A Devil's Playground: A Look at Sandbox Games (Part One)

When people think of Sandbox Style games, they usually immediately think of Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Dead Redemption, or any other Rockstar Game. Then, the passing glimpses of the Spider-Man games come to mind. But what about the games that could have had that moment in the sun? Mercenaries 2 and The Saboteur, while not exactly stand out games, were open world games. The one that comes closest to GTA 4 is Mafia 2, but it still doesn't hit off among most Sandbox fans.

This is kind of sad, to me, really, because the over all mechanics of the whole open world system is done better in Mafia 2 than in Grand Theft Auto. Hand to hand combat feels like a game instead of a chore, each vehicle does drive differently, but all do respond to your commands. The world feels alive with actual people other than pallet swaps of the same three people. There are more variations in missions. Even the collectables, wanted posters and (while anachronistic) Playboy centerfolds feels right.

GTA 4 has one leg up: mini games. Yes, Red Dead Redemption had mini games too, but it also had a story everyone could relate to. GTA 4's story, to me, feels unpolished due to the fact that the mini games are essential to the over all game itself where RDR's are optional. The story in GTA 4 feels less relatable to me due to the fact that I was born in America, but I can still feel sympathetic for Niko Bellic because he feels lied to by his cousin, and, moreso, by his own over zealousness for the American Dream and revenge. Revenge is perfectly a human relatable emotion, and one that's a little over used for this type of game, in my opinion.

Part of what makes The Saboteur and Mercenaries 2 fall in the sandbox game is the lack of mission variation. Blow stuff up, run away, hide, repeat (hide in Saboteur, stand there like Chuck Norris in Mercenaries 2). For a $9.99 downloadable game, that's not bad. For a $60 game... that's not a whole hell of a lot. The Spider-Man games did it a little bit better by adding more mission variation, such as stopping robberies and saving falling civilians. But the over and under load of missions only serve to distract from what the sandbox game is supposed to be, often pulling you away from the exploration. GTA 4 does the same thing with the main missions being cell phone calls that will put a marker on your map, making it so the only path way you can have at the time on your GPS is to the mission.

This is unacceptable when you start off in a game. You have no way of setting a point to save your game without ending the mission. The map the game comes with doesn't even have the save points marked on it, but has everything else. Combined with the sheer scope of the city, it makes the game over complicated for new gamers, giving them too much to do, introduced in too little time, hoping that they'll catch on by the end of the game. Some will stay dedicated to it, but most new comers will flee from it like a lobster from boiling water.

Next time, I'll be talking about how other genres can be made into open world games, and how genres beyond action/adventure integrate into the system so well that you may not realize it at first.

Umm... Wolverines?: The "Homefront" Review

In the year 2013, gas will be $20 a gallon. By 2019, we'll be fleeing to Mexico because it's better there, than in the US. By 2026, Korea will unleash an EMP that blacks out all of America, and take over. On top of all this, the Army will be so badly managed that they'll be scattered into two teams of, I'm not kidding, a platoon each.

This is the plot of Homefront, and while the premise of Korea taking over the US could be interesting and scary, the improbability of some of the events happening this fast is one of many things that makes the game's story less intense than it should be. The game seriously seems to forget that the world is suffering from a bad economy, not just the US. It wouldn't be so bad if the game didn't look at the recession with a myopic view. What makes the story all the less impacting is the fact that the team of people you're working with range from bland to undeveloped to being as bad as the enemy.

You're character is saved by Conner, a Resistance member who takes pleasure from torturing the enemy. He leads you to a helicopter that you have to fly in order to steal fuel from the Koreans. This is all your character is good for, because you will die from everything. It's not uncommon to die in one hit in this game. This wouldn't be as bad if it weren't for the fact that you can die because enemies can shoot through and around your cover. I died more times from a bullet turning around a wall I was behind than from getting shot outside of cover.

At its core, there's a almost decent shooter somewhere. That is, when you can get the game to work. The auto-snap aim never works properly, either not snapping onto an enemy within sight range, or missing completely despite having the sight right on them, or by the enemy knowing exactly where you'll hit, and moving an inch to the side. I want to know how exactly every FPS has these enemies, and why our military can never seem to be able to do that in games. What technology is this? Or is it witchery?

The set piece battles are thrown in, but at points pretty good... especially considering that most of them have been done before. The lone one I can think of that wasn't done to death was hijacking trucks from a helicopter. The rest of them feel like they've been done before and better. The same goes for the graphics and acting. The graphics look like the were done in the beginning of the seventh generation of consoles, when we didn't know the extent of what the tech could do. Characters don't seem to animate properly, mouths never close, and the textures are blurry. Voice acting feels like a "C" movie. If Bruce Campbell, Chuck Norris, and Sylvester Stallone can all out act you, you're doing something wrong (note to them... please don't murder me).

This is disappointing too, because the game has the spark that it could've been good. To top it off, it took me about four hours to finish it, and it just ends abruptly. I understand setting up for a sequel, but can we at least end this chapter properly? Even Halo knew that!

Homefront isn't worth $60-- hell, it isn't worth $40. It's a budget title with an advertising team big enough to make it seem more important than it is. Give this one a pass, because even if you buy it for $20 in a few months or a year, you're more than likely going to give it a passing play anyway, and then forget about it.

Overall:

D

+ Almost a good shooter

+ Interesting story...

- ... Made improbable by a rushed timeline

- ... and Characters that are unlikable

- Guerrilla tactics? That's head-on assault right?

- What's cover?

- Acting?!

- Good graphics?! What are these words?!

Cover Won't Save You, Now... Nor Will Stupid Name: The "Killzone 3"

It took me a year to beat Killzone 2, mostly because I was enjoying, but also because while it was fair, it was very, very difficult to me due to the control scheme, and the fact that weapons have a sense of inertia behind. It took me four days to beat Killzone 3. I was used to the controls, and I figured that it'd have the same, natural feel as the second game did. I enjoyed KZ2's story, combat realism, and it's serious nature. War isn't fun and games, and KZ2 blended them very well, which is a challenge.

How I wish I could say that about Killzone 3. Let's start with story. Whoever said that the second's story was too serious, kiss my ass. I would gladly take another serious story over what this story was. After Scolar Visari's murder in the second game, two people are vying to be Helghan's dictator: Jorhan Stahl (Malcolm McDowell), a weapon's manufacturer who makes the Joker look sane, and Orlock (Ray Winstone), an Admiral who has no defining characteristics from a Helghast soldier other than a scar. The remaining Earth's Army (ISA), including Sev (seriously... Sev? I always hated that name), Rico, and the combat-eager Captain Narville, now have to fight against two Helghast Armies to get back to Earth, before Earth is destroyed. You may think I spoiled it, but the plot if that predictable.

The story is also horribly written. I about used the disc as target practice when Narville refused to warn Earth that they were going to be destroyed because he's there to "protect my men." Imagine this: A squad in Afghanistan finds that al-Qaeda has nukes aimed at the US. The commander decides instead of fighting to warn the US, or prevent the launch, that it's a better idea to surrender because his men would survive. Hint: They probably wouldn't survive, but it's better to fight for the cause that they are fighting for in the first place. Not only is Narville's choice very cowardly, but very unlike his character. In the second, he was the one wanting blood. Here, he wants to wave a white flag.

Added to the game play is a cover mechanic. You hold a button to stay in cover, and you can aim over cover to shoot enemies. The problem is that cover is useless seeing as your head will always stick out of waist high cover when ducking, and enemies can somehow shoot through a four feet thick metal wall. Figuring you die in one to three shots, this is aggravating, even more so when enemies take a whole magazine to die. Guerrilla Games had to have seen this in testing, along with Rico constantly stopping you in the middle of trying to get somewhere safe to tell you that he should lead the way. At first, I thought this was a bug, but now I'm sure that the son of a bitch was using me as a meat shield, shortly after he did this, I'd die, and he'd scream, "I can't get to you!" despite standing right in front of me. The solution to these issues was that your teammates can heal you, and ammo points are abound. The first one loses any merit because either your teammate can't get to where you are, or one of the two people who can heal you aren't in that mission.

We also have a lot of on rails parts, and vehicles. The biggest one is the Jetpack, which allows the player to jump really high. This is used in two sections of the game, one of them being absolutely useless. These sections feel half-assed, as if the developers decided that it was a cool idea at first, but didn't take the time to flesh it out. Again, that type of design doesn't work well.

While we're on things that don't work, why is there an unknown female character who contributes nothing to the story replacing a character from the second game that people liked? Natko's in the Co-Op campaign, but not the single player. Instead, we get Jammer, and I still have no idea what she was doing in the game. She does absolutely nothing until the end, and even then, that's getting her ass kicked until a nameless male soldier saves her. It's sad on more than the level of the man saving woman trope. The fight comes from absolutely nowhere (one second she's fine, the next second she's in the middle of the fight), and the nameless guy has more personality than her. He's the "Star Trek" red shirt, and he does more than her.

To say that Killzone 3 is a disappointment is minor. While it's no where near the worst game I've played, the fact that it's as poorly written and designed as it is, especially when compared to the first two games, is insulting. When I was assigned this and Bulletstorm, I thought this was the one I'd like more. I was wrong. If you want to see how the trilogy ends (and watch the depressingly abrupt ending that has no closure), rent it. Otherwise, play a better shooter... like Killzone 2.

Overall:

C-

+ Good graphics

+/- Nearly Capable Game Play

- Broken Cover System

- Bad story

- Bad writing

- Vehicle Sections that Add Nothing

- Poor Design Choices and Bad Programming

- Seriously... a Downer Ending?

- Jammer? Sev? Orlock?

(BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP) You (BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP): The "Bulletstorm" Review

I have become the horror guy for a good reason, yet, I enjoy being the "Shooter" guy a lot more as of late. I guess that's why I was assigned Bulletstorm, a game that makes shooters cry.

The plot for Bulletstorm is simple. You're Grayson Hunt, a space pirate drunk on booze and revenge (mainly booze) against General Saranno, a space confederation general who hired Gray and his team, only to betray them. Gray does something incredibly stupid (again, drunk) that causes his pirate gang to mostly die, taking Saranno's ship with them to the planet Elysium. The once paradise is now over run by mutants and bikers, and it's up to Gray to escape with his remaining pirate.

Aiding him is his new toy, the Leash, which allows Gray to toss an enemy (or "thump" a room of them) into the air. Along with that is the Skillshot system in which the more complicated or original your kill is, the higher score you'll get to spend on upgrades. The first time you accomplish a skill shot, it's worth more than the subsequent times i.e. "Mercy" (shooting a guy in the groin then shooting or kicking his head off) is worth 500 the first time and 100 the other times. These shots, while inventive and some of them taking a lot of practice, would get old over time, except for the fact that there are so many of them to do, and so many ways to combine them, that the game encourages experimentation. This, in turn, adds something we rarely get to see in FPS's lately, the "F" word.

No, not that one (we see that all the time, this game especially). I mean "fun." Yes, Bulletstorm is a lot of fun. Of course, how couldn't it be? In the course of it's lush 8-12 hour campaign, you'll drill enemies, free a cyborg from a man eating plant's belly, and control a robot dinosaur named Waggleton P. Tallylicker. The only low point is the poorly written climax, in which Gray seems to forget everything he has in his reach. This does lead to an inevitable ending, yet it feels more hopeful. By the end of the game, you want more of it. A lot more.

Luckily, there's "Echoes" mode, which allows you to replay parts of the levels, but with the emphasis on skill shots. The one multiplayer mode, Anarchy, plays like Gears of War 2's "Horde mode," in which more and more enemies come to attack you in waves. Playing on a team means team Skillshots. Too bad EA constantly closes servers before you can long on to play.

Despite some weird hiccups, namely getting stuck in walls, the game looks and sounds great. The voice work is over the top, but so is the writing. How can you take any of these character's seriously when they use "Butter Dick Jones" or "Dick-Tits" as a way to express dismay? What's tricky is the game isn't always laughs, and that's where the writing truly shines. On top of that, the characters look human enough to be related to. Ladies, you finally have a realistic depiction of a female in a video game that isn't supposed to be real. I mean, she doesn't have the impossible proportions of Lara Croft. This is very refreshing to see.

I thought that Bulletstorm would bore the hell out of me in the first ten minutes. Surprisingly, it;s more fun than any other FPS I've played recently. Drop your jocks and pull up your socks, because Bulletstorm is here to stay.

Overall: B+

+ Actually fun

+ Skillpoints

+ Great writing

+ A Robot Dino!!!!

- A Bit buggy

- Online servers are crap