World War 2. First Person Shooters. Does this seem to be a familiar trend lately? How many of your online friends have been moaning and groaning about WW2 shooters lately, especially with the newest Call of Duty yet again reverting to it’s roots and going back to the 40’s for another go at this historic war? I know I can say on my end, it’s been a lot and i’ve been one of those people complaining. Call of Duty, COD2, COD3, COD: World at War, the entire Medal of Honor series, Battlefield, this just names a small amount of releases within the last handful of years that have visited and revisited Germany, and recreated it in every way imaginable. Haven’t we had our fill for a while? When do we say enough, let’s maybe develop a solid Vietnam War titles which still has yet to be done. Why not World War 1? When Brothers in Arms: Hells Highway hit the shelves, I took a skeptical step into what was seemingly another dead horse.

My first question about this title was the quality, how was it going to stack up against other WW2 shooters out there? My second question was if it was different enough to make itself stand out from the others, or is it just another run of the mill title that we’ve all played ten times before. With a few suprises, and a variety of good and bad, I was actually reasonably pleased with Hell’s Highway and did enjoy the game through it’s entirety. It’s not without it’s faults, which as a lesser known and underselling title, this was to be expected.

To begin with the good, this game plays out like a film. A good film. It’s cinematic that tells a great story that grips you in and gets you eager to reach the next clip so it can continue. The cut scenes are from in-game graphics, and at times look just downright ugly. Think Saving Private Ryan that focuses more on telling the story than the gore and killing. It’s entertaining, makes this game hold your interest for hours on end, and sticks in your mind as one of the better video game stories told to date.

The gameplay is a solid combination of pinpoint accurate shooting with squad tactics. Much like Gears of War, not taking cover will be your demise in a matter of seconds. It captures a certain amount of realism on how precise you actually have to be, poking your head out and taking a shot, just to duck back down to avoid catching a bullet to your head. Staying up and firing off a few shots back to back later in the game isn’t an option. This results in extended battles, not like other games when you can plow through a battlefield in a matter of ten minutes, in Hell’s Highway, it can take you ten minutes to kill five enemies hiding deep in cover at a distance. You do have up to three squads to command at once, you can place them into certain places of your preference, and order them to either hold the position or spray an enemy area so you may run to a new point of cover. Indicators above the enemies head tells you how overwhelmed they feel with the fire coming in their direction, a red globe indicates they are going to stay behind those sandbags for a good few seconds giving you the okay to push forward. It’s fun, and I haven’t quite seen a game work in this manner of tactics before.

Graphics leave much to be desired. Points of the game, especially in cut scenes, show texture tearing or a complete lack of rendered textures at all. At rare moments, the grass looks like flat light green construction paper with large darker green pixels scattered on it. It’s pretty awful. The character models are okay at best, but the fire effects, explosions, gunfire, and blood spatter looks pretty great. There is also a slow motion camera that kicks into play at times, if you lob a grenade at a bunker and send two or three germans flying, the camera will zoom in and slow it down so you can witness those limbs fly. Any headshot will also slow down and reward you with a skull cracking splatterfest. Headshots are a little less common than you’d think, but it makes it so rewarding when you do nail one, especially looking down iron sights and hitting your target at 300+ meters. Good stuff.

The game itself isn’t extremely long, it depends on your approach to it. If you want to run around and spray with a SMG or a LMG, have at it. You will die a lot, but good luck trying. I could see where with practice this would become a possible tactic, but I perfer hanging back in cover with a single shot and deadly accurate rifle picking off enemies at a distance. It makes it feel more authentic and intense. There are a few extras, including locating numerous “Killroy” sketches on the walls indicating american soldiers had previously occupied that particular house or barn. There are also Recon zones, which tend to be just random areas you walk into at points of levels and stumble upon on accident. It adds a level of replayabiliy, but probably not enough to inspire you to go through the game twice. A fun experience that will take you anywhere from six to ten hours to complete. There is no online community to speak of anymore, so I’ve unforunately been unable to form an opinion of it.

If you want a good cinematic World War 2 title for a good price, you can’t go wrong with Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway. It’s different enough to entertain you through one playthrough, has some good moments and tells a great story during the Operation Market Garden event of WW2. Give it a look, it’s far from perfect and doesn’t stack up to other titles available as far as quality and online population, but it’s a good single player experience at least worth a rental.

Gameplay: 9.25

A good amount of tactics and gunplay, but not for the impatient shooter fan. Run from cover to cover and plan your attacks with precision and intelligence to be successful. Great approach to a war game.

Graphics: 6.5

Average to not so great at times. Parts seem to have been overlooked by the developers, some cut scenes are distracting by the tearing and skipping.

Replayability: 6.0

One and done title. Some unlockables that you will probably find most of during the first stretch. With no online community, this is probably a better rental than a purchase.

Overall: 7.5

It was a fun experience, don’t get me wrong. There’s just not much left when you finish it, if you are attracted to visually stunning titles, this isn’t one of them. What it does do is some of the best tactical shooting in a war game that requires precision and patience. I thought it was great, some might find it fustrating.

If you are anything like me, you’ve been around the gaming world for a long time. The first console I owned was a Atari/Colecovision dual console, and soon thereafter got myself a Nintendo Entertainment System.

After that point, I was completely hooked, and continued on with gaming up to current present.

Over the years, I’ve owned some great consoles like the Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, and Playstation. I’ve unfortunately lived through the demise of some other consoles that just failed to succeed like Sega’s Dreamcast and the Panasonic 3DO. With a lot of up and downs, there’s still a handful of titles that stand out in my mind as some of the greatest ever. Many will put the likes of Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 3, and Ocarina of Time on their list, but mine differs a little bit. I have great memories of these games I grew up with, and occasionally reflect on them, wondering if the possibility of a relaunch or some unforeseen sequal will emerge that will just blow my mind.

Many are worthy, but there’s a few I feel that deserve to be modernized, if not just revamped and re-released like Gamecube did for Resident Evil, or create a completely new game from the original. Maybe someone will hear my pleas, and hopefully others will agree with some of my choices. These are some of the historical gaming masterpieces that I’d be ecstatic to have in my hands again.

Goldeneye, Nintendo 64

This one is almost a given. Anyone who lived during the N64 days remembers this one to be the greatest party game of it’s time. Endless hours of you and your buddies sitting in front of the television split-screen killing eachother in the greatest shooter of it’s time. Who hasn’t played Goldeneye? It was perfect in just about every way, was extremely fun and addictive, and had some fun features as well. Bond Paintball anyone? I think this title deserves a facelift, don’t change anything about it, keep the maps, the variety of weapons, just smooth it over a bit, make it HD, add online multiplayer, and release it as an arcade title for $10. Considering this was a Nintendo exclusive game, some say that this release is impossible, but Microsoft did have Rare’s perfect dark as a 360 launch title, the same company that developed Goldeneye and Perfect Dark exclusively on the N64. It could happen

Killer Instinct, SNES, Arcade

I still hold this game close to my heart as my all-time fighting game. You could bust out some wicked combos, especially with Orchid and her 80+ hit combos. This was THE fighting game of it’s time and was hugely successful, and it’s very difficult for me to understand why it died back in those days. A new Killer Instinct on current consoles would be a big hit, and I’d grab it up in a second. Keep the original characters, add some new ones, make it look and play as good as the original, and ship it out like the recently modernized Street Fighter. People who never played the original may not appreciate it quite as much, but it would still sell regardless. This is a gem waiting to emerge, someone needs to pick up the license and make it work.

Out of this World/Flashback, Sega Genesis, 3DO

Arguably, Flashback was the greatest game of my lifetime. It was so ahead of it’s time, the animations were as close to 3d and realistic as 16 bit consoles could ever process. It was a brilliant game, played well, sounded great, and had a phenomenal story. It was the unofficial sequal to Out of this World, another unusual but innovative title released previously. Even if they kept it as-is, released it as an arcade game or packaged it with one of those “Sega’s Greatest Hits” games, it would bring many of us older gamers great joy. I’ve probably beaten these games thirty times in my childhood, and will gladly replay them again if someone remembers they existed and decides to give us one more go through. A remake in itself would set it apart from other games, it’s how innovative it was for it’s time that made this one so special.

Mutant League Hockey/Football, Sega Genesis

Probably the greatest sports game spinoff ever. Mutant league sports played like a normal sports title would, but there are a few twists. You can win by score, you you can win by killing the other team before they kill you. In the sports areas are spiked walls, bottomless pits, and other fatal hazards. In hockey, the fighting was great, and you’d get a second penalty for losing the fight. Great fun. Either of these would work well as a re-release or a new next-gen title. The brutal concept was simply hilarious, and added a fun and gory twist to sports games. I haven’t been able to find much of anything about these games on the internet, and any hopes of a reunion are slim to none. One can always hope.

T&C Surf Designs, NES

I can imagine this is the one that no one has heard of, as I’d be shocked to find another person who recalls playing this one. In the shadow of “Skate or Die”, T&C was a combination of surfing and skateboarding that rotated between levels. Fact is, It was fun, and was good enough to stick around in my memory for this long. You basically skated/surfed through obstacles and collected coins along the way, while wearing a tiki mask. I’m assuming it had thick Hawaiian influence, due to the environment and graphics, and maybe it’s one of those rare games that’s worth hundreds of dollars these days. I can’t even say there’s any chance of ever seeing this game again, and I’d be equally as shocked to hear that anyone else out there besides myself has played this one.

Crystalis, NES

This is one of two original cartridges that I still own. In a gaming world of turn-based role playing games and Final Fantasy clones, Crystalis was one of the rare few true action RPGS on the console. It was long, surprisingly deep, had a good variety of weapons, and regardless of popular opinion, it’s still one of my favorite RPGS to date. You were a purple haired hero wielding element based swords that helped you progress through the Crystalis world. Each of four swords could be upgraded for a more powerful charge attack, that assisted you in eliminating enemies and obstacles. This is a game that I can play again when I want to, but it should be re-released to the world so other people can enjoy it as much as I did.

Straying from popular opinion, I see potential in a lot of older games that new titles just never quite matched up to. I’d drop money into any of these again, although hope for most ever seeing the light of modern gaming again is very dim. Maybe retro gaming is better left in our memories, and we do need to move past them and enjoy the present. It could even result that replaying these titles after so many years may prove to not be nowhere near as fun or how you remembered them. Perhaps though, if they are revisited, more innovations will emerge, or a franchise can begin for a long and forgotten title. Some hold higher potential than others, but I am only one voice and we are more than likely going to see more of the popular classics again. Regardless, I hold my opinion high, if the majority agrees or not, and these will forever be enshrined in my personal Retro gaming hall of fame.

So, updates have been very slow here, but rest assured new reviews are ready to publish and new comic strips and art are on the way.

Comic Con has had me so busy preparing for it. Many packets, art, and all the materials being put together for it has had me losing sleep for the past couple of weeks.

With that said, I plan to publish a simple comic strip just for the con before I leave to San Diego. I will be stopping and checking out the Deviant Art booth, so if you happen to be there, you might just meet me!

Till then.

D.

Assault on Dark Athena Game Review (XBox 360)

I do want to begin by clarifying, the newest Riddick installment released on the Xbox 360 is titled “The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Athena”. What I did not know before purchase was that this also includes the stellar title released on the original xbox formally called “The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay”. This particular review will cover the new game, Dark Athena, and will not include Butcher Bay as I will be reviewing that separately.

The first Riddick game on Microsoft’s first console shocked a lot of people. Many wrote it off as a typical mediocre film to game title that contains bland gameplay and clunky controls like many do. What those of us did play it discovered was the complete opposite, Escape from Butcher Bay was absolutely fantastic. It received a lot of praise from many gaming sites across the internet, was a multiple Game of the Year nominee and winner, and is questionably the best looking game ever released on the Xbox. It snuck up on people, as it offered very tight gameplay, excellent visuals, and an overall innovative experience.

So with the announcement of the newest installment, Dark Athena, I was very quick to learn more in great anticipation. In an “Orange Box” like fashion, they revamped the original Butcher Bay and packaged it up with the new Dark Athena and put it on shelves. Make no mistake, Riddick has impressed again, and the new experience is just as good, if not better than the first.

You begin on a beach outside of an enormous metal building. The world around you is vibrant, the water effects from the ocean are beautiful, and it throws you right into the action from the get go. One of the first things you notice is that in the beginning, stealth is key. You do have Riddick’s eyeglow ability allowing for exceptional night vision, which means you can crouch in the shadows and see the world around you, when your foes cannot. The stealth is nice, if you are in a position where the enemy cannot see you, your vision will tint blue indicating this. Lights around you can be destroyed to create more shadows increasing your chances of silently killing drones and guards within this building, so shooting out fluorescent bulbs becomes necessary.

Head-on combat is definitely possible, but difficult. You can run and gun if you choose to, but it’s hard to recommend without using tactics with the darkness. You can also pull corpses out of the light into a darker area of the room you are in to avoid other guards seeing their fallen comrades and alerting security.

As the game progresses, you find yourself on a Mercenary Slave spacecraft, where if you did indeed play Butcher Bay, some faces may be familiar to you. There is a decent level of puzzles to figure out as you navigate the ship. There are also a heavy amount of collectable Bounty Cards scattered throughout Dark Athena, they unlock bonus content when you pick them up, and you gain an achievement for locating all of them. Some are easier than others, and it adds a little depth to the experience. At points you do control for various mechanical weapons, including Drones and Mechs. The physics are just flat out fun, and the concept behind it is brilliant. You do not spend the entire game on this spacecraft, but a good portion of it is indeed on the gigantic steel vessel.

Some of your personal weapons may be very familiar, but they did add just a few others, including the SCAR. The SCAR, once gaining it is a very fun and vital piece of weaponry. You can fire up to five mines at a time, which do fire out like a rifle so you can be precise, and detonate them when you choose with the Left Trigger. This gun is about all you’ll use after you obtain it, it’s handy, powerful, necessary for some bosses, and all I have to say is spider drones, oh those freakin spider drones.

The visuals in this game are exceptional. They aren’t nearly “wow” worthy like the original is, but they are extremely well done. Lighting effects are among the best I’ve ever seen in a game, the glow of flashlights, the shadows cast, down to the incredible reflections. The enemies look great, especially the drones, along with some great animations to coincide. The character models are just awesome, at times you do wonder if you are watching a cut scene and not in-game footage. Riddick is undoubtedly modeled after Vin Diesel, and it’s almost a dead on likeness. If you enjoy good looking games, this is one of the best on the console to date.

There is online play, with a decent population playing, and it’s honestly average at best. You can tell it was influenced by Unreal Tournament, with the fast paced action, scattered spawning weapons, and furious gameplay action. Pray and spray applies well here, but it’s just not as good. Straying from the single player mode, the controls don’t feel nearly as good, I did drop on average of one out of every two games due to someone quitting or a connection error.

The players move around fast, almost too fast for the lack of spray the weapons have. You have one laser dot to aim with and hit your target that is reasonable accurate, which makes it very difficult to hit strafing enemies at a short distance.

Better weapons that had more of a wide spray range would have been much better, but the lack of weapon options and the speed of gameplay makes skill turn more into luck. Much like most online games, there’s too many quitters to have the game end when the host leaves, resulting in your stats for that game disappear. Very fustrating when attempting to gain achievements such as “Gain 100 kills in multiplayer”, as you can have a 22 kill game, the host leaves, and those kills just go away. Blah.

Dark Athena was a reasonably lengthy campaign, about 10-12 hours depending on skill and difficulty level, and with the original Escape from Butcher Bay not only included, but remastered and tightened up for the 360, This is a great value and two phenomenal titles for the price. There isn’t too much to go back for once you complete both games, unless you decide to go again at a higher difficulty, which you may avoid. Even normal difficulty is quite difficult. I loved this game, and look forward to my 2^nd plunge into Butcher Bay, and I can easily recommend this to anyone that owns an Xbox 360 console. Two great games and a great value, check out the demo on Xbox live today.

Gameplay: 9.5

Although difficult and at rare times seems unfair, Dark Athena is an excellent experience. It handles well, the controls are tight, there’s a lot of varied and innovative gameplay, and definitely lives up to the original. There’s enough here to please fans of both First Person Shooters, and Stealth Games, and they both work well together. Points lost unfortunately due to the poor multiplayer.

Graphics: 9.75

Just amazing. Everything about the visuals capture the environment around you, and you will stop more than once just to look at the quality of some of the lighting effects. It stacks up with some of the best looking games on the console to date, and you don’t see too many games beat this one out graphically. Very well done.

Replayability: 7.5

You may enjoy the multiplayer, but I really didn’t. Regardless, there’s two games here, with a lot of gameplay and some may be driven to play this one through twice. With collectables available, there is a certain level of replayability in the campaign, but not comparable to other current titles.

Overall: 9.25

I was impressed yet again by how well Dark Athena was produced. It’s fun, it holds your attention, and everything about it just feels like a fresh experience and a nice break from your typical shooters. It’s got something for everyone, and if you just want to replay the original hit Escape from Butcher Bay, well that’s here too. A nice bundle, especially for fans of the films, and I can easily recommend it to next gen console owners everywhere.

By Paul Theimer

A second opinion

When you hear Valve, you think quality. Responsible for multiple Game of the Year award winners in Half-Life, Half-Life 2, and The Orange Box, Valve has unmistakenable wedged themselves into gaming history with a number of brilliantly concieved, innovative, and technically sound video games. Unlike my counterpart who began Left 4 Dead before the fixes and survival pack, I recently took a crack at the title the same week the new and free expansion was added. With Valve being the developer, my expectations were high, myself being a little tired of the zombie genre in movies and games, I wasn’t sure what my reaction would be to this game and how much I would enjoy it. Valve failed to disappoint yet again, and not only did I fall for the Left 4 Dead world almost immediately, i’m still addicted to this gruesome and chaotic zombie masterpiece, and my disgruntled opinion on the overused zombie genre quickly dissolved.

The game itself takes itself in the form of four zombie films, telling the tale of four survivors struggling to reach numerous safe houses in efforts to finally be rescued and removed from this apocalyptic hell. The streets are littered with the undead, who react to light, loud noises, and certain interactions with the enviornment around you. There are scattered and dumb undead that trip over their own feet after being startled upon viewing you, to the hordes that sprint in your direction in a blood thirsty rampage, and the special infected that are stronger and much more deadly. Car Alarms are sure to awake the dead and cause you a handful of brain craving zombies swarming to you, but luckily the pulsating blip from a pipebomb attracts them just as effectively. The AI Director literally rewrites the script everytime you play, no memorizing enemy placement here as it’s all regenerated everytime you play. This adds a ton of depth and replayability, as it’s never the same experience twice even if you continue to replay the same scenario. Teamwork is the key to survival as the game will remind you constantly, and this offers the true meaning of complete teamwork and tactics.

You have the choice of either a sub-machine gun, a shotgun, an assault rifle, or a hunting rifle as your primary weapon, and carry a sidearm with unlimited ammo just in case you are in a tight situation and cannot reload or run out of ammo. The start of each chapter begins within a locked safehouse, the walls are desperately scribbled with notes and warnings of those who sought shelter there previous to you. You tend to stop and read some of what’s on the walls, notes to loved ones from family who just couldn’t wait for them any longer, banter that the military isn’t sending help, and dying cries from former survivors claiming that “This is our fault” and “We deserve this”. It’s a small detail that adds to the overall feel and experience, and it adds that Valve charm that we have all come to know and love. I would have liked to see more variety in weapon choice, as what is listed above is really your only option aside from upgrading to an auto-shotgun later into chapters. Even if they mixed up the appearance of the provided weaponry, it would have added just a little more to the game. A M-16 on “death toll” as an assault rifle option, and an AK-47 on “dead air” for example, even if they functioned identically, the difference in appearance would have made things slightly more interesting.

Online play is a blast, and I agree completely with D that being the infected is a little more enjoyable. I remember the first time I hid on the bottom level of an airport and lassoed a straggling survivor with my tongue on the upper level and dragged him to his demise. It’s a completely innovative experience that they’ve never really mastered in a multiplayer mode until now. It leaves for a great online experience that has more variety than your typical human vs human deathmatch. You can also go four player cooperative and blast through the scenarios with your buddies or take on survival mode and see how long you can last. There’s a lot of option, and the cooperative gameplay tends to be a little more attractive than the single player experience. The survivor AI is okay when you are playing by yourself, with minor issues that I ran into including being the first to ascend a ladder, being incapitated, and my three AI teammates being unable to figure out how to climb the ladder and save me. This only happened on two occassions, and it was reasonably my fault for getting further ahead, but a little more attention from the AI would have been appreciated. They will also not let human players take priority on medical supplies, they swarm first aid kits like jackals leaving you at times without one strapped to your back.

With very minor issues aside, Left 4 Dead is a fresh and inspiring take not only in the First Person Shooting genre, but in the whole Zombie genre as well. It’s different, addictive, completely fun especially with friends, and if Valve continues to support the game with downloadable content, especially free DLC, Left 4 Dead is going to be around for a long time. A lot of people play it online, and there’s really no arguing why the population is still so heavy because it’s just so well done. I can’t help but to agree with the Game of the Year status, as Left 4 Dead puts itself in the ranks of some of the best games available to date, and with Resident Evil 5 being released and RE supposedly being the authority in zombie gaming, I think Left 4 Dead beats it out on many levels. Buy this game, don’t even rent it, just go drop the cash into it today. You’ve already waited too long to play this game if you haven’t tried it.

Gameplay: 9.0

Graphics: 7.5

Replayability: 9.5

Overall: 9.5

P. Theimer

paulrtheimer@yahoo.com

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