pops up if you’re having a bit of trouble, which is useful for the younger players who might have trouble with some of the more difficult puzzles of the game.
While Torin’s Passage might not be a classic point-and-click game for either Sierra or the genre as a whole, it still has a ton of Sierra’s charm and polish, and is definitely worth checking out for any massive point-and-click adventure game fan.
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.