Metro 2033 - Xbox 360

Up next is a game from Gamefly. I saw a preview for Metro 2033 in Official Xbox Magazine a few months ago and thought it looked kind of awesome, like a darker Fallout 3. I haven't heard much about since then, I haven't even really seen in reviews on it good or bad.

I played a little bit of it last night, it was fun. A tad linear, but fun. Guess we'll see if it continues being fun.

Squid.

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem - Review

Eternal Darkness was the second Gamecube game I ever bought. I remember playing it and very much enjoying it. The sanity effects were amazing, I remember the first time I got the black screen with the green "VIDEO" text in the upper right corner I scrambled for my remote thinking I had accidentally hit the input button on it. I never finished the game and I always regretted this, it just seemed like such an great game.

I remember this game being incredibly spooky, I remember this game being amazing, I remember this game... wrong?

Having replayed and beaten Eternal Darkness I can honestly say that I don't exactly see what I saw in this game. Don't get me wrong, Eternal Darkness is a good game, or could have been a good game, if it weren't saddled with gameplay problems.

Here's a rule I go by with video games: I should never die due to poor camera angles. Sure, in all games you're going to have it where you might die once or twice because the camera went wonky for a second... but in Eternal Darkness I died many times due to the poor camera angles. It wasn't that the camera angle was occasionally bad, it's that the camera angle was almost ALWAYS bad. I understand that the camera angles in horror/survival games tend to be different, they don't want you to be able to see what's going to jump out at you long before it does. However, Eternal Darkness takes this and makes it ten times worse. When running down a hall the camera should not be facing toward my characters face looking behind me, and yet it was... constantly. The camera angles in this game were absolutely atrocious and got me killed many times, or made the game harder than it needed to be. I was killed several times because the camera was so high above me I couldn't tell what was actually killing my character. The camera wasn't the only thing wrong with this game, but it was certainly the worst thing wrong with this game.

While playing this game there were so many things that aggravated me I started making a list because I wasn't sure I would be able to remember them all. That's a pretty bad sign for a game, so here it is, my list. I'm sure there are still things missing because I started this about halfway through the game.

- Magick sometimes takes too long to cast. In the game you have different powers of magick, ranging from three point to seven point. Three point magick takes the shortest time to cast, and seven is the longest. I'm not going to say that this is necessarily a problem because I know this is how it's supposed to actually be in the game. For the most part it's fine, but occasionally there are times when you just don't have the time you need to cast a certain spell when you need to.

- Finishing moves take too long. When you kill an enemy you have to "finish him" to regain back your sanity that you lost from seeing this enemy. The problem being that for the most part these finishing moves take just a little too long for my taste. If you fight a group of four zombies you can't kill one and finish it, because the other three will wail on you while you do. So you have to kill all four before you finish off the first one... the only problem with that is that if you wait too long to finish them off, occasionally they come back to life.

- Not enough sanity given back. This has to do with my last point. When you see an enemy you lose sanity, when you kill and finish off that enemy you regain sanity... but not enough. It very much feels like you regain about 3/4 of the sanity you lost. I may be wrong, but it just doesn't seem like you get enough back. Which constantly leads to you having to refill your sanity meter via magick.

- Enemies in groups suck. I mentioned above that killing off a group of enemies and finishing them is a hassle, but groups of enemies in general just kind of suck. I had it where they would corner me and kill me and there was pretty much nothing I could do about it. Every time I would try to fight back one of them would hit me interrupting my attack. I had it where one enemy would hit me and knock me back into another enemy who would hit me and knock me back into the first... usually this would end in either my death or serious injury. This wasn't a huge problem and didn't happen a lot, but it happened enough times to aggravate me.

- Targeting kind of sucked. The targeting in this game was kind of awful. I would tend to accidentally attack an enemies arm when I mean to hit his head. And if there was an enemy who had a weak spot I guarantee targeting and attacking that spot is going to be a pain in the ass. And trying to switch from targeting one enemy to another? Forget it.

- Swords are a pain to use in closed quarters. I know, you're thinking "duh... of course they are." and I completely agree... kind of. Any time you were on stairs or in a hall, fighting with a sword was pretty horrible. I only bring this up because for the most part you're almost always fighting in closed quarters, and most of your characters only have a sword for a weapon. See how that could be a problem?

- Moving while using magic stops the spell but still uses up MP. This one I'm kind of torn on, because it makes sense... but still aggravated me. Mostly I don't know how times I accidentally bumped my controller and screwed up a spell. It mostly just got kind of annoying after a while, especially since some spells take a while to cast.

- Speaking of moving... are all of my characters out of shape, asthmatic, smokers? I know this is something that is used in a lot of survival horror games. Your character can only run so far until they have to catch their breath. I guess walking adds to the tension and makes it harder to run away from enemies... but for the love of god, can my character run more than five feet without having to stop and catch their breath? Please? I won't say I'm the pinnacle of physical fitness, but hell even I when faced by a zombie think I could run down a forty foot hallway without stopping to catch my breath. My character however could not.

- Still speaking of moving... that's how you regain MP. This idea seemed kind of cool at first. No health potions, you just regain MP while you move. It seemed like a good idea till I had to cast three spells but only had enough MP for two. You know what you get to do then? Run around in circles trying to regain MP until you have enough to cast that third spell. Boy, sounds like fun doesn't it? I would have enjoyed either MP "potions" or mixture of both. Make it so I regain MP while running but also have potions in the game. As it is, running in circles to regain MP is kind of lame.

- Reloading and moving. This is kind of like the magick spells and moving problems. If you move while reloading a gun you just stopped reloading... the problem being is that you only get to reload when your gun is empty. So if your revolver takes five bullets and you move while you're reloading and have only put in three bullets, you have three bullets and can't reload again until you shoot them. Again, super annoying and serves no real purpose.

- The sanity effects. Okay, I will admit they're still pretty awesome... but they have a ton of them and I saw a small portion, but I did see a lot of them over and over. I went and looked at a list of sanity effect and realized I didn't see about half of them. It would have been nice to see some new ones instead of seeing the same ones again and again.

- The voice acting is kind of crappy. It's not horrible, but it's certainly not good either.

The next two have to deal specifically with dying:

- You've died, it takes too long to back to the game. You've died. You now have to see the Nintendo logo, the dolby surround sound screen, the main title screen, the load screen, choose a game to load, are you sure you want to load this game? Part of what makes a survival horror game scary is being in the moment... when you have to do all this crap to get back to the game it takes you out of the moment. Couldn't you just give me a simple "reload from last save?" option when I die?

- Die right before a cut scene? You get to enjoy it again! I hate this in games. Cut scenes should be skippable for this very reason. I don't want to HAVE to watch a cut scene more than once.

The next two are going to be about the story/game itself:

- The story is too long. I know, I know you're all going "He's lost his mind!" but hear me out. I probably spent about twenty-four or so hours beating this game. Towards the end it felt like a chore. The game felt like it dragged on. There was definitely a few "Congratulations! You've made it to the point B! Now go all the way back to point A because you can open up a door there now!" There seemed to be a lot of backtracking. If this game would have been 15-20 hours long I don't think that some of things I found so aggravating would have felt that way.

- The story is also a little garbled. I paid attention and still was somewhat lost. I think it's because there are WAY too many characters. You control twelve characters throughout the game, each in a different time period and each telling a different part of the story. In my opinion it was just a few too many people to keep track of. I think the story would have been a lot better if you had cut out about half of the characters and fleshed out the rest. None of the characters stories really stood out to me because I only got to play them for a brief period of time before I had to control a different character and learn their story.

Like I said, this is a good game that was ruined by its gameplay. I can understand why they did the story the way they did, and overall it wasn't a bad story. But if you take a pretty good story and pile on a ton of aggravating gameplay aspects you get a bad game that could have been so much better.

Squid.

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem - Gamecube

I've decided to play something on the Gamecube because I miss being wireless. Eternal Darkness is one of the few Gamecube games I own, but from what I remember it was awesome. I don't remember it being all that scary, but I do remember that the "tricks" the games starts playing on you were amazingly cool. Hoping that this is a game that actually was awesome, and this isn't just nostalgia talking. I guess we'll find out.

Squid.

The Ren & Stimpy Show Presents: Stimpy's Invention - Review

I love Ren & Stimpy. I used to watch the show all the time growing up. I still have a Stimpy doll that farts and tongue comes out when you squeeze its stomach... and yet I remember almost nothing about the show. I remember a few of the characters and the general feel of the show, but I couldn't tell you the plot of even one episode. So when it came time to give this game a whirl I was kind of excited to play it, perhaps it would bring back some of those long lost memories.

First off, let me say this: This game is incredibly short. Not Contra short, but getting there. It took me about an hour to beat the entire game. Not that it wasn't a fun hour, but I kind of expected my game to last longer then three episodes of the TV show it's based off of.

Overall Ren & Stimpy: Stimpy's Invention was enjoyable. It captured the wackiness and fun of the TV show. I enjoyed how you controlled one of the characters with the other being AI controlled. Sure the character you weren't controlling usually fell off of things and overall was kind of dumb but Powdered Toast Man always brought them back fairly quickly, plus you constantly used the other character for "special moves". Need to get up somewhere high? Ren would squeeze Stimpy and you'd shoot up like a rocket. Need to hit a far away target? Stimpy can pick up and throw Ren like a boomerang. There's tons of special moves that you'll use throughout the game. Most of them being very quirky and fun.

Now on to the bad. One of the special moves I had a very hard time with. It was when you pressed UP + C which is supposed to make you do a special move to get to higher points. I had a difficult time getting it to work, I would say it only worked about a third of the time. The only problem being, it could possibly have been my controller. I only have one Genesis controller and who knows how well it works. But let's just say that it's not my controller, even if this is the case while it was annoying, it certainly wasn't game breakingly annoying.

Also I would have liked to have seen different special moves for the characters. While they technically have different moves, those moves do the exact same thing. So pressing UP + C as Ren would make you squeeze air out of Stimpy and shoot you up like a rocket, with Stimpy it would make you turn Ren into a helicopter.. both of these just you to higher places. I would have liked to have used separate characters for separate things, you can beat the entire game as just one character. I would have liked to have NEEDED to use both characters to beat the game.

Also, I would have liked the game to be a longer.

Sure there are cons to this game, but other than the the length of this game I would say they're rather insignificant. This was a fun game and really did well in preserving the entire feel of the TV show. If you're a fan of Ren & Stimpy and want a fun but short game, this is for you. I'm also guessing this game would be pretty fun playing two player mode. If you can pick this game up for $5 or $6 I would say to give it a go.

Squid.

The Ren & Stimpy Show Presents: Stimpy's Invention - Sega Genesis

The next game I play will be the game of my brother's choosing: The Ren & Stimpy Show Presents: Stimpy's Invention. This game also has the distinction of being the game with the longest title out of all of the video games I own.

I remember nothing about this game, I don't know if this is one of those games that I owned when I originally had my Genesis or if this is a game I bought in my teen years because I remember really liking the show. I honestly am not sure if I've ever even played this game. So this is a new experience all around. Hopefully it's a good experience.

Squid.

Goldeneye - Review

Take off the rose colored glasses people.

If you read about Goldeneye on the internet long enough you'll find that the majority of people agree that God came down to Mount Sinai and handed the game to Moses.

Artists rendition.

Everyone loves this game. Everyone agrees that this is one of the best games ever made. Everyone thinks this games STILL holds up to modern day games. Everyone but me.

Goldeneye was a great game. Goldeneye is not still a great game. Goldeneye is still an okay game.

I was very excited to replay Goldeneye, I enjoyed this game very much when it was released. I always enjoyed first person shooters and they were probably my favorite genre back in the day... but first person shooters rarely translated well to the consoles. Before Goldeneye the only FPS that I remember enjoying at all on the console was a Sega Genesis game called Zero Tolerance. I was pretty much raised as a PC gamer, until recently I would say that I was almost exclusively a PC gamer. So I had a wealth of great first person shooter games to choose from. So when I first heard about Goldeneye I was very intrigued about how good everyone seemed to think it was. And it was! Goldeneye was a very good console FPS, and was probably a lot of peoples introduction to the genre.

For it's time. Going back to it now I really started to notice Goldeneye's many flaws. The problem I have is that I'm not sure if the flaws are the games problem or if it's a technology problem. I could go on about how the graphics seems absolutely archaic now, but I know that it's not the games problem it's a technology problem. So I don't know if that's something I can legitimately complain about.

But there are things in it that turned what could have been a fun game from the past into a frustrating mess.

The AI is hit or miss in this game, I understand that this is most likely a technology problem, but there's times in the game where it feels more like a game issue. Mostly because there is times where the AI is spot on, in fact I will say throughout the game the AI is good for it time... but at other points it absolutely awful. There were times that I could stand five feet in front of a bad guy and he wouldn't even notice me... however there were also times when I'd be getting shot and had no idea where it was coming from because the guy was so far away the N64 couldn't even render out to that distance.

I thanked God for auto-aim in this game, that actual aiming in this game was just too non-responsive for it to be very helpful. The auto-aim really helped. Sometimes. It was hit or miss... quite literally. There were times where the auto-aim was spot on and worked wonderfully, but there where other times when I pointed my gun at the person and managed to shoot an entire magazine without even hitting the person.

This game also loved two of my most hated things in video games. Escort missions and timed missions. There weren't a lot of timed missions, but the few that there were turned out kind of annoying. There were however quite a few escort missions. I'm not sure who's genius idea it was to invent a mission in a game that paired you up with a horribly underpowered person that had a tendency to be killed, but I hate them. I hate them with all my heart. If Natalia got killed one more time in the control room mission I swear I was going to throw my controller through the TV set.

The objectives. Each mission you had certain objectives that you needed to complete before you would successfully finish that mission. The problem being that the objectives weren't always all that clear. There were times when you had to talk to a certain person, but unfortunately a lot of the people looked alike. There were several occasions where I would walk into a room and shoot the person I was supposed to talk to because he looked like a bad guy, hell occasionally the person I was supposed to talk to had a gun. You could also finish the missions without completing the objective, which would cause you to fail that mission. This wouldn't have been a problem except that occasionally to finish a mission all you needed to do was walk through a door. So if you hadn't finished all the objectives and you just happen to see a door that looks like all the other doors, that might be where the mission ends. It doesn't give you any warning about not finishing the objectives, it just lets you fail the mission making you start again from the very beginning. Which leads me to my next point...

Normally I hate save points, but ANYTHING would have been a nice. A save point, a checkpoint, something to save my progress in a level. There's nothing more frustrating than dying at the end of a mission and realizing you have to start all the way over from the first. There were levels that I had to play several times to beat, you know what's not all that awesome? Having to start at the beginning each time.

At the end of the day Goldeneye was fun and still holds a bit of nostalgia for me, but people really need to see it for what it is. Occasionally I'll hear people talk about how kids today should really play classic games before they start into games nowadays. We need to get over that. You know what? Some older games still are good, but for the most part the reason they're good is because you remember them being good. For someone who has never played them there's no sentimental value to them. To these people they're just old games that can't compete with new ones. Sure new games owe a lot to old games, if there wasn't Wolfenstein there might not have been Doom and without Doom they're might not have been Half Life, but that doesn't need you need to play Doom to appreciate Half Life. Was Goldeneye a great game in its time? Very much so, up until Halo was made it was probably one of the best console first person shooters. Is it still a great game that everyone should have to play? No. It just doesn't hold up to the test of time. Now it's a good game that is surrounded by way too much nostalgia.

Let the hate mail begin.

Squid.

Goldeneye - Nintendo 64

Since my Gamecube playing is put on hold until I get a new memory card we're going to play some Nintendo 64. Goldeneye for a lot of people was their first introduction to first person shooters. I dare say that up until the point of it's release it was one of if not the only good console FPS. I however was a PC gamer which meant I had been playing first person shooters since Wolfenstein. However I remember I was even impressed with it. I was in ninth or tenth grade when Goldeneye was released I remember hearing someone talking about how realistic it was, his exact quote was "Shooting people in the game is almost like shooting people in real life because it's that realistic!"

I look at games now in comparison and I find it fascinating that in 1997 these were cutting edge graphics. Now we have cell phones that could probably run this game. Still, fun is fun and let's see if Goldeneye is still as fun as I remember it being.

Squid.

Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat - Review

I remember a few things about Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat when I originally played it. I remember enjoying it, I remember thinking it was very fun, and I remember getting fairly far in the game. This time around things were a bit different. First off, as far as I can tell I didn't get far in the game at all. My original save was maybe three to four hours into the game. And as for the liking and enjoying it? Boy how times have changed.

Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat isn't a bad game per se, but it does have a ton of little things that all added up to me not really enjoying myself while playing it. It was the little things here and there that turned what could have been a very fun game into something that was frustrating and annoying.

First things first, the targeting. There is none. Before I go off about this I just want to say that I'm not sure there was targeting in games on the Xbox, it might not have been capable of it... but good god does this game need it. What I'm talking about is locking on to one target. If I want to throw a keg of black powder at a bad guy, I want it to hit. In this game I don't know how many times my hits were off to the side because I wasn't looking directly at my target. This goes for the land battles as well as the sea battles.

The camera. The camera wasn't awful on land, but at sea it occasionally would get very annoying. By the end of the game I had pretty much figured it out, but camera angles should be something very intuitive and natural. Not something I have to "figure out."

The voice acting. The voice acting ranged from awful to decent. I've heard worse, but I've also certainly heard better.

The goddamn fetch quests. Hey! Katrina! I need you to find these stars for me. Hey! Katrina! Would you see if you can also find these headhunter masks? There's several of these in the game. You have to find some trinkets for some person. And of course they're scattered all over the many lands. Now granted only one of these types of quests is mandatory to do to finish the game but it was still annoying as hell. Especially when you considered that they gave you no real clues as to where some of these items were. Not even a "Hey, this item is on this island." You were supposed to go exploring and find them for yourself, or have found them in the past. I finally had to get a walkthrough to find some of the items because I had no clue as to where they were. It ruined the pace of the game completely for me. I didn't want to have to wander from island to island trying to find a treasure chest. Especially when I had to go a loading screen every new island I went to, and loading screens is where I tended to get dirty disc errors.

I'm not saying that all of Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat was bad. Exploring the different islands was kind of fun, the story was decent, and the different islands where very well themed and each had their own feel to them. The bad guys were interesting and the bosses were fun, though some where incredibly difficult. I think the thing that disappoints me the most is that it seems with a little polishing the game could have been so much better. It had a lot of appeal and could have potentially been a very good game, but the things it had working against it just turned it into a mediocre game.

Squid.