2006
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2019/10/03/monster-house-2006-gcn-ps2-review/
Three teens discover that their neighbor’s house is a living, breathing monster that eats anyone who goes near it. With none of the adults believing them, and with Halloween approaching, the trio try and find a way to stop the Monster House before it eats half the neighborhood.
Not that you would know, since the game gives you the briefest of a plot description before shoving you into the game. It just assumes that you’ve seen the film, and probably are a fan of it.
Monster House is one of the most boring games I’ve ever played. 95% of the game is walking into a small room, shooting monsters made out of furniture around the titular Monster House, and then moving into the next room. If you’re lucky, you can do the most minimal amount of exploring that the game allows you to do, you’ll find collectable clapping monkeys that will unlock concept art for the movie. If you miss any, you have to go back through the game to get the ones you didn’t find the first time.
Since the developers knew that this was aimed towards kids, every monster battle just consists of you pressing the fire button, which automatically locks onto a monster, and you shooting at it while strafing around it until it’s destroyed. There isn’t even any ammo collecting. You just hit one of the buttons over and over until your water gun pumps up until it’s full again.
I guess there are a couple of things that could be counted as a “puzzles”, but are barely puzzles. One involves you have to shoot a certain amount of targets in a carnival game to get a clowns nose to place on a giant clown’s face so you can move onto the next room. Another is pipes coming up out of the floor in certain intervals.
The game has checkpoints, but they’re so few and far between, so you’ll have to go back 15 minutes of game. While the game isn’t all that difficult, it’s definitely makes the game more tedious than it should if you you do happened to lose all of your health. There are even a couple of quicktime events that come out of nowhere, but thankfully they’re always the same every single time they happen. The only real problem I have with the quicktime events is near the end of the game, you have to press them in the order that they pop up, and if you don’t press it quick enough, you can end up replaying the same small part of the game over and over again, up to a couple of dozen of times.
Graphically, the game actually looks OK, but that’s mostly because of the movies great art style. But that’s probably the best I can say about the games graphics, because the game uses the exact same couple of rooms over and over again, leading to a lot of repetition visually. Considering that you play as all three characters, it makes it even worse.
Probably the best part of the whole game is not the game itself, but a bonus game based on a video game from the movie, a game called “Thou Art Dead”, based on a video game from the film, which one of the characters from the film plays in an arcade. It’s a homage to old NES games like Castlevania and Ghosts ‘N Goblins. It’s actually incredibly fun. The only problem is that you have to collect coins throughout the campaign, and even then the coins are limited, and if you want to keep playing, you have to replay the game to collect the coins.
There was a version of “Thou Art Dead” released on the official website as a promotion for the film, and I would just recommend that over the actual game.
I know that I should have low expectations no only going into a children’s video game, let alone a children’s video game based on a film meant for kids bothering their parents so they have something to play, but there have been so many good video games for children based on other forms of media that it’s not really an excuse.
I don’t know why you would give this to your kid over just showing them the film, especially when you need to have seen the film in the first place to get what’s going on. Plus the film is much more entertaining, much shorter, and much better than this game. I honestly have no idea why I even played this game to begin with. Maybe it’s because I liked the movie and I was curious as to what the game was like. I probably should have just watched a couple of YouTube videos to satiate my curiosity.
Three teens discover that their neighbor’s house is a living, breathing monster that eats anyone who goes near it. With none of the adults believing them, and with Halloween approaching, the trio try and find a way to stop the Monster House before it eats half the neighborhood.
Not that you would know, since the game gives you the briefest of a plot description before shoving you into the game. It just assumes that you’ve seen the film, and probably are a fan of it.
Monster House is one of the most boring games I’ve ever played. 95% of the game is walking into a small room, shooting monsters made out of furniture around the titular Monster House, and then moving into the next room. If you’re lucky, you can do the most minimal amount of exploring that the game allows you to do, you’ll find collectable clapping monkeys that will unlock concept art for the movie. If you miss any, you have to go back through the game to get the ones you didn’t find the first time.
Since the developers knew that this was aimed towards kids, every monster battle just consists of you pressing the fire button, which automatically locks onto a monster, and you shooting at it while strafing around it until it’s destroyed. There isn’t even any ammo collecting. You just hit one of the buttons over and over until your water gun pumps up until it’s full again.
I guess there are a couple of things that could be counted as a “puzzles”, but are barely puzzles. One involves you have to shoot a certain amount of targets in a carnival game to get a clowns nose to place on a giant clown’s face so you can move onto the next room. Another is pipes coming up out of the floor in certain intervals.
The game has checkpoints, but they’re so few and far between, so you’ll have to go back 15 minutes of game. While the game isn’t all that difficult, it’s definitely makes the game more tedious than it should if you you do happened to lose all of your health. There are even a couple of quicktime events that come out of nowhere, but thankfully they’re always the same every single time they happen. The only real problem I have with the quicktime events is near the end of the game, you have to press them in the order that they pop up, and if you don’t press it quick enough, you can end up replaying the same small part of the game over and over again, up to a couple of dozen of times.
Graphically, the game actually looks OK, but that’s mostly because of the movies great art style. But that’s probably the best I can say about the games graphics, because the game uses the exact same couple of rooms over and over again, leading to a lot of repetition visually. Considering that you play as all three characters, it makes it even worse.
Probably the best part of the whole game is not the game itself, but a bonus game based on a video game from the movie, a game called “Thou Art Dead”, based on a video game from the film, which one of the characters from the film plays in an arcade. It’s a homage to old NES games like Castlevania and Ghosts ‘N Goblins. It’s actually incredibly fun. The only problem is that you have to collect coins throughout the campaign, and even then the coins are limited, and if you want to keep playing, you have to replay the game to collect the coins.
There was a version of “Thou Art Dead” released on the official website as a promotion for the film, and I would just recommend that over the actual game.
I know that I should have low expectations no only going into a children’s video game, let alone a children’s video game based on a film meant for kids bothering their parents so they have something to play, but there have been so many good video games for children based on other forms of media that it’s not really an excuse.
I don’t know why you would give this to your kid over just showing them the film, especially when you need to have seen the film in the first place to get what’s going on. Plus the film is much more entertaining, much shorter, and much better than this game. I honestly have no idea why I even played this game to begin with. Maybe it’s because I liked the movie and I was curious as to what the game was like. I probably should have just watched a couple of YouTube videos to satiate my curiosity.
2005
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2019/04/22/swat-4-2005-game-review/
SWAT 4 is both one of the best games that I’ve ever played and one of the most infuriating monitor smashing, keyboard snapping, stroke inducing games that I’ve played at the same time. How can a game be both of those things? Well, lets have a look, shall we.
There isn’t much of a story in the usual sense. Some of the mission briefings with have a few minor plot threads through out the game, but most of the the story that the game has is unique to each mission. Unlike previous installments of the franchise, where you followed the L.A.P.D. Branch of SWAT, SWAT 4 takes places in Los Angeles, California, the single player campaign taking place in the fictional East Coast city of Fairview (an amalgamation of New York City, Boston, a few other eastern cities). Taking place in the then far off future of 2008/2009. You can practice at the Riverside Training Facility, under the guidance of police Lieutenant Sunny Bonds, or jump right into the action.
Before every mission, you’re given the option to check your Objectives screen. This gives you a very throughout and detailed overlook of the situation, such as a briefing catching you up on the details, being able to listen to any related 911 calls, a map showing all of the entrances of the location and possibly the layout of the building that you can bring up in the pause menu, any known info on the supects, any civilians in the building, and a timeline of events. You can even choose which way you want to enter a building.
At the Equipment menu, you can choose the loadouts for yourself and your whole squad. The game comes with several loadouts included, but if you want to make your own personalized loadout, you can, and you save it. And you can copy any of the loadouts you’ve selected to the rest of your squad.
Your primary weapons include the Colt M4A1 Carbine, .45 SMG, Suppressed 9mm SMG, 9mm SMG, Nova Pump, M4 Super 90, GB36s Assault Rifle, AK-47, and Gal Sub machine Gun. And if you want to go in with a less lethal option, which is recommended in a few mission, are the Pepper-ball Gun, and Less-Lethal Shotgun, which fires sandbags.
Your secondary weapons include your standard guns such as M1911 Handgun, Colt Python Revolver, and 9mm Handgun. Less aggressive options include the Taser Stun Gun and Pepper Spray for the people who are refusing to be handcuffed or need some convincing to put down their weapon. Explosives include the Stinger Grenade cause quite a punch to anyone close to it, Flashbang, which blinds your enemies, and CS Gas, which can blind enemies with smoke and cause anyone close enough to it to go into a coughing fit.
If you come across locked doors, you have the Breaching Equipment, which includes a Shotgun that can breach locked doors by firing at the door handle or C2, which you can apply to the door around the same area, blowing the doors lock off.
Finally there is the Door Wedge, which you can used to prevent people from opening doors, essentially preventing them from escaping a certain way as you move around to another opening to a room, and the Optiwand, which lets you see under a door to check if there are any enemies in the room you want to enter.
To order your squad members around, there is a drop down menu that you can get to by holding down your right mouse button. You can order your team to follow you, move to wherever you’ve happened to aim at, to stack up at a door to check if it’s locked and to prepare to enter to room, or have them enter the room straight away. You can even separate your team, which is called “Gold” team, or “Element”, into two smaller teams, “Red” team and “Blue” team. This can help in certain strategies, such as them entering two doors of the same room, and taking on enemies from two different angles and having the element of surprise.
There are also few mode besides the campaign that you can try if you want some variety. There is Instant Action, in which you drop into the most recent mission that you’ve complete with the default gear. You can also create and play your own missions based off of the missions from the Single Player part of the game. There are a ton of options to choose from in this mode, including difficulty, whether or not you want the missions from the Single Player version of the level or a mix of objectives from a list, which entry point you want to start at and a time limit, and which load out you want to take in.
You can even choose to be a lone wolf or have a smaller amount of SWAT members on your team, and the amount of civilians there are in a level and the amount of and types of guns terrorists are holding. You can make any level as easy or insanely impossibly as you want, and is probably the most fun part of the single player experience.
One of the best features of SWAT 4 is the multiplayer. The multiplayer features several game modes, all of which are team-based. These include Barricaded Suspects, in which Teams gain points by arresting or neutralizing members of the other team, and whoever hits the score limit first or has the highest score when the round ends win, VIP Escort, in which a random member of the SWAT team is selected to be the VIP. The suspects must arrest the VIP and hold him for two minutes before they can execute him. SWAT must escort the VIP to the extraction point in the mission area while preventing suspects from arresting him.
Rapid Deployment, in which three to five bombs are placed throughout the map, and the SWAT team must locate and disable all of the within the time limit, and if they fail to do so, the suspects win. And Co-op, in you can play through all of the single-player missions with up to four other people taking place of the computer-controller SWAT officers.
Graphically, the game still holds up fairly well. Every location looks exactly like what it’s real world counterpoint would look like (I.E. Restaurant, Convenience Store, Medical Center, Jewelry Store, Run Down Apartments, etc.). Some levels even have a fantastic and creepy atmosphere that really drive home the point that you’re dealing with some pretty disturbed people, such as a level where a man has a kidnapped woman in his basement, and a level in an run down apartment building that has a cult in it.
What really stands out are the small details around each level that make the game world feel like the events in the game are actually happening, such as news reports on the radio of current and previous missions, and even in one mission, there is a live news report happening, giving away your SWAT team’s presence to the terrorists. The other squad members even comment on the situation as it’s unfolding along with occasionally commenting on certain things located around a location, and even give a few sarcastic remarks about the situation, location, and even about each other.
There’s even a few missions that have new objectives pop up as the mission goes on, giving the feeling as if the situation is unfolding before you. It’s small details like these that you wouldn’t even notice that make it seem like the developers were actually putting a lot of effort and love into each location.
The only minor complaint I have with the graphics are the mirrors, which look hilariously stretched and weird. But they do actually serve a purpose in the game, as a few spots in a few levels, you can use the mirror to spot enemies around corners.
SWAT 4 is also pretty impressive on the audio side too. At certain points, the game will appear like there is distant gunfire off in another part of the level, adding to the whole situation unfolding in front of you vibe the game is trying to give off, using what limitations the game has to make it seem like more is going on than possible. The soundtrack is dynamic to whatever situation is going on at the time. Whenever your team is breaching a room or coming into contact with enemies around the map, the music goes from the usual ambient music that plays when you’re exploring the area to a tense music that puts you on edge, really making it seem like a situation could go south any second.
Speaking of going south, the biggest flaw of SWAT 4 rears it’s ugly head. The thing that really brings the game down is it’s bullshit inconsistent enemy AI and absurd difficulty spikes. The first two levels are tutorial levels to ease you into the games concepts, but by the third or forth level, for some insane reason, the enemy difficulty spikes incredibly high, and a mere thug can take out your entire squad of 4 members with a 9mm handgun right as their going through a door, sometimes literally the first door of a map, simply by firing said handgun at them as they’re piling through the doorway. And it doesn’t help that every now and again a fellow SWAT member can be hung up on the side of some part of the level because the path finding got confused for half a second.
This can happen several times in a row, and then for no reason, you’re able to get through a mission with little to no difficulty. There can be 4 missions in a row that are incredibly difficult, and suddenly one is incredibly easy. And vice versa, where 4 mission are incredibly easy, and then for no reason, one mission is insanely hard. This is where another feature of the game, which is that the civilians and terrorists are randomly placed around the level, giving each level some level of replayability, becomes a curse. You’ll never know what happens next, making it even more difficult to predict where everyone is, making the difficulty spikes especially bad.
I’ve even failed a mission because a SWAT member was firing at a terrorist and killed a civilian. This happened multiple times. And that’s not even mentioning the infrequent cases of an enemy happening to clip through a wall and firing on me and killing me. Its like the game was 95% done, and all that was left was simply testing out the AI to make sure the game was balanced for players, only for the published to go “Lol, nope, we’ve got to publish this right now!”, making the game way too unbalanced. Either that, or the developers knew the game had too few levels or content and though that punishing AI was a way to combat that.
It doesn’t seem to help that changing the difficulty doesn’t seem to do much other than change the amount of points that you’re supposed to get by the end of the level. There are 4 difficulty levels. Easy is 0 points, meaning you can just run into every situation and fire off into every direction, and as long as you complete your mission goals, you can complete the level. Other difficulty levels include Normal, which is 50 points, Hard, which is 75 points, and Elite, which is 95 points. This is great is want to try and get through a level as close to procedure as you can, but I just wish there was an extra difficulty tab for enemy AI, maybe making the enemies more aggressive or strategic or something. As is, it feels like I have to abuse the games logic and rules to get through some of the levels.
While going through a level, you can also receive injuries from terrorists gunfire. I guess the point of this was realism, but it can make certain longer missions tedious, making it take an extra ~15 to ~30 minutes at least, and some missions literally impossible to complete without restarting them. There is one mission where you have to disarm bombs within a time limit, but you’d better not have one or both of your legs injured, because you have to restart the entire mission unless you’re somehow lucky enough to not get injured or injured with just enough time left, which I doubt.
Since you don’t want to lose a ton of points because you didn’t scream “Get Down!” at a terrorist before you had to fire upon him in a kill-or-get-killed situation, or get your legs injured and tediously spend ~45 minutes tediously walking throughout a level, you have to send in your fellow SWAT members so they can take the brunt of the situation. And when your fellow SWAT members can be taken out in half a second because enemy AI has instantaneous reflexes and eagle like sight, is not what you want to do, despite being something you have to do.
Because of the shitty AI, a lot of the small nitpicks become significantly worse. Sometimes, an enemy is sitting in the corner of some part of the map you might not know about or haven’t double checked. And if you’ve walked around a level for ~45 minutes only for an enemy to kill you, meaning you have to restart a mission for the umpteenth time, that minor problem suddenly becomes a massive rage inducing problem.
While you can order your squad members to handcuff people, you still have to report the person in, along with collecting dropped weapons as evidence and anyone who was either killed during the mission or killed or injured before you got there. And if you’re trying to reach the point threshold to properly complete a mission, all while your legs are injured, you’re now spending the next half hour slowly limping around any given mission.
Also, if I’m playing a professional SWAT member, why am I reacting this badly to gun recoil? I can even tap the mouse button without the gun suddenly finding itself aimed at the roof. And the spread for the guns seems way too far apart when I’m just firing off in short bursts.
Every now and again, one of your SWAT members can get caught up on the edge of a doorway or the side of a way when turning into certain hallways. You’ll inevitably notice this when you order your SWAT members to line up against a door, ready to enter on your command, and you sit there waiting for 10 minutes wondering why the rest of your SWAT team aren’t entering a room only to realize that one of them is somewhere in the map, stuck somewhere.
There are even SWAT snipers on a few levels that can give you info on certain people located in certain levels. You can even take control of one of these snipers and take out one of the enemies from a distance. These don’t deduct from your overall score, so I would recommend using the snipers as often as possible. It might be gaming the system, but when it comes to this games bullshit AI, you kinda have to.
I know this seems weird saying that SWAT 4 is still worth playing despite the fact that I ranted about it being atrociously unfair with it’s AI and the small accumulating problems that seem to just pile up, but SWAT 4 is worth playing to some degree. Just be aware of some of the bullshit problems this game has. If you can deal with the infuriating difficultly spikes and inconsistent friendly and enemy AI at the best of times, or have friends that think that playing as a member of SWAT is a fantastic idea and can overlook the games flaws to spend a couple of hours with friends to have a blast playing one of the better co-op games out there, SWAT 4 can be a lot of fun. Ironically, this is probably the most polished and mature game in the series up to this point.
SWAT 4 is both one of the best games that I’ve ever played and one of the most infuriating monitor smashing, keyboard snapping, stroke inducing games that I’ve played at the same time. How can a game be both of those things? Well, lets have a look, shall we.
There isn’t much of a story in the usual sense. Some of the mission briefings with have a few minor plot threads through out the game, but most of the the story that the game has is unique to each mission. Unlike previous installments of the franchise, where you followed the L.A.P.D. Branch of SWAT, SWAT 4 takes places in Los Angeles, California, the single player campaign taking place in the fictional East Coast city of Fairview (an amalgamation of New York City, Boston, a few other eastern cities). Taking place in the then far off future of 2008/2009. You can practice at the Riverside Training Facility, under the guidance of police Lieutenant Sunny Bonds, or jump right into the action.
Before every mission, you’re given the option to check your Objectives screen. This gives you a very throughout and detailed overlook of the situation, such as a briefing catching you up on the details, being able to listen to any related 911 calls, a map showing all of the entrances of the location and possibly the layout of the building that you can bring up in the pause menu, any known info on the supects, any civilians in the building, and a timeline of events. You can even choose which way you want to enter a building.
At the Equipment menu, you can choose the loadouts for yourself and your whole squad. The game comes with several loadouts included, but if you want to make your own personalized loadout, you can, and you save it. And you can copy any of the loadouts you’ve selected to the rest of your squad.
Your primary weapons include the Colt M4A1 Carbine, .45 SMG, Suppressed 9mm SMG, 9mm SMG, Nova Pump, M4 Super 90, GB36s Assault Rifle, AK-47, and Gal Sub machine Gun. And if you want to go in with a less lethal option, which is recommended in a few mission, are the Pepper-ball Gun, and Less-Lethal Shotgun, which fires sandbags.
Your secondary weapons include your standard guns such as M1911 Handgun, Colt Python Revolver, and 9mm Handgun. Less aggressive options include the Taser Stun Gun and Pepper Spray for the people who are refusing to be handcuffed or need some convincing to put down their weapon. Explosives include the Stinger Grenade cause quite a punch to anyone close to it, Flashbang, which blinds your enemies, and CS Gas, which can blind enemies with smoke and cause anyone close enough to it to go into a coughing fit.
If you come across locked doors, you have the Breaching Equipment, which includes a Shotgun that can breach locked doors by firing at the door handle or C2, which you can apply to the door around the same area, blowing the doors lock off.
Finally there is the Door Wedge, which you can used to prevent people from opening doors, essentially preventing them from escaping a certain way as you move around to another opening to a room, and the Optiwand, which lets you see under a door to check if there are any enemies in the room you want to enter.
To order your squad members around, there is a drop down menu that you can get to by holding down your right mouse button. You can order your team to follow you, move to wherever you’ve happened to aim at, to stack up at a door to check if it’s locked and to prepare to enter to room, or have them enter the room straight away. You can even separate your team, which is called “Gold” team, or “Element”, into two smaller teams, “Red” team and “Blue” team. This can help in certain strategies, such as them entering two doors of the same room, and taking on enemies from two different angles and having the element of surprise.
There are also few mode besides the campaign that you can try if you want some variety. There is Instant Action, in which you drop into the most recent mission that you’ve complete with the default gear. You can also create and play your own missions based off of the missions from the Single Player part of the game. There are a ton of options to choose from in this mode, including difficulty, whether or not you want the missions from the Single Player version of the level or a mix of objectives from a list, which entry point you want to start at and a time limit, and which load out you want to take in.
You can even choose to be a lone wolf or have a smaller amount of SWAT members on your team, and the amount of civilians there are in a level and the amount of and types of guns terrorists are holding. You can make any level as easy or insanely impossibly as you want, and is probably the most fun part of the single player experience.
One of the best features of SWAT 4 is the multiplayer. The multiplayer features several game modes, all of which are team-based. These include Barricaded Suspects, in which Teams gain points by arresting or neutralizing members of the other team, and whoever hits the score limit first or has the highest score when the round ends win, VIP Escort, in which a random member of the SWAT team is selected to be the VIP. The suspects must arrest the VIP and hold him for two minutes before they can execute him. SWAT must escort the VIP to the extraction point in the mission area while preventing suspects from arresting him.
Rapid Deployment, in which three to five bombs are placed throughout the map, and the SWAT team must locate and disable all of the within the time limit, and if they fail to do so, the suspects win. And Co-op, in you can play through all of the single-player missions with up to four other people taking place of the computer-controller SWAT officers.
Graphically, the game still holds up fairly well. Every location looks exactly like what it’s real world counterpoint would look like (I.E. Restaurant, Convenience Store, Medical Center, Jewelry Store, Run Down Apartments, etc.). Some levels even have a fantastic and creepy atmosphere that really drive home the point that you’re dealing with some pretty disturbed people, such as a level where a man has a kidnapped woman in his basement, and a level in an run down apartment building that has a cult in it.
What really stands out are the small details around each level that make the game world feel like the events in the game are actually happening, such as news reports on the radio of current and previous missions, and even in one mission, there is a live news report happening, giving away your SWAT team’s presence to the terrorists. The other squad members even comment on the situation as it’s unfolding along with occasionally commenting on certain things located around a location, and even give a few sarcastic remarks about the situation, location, and even about each other.
There’s even a few missions that have new objectives pop up as the mission goes on, giving the feeling as if the situation is unfolding before you. It’s small details like these that you wouldn’t even notice that make it seem like the developers were actually putting a lot of effort and love into each location.
The only minor complaint I have with the graphics are the mirrors, which look hilariously stretched and weird. But they do actually serve a purpose in the game, as a few spots in a few levels, you can use the mirror to spot enemies around corners.
SWAT 4 is also pretty impressive on the audio side too. At certain points, the game will appear like there is distant gunfire off in another part of the level, adding to the whole situation unfolding in front of you vibe the game is trying to give off, using what limitations the game has to make it seem like more is going on than possible. The soundtrack is dynamic to whatever situation is going on at the time. Whenever your team is breaching a room or coming into contact with enemies around the map, the music goes from the usual ambient music that plays when you’re exploring the area to a tense music that puts you on edge, really making it seem like a situation could go south any second.
Speaking of going south, the biggest flaw of SWAT 4 rears it’s ugly head. The thing that really brings the game down is it’s bullshit inconsistent enemy AI and absurd difficulty spikes. The first two levels are tutorial levels to ease you into the games concepts, but by the third or forth level, for some insane reason, the enemy difficulty spikes incredibly high, and a mere thug can take out your entire squad of 4 members with a 9mm handgun right as their going through a door, sometimes literally the first door of a map, simply by firing said handgun at them as they’re piling through the doorway. And it doesn’t help that every now and again a fellow SWAT member can be hung up on the side of some part of the level because the path finding got confused for half a second.
This can happen several times in a row, and then for no reason, you’re able to get through a mission with little to no difficulty. There can be 4 missions in a row that are incredibly difficult, and suddenly one is incredibly easy. And vice versa, where 4 mission are incredibly easy, and then for no reason, one mission is insanely hard. This is where another feature of the game, which is that the civilians and terrorists are randomly placed around the level, giving each level some level of replayability, becomes a curse. You’ll never know what happens next, making it even more difficult to predict where everyone is, making the difficulty spikes especially bad.
I’ve even failed a mission because a SWAT member was firing at a terrorist and killed a civilian. This happened multiple times. And that’s not even mentioning the infrequent cases of an enemy happening to clip through a wall and firing on me and killing me. Its like the game was 95% done, and all that was left was simply testing out the AI to make sure the game was balanced for players, only for the published to go “Lol, nope, we’ve got to publish this right now!”, making the game way too unbalanced. Either that, or the developers knew the game had too few levels or content and though that punishing AI was a way to combat that.
It doesn’t seem to help that changing the difficulty doesn’t seem to do much other than change the amount of points that you’re supposed to get by the end of the level. There are 4 difficulty levels. Easy is 0 points, meaning you can just run into every situation and fire off into every direction, and as long as you complete your mission goals, you can complete the level. Other difficulty levels include Normal, which is 50 points, Hard, which is 75 points, and Elite, which is 95 points. This is great is want to try and get through a level as close to procedure as you can, but I just wish there was an extra difficulty tab for enemy AI, maybe making the enemies more aggressive or strategic or something. As is, it feels like I have to abuse the games logic and rules to get through some of the levels.
While going through a level, you can also receive injuries from terrorists gunfire. I guess the point of this was realism, but it can make certain longer missions tedious, making it take an extra ~15 to ~30 minutes at least, and some missions literally impossible to complete without restarting them. There is one mission where you have to disarm bombs within a time limit, but you’d better not have one or both of your legs injured, because you have to restart the entire mission unless you’re somehow lucky enough to not get injured or injured with just enough time left, which I doubt.
Since you don’t want to lose a ton of points because you didn’t scream “Get Down!” at a terrorist before you had to fire upon him in a kill-or-get-killed situation, or get your legs injured and tediously spend ~45 minutes tediously walking throughout a level, you have to send in your fellow SWAT members so they can take the brunt of the situation. And when your fellow SWAT members can be taken out in half a second because enemy AI has instantaneous reflexes and eagle like sight, is not what you want to do, despite being something you have to do.
Because of the shitty AI, a lot of the small nitpicks become significantly worse. Sometimes, an enemy is sitting in the corner of some part of the map you might not know about or haven’t double checked. And if you’ve walked around a level for ~45 minutes only for an enemy to kill you, meaning you have to restart a mission for the umpteenth time, that minor problem suddenly becomes a massive rage inducing problem.
While you can order your squad members to handcuff people, you still have to report the person in, along with collecting dropped weapons as evidence and anyone who was either killed during the mission or killed or injured before you got there. And if you’re trying to reach the point threshold to properly complete a mission, all while your legs are injured, you’re now spending the next half hour slowly limping around any given mission.
Also, if I’m playing a professional SWAT member, why am I reacting this badly to gun recoil? I can even tap the mouse button without the gun suddenly finding itself aimed at the roof. And the spread for the guns seems way too far apart when I’m just firing off in short bursts.
Every now and again, one of your SWAT members can get caught up on the edge of a doorway or the side of a way when turning into certain hallways. You’ll inevitably notice this when you order your SWAT members to line up against a door, ready to enter on your command, and you sit there waiting for 10 minutes wondering why the rest of your SWAT team aren’t entering a room only to realize that one of them is somewhere in the map, stuck somewhere.
There are even SWAT snipers on a few levels that can give you info on certain people located in certain levels. You can even take control of one of these snipers and take out one of the enemies from a distance. These don’t deduct from your overall score, so I would recommend using the snipers as often as possible. It might be gaming the system, but when it comes to this games bullshit AI, you kinda have to.
I know this seems weird saying that SWAT 4 is still worth playing despite the fact that I ranted about it being atrociously unfair with it’s AI and the small accumulating problems that seem to just pile up, but SWAT 4 is worth playing to some degree. Just be aware of some of the bullshit problems this game has. If you can deal with the infuriating difficultly spikes and inconsistent friendly and enemy AI at the best of times, or have friends that think that playing as a member of SWAT is a fantastic idea and can overlook the games flaws to spend a couple of hours with friends to have a blast playing one of the better co-op games out there, SWAT 4 can be a lot of fun. Ironically, this is probably the most polished and mature game in the series up to this point.
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2019/01/31/a-story-about-my-uncle-2014-review/
Every now and again I come across a great game that focuses on it’s story instead of combat, such as A Story About My Uncle, which is a game that has no combat, and instead has the player leaping from platform to platform and experiencing the world it has developed.
Told through a father recounting a story told by a father to his daughter, the game follows a young boy who goes to look from his missing uncle Fred. After finding a a mysterious suit that lets you jump incredibly high and far, the main character soon finds himself in another world filled with a strange frog people that he becomes friendly with, along with encountering a few dangers along with the way.
Most of the gameplay involves the grappling hook mechanic, which feels incredibly smooth and satisfying. It’s like a smaller scale first person Spider-Man game. Along with the grappling hook, you can occasionally leap from platform to platform with the help of your suit, and half way through the game, you can get rocky boots that add a rocket jump, giving you some extra help with certain platforms.
Near the end of the game, it can go up in difficulty, and the young audience that this is aimed at might have some trouble getting through it. But the whole game is never unreasonably hard with it’s puzzles.
The game art stands out, and makes up for the games obvious lower budget. It starts out looking nice, but half way through the game, it really shines and shows how gorgeous the game can be. I can definitely see myself using a screenshot or two, or some of the art for this game as the background on my computer. I should also not that the soundtrack is also pretty nice, and compliments the rest of the game really well, really adding to the whole experience.
Every now and again I don’t quite know where to go due to some of the floating rocks you have to swing across not being immediately obvious, taking a moment or two to for me to find them. Sometimes, one of the rocks can be hard to determine how far away they are, leading to a few leaps of faith before getting it right.
There is some replayability in the game, with a few some unlockables both in the form of Time Trials you get after completing the game and collectables tucked throughout the game that give you stuff, including being able to change the color of your grappling hook, an Acrobatic and Adidas mode, along with something called Goat Mode (which is almost to be expected since this game is from the same guys as Goat Simulator after all).
A Story About My Uncle is a fun and pleasant experience the whole way through, and I found myself going back and playing it a second time a while after finishing it. I’d easily recommend this game.
Every now and again I come across a great game that focuses on it’s story instead of combat, such as A Story About My Uncle, which is a game that has no combat, and instead has the player leaping from platform to platform and experiencing the world it has developed.
Told through a father recounting a story told by a father to his daughter, the game follows a young boy who goes to look from his missing uncle Fred. After finding a a mysterious suit that lets you jump incredibly high and far, the main character soon finds himself in another world filled with a strange frog people that he becomes friendly with, along with encountering a few dangers along with the way.
Most of the gameplay involves the grappling hook mechanic, which feels incredibly smooth and satisfying. It’s like a smaller scale first person Spider-Man game. Along with the grappling hook, you can occasionally leap from platform to platform with the help of your suit, and half way through the game, you can get rocky boots that add a rocket jump, giving you some extra help with certain platforms.
Near the end of the game, it can go up in difficulty, and the young audience that this is aimed at might have some trouble getting through it. But the whole game is never unreasonably hard with it’s puzzles.
The game art stands out, and makes up for the games obvious lower budget. It starts out looking nice, but half way through the game, it really shines and shows how gorgeous the game can be. I can definitely see myself using a screenshot or two, or some of the art for this game as the background on my computer. I should also not that the soundtrack is also pretty nice, and compliments the rest of the game really well, really adding to the whole experience.
Every now and again I don’t quite know where to go due to some of the floating rocks you have to swing across not being immediately obvious, taking a moment or two to for me to find them. Sometimes, one of the rocks can be hard to determine how far away they are, leading to a few leaps of faith before getting it right.
There is some replayability in the game, with a few some unlockables both in the form of Time Trials you get after completing the game and collectables tucked throughout the game that give you stuff, including being able to change the color of your grappling hook, an Acrobatic and Adidas mode, along with something called Goat Mode (which is almost to be expected since this game is from the same guys as Goat Simulator after all).
A Story About My Uncle is a fun and pleasant experience the whole way through, and I found myself going back and playing it a second time a while after finishing it. I’d easily recommend this game.
2003
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2017/03/14/chaser-2003-pc-review/
Chaser might be one of the most forgettable First Person Shooters in the sea of First Person Shooters, and it’s pretty easy to see why. The story, world, and art style are pretty much all things we’ve seen done before a lot better in both in video games and other forms of media. And that’s before we even get to the generic gameplay.
Developed by Cauldron and published by JoWood Productions, Chaser was released on August 30th, 2003 only for PC, and considering how broken this game ended up being in areas, I can’t imagine how more broken the game would have been if it had been ported to anything else, so be thankful that it came out in the working state that it did.
The game opens in the year 2044, on the H.M.S. Majestic, a space station orbiting Earth. The generically titled main character John Chaser wakes up in the medical bay, groggy and without the faintest clue who he is, conveniently suffering from amnesia. Just as he is waking up, the space station gets boarded by a group of heavily armed and armored men who are looking to kill Chaser.
Luckily, Chaser manages to escape the space station just before it explodes and crash lands on Earth. If the story couldn’t get any more unoriginal, Chaser just takes the plot points wholesale from 1990’s Total Recall, just without any of the quality. Also, what kind of a name is Chaser anyway?
Every single voice actor sounds bored out of their minds or they just took Ambien because they were brought in 30 seconds before they were about to record, got a glimpse of the script, and that was the only way they could tolerate their way through it. Most of the voice acting sounds like the actors were reading the lines out to themselves for the first time and didn’t realize the weren’t going to get a second take. Some of the dialogue doesn’t even match up to the subtitles. Its like the people who were doing the acting and the people doing the subtitles got two completely different scripts.
Graphically, the game is underwhelming. Its average at best and inconsistent at worst. The game uses an engine developed by the company’s in studio engine, the CloakNT engine. The company was hoping that it competes with the likes of the Unreal engine and ID’s IDTech, but its pretty easy to see that it couldn’t compete and had no chance.
The engine tries to have realistic water for the time, you shoot the water and the water ripples. At one point during the game, the water was placed so poorly that if you shoot it the right way (or wrong way depending on how you look at it), the rippling effect slipped out of the surrounding ground geometry.
A section of the game involves you using a sniper rifle to shoot across an open area as a way of showing what the engine is capable of. Which is immediately destroyed by the fact that if you move your character, giant parts of the level will disappear into a what appears to be a black void.
Character models are blocky and are animated weirdly (seriously, look at the characters eyebrows during cutscenes). Half the time you shoot at windows, shards will stay floating in place. The only compliment I can give Chaser is that some of the early levels on Mars look OK, which is not saying much considering the rest of the game.
Levels are incredibly unintuitive. Trying to find out where your objectives are is incredibly tedious, and are often hidden in locations that you would only find after looking in every other location trying to find where to go or by accident.
The controls have a floatyness to them. Hitboxes for enemies are a bit wonky, and are especially bad when using the sniper rifle. Its a mix of the people that you’re shooting at being just small enough in your scope and the rifle being inaccurate enough that you’re bound to miss who your aiming at half of the time. Which is the second blow to the section focused around using the sniper rifle.
The second unforgivably bad section of Chaser is the underwater section. Just like the rest of water levels in video games, the level starts hurting immediately. If the games floaty controls weren’t bad enough on land, they’re even worse here. The underwater section takes places in a ship graveyard in which you have go through the interiors of several ships. The floaty controls and small areas do not mix.
I think the developers also knew this level was terrible, because they put in lights to help guide you through the level. Even then, you’ve still bound to get lost anyway, due to the levels being overly unintuitive. This entire level could have been another cutscene, I’d rather have 5 minutes of mildly annoying voice acting rather than 45 minutes of frustrating level design and awful controls.
It also doesn’t help that the level geometry has problems throughout the game. You’ll end up getting stuck on geometry with no way to get unstuck, so you’ll have to abuse the quickload button. So you’d better save often. Using ladders is a pain in the ass to use. You try and jump off of them to the area you climbed to only to not make it end up hitting the ground.
Which brings us to the worst part of the game. The game doesn’t show you if you take any injuries when falling, so it took multiple deaths to realize it was the fall damage getting me killed. Doors take a second to open. And it doesn’t help that a lot of doors make the same sound when both locked and unlocked if the make a sound, if the make a sound at all, which also contributed to a few deaths before I caught on to what was going on.
The AI is also pretty bad. Which is compounded by the fact that there is no real pathfinding. Enemies will run into objects and friendly AI will try to follow you by going in a straight line instead of about the level, which results in them constantly running into the wall.
For no reason, your weapons disappear between levels, only for you to get an almost, if not completely, different arsenal. And this isn’t your character going into a completely different location or situation either. This happens when you move to a new area of the same place you were just before, like it assumed what weapons the player would have. Why not have a location early on for the player to get those weapons early on in the level.
Also, There was even a glitch that had a puddle of blood land ON the water. Not in it, ON it, like it was a solid object. I don’t know if that’s just how the engine works or someone did that on purpose.
The biggest problem with the game is that it COULD have been good. There are several moments throughout the game that show the developers were at least trying. After you escape the space station at the beginning of the game, it gets blown up and you see the aftermath, with parts of it crashing onto Earth. You see parts of the destroyed space station hitting buildings in the city you landed in. It would have been a good moment if it weren’t for the fact that gang members attack you for being in their territory instead of trying not to be killed by falling debris. And the space station being destroying a major city never gets brought up again.
In the end, Chaser really isn’t worth playing. There have been so many better games in the FPS genre before and since. If you want to play anything that has Mars in it, play any of the Red Faction games, they’re ALL better (And I’m hesitant to say this, but yes, even Armageddon. Even the “Gangstas In Space” segment from Saints Row The Third is significantly better). If you want to experience the plot of Chaser, but much better, just watch the 1990 Total Recall film instead.
Chaser might be one of the most forgettable First Person Shooters in the sea of First Person Shooters, and it’s pretty easy to see why. The story, world, and art style are pretty much all things we’ve seen done before a lot better in both in video games and other forms of media. And that’s before we even get to the generic gameplay.
Developed by Cauldron and published by JoWood Productions, Chaser was released on August 30th, 2003 only for PC, and considering how broken this game ended up being in areas, I can’t imagine how more broken the game would have been if it had been ported to anything else, so be thankful that it came out in the working state that it did.
The game opens in the year 2044, on the H.M.S. Majestic, a space station orbiting Earth. The generically titled main character John Chaser wakes up in the medical bay, groggy and without the faintest clue who he is, conveniently suffering from amnesia. Just as he is waking up, the space station gets boarded by a group of heavily armed and armored men who are looking to kill Chaser.
Luckily, Chaser manages to escape the space station just before it explodes and crash lands on Earth. If the story couldn’t get any more unoriginal, Chaser just takes the plot points wholesale from 1990’s Total Recall, just without any of the quality. Also, what kind of a name is Chaser anyway?
Every single voice actor sounds bored out of their minds or they just took Ambien because they were brought in 30 seconds before they were about to record, got a glimpse of the script, and that was the only way they could tolerate their way through it. Most of the voice acting sounds like the actors were reading the lines out to themselves for the first time and didn’t realize the weren’t going to get a second take. Some of the dialogue doesn’t even match up to the subtitles. Its like the people who were doing the acting and the people doing the subtitles got two completely different scripts.
Graphically, the game is underwhelming. Its average at best and inconsistent at worst. The game uses an engine developed by the company’s in studio engine, the CloakNT engine. The company was hoping that it competes with the likes of the Unreal engine and ID’s IDTech, but its pretty easy to see that it couldn’t compete and had no chance.
The engine tries to have realistic water for the time, you shoot the water and the water ripples. At one point during the game, the water was placed so poorly that if you shoot it the right way (or wrong way depending on how you look at it), the rippling effect slipped out of the surrounding ground geometry.
A section of the game involves you using a sniper rifle to shoot across an open area as a way of showing what the engine is capable of. Which is immediately destroyed by the fact that if you move your character, giant parts of the level will disappear into a what appears to be a black void.
Character models are blocky and are animated weirdly (seriously, look at the characters eyebrows during cutscenes). Half the time you shoot at windows, shards will stay floating in place. The only compliment I can give Chaser is that some of the early levels on Mars look OK, which is not saying much considering the rest of the game.
Levels are incredibly unintuitive. Trying to find out where your objectives are is incredibly tedious, and are often hidden in locations that you would only find after looking in every other location trying to find where to go or by accident.
The controls have a floatyness to them. Hitboxes for enemies are a bit wonky, and are especially bad when using the sniper rifle. Its a mix of the people that you’re shooting at being just small enough in your scope and the rifle being inaccurate enough that you’re bound to miss who your aiming at half of the time. Which is the second blow to the section focused around using the sniper rifle.
The second unforgivably bad section of Chaser is the underwater section. Just like the rest of water levels in video games, the level starts hurting immediately. If the games floaty controls weren’t bad enough on land, they’re even worse here. The underwater section takes places in a ship graveyard in which you have go through the interiors of several ships. The floaty controls and small areas do not mix.
I think the developers also knew this level was terrible, because they put in lights to help guide you through the level. Even then, you’ve still bound to get lost anyway, due to the levels being overly unintuitive. This entire level could have been another cutscene, I’d rather have 5 minutes of mildly annoying voice acting rather than 45 minutes of frustrating level design and awful controls.
It also doesn’t help that the level geometry has problems throughout the game. You’ll end up getting stuck on geometry with no way to get unstuck, so you’ll have to abuse the quickload button. So you’d better save often. Using ladders is a pain in the ass to use. You try and jump off of them to the area you climbed to only to not make it end up hitting the ground.
Which brings us to the worst part of the game. The game doesn’t show you if you take any injuries when falling, so it took multiple deaths to realize it was the fall damage getting me killed. Doors take a second to open. And it doesn’t help that a lot of doors make the same sound when both locked and unlocked if the make a sound, if the make a sound at all, which also contributed to a few deaths before I caught on to what was going on.
The AI is also pretty bad. Which is compounded by the fact that there is no real pathfinding. Enemies will run into objects and friendly AI will try to follow you by going in a straight line instead of about the level, which results in them constantly running into the wall.
For no reason, your weapons disappear between levels, only for you to get an almost, if not completely, different arsenal. And this isn’t your character going into a completely different location or situation either. This happens when you move to a new area of the same place you were just before, like it assumed what weapons the player would have. Why not have a location early on for the player to get those weapons early on in the level.
Also, There was even a glitch that had a puddle of blood land ON the water. Not in it, ON it, like it was a solid object. I don’t know if that’s just how the engine works or someone did that on purpose.
The biggest problem with the game is that it COULD have been good. There are several moments throughout the game that show the developers were at least trying. After you escape the space station at the beginning of the game, it gets blown up and you see the aftermath, with parts of it crashing onto Earth. You see parts of the destroyed space station hitting buildings in the city you landed in. It would have been a good moment if it weren’t for the fact that gang members attack you for being in their territory instead of trying not to be killed by falling debris. And the space station being destroying a major city never gets brought up again.
In the end, Chaser really isn’t worth playing. There have been so many better games in the FPS genre before and since. If you want to play anything that has Mars in it, play any of the Red Faction games, they’re ALL better (And I’m hesitant to say this, but yes, even Armageddon. Even the “Gangstas In Space” segment from Saints Row The Third is significantly better). If you want to experience the plot of Chaser, but much better, just watch the 1990 Total Recall film instead.
2007
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2018/10/16/nsfw-manhunt-2-2007-wii-psp-ps2-pc-review/
After the controversy of the first Manhunt, you would think that Rockstar wouldn’t put the money and effort into making a sequel. Maybe a few ports of the first game to other consoles to help recoup some of it’s costs on the down low, but not a fully fledged sequel. But surprisingly, 4 years later, Manhunt 2 was announced and released to the public.
The PC and PS2 versions were developed by Rockstar London, the PSP version was developed by Rockstar Leeds, and the Wii version was developed by Rockstar Toronto, with the WII, PSP, and PS2 versions being released in 2007, an the PC version being released in an uncensored form in 2009.
Instead of being a direct sequel of the first game’s plot, Manhunt 2 instead goes in a different direction. Focusing on two inmates at the Dixmor Asylum for the criminally insane, Daniel and Leo, as a severe thunderstorm causes the security system to go offline, opening all of the cell doors in the facility, letting the people locked inside out to roam around.
In the chaos, Daniel, who is a partial amnesiac, unable to remember how he got into the asylum, with the help of Leo, escape. After this escape. Daniel tries it figure out why he can’t remember his past and how he got into the asylum in the first place. While you’re following the clues, a group of people called the Watchmen are hunting you down, trying to prevent you from finding the truth.
Manhunt 2 tries to do something slightly different with it’s main character in that it tries to make you feel at least some sympathy for the main character. Daniel seems to be just as disgusted with his actions as a lot of the people playing would be. He does get desensitized to it as the game goes along, but when you’re brutally killing people in the dozens like Daniel is, I’m pretty sure most people would get desensitized to it.
While the first game had a great 80’s horror movie vibe going, with a John Carpenter-esque synth soundtrack, and slasher style, Manhunt 2 goes for more of a conspiracy thriller vibe with it’s plot. It isn’t bad by any means, it just doesn’t have the same vibe the first game did, and just doesn’t capture the same vibe as the first game.
The first noticeable difference between this game and the first is that Manhunt 2 definitely cranks it’s mature content up to 11, where the first Manhunt only got the ESRB rating “Mature”, this one got an “Adults Only” rating, meaning it would be refused sale on store shelves for major chains in the US. The difference is that Manhunt 2 adds some sexual content and use of drugs on top of it’s high impact violence and strong language. I earlier asked why Rockstar would want to release a sequel to probably it’s most controversial game, but if you were going to release a sequel to Manhunt, upping everything that made people disgusted to the first one seems like you’re just making it worse.
As a result, the PSP, PlayStation 2, and WII version of the games were censored, with all of the executions having a filter applied to them, to the point of not being able to see whats going on in some of these versions of the game, with the WII version getting the worst of it. But strangely, a lot of the sexual content seems to be intact in these versions. And the Wii version seems to have the best quality video with the cutscenes. Weird.
The core gameplay is the same as the first one. You’ll be hiding in shadows, running from enemies if any of them see you, and be performing executions. Executions have more variety this time around. The instruments of violence you can pick up have a wider variety than the first game, making executions a little less tedious having to sit through the same animations over and over again.
A new addition to the execution system is that you can also use parts of the environment to perform executions, similar to the earlier Punisher game from 2005, which also had to get censored on consoles. You’d think that people would learn. These include electrocuting someone to death with a fuse box, freezing someones head in liquid nitrogen and smashing it to pieces, and even trapping someone in an iron maiden with spikes on the inside. Quite a few of these are level specific, so it never gets old as there is always something new to see.
The gun combat has significantly improved. It’s still not amazing by any stretch, but it’s now a viable option, especially since gun combat has a heavier focus than the last game. If actually running and gunning in this game isn’t your cup of tea, guns can now also be used for executions too, making them actually worth your time. The Melee combat is also better, but is still only viable as a last resort.
Surprisingly, the WII and even the PC version has motion based movements for it’s executions, requiring you you to use the Wiimote and nunchuck to re-enact the executions on screen to execute enemies, while the Wiimote even has noises coming out of it’s speaker when you perform these executions, adding another layer to the already disturbing nature of the game.
The PC version has a slightly gimped version that has you simply moving the mouse in a certain direction to complete the execution. It’s not bad, but it doesn’t feel as smooth as the Wii version, because you’re limited to the mouse. If you are annoyed by it, you can turn it off in the PC version. Because of this feature, both the PC and Wii versions come with a tutorial to show how these move based executions work.
Probably the most annoying part of Manhunt 2, for me at least, is that in the Wii and PC versions of the game, while you’re hiding in the shadows, someone hunting you can come over to the area that you’re hiding, and while they’re inspecting your hiding area, a circle pops up, and you have to hold your mouse/Wiimote in that circle as it moves around. It just feels like an unnecessary addition ontop of the motion controls. I get that it’s supposed to make the stealth part of the game more tense, but it just feels like an annoyance the further you get into the game.
Also, like the fist game, the PlayStation 2 version takes advantage of the PS2 headset, and in a similar fashion, you can hear Leo through the earpiece along with using your voice to attract nearby enemies.
Another feature that the PC and Wii versions also come with is an alternate ending that you can unlock if you do well enough during the game and get a high enough star rating in each level.
While Manhunt 2 isn’t a bad game, and in a lot of ways is much better than the first, it still feels like a step down from the first game purely because it cranks up the shocking content, going for violence and sexual content over the sense of atmosphere the original one. If you liked the first Manhunt, you would probably enjoy the second one, but for the people who don’t like extreme content in their video games, this game is a skip.
After the controversy of the first Manhunt, you would think that Rockstar wouldn’t put the money and effort into making a sequel. Maybe a few ports of the first game to other consoles to help recoup some of it’s costs on the down low, but not a fully fledged sequel. But surprisingly, 4 years later, Manhunt 2 was announced and released to the public.
The PC and PS2 versions were developed by Rockstar London, the PSP version was developed by Rockstar Leeds, and the Wii version was developed by Rockstar Toronto, with the WII, PSP, and PS2 versions being released in 2007, an the PC version being released in an uncensored form in 2009.
Instead of being a direct sequel of the first game’s plot, Manhunt 2 instead goes in a different direction. Focusing on two inmates at the Dixmor Asylum for the criminally insane, Daniel and Leo, as a severe thunderstorm causes the security system to go offline, opening all of the cell doors in the facility, letting the people locked inside out to roam around.
In the chaos, Daniel, who is a partial amnesiac, unable to remember how he got into the asylum, with the help of Leo, escape. After this escape. Daniel tries it figure out why he can’t remember his past and how he got into the asylum in the first place. While you’re following the clues, a group of people called the Watchmen are hunting you down, trying to prevent you from finding the truth.
Manhunt 2 tries to do something slightly different with it’s main character in that it tries to make you feel at least some sympathy for the main character. Daniel seems to be just as disgusted with his actions as a lot of the people playing would be. He does get desensitized to it as the game goes along, but when you’re brutally killing people in the dozens like Daniel is, I’m pretty sure most people would get desensitized to it.
While the first game had a great 80’s horror movie vibe going, with a John Carpenter-esque synth soundtrack, and slasher style, Manhunt 2 goes for more of a conspiracy thriller vibe with it’s plot. It isn’t bad by any means, it just doesn’t have the same vibe the first game did, and just doesn’t capture the same vibe as the first game.
The first noticeable difference between this game and the first is that Manhunt 2 definitely cranks it’s mature content up to 11, where the first Manhunt only got the ESRB rating “Mature”, this one got an “Adults Only” rating, meaning it would be refused sale on store shelves for major chains in the US. The difference is that Manhunt 2 adds some sexual content and use of drugs on top of it’s high impact violence and strong language. I earlier asked why Rockstar would want to release a sequel to probably it’s most controversial game, but if you were going to release a sequel to Manhunt, upping everything that made people disgusted to the first one seems like you’re just making it worse.
As a result, the PSP, PlayStation 2, and WII version of the games were censored, with all of the executions having a filter applied to them, to the point of not being able to see whats going on in some of these versions of the game, with the WII version getting the worst of it. But strangely, a lot of the sexual content seems to be intact in these versions. And the Wii version seems to have the best quality video with the cutscenes. Weird.
The core gameplay is the same as the first one. You’ll be hiding in shadows, running from enemies if any of them see you, and be performing executions. Executions have more variety this time around. The instruments of violence you can pick up have a wider variety than the first game, making executions a little less tedious having to sit through the same animations over and over again.
A new addition to the execution system is that you can also use parts of the environment to perform executions, similar to the earlier Punisher game from 2005, which also had to get censored on consoles. You’d think that people would learn. These include electrocuting someone to death with a fuse box, freezing someones head in liquid nitrogen and smashing it to pieces, and even trapping someone in an iron maiden with spikes on the inside. Quite a few of these are level specific, so it never gets old as there is always something new to see.
The gun combat has significantly improved. It’s still not amazing by any stretch, but it’s now a viable option, especially since gun combat has a heavier focus than the last game. If actually running and gunning in this game isn’t your cup of tea, guns can now also be used for executions too, making them actually worth your time. The Melee combat is also better, but is still only viable as a last resort.
Surprisingly, the WII and even the PC version has motion based movements for it’s executions, requiring you you to use the Wiimote and nunchuck to re-enact the executions on screen to execute enemies, while the Wiimote even has noises coming out of it’s speaker when you perform these executions, adding another layer to the already disturbing nature of the game.
The PC version has a slightly gimped version that has you simply moving the mouse in a certain direction to complete the execution. It’s not bad, but it doesn’t feel as smooth as the Wii version, because you’re limited to the mouse. If you are annoyed by it, you can turn it off in the PC version. Because of this feature, both the PC and Wii versions come with a tutorial to show how these move based executions work.
Probably the most annoying part of Manhunt 2, for me at least, is that in the Wii and PC versions of the game, while you’re hiding in the shadows, someone hunting you can come over to the area that you’re hiding, and while they’re inspecting your hiding area, a circle pops up, and you have to hold your mouse/Wiimote in that circle as it moves around. It just feels like an unnecessary addition ontop of the motion controls. I get that it’s supposed to make the stealth part of the game more tense, but it just feels like an annoyance the further you get into the game.
Also, like the fist game, the PlayStation 2 version takes advantage of the PS2 headset, and in a similar fashion, you can hear Leo through the earpiece along with using your voice to attract nearby enemies.
Another feature that the PC and Wii versions also come with is an alternate ending that you can unlock if you do well enough during the game and get a high enough star rating in each level.
While Manhunt 2 isn’t a bad game, and in a lot of ways is much better than the first, it still feels like a step down from the first game purely because it cranks up the shocking content, going for violence and sexual content over the sense of atmosphere the original one. If you liked the first Manhunt, you would probably enjoy the second one, but for the people who don’t like extreme content in their video games, this game is a skip.
2003
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2018/10/09/manhunt-2003-pc-ps2-xbox-review/
Rockstar Games has received quite a bit of controversy of the years for a lot of their games. While a lot of it is completely unwarranted, probably one of the more infamous games that got a lot of flak was Manhunt. It’s dark and mature content got the game banned in several countries, such as Australia, New Zealand and Germany. Manhunt was released in 2003 for the PlayStation 2, and in 2004 for the PC and Xbox.
In Manhunt, you play as James Earl Cash, a death row inmate who is thought to be dead by everyone after a lethal injection. But Cash finds himself waking up in a locked room with a man known only as “The Director”, played fantastically by Brian Cox (X-Men 2 and The Bourne Identity), speaking to you through an earpiece. “The Director” promises Cash his freedom, but only if Cash follows his instructions.
Soon, Cash finds himself part of a snuff film ring that wants to use him as its newest star, having to kill for the cameras, all for the sick twisted pleasure of the audience. Through the night, he has to make his way through several psychotic gangs who are trying to kill him in the most brutal way possible. The game’s story is pretty dark in nature, which will turn off most people from playing it. The whole concept comes off as “The Running Man” mixed with “8MM”.
The game is the standard Third Person stealth action game that draws from similar games such as Hitman: Codename 47 and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, with the standard trial-and error approach that quite a few standard stealth-based games had at the time. It’s no Thief: The Dark Project, but it was never trying to be. Stay hidden in the shadows, and if someone spots you wandering around, run around until you lose them, and go back to hiding in the shadows. Nothing too complicated.
The bad guys routes are limited to their areas of the map though, so you can’t drag an enemy out to a completely different area. You have to take enemies out in the location that they’re patrolling.
However, Manhunt’s main focus is the way you kill other characters. Since the hand-to-hand combat on the GTA III engine has always been bad, the game had to compensate by having you brutally execute the enemies. There are 3 different levels of execution, Hasty, Violent, and Gruesome, each more violent than the last. The severity of the execution depends on how long you hold the button down.
There’s a chance that while preparing to execute your “victim” (a word I use loosely since the enemies of the game are pretty much pure evil), there is the chance that either another enemy will spot you, or the person you’re following will turn around, causing you to run off, hide in the shadows, and try again when the person loses interest and goes back to patrolling, so you have to be somewhat careful in picking someone off. Thankfully, the game does have a block ability just in case you have to defend yourself, but the melee combat should always be avoided since it’s more frustrating than anything.
Unfortunately, the controls are not the greatest. While the PC version uses the standard WASD keys to move and mouse to look around in third person, but for some reason on the console version, when you use the right thumb stick to look around, your perspective suddenly shifts to First Person, which makes looking around at your surroundings more frustrating. The only way to look around corners in Third Person is to have the character put their back to the wall and have them peek around the corner.
While First Person is a neat addition for observing your surroundings, it could have easily been a button press for when it was needed. The majority of the game can be played with Third Person with no problem, and is always the preferred play style. So making it necessary is quite frustrating.
Unfortunately, the second half of the game implements ranged weapons, making it more run-and-gun oriented. The game’s shooting mechanics aren’t that great either, making this half of the game for frustrating than it should be. It isn’t terrible, but it can get frustrating if you slip up. Guns can cause a lot of damage, resulting in a quicker death if you decided to go up against someone head on rather than stealth, so when stealth is an options, it’s preferable choice.
There is a cover system to compensate for the not so great ranged combat, and it works OK. It is possible to sneak up on someone and get a head shot with a shotgun, or get a lot of damage in with a handgun. So if you plan it out right, gun combat can be alright. But as it goes on, it can feel tedious, losing a lot of what made the early game stand out.
A surprising addition to the game is the use of the USB headset for the PlayStation 2. Instead of banging on the walls while you’re hiding in the shadows to attract the enemies, you can make noise into the headset instead. On top of that, if you’re using the headset, the “Director” speaks to you through the earpiece, like the character in the game, instead of through your TV’s speakers. This feature wasn’t a necessary addition, but it does add this weird sense of immersion to the game, and is a welcome addition.
There are a few bumps along the way that also bring the game down. One level of the game is an escort mission, and while it is manageable in that you can hide the person in the shadows and distract the enemies, it did feel slightly out of place. While the guns and escort missions were added in to have some variety, i just wish they were implemented better.
Graphically, the game uses the same engine as GTA III/Vice City/San Andreas, so it isn’t pushing the limits of the hardware. But because the game uses smaller areas instead of the open world of the GTA III trilogy, the graphics do get a noticeable bump in quality.
The entire game has an 80’s horror movie feel to it, with grungy feeling locations in it, such as old and abandoned buildings, streets cluttered with trash, and dark back alleys, as well as a VHS filter over the whole game, making it feel like you’ve found something that you shouldn’t have on some old cassette tape somewhere.
On top of that, Manhunt’s soundtrack is fantastic, with lot’s of 80’s John Carpenter inspired synth, helping to emphasize the dark and creepy atmosphere, making a lot of the parts where you’re being chased around feel more tense, and the moments where you have to sneak though the shadows feel like you’re about to get seen at any moment.
The sound design in Manhunt is top notch, with guns having a good oompf behind them. And when you’re taking out someone with an execution, you’re getting every last uncomfortable detail. If there is one thing this game really excels at, it’s the presentation.
The game surprisingly also features unlockables, which you can unlock after receiving a certain number of stars out of 5 from each level, which you get from how well you “perform” during a level. Besides the standard Concept Art, you unlock “Bonus Scenes”, with each one having their own objectives, such as killing as many of a specific enemy as possible and seeing how long you can survive waves on enemies.
These unlockables and star ratings add a surprising amount of replayability to the game, and poke at that part of your completionist part of your brain that wants to see 100% of everything the game has to offer, all while perfecting the game while doing it.
Manhunt is clearly not for everyone, with both it’s gruesome violence and dark themes. But with the fantastic presentation and for the small group of people who enjoy the more extreme type of horror this game has, Manhunt is definitely worth checking out.
Rockstar Games has received quite a bit of controversy of the years for a lot of their games. While a lot of it is completely unwarranted, probably one of the more infamous games that got a lot of flak was Manhunt. It’s dark and mature content got the game banned in several countries, such as Australia, New Zealand and Germany. Manhunt was released in 2003 for the PlayStation 2, and in 2004 for the PC and Xbox.
In Manhunt, you play as James Earl Cash, a death row inmate who is thought to be dead by everyone after a lethal injection. But Cash finds himself waking up in a locked room with a man known only as “The Director”, played fantastically by Brian Cox (X-Men 2 and The Bourne Identity), speaking to you through an earpiece. “The Director” promises Cash his freedom, but only if Cash follows his instructions.
Soon, Cash finds himself part of a snuff film ring that wants to use him as its newest star, having to kill for the cameras, all for the sick twisted pleasure of the audience. Through the night, he has to make his way through several psychotic gangs who are trying to kill him in the most brutal way possible. The game’s story is pretty dark in nature, which will turn off most people from playing it. The whole concept comes off as “The Running Man” mixed with “8MM”.
The game is the standard Third Person stealth action game that draws from similar games such as Hitman: Codename 47 and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, with the standard trial-and error approach that quite a few standard stealth-based games had at the time. It’s no Thief: The Dark Project, but it was never trying to be. Stay hidden in the shadows, and if someone spots you wandering around, run around until you lose them, and go back to hiding in the shadows. Nothing too complicated.
The bad guys routes are limited to their areas of the map though, so you can’t drag an enemy out to a completely different area. You have to take enemies out in the location that they’re patrolling.
However, Manhunt’s main focus is the way you kill other characters. Since the hand-to-hand combat on the GTA III engine has always been bad, the game had to compensate by having you brutally execute the enemies. There are 3 different levels of execution, Hasty, Violent, and Gruesome, each more violent than the last. The severity of the execution depends on how long you hold the button down.
There’s a chance that while preparing to execute your “victim” (a word I use loosely since the enemies of the game are pretty much pure evil), there is the chance that either another enemy will spot you, or the person you’re following will turn around, causing you to run off, hide in the shadows, and try again when the person loses interest and goes back to patrolling, so you have to be somewhat careful in picking someone off. Thankfully, the game does have a block ability just in case you have to defend yourself, but the melee combat should always be avoided since it’s more frustrating than anything.
Unfortunately, the controls are not the greatest. While the PC version uses the standard WASD keys to move and mouse to look around in third person, but for some reason on the console version, when you use the right thumb stick to look around, your perspective suddenly shifts to First Person, which makes looking around at your surroundings more frustrating. The only way to look around corners in Third Person is to have the character put their back to the wall and have them peek around the corner.
While First Person is a neat addition for observing your surroundings, it could have easily been a button press for when it was needed. The majority of the game can be played with Third Person with no problem, and is always the preferred play style. So making it necessary is quite frustrating.
Unfortunately, the second half of the game implements ranged weapons, making it more run-and-gun oriented. The game’s shooting mechanics aren’t that great either, making this half of the game for frustrating than it should be. It isn’t terrible, but it can get frustrating if you slip up. Guns can cause a lot of damage, resulting in a quicker death if you decided to go up against someone head on rather than stealth, so when stealth is an options, it’s preferable choice.
There is a cover system to compensate for the not so great ranged combat, and it works OK. It is possible to sneak up on someone and get a head shot with a shotgun, or get a lot of damage in with a handgun. So if you plan it out right, gun combat can be alright. But as it goes on, it can feel tedious, losing a lot of what made the early game stand out.
A surprising addition to the game is the use of the USB headset for the PlayStation 2. Instead of banging on the walls while you’re hiding in the shadows to attract the enemies, you can make noise into the headset instead. On top of that, if you’re using the headset, the “Director” speaks to you through the earpiece, like the character in the game, instead of through your TV’s speakers. This feature wasn’t a necessary addition, but it does add this weird sense of immersion to the game, and is a welcome addition.
There are a few bumps along the way that also bring the game down. One level of the game is an escort mission, and while it is manageable in that you can hide the person in the shadows and distract the enemies, it did feel slightly out of place. While the guns and escort missions were added in to have some variety, i just wish they were implemented better.
Graphically, the game uses the same engine as GTA III/Vice City/San Andreas, so it isn’t pushing the limits of the hardware. But because the game uses smaller areas instead of the open world of the GTA III trilogy, the graphics do get a noticeable bump in quality.
The entire game has an 80’s horror movie feel to it, with grungy feeling locations in it, such as old and abandoned buildings, streets cluttered with trash, and dark back alleys, as well as a VHS filter over the whole game, making it feel like you’ve found something that you shouldn’t have on some old cassette tape somewhere.
On top of that, Manhunt’s soundtrack is fantastic, with lot’s of 80’s John Carpenter inspired synth, helping to emphasize the dark and creepy atmosphere, making a lot of the parts where you’re being chased around feel more tense, and the moments where you have to sneak though the shadows feel like you’re about to get seen at any moment.
The sound design in Manhunt is top notch, with guns having a good oompf behind them. And when you’re taking out someone with an execution, you’re getting every last uncomfortable detail. If there is one thing this game really excels at, it’s the presentation.
The game surprisingly also features unlockables, which you can unlock after receiving a certain number of stars out of 5 from each level, which you get from how well you “perform” during a level. Besides the standard Concept Art, you unlock “Bonus Scenes”, with each one having their own objectives, such as killing as many of a specific enemy as possible and seeing how long you can survive waves on enemies.
These unlockables and star ratings add a surprising amount of replayability to the game, and poke at that part of your completionist part of your brain that wants to see 100% of everything the game has to offer, all while perfecting the game while doing it.
Manhunt is clearly not for everyone, with both it’s gruesome violence and dark themes. But with the fantastic presentation and for the small group of people who enjoy the more extreme type of horror this game has, Manhunt is definitely worth checking out.
2016
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2020/03/03/mod-corner-swat-4-elite-force-swat-4-sketchkov-syndicate/
While SWAT 4 and it’s expansion pack Sketchkov Syndicate had a fantastic premise and a lot of great features that were executed pretty well, it also had a notorious difficulty spike and often annoying unpredictability that made a lot of the later levels a tedious slog to get through. That’s where SWAT: Elite Force comes in, not only adding even more great features to the game, but ironing out some of the problems that I had with the game.
From the get go, the changes are immediate. While the graphics remain the same, the mod still manages to add a few new bells and whistles, such as resolutions that go up to 8K, meaning that you no longer have to deal with the 1600×1200 resolution limit, along with new features such as an FOV slider and mouse smoothing. These might seem like small things, but once they’re there, you can’t imagine playing the game without them.
When you start a Single Player game, there is now the option to play through all of the levels of SWAT 4 and Sketchkov Syndicate together, which is nice for repeated playthoughs if you don’t want to have to switch between the two. If you’re really concerned about the story of the expansion being broken up by the levels from the base game, you can still choose to play them separately.
There are also some new levels that come included with the Elite Force mod. There’s only a few of them, but they fit in perfectly with the rest of the levels. You can also choose to include these levels in your Career or play them separately.
If you’ve played SWAT 4 and it’s expansion so much that the HARD difficulty is a breeze, there are some Premadeath options. Permadeath is exactly what you think it is, in that if you die, you have to start the career all over again, and if your AI permanently die, and they’re out for the rest of the game, meaning if you want to get through the game as easy as possible, you have to make sure your teammates are safe too.
While the difficult from the base game still manages to peak through every now and again, but thankfully it’s been significantly reduced to the mod re-balancing the game by moving around the maps in a new order, easing you into the game and it’s mechanics a lot better.
The AI also got a re-balance. In situations during the base game that I know I would have definitely failed in the base game and have to spend up to an hour on a level, I managed to pass with very few tries, if any, in Elite Force, even if it was by the skin of my teeth.
Throughout any of the missions, the mod now tells you when you complete individual objectives as you complete them, meaning that you no longer have to constantly check what your mission objectives are every couple of minutes by going into the objectives menu. It makes the whole experience feel smoother.
Your fellow SWAT members can still be taken out fairly quickly some times, but nowhere near as much as in the base game. SWAT members didn’t really start getting incapacitated on my play through until at least the 10th mission. Although, SWAT members still seem to get hung up on corners every now and again. I guess that’s a bug that’s baked into the AI.
You can now also order your fellow officers to do some of the stuff that only you could before, such as use grenades, lightsticks, C2, the optiwand, the pepper spray, and even use the door wedge on both closed and open doors. It really does take some of the tedium out of playing with the AI squad mates. The mod even introduces Speech Recognition. I haven’t tested it out myself, but it seems to work from what I’ve heard. This really helps for those who more immersion, and it certainly cuts down on going through menus.
There are also several new weapons, including a SCAR-H, Aks-74u, MP5K PDW, Glock 18 Glock 19, and even the option to carry no weapon at all. I guess that’s for if you know the game so well that you feel up for a challenge and a no-weapon run. Also, there are 2 new armor pieces. The Heavy Kevlar Armor and Heavy Ceramic Armor.
When you’re tired of playing the game by yourself, there is a myriad of new features for the multiplayer, including various new commands and key binds. You can even play though the single player in CO-OP.
This mod even restores content that didn’t make it into the final game due to time constraints during the development, but were left on the disc, along with more than 100 bug fixes throughout the game.
If you’re a fan of SWAT 4, then Elite Force is a must play. It’s amazing what a few tweaks can do to make a game better. If you want to know what every change is, the mod does come with a text file listing every single little detail. It does nothing but improve the game in a lot of ways along with adding a lot of new content for you to play around with. Elite Force is now my preferred way of playing SWAT 4, and I can’t see myself ever playing the game without it.
While SWAT 4 and it’s expansion pack Sketchkov Syndicate had a fantastic premise and a lot of great features that were executed pretty well, it also had a notorious difficulty spike and often annoying unpredictability that made a lot of the later levels a tedious slog to get through. That’s where SWAT: Elite Force comes in, not only adding even more great features to the game, but ironing out some of the problems that I had with the game.
From the get go, the changes are immediate. While the graphics remain the same, the mod still manages to add a few new bells and whistles, such as resolutions that go up to 8K, meaning that you no longer have to deal with the 1600×1200 resolution limit, along with new features such as an FOV slider and mouse smoothing. These might seem like small things, but once they’re there, you can’t imagine playing the game without them.
When you start a Single Player game, there is now the option to play through all of the levels of SWAT 4 and Sketchkov Syndicate together, which is nice for repeated playthoughs if you don’t want to have to switch between the two. If you’re really concerned about the story of the expansion being broken up by the levels from the base game, you can still choose to play them separately.
There are also some new levels that come included with the Elite Force mod. There’s only a few of them, but they fit in perfectly with the rest of the levels. You can also choose to include these levels in your Career or play them separately.
If you’ve played SWAT 4 and it’s expansion so much that the HARD difficulty is a breeze, there are some Premadeath options. Permadeath is exactly what you think it is, in that if you die, you have to start the career all over again, and if your AI permanently die, and they’re out for the rest of the game, meaning if you want to get through the game as easy as possible, you have to make sure your teammates are safe too.
While the difficult from the base game still manages to peak through every now and again, but thankfully it’s been significantly reduced to the mod re-balancing the game by moving around the maps in a new order, easing you into the game and it’s mechanics a lot better.
The AI also got a re-balance. In situations during the base game that I know I would have definitely failed in the base game and have to spend up to an hour on a level, I managed to pass with very few tries, if any, in Elite Force, even if it was by the skin of my teeth.
Throughout any of the missions, the mod now tells you when you complete individual objectives as you complete them, meaning that you no longer have to constantly check what your mission objectives are every couple of minutes by going into the objectives menu. It makes the whole experience feel smoother.
Your fellow SWAT members can still be taken out fairly quickly some times, but nowhere near as much as in the base game. SWAT members didn’t really start getting incapacitated on my play through until at least the 10th mission. Although, SWAT members still seem to get hung up on corners every now and again. I guess that’s a bug that’s baked into the AI.
You can now also order your fellow officers to do some of the stuff that only you could before, such as use grenades, lightsticks, C2, the optiwand, the pepper spray, and even use the door wedge on both closed and open doors. It really does take some of the tedium out of playing with the AI squad mates. The mod even introduces Speech Recognition. I haven’t tested it out myself, but it seems to work from what I’ve heard. This really helps for those who more immersion, and it certainly cuts down on going through menus.
There are also several new weapons, including a SCAR-H, Aks-74u, MP5K PDW, Glock 18 Glock 19, and even the option to carry no weapon at all. I guess that’s for if you know the game so well that you feel up for a challenge and a no-weapon run. Also, there are 2 new armor pieces. The Heavy Kevlar Armor and Heavy Ceramic Armor.
When you’re tired of playing the game by yourself, there is a myriad of new features for the multiplayer, including various new commands and key binds. You can even play though the single player in CO-OP.
This mod even restores content that didn’t make it into the final game due to time constraints during the development, but were left on the disc, along with more than 100 bug fixes throughout the game.
If you’re a fan of SWAT 4, then Elite Force is a must play. It’s amazing what a few tweaks can do to make a game better. If you want to know what every change is, the mod does come with a text file listing every single little detail. It does nothing but improve the game in a lot of ways along with adding a lot of new content for you to play around with. Elite Force is now my preferred way of playing SWAT 4, and I can’t see myself ever playing the game without it.
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2018/10/03/magrunner-dark-pulse-pc-ps3-360-review/
The Lovecraft mythos aren’t a highly represented concept in video games. Sure, there have been plenty of video games heavily influenced by the works of Lovecraft, but not a lot taken from Lovecraft’s work itself. While it’s not a direct adaptation of any of Lovecraft’s work, it’s still nice seeing the iconic creatures in video game form.
Magrunner: Dark Pulse is a first person puzzle game developed by Frogwares and published by Focus Home Interactive, and was released for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 in 2013.
The game takes place a couple of decades into the future, when the Gruckezber Corporation has risen to a position of world dominance. By 2035, their LifeNET Total Existence Network has connected billions of people across the world, and is big enough to have influence over both public and private services, as well as social, environmental, and governmental areas. By 2050, the company had built a training facility for deep space exploration, with a selection process for their astronouts using the LifeNET service.
You play as Dax C. Ward, one of the finalists to get to go through the training facilities along with several others, along with the help of his lifelong family friend Gamaji. But soon, a major malfunction takes the facility offline, locking the whole place down, all while the facility starts to change in appearance to something more creepy and inhuman.
Right off the bat, it’s pretty obvious that the game took it’s presentation and gameplay influence from the Portal franchise, but instead of robots and portals, it has Cthulhu and magnets. Once you get past the obvious initial comparison, Magrunner does do enough to differentiate itself from the Portal games, going for horror instead of comedy. The game isn’t all that scary, since it does still go with the cheesy science experiments gone wrong, but you’re definitely not going to get the two games confused.
In between puzzle solving chambers, there are elevators that take you from one puzzle room to the next. The whole point of these elevator rides is get exposition out through interviews and conversations between the main character and other characters. These kinda kill any momentum the game might have if it went from one puzzle straight to another, and the conversations could have easily been trimmed slightly and been had during puzzle sections.
Plus the game has quite a few loading screens, which is only compounded by the fact that you need to load both the elevator ride when you get on and off it, making the game a touch tedious to play, making the idea of replaying the game a tad unappealing. If the game used this time with the elevators to load each level as it gave you exposition, it wouldn’t be as bad, but you’re stuck looking at loading screens. Levels are often so short that often times it feels like there are more loading screens than there are.
Magrunner uses the whole magnet concept fairly well. Your character has a glove that lets you control an objects magnetism. Left click can make object attract and right click makes them repel. Levels come with several things that use magnets, such as small platforms that are used to get to different parts of each level, and both small and large cubes that are used several ways, such as to help power some of the platforms throughout a level, put on buttons, and are used to smash through breakable glass. Although the cube doesn’t come with as much of a personality as the Companion Cube from Portal.
Later in the game, you do get an add-on for your glove in the form of Newton, a robotic dog made by the protagonist, and he’s used to help with attracting objects that are just out reach from other means. Puzzles do get to the point where you can get stuck for ~30-45 minutes in a room, but none of them feel completely unfair. There are a few puzzles that don’t quite communicate what you need to do immediately, but it’s never gets to be a problem.
However, the game does come with the option in the menu to see how far an objects magnetic reach can go, making the puzzles a bit more manageable, not leaving you to guess how far away something is from a magnets reach.
Probably the most frustrating part of the game is that in later levels, there are creatures that you have to either kill or avoid, which is definitely the biggest difference between Magrunner and Portal. To kill them, you have to fire off explosive cubes from a cube ‘launcher’. If you miss, you have to get the enemy to circle around to a position the be able to hit them, all while get another explosive cube to hit them with.
If the game was a bit smarter, it would have tried skipping combat at all and figured out a way to let you either outrun every encounter with a creature, or let you get rid of it in another manner, such as trapping them, distracting them, or fooling them to run off of a platform and killing themselves. While you’re faster than them, there isn’t a sprint button.
Graphically, the game is a bit of a mixed bag at times. Early on, the game looks quite nice, with levels and character models looking polished. But when it gets to later parts of the game where you come across underground puzzle chambers that are falling apart, some of the caverns featured in puzzle rooms that are falling apart look a little rough around the edges (in more ways than one). Nothing terrible, but a bit of a dip in quality.
Magrunner: Dark Pulse might not be to everyone’s taste, but for those who loved the puzzle solving of at least the first Portal game, and are OK with Magrunner’s lesser parts, it might be worth checking out for anyone looking for more first person puzzle solving.
The Lovecraft mythos aren’t a highly represented concept in video games. Sure, there have been plenty of video games heavily influenced by the works of Lovecraft, but not a lot taken from Lovecraft’s work itself. While it’s not a direct adaptation of any of Lovecraft’s work, it’s still nice seeing the iconic creatures in video game form.
Magrunner: Dark Pulse is a first person puzzle game developed by Frogwares and published by Focus Home Interactive, and was released for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 in 2013.
The game takes place a couple of decades into the future, when the Gruckezber Corporation has risen to a position of world dominance. By 2035, their LifeNET Total Existence Network has connected billions of people across the world, and is big enough to have influence over both public and private services, as well as social, environmental, and governmental areas. By 2050, the company had built a training facility for deep space exploration, with a selection process for their astronouts using the LifeNET service.
You play as Dax C. Ward, one of the finalists to get to go through the training facilities along with several others, along with the help of his lifelong family friend Gamaji. But soon, a major malfunction takes the facility offline, locking the whole place down, all while the facility starts to change in appearance to something more creepy and inhuman.
Right off the bat, it’s pretty obvious that the game took it’s presentation and gameplay influence from the Portal franchise, but instead of robots and portals, it has Cthulhu and magnets. Once you get past the obvious initial comparison, Magrunner does do enough to differentiate itself from the Portal games, going for horror instead of comedy. The game isn’t all that scary, since it does still go with the cheesy science experiments gone wrong, but you’re definitely not going to get the two games confused.
In between puzzle solving chambers, there are elevators that take you from one puzzle room to the next. The whole point of these elevator rides is get exposition out through interviews and conversations between the main character and other characters. These kinda kill any momentum the game might have if it went from one puzzle straight to another, and the conversations could have easily been trimmed slightly and been had during puzzle sections.
Plus the game has quite a few loading screens, which is only compounded by the fact that you need to load both the elevator ride when you get on and off it, making the game a touch tedious to play, making the idea of replaying the game a tad unappealing. If the game used this time with the elevators to load each level as it gave you exposition, it wouldn’t be as bad, but you’re stuck looking at loading screens. Levels are often so short that often times it feels like there are more loading screens than there are.
Magrunner uses the whole magnet concept fairly well. Your character has a glove that lets you control an objects magnetism. Left click can make object attract and right click makes them repel. Levels come with several things that use magnets, such as small platforms that are used to get to different parts of each level, and both small and large cubes that are used several ways, such as to help power some of the platforms throughout a level, put on buttons, and are used to smash through breakable glass. Although the cube doesn’t come with as much of a personality as the Companion Cube from Portal.
Later in the game, you do get an add-on for your glove in the form of Newton, a robotic dog made by the protagonist, and he’s used to help with attracting objects that are just out reach from other means. Puzzles do get to the point where you can get stuck for ~30-45 minutes in a room, but none of them feel completely unfair. There are a few puzzles that don’t quite communicate what you need to do immediately, but it’s never gets to be a problem.
However, the game does come with the option in the menu to see how far an objects magnetic reach can go, making the puzzles a bit more manageable, not leaving you to guess how far away something is from a magnets reach.
Probably the most frustrating part of the game is that in later levels, there are creatures that you have to either kill or avoid, which is definitely the biggest difference between Magrunner and Portal. To kill them, you have to fire off explosive cubes from a cube ‘launcher’. If you miss, you have to get the enemy to circle around to a position the be able to hit them, all while get another explosive cube to hit them with.
If the game was a bit smarter, it would have tried skipping combat at all and figured out a way to let you either outrun every encounter with a creature, or let you get rid of it in another manner, such as trapping them, distracting them, or fooling them to run off of a platform and killing themselves. While you’re faster than them, there isn’t a sprint button.
Graphically, the game is a bit of a mixed bag at times. Early on, the game looks quite nice, with levels and character models looking polished. But when it gets to later parts of the game where you come across underground puzzle chambers that are falling apart, some of the caverns featured in puzzle rooms that are falling apart look a little rough around the edges (in more ways than one). Nothing terrible, but a bit of a dip in quality.
Magrunner: Dark Pulse might not be to everyone’s taste, but for those who loved the puzzle solving of at least the first Portal game, and are OK with Magrunner’s lesser parts, it might be worth checking out for anyone looking for more first person puzzle solving.
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2020/03/11/classified-the-sentinel-crisis-2005-xbox-review/
Never heard of Classified: The Sentinel Crisis? I don’t blame you. The only reason that I found this games was during one of my late night sessions of trying to find obscure games to play. And everywhere I looked for information on this game has shown me just how little of a footprint it has left on the history of video games.
You play as a Black Ops soldier recruited by the U.S. Military’s highly classified Sentinel Program. Your only tools are the Intelligent Sentinel Combat Suit (ISCS) and the multifunction OIWC assault rifle, a weapon of unparalleled versatility and power. The military scientist responsible for he sentinel technology was on a mission somewhere in the Blakans, but has now disappeared, and you’re sent in to find him. To find him, you must join forces with a rebel faction to expose the enemy and locate your quarry before the Sentinel technology falls into the wrong hands.
Got that? Because this game has the bare minimum of a story for it to qualify as a story, and is pretty much one step above just having text before every mission. This type of story has been done a thousand times better in a thousand other stories, and has been stretched as thinly as possible over the 6 hour single player campaign in this game. Meaning that nothing about the story stands out or is satisfying.
The level design for this game reminds me a lot of how levels for First Person Shooters for the Nintendo 64 were designed. Incredibly basic level design and structure. Get from point A to point B with little to no deviation. Even something like Goleneye 007 for the Nintendo 64 had more going on.
While everything looks passable, the whole thing kinda reminds me of the XBLA version of the original Perfect Dark, where everything about the game is the exact same except for the slightly higher quality models, textures, and higher screen resolution. Except that was done to make the game look like how you remember the game looking, and here, it just looks slightly outdated, even for the time.
You can’t even destroy computers, tables, and chairs like you could in the previously mentioned Goldeneye 007. At least let me destroy crates for ammo, health, or armor. But the game makes up for it with dropping plentiful amounts of ammo, and you have regenerating shields for most of the game.
There aren’t even any spots off the beaten path where you can collect extra ammo or health. The game is so linear that I’m surprised that it isn’t a light-gun game. This whole game is so generic that It could be a stand in for one of those generic games that you would see in the background of a movie that only exists because they couldn’t afford the rights to a real game.
The AI is so simple that I’ve seen multiple bad guys running into a wall trying to get where they are going. One time I saw two enemies doing this at once, while running in two completely different directions. Somehow, sometimes the enemies don’t hear your weapon fire. The either rely entirely on line of sight, or only notice you when you’re incredibly close to them, and when you’re that close, you’re already firing at them, killing them before they can even fire at you. There are some guys who are slightly harder to kill than the others, but they’re still such an insignificant amount of trouble.
Every now and again, the game likes to have a section that breaks up the shooting, but always ends up being slow, boring, and tedious. There’s one level that begins in a tram (train?), where you have to protect the tram from being damaged and exploding. It isn’t that long or difficult, it’s just incredibly tedious. It’s soon followed by an incredibly short section where you have to use your fists to attack enemies because they captured you and took all of your weapons that was so short that it feels like it could have been taken out of the game completely and replaced with a cutscene of your character attacking one of the guards and stealing his weapon.
There is even a pseudo stealth section, and I say pseudo, because it doesn’t even put in the bare minimum of just hiding in the shadows until someone turns around you can sneak past them. And it doesn’t even matter anyway, because you can just blast everyone away, and you don’t get punished for it. The only thing that matters is killing the guy that the objectives want you to kill.
The weapons are also pretty generic. I say weapons, plural, but really there is one weapon that slightly changes its look depending on it’s fire mode. Basically the gun is a stand in for the generic array of weapons that most First Person Shooters have. The assault rifle and sniper rifle modes are the most useful, followed by the grenade launcher and the RPG, which are good for taking out groups of enemies close together. But then we have the shotgun.
The shotgun is one of the most mediocre shotguns I’ve ever seen in a game. For it to even be effective, you have to run right up to an enemy and hope your aiming is good enough that you can take it out in one go. Any further and it’s useless. With the other modes in the gun, the shotgun pretty much never gets used outside of you using it once, finding out it’s terrible, and never using it again.
Actually, there is a second gun, a generic handgun. The only time I used it is when the game took away my omni-weapon. It works, but I’ve never felt the need to ever go back to it outside of that one time.
You can pick up upgrades for your gun throughout the game. Some of them you seem to get automatically, but I have no idea where your character got these from. Maybe it’s a Metroid: Other M situation where you’re playing a character who isn’t allowed to use them until a certain point in the game. Or maybe I’m trying to make up excuses for an already bad game by comparing it to an even worse one.
The game doesn’t even include multiplayer. Not even split-screen multiplayer or co-op. This game has such little replayability that you could watch someones let’s play on Youtube and pretend it’s a machinima movie put together by a couple of friends.
While the game doesn’t have ragdoll physics, since games were still in that transition period where not every game had realistic physic yet, but it’s still mildly amusing to see a character’s body zip past the camera like Wile E. Coyote when a grenade explodes next to them. How depressing is it that the most fun I had with this game was purely accidental.
This game was released in 2005. At this point, the original Xbox had Halo 1 and 2, Doom 3, Unreal Championship, and Half-Life 2. This game was even released the same year as Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil, Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict, Serious Sam 2, Star Wars: Republic Commando, and Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath. It’s not like the Xbox was hurting for fantastic First Person Shooters. And that’s only the FPS games that only appeared exclusively on the original Xbox (sans PC version of course, we’re talking consoles only here), as there were tons of multi-platform First Person Shooters on the console too. So it’s incredibly easy to see why Classified: The Sentinel Crisis was so overlooked.
Why would you buy this over any other FPS the system had to offer? You could buy the disc version the Halo 2 Multiplayer maps and have a better time playing by yourself by just running around and looking at how good the level and art design is. At least then you could have some friends over and a good time.
This game might not even be close to the worst game I’ve played on a technical level, or even on a conceptual level, but there is one thing I can say about a lot of bad games. They either have ambition, personality, or, if nothing else, they’re easy to make fun of.
At some point there was going to be a PS2 version, but it ended up being cancelled for unknown reasons. I’m guessing it’s because this game barely sold any copies, and was promptly forgotten before it even hit store shelves.
Classified: The Sentinel Crisis has to be one of the most bland First Person Shooters that I’ve ever played. From it’s name and box art, to it’s characters, plot, and levels. Not great, not terrible, just incredibly bland and forgettable. Unless you are on the hunt to collect everything you can for your retro games collection, you should probably avoid this.
Never heard of Classified: The Sentinel Crisis? I don’t blame you. The only reason that I found this games was during one of my late night sessions of trying to find obscure games to play. And everywhere I looked for information on this game has shown me just how little of a footprint it has left on the history of video games.
You play as a Black Ops soldier recruited by the U.S. Military’s highly classified Sentinel Program. Your only tools are the Intelligent Sentinel Combat Suit (ISCS) and the multifunction OIWC assault rifle, a weapon of unparalleled versatility and power. The military scientist responsible for he sentinel technology was on a mission somewhere in the Blakans, but has now disappeared, and you’re sent in to find him. To find him, you must join forces with a rebel faction to expose the enemy and locate your quarry before the Sentinel technology falls into the wrong hands.
Got that? Because this game has the bare minimum of a story for it to qualify as a story, and is pretty much one step above just having text before every mission. This type of story has been done a thousand times better in a thousand other stories, and has been stretched as thinly as possible over the 6 hour single player campaign in this game. Meaning that nothing about the story stands out or is satisfying.
The level design for this game reminds me a lot of how levels for First Person Shooters for the Nintendo 64 were designed. Incredibly basic level design and structure. Get from point A to point B with little to no deviation. Even something like Goleneye 007 for the Nintendo 64 had more going on.
While everything looks passable, the whole thing kinda reminds me of the XBLA version of the original Perfect Dark, where everything about the game is the exact same except for the slightly higher quality models, textures, and higher screen resolution. Except that was done to make the game look like how you remember the game looking, and here, it just looks slightly outdated, even for the time.
You can’t even destroy computers, tables, and chairs like you could in the previously mentioned Goldeneye 007. At least let me destroy crates for ammo, health, or armor. But the game makes up for it with dropping plentiful amounts of ammo, and you have regenerating shields for most of the game.
There aren’t even any spots off the beaten path where you can collect extra ammo or health. The game is so linear that I’m surprised that it isn’t a light-gun game. This whole game is so generic that It could be a stand in for one of those generic games that you would see in the background of a movie that only exists because they couldn’t afford the rights to a real game.
The AI is so simple that I’ve seen multiple bad guys running into a wall trying to get where they are going. One time I saw two enemies doing this at once, while running in two completely different directions. Somehow, sometimes the enemies don’t hear your weapon fire. The either rely entirely on line of sight, or only notice you when you’re incredibly close to them, and when you’re that close, you’re already firing at them, killing them before they can even fire at you. There are some guys who are slightly harder to kill than the others, but they’re still such an insignificant amount of trouble.
Every now and again, the game likes to have a section that breaks up the shooting, but always ends up being slow, boring, and tedious. There’s one level that begins in a tram (train?), where you have to protect the tram from being damaged and exploding. It isn’t that long or difficult, it’s just incredibly tedious. It’s soon followed by an incredibly short section where you have to use your fists to attack enemies because they captured you and took all of your weapons that was so short that it feels like it could have been taken out of the game completely and replaced with a cutscene of your character attacking one of the guards and stealing his weapon.
There is even a pseudo stealth section, and I say pseudo, because it doesn’t even put in the bare minimum of just hiding in the shadows until someone turns around you can sneak past them. And it doesn’t even matter anyway, because you can just blast everyone away, and you don’t get punished for it. The only thing that matters is killing the guy that the objectives want you to kill.
The weapons are also pretty generic. I say weapons, plural, but really there is one weapon that slightly changes its look depending on it’s fire mode. Basically the gun is a stand in for the generic array of weapons that most First Person Shooters have. The assault rifle and sniper rifle modes are the most useful, followed by the grenade launcher and the RPG, which are good for taking out groups of enemies close together. But then we have the shotgun.
The shotgun is one of the most mediocre shotguns I’ve ever seen in a game. For it to even be effective, you have to run right up to an enemy and hope your aiming is good enough that you can take it out in one go. Any further and it’s useless. With the other modes in the gun, the shotgun pretty much never gets used outside of you using it once, finding out it’s terrible, and never using it again.
Actually, there is a second gun, a generic handgun. The only time I used it is when the game took away my omni-weapon. It works, but I’ve never felt the need to ever go back to it outside of that one time.
You can pick up upgrades for your gun throughout the game. Some of them you seem to get automatically, but I have no idea where your character got these from. Maybe it’s a Metroid: Other M situation where you’re playing a character who isn’t allowed to use them until a certain point in the game. Or maybe I’m trying to make up excuses for an already bad game by comparing it to an even worse one.
The game doesn’t even include multiplayer. Not even split-screen multiplayer or co-op. This game has such little replayability that you could watch someones let’s play on Youtube and pretend it’s a machinima movie put together by a couple of friends.
While the game doesn’t have ragdoll physics, since games were still in that transition period where not every game had realistic physic yet, but it’s still mildly amusing to see a character’s body zip past the camera like Wile E. Coyote when a grenade explodes next to them. How depressing is it that the most fun I had with this game was purely accidental.
This game was released in 2005. At this point, the original Xbox had Halo 1 and 2, Doom 3, Unreal Championship, and Half-Life 2. This game was even released the same year as Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil, Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict, Serious Sam 2, Star Wars: Republic Commando, and Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath. It’s not like the Xbox was hurting for fantastic First Person Shooters. And that’s only the FPS games that only appeared exclusively on the original Xbox (sans PC version of course, we’re talking consoles only here), as there were tons of multi-platform First Person Shooters on the console too. So it’s incredibly easy to see why Classified: The Sentinel Crisis was so overlooked.
Why would you buy this over any other FPS the system had to offer? You could buy the disc version the Halo 2 Multiplayer maps and have a better time playing by yourself by just running around and looking at how good the level and art design is. At least then you could have some friends over and a good time.
This game might not even be close to the worst game I’ve played on a technical level, or even on a conceptual level, but there is one thing I can say about a lot of bad games. They either have ambition, personality, or, if nothing else, they’re easy to make fun of.
At some point there was going to be a PS2 version, but it ended up being cancelled for unknown reasons. I’m guessing it’s because this game barely sold any copies, and was promptly forgotten before it even hit store shelves.
Classified: The Sentinel Crisis has to be one of the most bland First Person Shooters that I’ve ever played. From it’s name and box art, to it’s characters, plot, and levels. Not great, not terrible, just incredibly bland and forgettable. Unless you are on the hunt to collect everything you can for your retro games collection, you should probably avoid this.
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2018/12/14/christmas-shopper-simulator-2-black-friday/
The one inevitable thing about Christmas is the shopping for presents. It’s tedious and annoying, with the constant advertising all over the place and having to deal with the crowds depending on how late you left it. So instead of going out to buy your presents, why not just buy everything online. But it’s not the same experience as seeing all of the shitty ads on every store front and obnoxious crowds rushing over and injuring each other to get the best deals, so that’s where Christmas Shopper Simulator has you covered. You can witness the virtual crowds from the safety of your own home.
Christmas Shopper Simulator was developed by an obscure company called Freak Storm Games, who seemed to rename itself Solid Storm Games shortly before being dissolved with the Christmas Shopper Simulator games being the only games under their belt. The game was actually published by the aptly titled video game store GAME, as a way to advertise their stores for, obviously, Christmas, being released December 16, 2014, literally 9 days away from Christmas, just in time for any shoppers leaving it this late.
The game consists of the player character, either a male or female avatar with absolutely no option for customization, which doesn’t really matter because of how short this game is, as they go buy, or steal if the player wants to complete this as quickly as possible, presents for their loved ones.
To know which presents to get, you have to accept missions from a payphone Hotline Miami style, and then wander around a smallish shopping mall finding each present from whatever store has it, such as kicking open crates for a panda mask, avoiding security in a store that hasn’t opened yet for a video game, and jumping over maintenance platforms to obtain a doll.
The whole game feels a little like Goat Simulator, which came out seven months before, as you can use and abuse the game’s physics engine to destroy the games environment. Doing so won’t really get you anything, but to make up for it, the game comes with a bunch of wacky achievements, such as finding bag ladies, trying use the physics to do the splits, and for some reason, fart a bunch.
It’s nowhere near as “polished” as Goat Simulator, it’s clearly not trying to be, as it’s an incredibly simple and really short game simply meant to be a quick advertisement for a game store for the Christmas Season. But it is mildly amusing for what it is for the 5 minutes you’ll play of it before promptly forgetting about it.
Christmas Shopper Simulator, along with the second game, should only take 30 minutes at most combined, offer very little in the way of content, and were only made as Youtuber fodder to help promote the storefront that it was made to promote. The only upsides to this are that it's short and free.
The one inevitable thing about Christmas is the shopping for presents. It’s tedious and annoying, with the constant advertising all over the place and having to deal with the crowds depending on how late you left it. So instead of going out to buy your presents, why not just buy everything online. But it’s not the same experience as seeing all of the shitty ads on every store front and obnoxious crowds rushing over and injuring each other to get the best deals, so that’s where Christmas Shopper Simulator has you covered. You can witness the virtual crowds from the safety of your own home.
Christmas Shopper Simulator was developed by an obscure company called Freak Storm Games, who seemed to rename itself Solid Storm Games shortly before being dissolved with the Christmas Shopper Simulator games being the only games under their belt. The game was actually published by the aptly titled video game store GAME, as a way to advertise their stores for, obviously, Christmas, being released December 16, 2014, literally 9 days away from Christmas, just in time for any shoppers leaving it this late.
The game consists of the player character, either a male or female avatar with absolutely no option for customization, which doesn’t really matter because of how short this game is, as they go buy, or steal if the player wants to complete this as quickly as possible, presents for their loved ones.
To know which presents to get, you have to accept missions from a payphone Hotline Miami style, and then wander around a smallish shopping mall finding each present from whatever store has it, such as kicking open crates for a panda mask, avoiding security in a store that hasn’t opened yet for a video game, and jumping over maintenance platforms to obtain a doll.
The whole game feels a little like Goat Simulator, which came out seven months before, as you can use and abuse the game’s physics engine to destroy the games environment. Doing so won’t really get you anything, but to make up for it, the game comes with a bunch of wacky achievements, such as finding bag ladies, trying use the physics to do the splits, and for some reason, fart a bunch.
It’s nowhere near as “polished” as Goat Simulator, it’s clearly not trying to be, as it’s an incredibly simple and really short game simply meant to be a quick advertisement for a game store for the Christmas Season. But it is mildly amusing for what it is for the 5 minutes you’ll play of it before promptly forgetting about it.
Christmas Shopper Simulator, along with the second game, should only take 30 minutes at most combined, offer very little in the way of content, and were only made as Youtuber fodder to help promote the storefront that it was made to promote. The only upsides to this are that it's short and free.
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2018/12/14/christmas-shopper-simulator-2-black-friday/
Christmas Shopper Simulator seemed to be a success though, as it got a sequel on November 20 of the following year, called Christmas Shopper Simulator 2: Black Christmas. I would say that because they had several months to improve their idea since they’ve got the foundation set with the first game, but it seemed to end up as a mixed bag more than anything.
Instead of just getting a mission from a payphone and then completing said mission by buying a present for someone, you now have to earn money by doing random tasks to buy your Christmas gifts. These can range from abusing the games physics to launch yourself as far as you possibly can, find a taser and use it on people, and take random selfies. And if you want easy money, find a fire extinguisher and knock a lot of people over in a row to get hundreds of dollars.
There are even a few new characters to choose from besides the Female and Male shoppers, including two unlockables. A guy in an Ice Cream Sandwich costume is the third option, and the two unlockables are a Fly and an Ant. Both are unlockable just by typing Ant and Fly into the code menu.
While Christmas Shopper Simulator 2 is an improvement in a lot of ways over the first game, it just seems like it’s way more buggy. Right off the get go, for me personally, the framerate was pretty bad. It’s not entirely unplayable, but it was definitely impacting my enjoyment game. Between the framerate and the clunky movement, I’ve been struggling to even get around certain parts of the mall. I’ve even had a crash or two on Windows 7, and the game won’t even work on Windows 10. I feel like it’s because the physics objects piling up and nobody bothered to optimize for it because it needed to be out for Black Friday. I doubt any of these bugs will be fixed since the company behind this game got shut down.
The fake stores in the game such as “Snake’s Solid Boxes”, “Gnocchi on Heaven’s Door”, and “TV & Curry”, as well poking fun at the way video game companies shove out expensive DLC with effort and try to make every game a franchise by trying to sell you figures and real world collectables with the Shopper Simulator website are mildly amusing, but the jokes get really old really fast.
Black Friday, along with the first game, should only take 30 minutes at most combined, offer very little in the way of content, and were only made as Youtuber fodder to help promote the storefront that it was made to promote. The only upsides to this are that it's short and free.
Christmas Shopper Simulator seemed to be a success though, as it got a sequel on November 20 of the following year, called Christmas Shopper Simulator 2: Black Christmas. I would say that because they had several months to improve their idea since they’ve got the foundation set with the first game, but it seemed to end up as a mixed bag more than anything.
Instead of just getting a mission from a payphone and then completing said mission by buying a present for someone, you now have to earn money by doing random tasks to buy your Christmas gifts. These can range from abusing the games physics to launch yourself as far as you possibly can, find a taser and use it on people, and take random selfies. And if you want easy money, find a fire extinguisher and knock a lot of people over in a row to get hundreds of dollars.
There are even a few new characters to choose from besides the Female and Male shoppers, including two unlockables. A guy in an Ice Cream Sandwich costume is the third option, and the two unlockables are a Fly and an Ant. Both are unlockable just by typing Ant and Fly into the code menu.
While Christmas Shopper Simulator 2 is an improvement in a lot of ways over the first game, it just seems like it’s way more buggy. Right off the get go, for me personally, the framerate was pretty bad. It’s not entirely unplayable, but it was definitely impacting my enjoyment game. Between the framerate and the clunky movement, I’ve been struggling to even get around certain parts of the mall. I’ve even had a crash or two on Windows 7, and the game won’t even work on Windows 10. I feel like it’s because the physics objects piling up and nobody bothered to optimize for it because it needed to be out for Black Friday. I doubt any of these bugs will be fixed since the company behind this game got shut down.
The fake stores in the game such as “Snake’s Solid Boxes”, “Gnocchi on Heaven’s Door”, and “TV & Curry”, as well poking fun at the way video game companies shove out expensive DLC with effort and try to make every game a franchise by trying to sell you figures and real world collectables with the Shopper Simulator website are mildly amusing, but the jokes get really old really fast.
Black Friday, along with the first game, should only take 30 minutes at most combined, offer very little in the way of content, and were only made as Youtuber fodder to help promote the storefront that it was made to promote. The only upsides to this are that it's short and free.
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2017/06/28/touring-car-champions-ms-dos-review/
Touring Car Champions might be one of the most annoying racing games that I’ve ever played. Maybe not the worst, but definitely one of the most annoying. Right now I’d be willing to bet that a few of you might thinking to yourself “Hey, I remember that game, and it wasn’t that annoying. What the heck are you talking about?” The game you’re remembering is TOCA: Touring Car Championship, a game that came out the same year as Touring Car Champions, and was an actual, fully fledged racing game. And good too.
And considering that 1997, the year this game came out, was also the year of other better racing games such as Need for Speed II, Gran Turismo, Moto Racer, and NASCAR ’98, it’s no wonder this game was forgotten to time. And to top it all off, this racing game decided to jump on the FMV bandwagon. Yep, it’s an FMV rgame.
Touring Car Champions was released in 1997 for MS-DOS. It was developed by Torus Games, an Australian company only known for various ports of other games to the Gameboy Color and Gameboy Advance as well as a few licensed games, and are surprisingly have been around since 1994 and are still going. To this day, they’re still releasing cheap licensed games and ports, and it’s quite amazing that they’ve lasted this long. They even have this game listed on their website. It was also published by Virtual Sports Interactive, who as far as i can tell, only published this game, which is a bad sign.
This game has the distinction of being the first game based on the Australian Car Touring Championship and Bathurst 1000, so it does have something going for it. But the only people who want to know an obscure face like that are motorsports fans and fans of obscure video games.
The game only has only one track, and that is the Mount Panorama Circuit, which is used in the Bathurst 1000. But instead of recreating the entire track in either 3D or 2D, the developers decided to use a looping recording of the track. I imagine it would have been neat to see a recording of the track from the perspective of the driver, but they could have saved money, time, and effort and easily released it on VHS at the time in a higher quality and without having to play an awful game to see it. And not only that, there is a bunch of stuff cluttering your view of it, so even enjoying it for the fact that you get to see some video from the sport you you enjoy, it’s pretty much worthless.
At least if the single track that they had was recreated, you could have messed around in it by driving in the wrong direction or at least seeing parts of the track from the tarmac itself. The game doesn’t even have that going for it.
Something actually interesting about the game is that it was fully endorsed by the Holden Racing Team, Holden Special Vehicles, Mount Panorama Consortium, and Mt Panorama Motor Racing Hall of Fame. The game even claims that has both Ford and Holden in there so, so i guess it has the infamous Holden and Ford competitive vibe going for it? This is probably not the best way to duke it out between the two companies.
If the track is FMV of the actual track, then you’re probably asking how the driving handles. The developers thought it was a good idea to put the vehicle you’re driving on top of the video. So what you’re left with is a visual mess that has no consistency. It’s so bad that the game has to tell you which car is yours before the race starts with giant bold letters “THIS IS YOU.”
To make matters worse, half of the screen is taken up by the dashboard of the car. So you left with two-thirds of track left to try and race on. It makes it confusing, because one part of your brain is trying to focus on your car, but another part is so used to seeing the dashboard when you’re trying to emulate actually driving the game. You won’t ever get used to it.
Either have the video full screen with minimal HUD elements, or have the whole game from the drivers perspective, with the video being full screen being the preferable since having the dashboard there doesn’t make you feel like you’re actually driving a car. But considering that the whole game is looping video with zero visual difference, the former would have be the only viable option.
Even the sound is annoying. The cars engine’s are overpowering and are incredibly loud. So much so that I permanently turned the sound off. There isn’t any music either, so it’s either the sound of the car’s engines boring themselves into your hear or silence. If you haven’t turned the game off at this point, I’d say turn the sound off and play some AC/DC in the background.
Once you get passed the eyesore that are the graphics, there is a very basic game here. There is the practice mode, where you can spend your time trying to get used to the game to see if you’ll end up playing the rest of it. There is Quickrace, where you can pick from a few basic options, such as the amount of laps you want, the amount of opponents, and the difficulty setting before jumping into a single race. And there is a “Round”, which is the tournament mode of the game, which spans several seasons of the Bathurst 1000.
“Round” is where most of the game is. You can select from a few real life drivers, such as Craig Lowndes, Peter Brock, Tomas Mezera, and Greg Murphy, as well as a generic girl or guy (the games description, not mine), as well as being able to select a team, manager, and pit crew, which I’m pretty sure doesn’t affect the game at all, so you could pick them at random and still get the same results. That also goes with the car upgrades, which include everything from the brakes, to the engine, to the exhaust.
There are only two real things that matter when it comes to the gameplay. The first is going off the track onto the dirt. Considering there isn’t any real feedback other than you slowing down, it’s hard to figure out what part of the screen is dirt and which part is the track. Something that would have been solved if the game had actual graphics instead of incredibly limited video.
The second is trying to get passed the other cars. At the beginning of a race, all of the cars are close to each other, and the perspective is atrocious, which makes trying to pass them difficult. And not in a way that realistically fits racing, but in a way that is only present in broken video games. When you hit another car, you comically spin around, confirming that the game wasn’t intended to be realistic or even good, but simply to show off the product, which are the cars and the Bathurst 1000.
The game is very basic, and because of it’s limited tracks, awful visuals, and annoyingly loud engine noises, it can’t even achieve being a simple fun racing game. The only people who would have played this are fans of the Bathurst race. And even then, there are better racing games out there featuring the track, such as the Forza and V8 Supercars/TOCA franchises. Even if you just like racing games in general, this came out the same year as the original Gran Turismo and TOCA Touring Car Championship, and even more arcade style games such as Need For Speed II and Moto Racer.
Torus Games still has this game on their website with pictures and text written like they’re still proud of it. The only good thing I can say is that getting this game up and running is fairly easy in this modern age of gaming with the advent of Dosbox. While it’s not the worst racing game that I’ve played, there’s a reason that this game has been almost completely forgotten by time, and you should definitely avoid this game, especially since there have been better games since.
Touring Car Champions might be one of the most annoying racing games that I’ve ever played. Maybe not the worst, but definitely one of the most annoying. Right now I’d be willing to bet that a few of you might thinking to yourself “Hey, I remember that game, and it wasn’t that annoying. What the heck are you talking about?” The game you’re remembering is TOCA: Touring Car Championship, a game that came out the same year as Touring Car Champions, and was an actual, fully fledged racing game. And good too.
And considering that 1997, the year this game came out, was also the year of other better racing games such as Need for Speed II, Gran Turismo, Moto Racer, and NASCAR ’98, it’s no wonder this game was forgotten to time. And to top it all off, this racing game decided to jump on the FMV bandwagon. Yep, it’s an FMV rgame.
Touring Car Champions was released in 1997 for MS-DOS. It was developed by Torus Games, an Australian company only known for various ports of other games to the Gameboy Color and Gameboy Advance as well as a few licensed games, and are surprisingly have been around since 1994 and are still going. To this day, they’re still releasing cheap licensed games and ports, and it’s quite amazing that they’ve lasted this long. They even have this game listed on their website. It was also published by Virtual Sports Interactive, who as far as i can tell, only published this game, which is a bad sign.
This game has the distinction of being the first game based on the Australian Car Touring Championship and Bathurst 1000, so it does have something going for it. But the only people who want to know an obscure face like that are motorsports fans and fans of obscure video games.
The game only has only one track, and that is the Mount Panorama Circuit, which is used in the Bathurst 1000. But instead of recreating the entire track in either 3D or 2D, the developers decided to use a looping recording of the track. I imagine it would have been neat to see a recording of the track from the perspective of the driver, but they could have saved money, time, and effort and easily released it on VHS at the time in a higher quality and without having to play an awful game to see it. And not only that, there is a bunch of stuff cluttering your view of it, so even enjoying it for the fact that you get to see some video from the sport you you enjoy, it’s pretty much worthless.
At least if the single track that they had was recreated, you could have messed around in it by driving in the wrong direction or at least seeing parts of the track from the tarmac itself. The game doesn’t even have that going for it.
Something actually interesting about the game is that it was fully endorsed by the Holden Racing Team, Holden Special Vehicles, Mount Panorama Consortium, and Mt Panorama Motor Racing Hall of Fame. The game even claims that has both Ford and Holden in there so, so i guess it has the infamous Holden and Ford competitive vibe going for it? This is probably not the best way to duke it out between the two companies.
If the track is FMV of the actual track, then you’re probably asking how the driving handles. The developers thought it was a good idea to put the vehicle you’re driving on top of the video. So what you’re left with is a visual mess that has no consistency. It’s so bad that the game has to tell you which car is yours before the race starts with giant bold letters “THIS IS YOU.”
To make matters worse, half of the screen is taken up by the dashboard of the car. So you left with two-thirds of track left to try and race on. It makes it confusing, because one part of your brain is trying to focus on your car, but another part is so used to seeing the dashboard when you’re trying to emulate actually driving the game. You won’t ever get used to it.
Either have the video full screen with minimal HUD elements, or have the whole game from the drivers perspective, with the video being full screen being the preferable since having the dashboard there doesn’t make you feel like you’re actually driving a car. But considering that the whole game is looping video with zero visual difference, the former would have be the only viable option.
Even the sound is annoying. The cars engine’s are overpowering and are incredibly loud. So much so that I permanently turned the sound off. There isn’t any music either, so it’s either the sound of the car’s engines boring themselves into your hear or silence. If you haven’t turned the game off at this point, I’d say turn the sound off and play some AC/DC in the background.
Once you get passed the eyesore that are the graphics, there is a very basic game here. There is the practice mode, where you can spend your time trying to get used to the game to see if you’ll end up playing the rest of it. There is Quickrace, where you can pick from a few basic options, such as the amount of laps you want, the amount of opponents, and the difficulty setting before jumping into a single race. And there is a “Round”, which is the tournament mode of the game, which spans several seasons of the Bathurst 1000.
“Round” is where most of the game is. You can select from a few real life drivers, such as Craig Lowndes, Peter Brock, Tomas Mezera, and Greg Murphy, as well as a generic girl or guy (the games description, not mine), as well as being able to select a team, manager, and pit crew, which I’m pretty sure doesn’t affect the game at all, so you could pick them at random and still get the same results. That also goes with the car upgrades, which include everything from the brakes, to the engine, to the exhaust.
There are only two real things that matter when it comes to the gameplay. The first is going off the track onto the dirt. Considering there isn’t any real feedback other than you slowing down, it’s hard to figure out what part of the screen is dirt and which part is the track. Something that would have been solved if the game had actual graphics instead of incredibly limited video.
The second is trying to get passed the other cars. At the beginning of a race, all of the cars are close to each other, and the perspective is atrocious, which makes trying to pass them difficult. And not in a way that realistically fits racing, but in a way that is only present in broken video games. When you hit another car, you comically spin around, confirming that the game wasn’t intended to be realistic or even good, but simply to show off the product, which are the cars and the Bathurst 1000.
The game is very basic, and because of it’s limited tracks, awful visuals, and annoyingly loud engine noises, it can’t even achieve being a simple fun racing game. The only people who would have played this are fans of the Bathurst race. And even then, there are better racing games out there featuring the track, such as the Forza and V8 Supercars/TOCA franchises. Even if you just like racing games in general, this came out the same year as the original Gran Turismo and TOCA Touring Car Championship, and even more arcade style games such as Need For Speed II and Moto Racer.
Torus Games still has this game on their website with pictures and text written like they’re still proud of it. The only good thing I can say is that getting this game up and running is fairly easy in this modern age of gaming with the advent of Dosbox. While it’s not the worst racing game that I’ve played, there’s a reason that this game has been almost completely forgotten by time, and you should definitely avoid this game, especially since there have been better games since.
1997
Original post here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2017/06/06/chasm-the-rift-1997-pc-review/
In the 90’s, ID Software was the king of the FPS genre. So much so that for about the first half of the decade, First Person Shooters were called Doom Clones. Quake had a similar effect, but to a lesser extent, and the focus was more on the tech than the gameplay, but there were still a lot of games trying to ape off of it’s success. By 1996 with the release of Quake, FPS games had finally settled own as the genre that we all know and love today.
And one of the Quake clones is an unfortunately forgotten game called Chasm: The Rift.
Chasm: The Rift (AKA “Chasm: The Shadow Zone”, which was the name for the demo, and “The Chasm – Entering the Shadow Zone”, which was it’s announced name before being changed to Chasm: The Rift) is a FPS released in September 30th, 1997, and was released for Windows and MS-DOS. It was developed by Action Forms, who are most famous for “Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason”, which came out in 2008, and their cult classic Carnosaurs franchise.
It was published by GT Interactive as competition to Quake, which came out the year before, as a way of getting back at Activision since GT lost the publishing rights of Quake to them. The release for Chasm: The Rift was poorly timed however since it came out a month after Goldeneye 007 for the Nintendo 64, and was release about 3 months before Quake II, which was released for the Christmas rush, meaning that Chasm never had a chance. The only reason that I even knew about it is that I found a cheap copy of it released by one of those bargain bin labels.
The plot takes place in the not too distant future where scientists have discovered that the normal flow of time has been disrupted, from the past to the future, and time rifts have been forming in the Earth’s atmosphere, leading to different periods of history. Mutants known as Timestrikers (unrelated to Timesplitters franchise despite the name similarity) have been making their way through history to try and eradicate all human life. You play as am unnamed commando who has been volunteered and specifically trained to investigate and stop the attacks of these Timestrikers before all life is wiped out. You start out at a power station to investigate why people aren’t getting any power, and the game goes on from there.
The is basic but is enough to explain what is going on and gives you enough reason as to why you’re doing what you’re doing. At the end of each episode, the game is broken up by a cutscene further explaining the plot as you’re playing. The plot is a nice addition to make it stand out from Quake and helps break up the action, but the cutscenes are essentially fancy profile shots of characters and are there just to justify the next level. No award winning writing here, and no need.
There are only two other characters besides you, and one of which pretty much disappears from the plot immediately after the first cutscene and becomes almost completely forgotten after that. Enough other FPS games had at least some plot at this point, so this is nothing special, but it’s still pretty neat.
Graphically, Chasm wasn’t pushing the limits of the hardware of the time like Quake 1 did or Quake 2 would, since unlike those games, which used the graphical capabilities of OpenGL and 3DFX cars for higher video resolutions and colored lighting, Chasm instead goes for a 2.5D engine like the original Doom did, the main difference being that it looked completely 3D and had mouselook but operated on similar physics to Doom. It was designed this way to be able to run on as many machines as possible, taking advantage of the fact that games like the aforementioned Quake 1 and 2 requiring high end PCs to get a good framerate, letting a lot people be able to play their game over other games without having to upgrade their PCs. So while you couldn’t brag to your friends about how powerful your rig was, you still were having fun.
But what it lacks in graphical prowess, it makes up for having a good art design. Because of the time travel plot, the game jumps from the futuristic sci-fi setting that the game starts with and ends up having places set in ancient Egypt and the middle ages. As a way of making up for the lack of the graphical capabilities of the engine, the levels come with neat little details scattered throughout the levels, such weather effects that include rain and open windows that rocked back and forth in the wind, which you could shoot out and destroy.
The only downside to the levels are that more than a few of them come with sections that have close quarters combat, and if you happen to have one of your larger more powerful weapons out at the time, you can accidentally kill yourself from the splash damage of shooting a nearby wall. Once you get used to the tight nit parts of levels, you can train yourself to use some of the lesser weapons, but it’s annoying the first few times it happens to you.
Chasm’s weapons are mostly standard for a 90’s FPS game. You’ve got the Rifle, which is the default weapon and has infinite ammo, the Double-Barrelled Shotgun, Land Mines, which I never used because the other guns always had plenty of ammo and the levels were just small enough that I could get myself blown up on them if I wasn’t careful with their placement, the Blade Gun, which shoots out deadly spinning blades, the Grenadier, which looks like a grenade launcher but acts like a rocket launcher, the Laser Crossbow, the Chaingun, and the Mega Destroyer, which is this games BFG. And despite the fact that the game has tight corridors, I did manage to use this a few times in the slightly more open areas.
Of course, Chasm comes with the obligatory ’90s FPS power-ups too. Other than the health and armor pickups, there is temporary invisibility, which works pretty well, temporary invulnerability, and the reflector, which bounces some of the enemies attacks off of you and right back at them, and can be fun after some practice.
Unfortunately, the game is on the shorter side, with only about 15 or 16 levels total, and it’s pretty easy to complete this whole game in an afternoon. The only thing preventing it from being shorter is that more often than note, parts of levels turn into mazes that you can get lost in pretty easily, so half of your play though will be trying to find the next button or area. Thankfully, the game comes with a mini-map when you press the TAB button so it lessens the impact, but it’s still an annoyance.
While the enemies might mostly act the same, they all have unique look to them. You have your standard military looking guys in the first section of the game with the weapons that you’d expect them to have, such as lasers and rocks, but the enemy roster soon includes a variety of baddies that depend on the time period that you’re in, such as zombies, giant mutant warthogs, half animal half human mutants, alien warriors, mutant scorpions, and a gremlin-like creature wearing a jester outfit that the creative team like the look of so much that they put it onto the games cover. The game comes with a type of strategy where you can blow limbs off of the enemies, resulting in some of them changing their strategy by running up to and trying to beat you to death because you blew off their arm that was holding their ranged weapon. It adds that extra layer to the gameplay that Quake didn’t have.
At the end of each episode, there is a boss battle, which there is a total of 4. But instead of being bullet sponges like a lot of FPS games from the 90s, you have to use parts of the level to try and kill them. For example, you have to defeat the first boss by trapping it in a room with a giant fan and press a button to suck it into said fan.
Action Forms even released a free 3 level map pack on the website for this game, which has gone down over the years, but exists in both an archived form via the Web Archive, and is packed in with an installer that includes both the base game and these extra levels. These new levels add in even more variety in terms of it’s visuals, featuring snow levels, and has a few new monsters to boot.
The most surprising thing about the game is that it came with a level editor, but sadly I couldn’t find a whole lot of levels or mods for it other than a few ports of E1M1 from Wolfenstein 3D, a few test maps that few people have made, and even a Transformers mod that didn’t make it that far before it was eventually abandoned to be work on as a Quake II mod, which from what I can tell, didn’t make it far into development either. It is possible to make levels with the Doom SLADE editor, but I doubt it’s worth investing time and effort into a game no one remembers, unless you’re impressing the other 4 people who still love playing the game.
On the sound front, it’s pretty solid and everything sounds good. The soundtrack consists of atmospheric music, cribbing off of Quake’s soundtrack. It might not have had the talent of Trent Reznor or even be as memorable, but it’s still a pretty solid soundtrack.
Believe it or not, Chasm even comes with a multiplayer component, but compared to other FPS games coming out at the time, it’s one of the most unmemorable multiplayer experiences out there. It also comes with two cooperative modes where you can play through the game with or without enemies with friends. Considering how close quarters the game got at points during the Single Player, I can’t imagine how it would have been with other people. But it’s still an appreciated feature.
The multiplayer features the standard Deathmatch mode you’d come to expect from a 90s FPS with multiplayer, and even though it does have a few Deathmatch arenas, most of the levels are from the Single Player. And to gain access to most of the level, you have to play it like you would the Single Player. Why it doesn’t have the entire map unlocked from the beginning is baffling. And who would bother with trying to unlock these areas when you’re just going to get killer by the other players anyway, unless there was some mutual agreement to let someone open up the areas. And you’re limited to what weapons the level had to begin with. There is no reason to play Deathmatch unless you’re a sadomasochist who wants to set up a multiplayer game with an old FPS game and have several friends who are also sadomasochist who love obscure FPS games.
Chasm is a solid little game even if it couldn't compete with it's contemporaries. Back in the day this would have been difficult to get up and working which was compounded by it's obscurity meaning that not a lot of people could help you get it up and working, but thankfully developer General Arcade has come along and given the game a remaster which lets you not only play the game on modern systems but at resolutions up to 4K at higher frame rates without having to fiddle with some ini file.
In the 90’s, ID Software was the king of the FPS genre. So much so that for about the first half of the decade, First Person Shooters were called Doom Clones. Quake had a similar effect, but to a lesser extent, and the focus was more on the tech than the gameplay, but there were still a lot of games trying to ape off of it’s success. By 1996 with the release of Quake, FPS games had finally settled own as the genre that we all know and love today.
And one of the Quake clones is an unfortunately forgotten game called Chasm: The Rift.
Chasm: The Rift (AKA “Chasm: The Shadow Zone”, which was the name for the demo, and “The Chasm – Entering the Shadow Zone”, which was it’s announced name before being changed to Chasm: The Rift) is a FPS released in September 30th, 1997, and was released for Windows and MS-DOS. It was developed by Action Forms, who are most famous for “Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason”, which came out in 2008, and their cult classic Carnosaurs franchise.
It was published by GT Interactive as competition to Quake, which came out the year before, as a way of getting back at Activision since GT lost the publishing rights of Quake to them. The release for Chasm: The Rift was poorly timed however since it came out a month after Goldeneye 007 for the Nintendo 64, and was release about 3 months before Quake II, which was released for the Christmas rush, meaning that Chasm never had a chance. The only reason that I even knew about it is that I found a cheap copy of it released by one of those bargain bin labels.
The plot takes place in the not too distant future where scientists have discovered that the normal flow of time has been disrupted, from the past to the future, and time rifts have been forming in the Earth’s atmosphere, leading to different periods of history. Mutants known as Timestrikers (unrelated to Timesplitters franchise despite the name similarity) have been making their way through history to try and eradicate all human life. You play as am unnamed commando who has been volunteered and specifically trained to investigate and stop the attacks of these Timestrikers before all life is wiped out. You start out at a power station to investigate why people aren’t getting any power, and the game goes on from there.
The is basic but is enough to explain what is going on and gives you enough reason as to why you’re doing what you’re doing. At the end of each episode, the game is broken up by a cutscene further explaining the plot as you’re playing. The plot is a nice addition to make it stand out from Quake and helps break up the action, but the cutscenes are essentially fancy profile shots of characters and are there just to justify the next level. No award winning writing here, and no need.
There are only two other characters besides you, and one of which pretty much disappears from the plot immediately after the first cutscene and becomes almost completely forgotten after that. Enough other FPS games had at least some plot at this point, so this is nothing special, but it’s still pretty neat.
Graphically, Chasm wasn’t pushing the limits of the hardware of the time like Quake 1 did or Quake 2 would, since unlike those games, which used the graphical capabilities of OpenGL and 3DFX cars for higher video resolutions and colored lighting, Chasm instead goes for a 2.5D engine like the original Doom did, the main difference being that it looked completely 3D and had mouselook but operated on similar physics to Doom. It was designed this way to be able to run on as many machines as possible, taking advantage of the fact that games like the aforementioned Quake 1 and 2 requiring high end PCs to get a good framerate, letting a lot people be able to play their game over other games without having to upgrade their PCs. So while you couldn’t brag to your friends about how powerful your rig was, you still were having fun.
But what it lacks in graphical prowess, it makes up for having a good art design. Because of the time travel plot, the game jumps from the futuristic sci-fi setting that the game starts with and ends up having places set in ancient Egypt and the middle ages. As a way of making up for the lack of the graphical capabilities of the engine, the levels come with neat little details scattered throughout the levels, such weather effects that include rain and open windows that rocked back and forth in the wind, which you could shoot out and destroy.
The only downside to the levels are that more than a few of them come with sections that have close quarters combat, and if you happen to have one of your larger more powerful weapons out at the time, you can accidentally kill yourself from the splash damage of shooting a nearby wall. Once you get used to the tight nit parts of levels, you can train yourself to use some of the lesser weapons, but it’s annoying the first few times it happens to you.
Chasm’s weapons are mostly standard for a 90’s FPS game. You’ve got the Rifle, which is the default weapon and has infinite ammo, the Double-Barrelled Shotgun, Land Mines, which I never used because the other guns always had plenty of ammo and the levels were just small enough that I could get myself blown up on them if I wasn’t careful with their placement, the Blade Gun, which shoots out deadly spinning blades, the Grenadier, which looks like a grenade launcher but acts like a rocket launcher, the Laser Crossbow, the Chaingun, and the Mega Destroyer, which is this games BFG. And despite the fact that the game has tight corridors, I did manage to use this a few times in the slightly more open areas.
Of course, Chasm comes with the obligatory ’90s FPS power-ups too. Other than the health and armor pickups, there is temporary invisibility, which works pretty well, temporary invulnerability, and the reflector, which bounces some of the enemies attacks off of you and right back at them, and can be fun after some practice.
Unfortunately, the game is on the shorter side, with only about 15 or 16 levels total, and it’s pretty easy to complete this whole game in an afternoon. The only thing preventing it from being shorter is that more often than note, parts of levels turn into mazes that you can get lost in pretty easily, so half of your play though will be trying to find the next button or area. Thankfully, the game comes with a mini-map when you press the TAB button so it lessens the impact, but it’s still an annoyance.
While the enemies might mostly act the same, they all have unique look to them. You have your standard military looking guys in the first section of the game with the weapons that you’d expect them to have, such as lasers and rocks, but the enemy roster soon includes a variety of baddies that depend on the time period that you’re in, such as zombies, giant mutant warthogs, half animal half human mutants, alien warriors, mutant scorpions, and a gremlin-like creature wearing a jester outfit that the creative team like the look of so much that they put it onto the games cover. The game comes with a type of strategy where you can blow limbs off of the enemies, resulting in some of them changing their strategy by running up to and trying to beat you to death because you blew off their arm that was holding their ranged weapon. It adds that extra layer to the gameplay that Quake didn’t have.
At the end of each episode, there is a boss battle, which there is a total of 4. But instead of being bullet sponges like a lot of FPS games from the 90s, you have to use parts of the level to try and kill them. For example, you have to defeat the first boss by trapping it in a room with a giant fan and press a button to suck it into said fan.
Action Forms even released a free 3 level map pack on the website for this game, which has gone down over the years, but exists in both an archived form via the Web Archive, and is packed in with an installer that includes both the base game and these extra levels. These new levels add in even more variety in terms of it’s visuals, featuring snow levels, and has a few new monsters to boot.
The most surprising thing about the game is that it came with a level editor, but sadly I couldn’t find a whole lot of levels or mods for it other than a few ports of E1M1 from Wolfenstein 3D, a few test maps that few people have made, and even a Transformers mod that didn’t make it that far before it was eventually abandoned to be work on as a Quake II mod, which from what I can tell, didn’t make it far into development either. It is possible to make levels with the Doom SLADE editor, but I doubt it’s worth investing time and effort into a game no one remembers, unless you’re impressing the other 4 people who still love playing the game.
On the sound front, it’s pretty solid and everything sounds good. The soundtrack consists of atmospheric music, cribbing off of Quake’s soundtrack. It might not have had the talent of Trent Reznor or even be as memorable, but it’s still a pretty solid soundtrack.
Believe it or not, Chasm even comes with a multiplayer component, but compared to other FPS games coming out at the time, it’s one of the most unmemorable multiplayer experiences out there. It also comes with two cooperative modes where you can play through the game with or without enemies with friends. Considering how close quarters the game got at points during the Single Player, I can’t imagine how it would have been with other people. But it’s still an appreciated feature.
The multiplayer features the standard Deathmatch mode you’d come to expect from a 90s FPS with multiplayer, and even though it does have a few Deathmatch arenas, most of the levels are from the Single Player. And to gain access to most of the level, you have to play it like you would the Single Player. Why it doesn’t have the entire map unlocked from the beginning is baffling. And who would bother with trying to unlock these areas when you’re just going to get killer by the other players anyway, unless there was some mutual agreement to let someone open up the areas. And you’re limited to what weapons the level had to begin with. There is no reason to play Deathmatch unless you’re a sadomasochist who wants to set up a multiplayer game with an old FPS game and have several friends who are also sadomasochist who love obscure FPS games.
Chasm is a solid little game even if it couldn't compete with it's contemporaries. Back in the day this would have been difficult to get up and working which was compounded by it's obscurity meaning that not a lot of people could help you get it up and working, but thankfully developer General Arcade has come along and given the game a remaster which lets you not only play the game on modern systems but at resolutions up to 4K at higher frame rates without having to fiddle with some ini file.
2007
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2018/11/30/mod-corner-polar-payne-polar-paradise-max-payne-review/
Set in the chilling backdrop of the North Pole, you play the role of Dinky, a polar bear who returns to find his family mercilessly slaughtered by Eskimos, high on a new designer drug called Valkyr. Enraged and hungry for revenge, Dinky embarks on a crusade for justice against his families murderers.
Released in 2003, Polar Payne is obviously a parody of Max Payne’s film noir story, but instead of a man avenging his family, it’s a polar bear instead. The original campaign for the mod is incredibly short, only being one small map that would take 5 minutes at most to complete, making it able to be finished in a lunch break.
Graphically, Polar Payne is only OK looking, but it’s almost entirely made up of new assets, sans animations. Probably the most fun part of it are the new ways to take out enemies since it incorporates the Kung Fu mod for it’s melee combat, with combat ranging from letting you kick off the heads of enemies or hugging them to death, to a new weapons such as the flame thrower and a “Trout of Death”, which is just a grenade re-skinned as a fish. You don’t get to use half of them before the mod is over because of how short it is.
On the other hand, you are able to play through the entire story of Max Payne as Dinky, using the new weapons. It is pretty amusing watching a Polar Bear going through the same levels and story as Max Payne.
The mod even comes with it's own manual as a PDF that details how to play the mod along with including the plot. This is something that even a lot of bigger budgeted games these days don't do.
If you’re into the Christmas cheer, and you want something short to play in between hanging out with family for the holidays. Polar Payne is worth checking out, taking at most 5 minutes to play
Set in the chilling backdrop of the North Pole, you play the role of Dinky, a polar bear who returns to find his family mercilessly slaughtered by Eskimos, high on a new designer drug called Valkyr. Enraged and hungry for revenge, Dinky embarks on a crusade for justice against his families murderers.
Released in 2003, Polar Payne is obviously a parody of Max Payne’s film noir story, but instead of a man avenging his family, it’s a polar bear instead. The original campaign for the mod is incredibly short, only being one small map that would take 5 minutes at most to complete, making it able to be finished in a lunch break.
Graphically, Polar Payne is only OK looking, but it’s almost entirely made up of new assets, sans animations. Probably the most fun part of it are the new ways to take out enemies since it incorporates the Kung Fu mod for it’s melee combat, with combat ranging from letting you kick off the heads of enemies or hugging them to death, to a new weapons such as the flame thrower and a “Trout of Death”, which is just a grenade re-skinned as a fish. You don’t get to use half of them before the mod is over because of how short it is.
On the other hand, you are able to play through the entire story of Max Payne as Dinky, using the new weapons. It is pretty amusing watching a Polar Bear going through the same levels and story as Max Payne.
The mod even comes with it's own manual as a PDF that details how to play the mod along with including the plot. This is something that even a lot of bigger budgeted games these days don't do.
If you’re into the Christmas cheer, and you want something short to play in between hanging out with family for the holidays. Polar Payne is worth checking out, taking at most 5 minutes to play
2008
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2018/11/30/mod-corner-polar-payne-polar-paradise-max-payne-review/
The manual for the first mod (a pdf that comes in the zip file) joking refers to a sequel in the form of a parody of Max Payne 2’s title, which was coming out around the same time as the first mod. But lo and behold, 5 years later in 2008, a sequel did materialize, called Polar Paradise. Well, it’s not really a sequel so much as it’s a fleshed out reboot that goes for the more over-the-top comical style.
Polar Paradise is yet again set at the North Pole, with you playing Dinky once more, who has returned home on Christmas Eve to find that his family was kidnapped by Santa Claus and forced to work in his evil Toy Factory. With nothing to lose, Dinky sets out for vengeance.
There is a plethora of new enemies, penguins with bombs on their back that explode on contact, angry Elves with guns, and penguins flying small aircraft shooting you with snowballs. It also features new weapons, ranging from Kung Fu, to throwing snowballs, a flame thrower, a bomb launcher, a sniper rifle and an assault rifle that shoots candy. The guns act close to the actual weapons in Max Payne so much that they have he same icons. You could easily figure out which is which.
This time, instead of having one small level, Polar Paradise has a few larger levels, making it closer to 10-15 minutes long. The mod starts you out in an Elf village before moving on to Santa’s workshop, which used some of the Santa’s Workshop cliches you’d expect you see from a parody of the holidays.
There’s even a bonus level where you snowboard to escape Santa’s Workshop. It’s obviously a bit clunky since Max Payne wasn’t designed for it, but it’s playable (kinda), and the fact that it exists amuses me to no end.
If you’re into the Christmas cheer, and you want something short to play in between hanging out with family for the holidays. Polar Paradise is worth checking out, taking at most 20 minutes to play
The manual for the first mod (a pdf that comes in the zip file) joking refers to a sequel in the form of a parody of Max Payne 2’s title, which was coming out around the same time as the first mod. But lo and behold, 5 years later in 2008, a sequel did materialize, called Polar Paradise. Well, it’s not really a sequel so much as it’s a fleshed out reboot that goes for the more over-the-top comical style.
Polar Paradise is yet again set at the North Pole, with you playing Dinky once more, who has returned home on Christmas Eve to find that his family was kidnapped by Santa Claus and forced to work in his evil Toy Factory. With nothing to lose, Dinky sets out for vengeance.
There is a plethora of new enemies, penguins with bombs on their back that explode on contact, angry Elves with guns, and penguins flying small aircraft shooting you with snowballs. It also features new weapons, ranging from Kung Fu, to throwing snowballs, a flame thrower, a bomb launcher, a sniper rifle and an assault rifle that shoots candy. The guns act close to the actual weapons in Max Payne so much that they have he same icons. You could easily figure out which is which.
This time, instead of having one small level, Polar Paradise has a few larger levels, making it closer to 10-15 minutes long. The mod starts you out in an Elf village before moving on to Santa’s workshop, which used some of the Santa’s Workshop cliches you’d expect you see from a parody of the holidays.
There’s even a bonus level where you snowboard to escape Santa’s Workshop. It’s obviously a bit clunky since Max Payne wasn’t designed for it, but it’s playable (kinda), and the fact that it exists amuses me to no end.
If you’re into the Christmas cheer, and you want something short to play in between hanging out with family for the holidays. Polar Paradise is worth checking out, taking at most 20 minutes to play