Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition

 Figured I'd replay this since its been about a decade and a new version is available and was on sale for cheap

Well the second time around it doesn't really hold up like I thought it did in my memory.
I played it on the second hardest difficulty and here are my basic thoughts:

+ The graphics can look pretty with some nice draw distances and big vistas
+ The gameplay is fun and arcadey, mostly sliding all over the place going really fast and seeing all your kills get scored was fun
+ The controls are fast and fluid
+Enemy variety is decent, many different types with distinct features such as radioactive guys that will burn you if you kill too close,  suicide bomber guys, big monsters that you need to damage their weak parts, regular soldiers, snipers etc..

-None of the levels are memorable and the overall variety isn't that great. There are some cave areas, some ship areas, but everything else is just the same destroyed city street

- While the enemy variety is decent, theyre so bullet spongey that it just isn't all that enjoyable to fight them. Even the damn characters in the game have a quote "Wow these guys are just bullet sponges" . I mean it's probably because I put it on the second hardest difficulty but I don't know, it just wasn't all that fun. It means that the only viable weapons are some powerful handcannon and a shotgun. The machine gun that you always carry is basically worthless, taking 100-200 bullets to kill a single enemy. 

- The weapon variety is disappointing. There is a handful of weapons, but I only found a pistol, shotgun, and this spike shooting gun viable.  The guns just aren't all that exciting in general to be honest with you. They can get this charged shot ability but still it kind of just feels like a chore going through the enemies sometimes. I guess the actual shooting isn't all that fun? 

- The story and dialogue is pretty bad. It's all just corny dick and fart jokes that 14 year olds would find funny. Halfway through the game I just muted it, put it in windowed mode, watched youtube videos / listened to music and played like that. It got too lame and stupid. The characters aren't all that interesting either. 

- Game dragged on, Even though its only an 8 hour game, I was left feeling like I was ready for it to be over around the halfway mark. 

- You're not ever really 'doing' anything objective wise. It's all just go room to room area to area, kill enemies, and then the next dialogue part. No objectives stand out or anything. Its either that or just walk up to a wall and kick it / flip a switch.

Overall its a decent arcade shooter game but not one that will be on my top charts or anything, just some OK filler. The game ends on a cliffhanger and a high emphasis on a Bulletstorm 2, but I don't think that will be happening lol.

6/10

Sniper Ghost Warrior 2

 

As I complete surprise this game is actually quite worse than the first, which is shocking. This seems at first glance like a total step up in all areas, the graphics are much nicer, it really isn't a bad looking game and has some impressive visuals for a budget title,  it seems much more polished, it uses the modern crytek engine, all the mechanics got an overhaul, seems higher budget etc

But there is one fatal flaw:
This, much more than the first game, is hardly a video game, but more a 'Simon says' simulator.
The entire game you have a sidekick with you whos entire purpose is to walk you through every single step in the game, telling you exactly what to do, when to do it, and how to do it.

The entire loop of the game consists of waiting for your sidekick to tell you "shoot x guy"  " go here"  "wait for my say"  and it really doesn't feel like you're actually playing a game, but rather an actor in a really boring play. This alone makes this game a worse experience than the first Sniper Ghost warrior, which atlesast had some modicum of freedom.

The final nail in the coffin that solidifies this as a horrible slog and all around worse than the first game is:

No longer can you quicksave. The game operates on a checkpoint system, however, the checkpoints can be at times 5-10 minutes apart from eachother

Now, this usually would not be a bad thing. But as I've stated before how the game is more or less a 'simon says'  game, you can only imagine how much of a boring, painful, irritating slog it becomes having to wait for your stupid sidekick to repeat the same boring script for the fourth time, having to be his lap dog and bark at his every order, all because you got impatient the first time and shot too early and ruined the scene or something. Truly a shocking gameplay design.

Usually I actually prefer when games don't allow you to quicksave, and force you to 'git gud' to pass segments, but here, there is no skill. There is no player agency. Simply if you deviate from the pre-defined script, the game punishes you and you have to go back and do the whole thing again.


Finally, another thing that makes this an awful experience compared to the first game, is the fact that levels are 10x longer than before.

In the previous game, the average level could be anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes long. This is rediculously short, but I liked the pace and sense of fast progress you got, it made the game a breeze to play through with such clear cut stop-start points

However, now, the missions are anywhere from 30-50 minutes long. And they're not interesting, fun, or enjoyable, as I've explained previously.

The game is also twice the length of the first, which makes it even more a tough pill to swallow.

I don't feel the need to talk more about this game. Yes almost everything techincally is better about it, the gameplay philosophy is just atrocious. This could of easily been a much better game than the first, but they botched it.
 

3/10

Sniper: Ghost Warrior

 

Yet another budget title from City Interactive. This developer makes the most bargain bin 'arcade' games out there. Arcade in the sense that there is hardly ever any story, and its just pure gameplay.  This game is incredibly simple and repetitive, you enter every level with a giant objective marker and you run towards it. It's funny how you think of a Sniper being some stealthy subtle mastermind, but half of this game you are blazing through outposts and fortresses with assault rifles or turrets and shit its pretty funny.

This is what I like to call a 'Quicksave shooter'  where you constantly mash F5 button after every kill because you don't want to lose progress and why would you? Which makes the gameplay really trivial but thats what the developers intended so..
 
Speaking of those sections, the guns handle awfully. Yes its a sniper game so you would hope to expect the assault rifles to handle like shit, but they are forcing you to use them and honestly it makes my head spin to shoot them. The screen shakes so damn much and the muzzle flash takes up half the screen you cant see what youre shooting. And To make things worse there is hardly any impact or satisfying reaction when you shoot enemies, so you barely even know if youre shooting anyone.


The other half of the game is sniping obviously. It's as generic as it can get. The whole game is basically in a jungle, and I must admit for an extremely budget title the graphics and textures and enviorments arent all that bad. There are some decent shadow effects running all around the enviorment and the whole game seems to be inspired by Far Cry a bit. you have the tropical island mood, as well as a hit 'Q' to heal yourself by injecting a needle.  Your health revives up to 30, but anything past that requires manual heals.  But I just found for the majority of the game to keep your health at 30 and just tank shots or simply run past enemies and let your health regen up to 30.

The enviorment is pretty linear but it almost gives the illusion of open space. The maps feel big because of the tropical location, and it is like you can wander around as you please, but upon further inspection there are a ton of invisible walls and barriers so..

The AI is so piss poor and dumb they mostly just stand around staring at you or walking around aimlessly. Hell, if they spot you, often times you can just sneak a few meters away and they suddenly instantly forget and keep chatting again.

More about the sniping,
I played on the second hardest difficulty 'medium'  and it seems everytime I scope the enemies were highlight for me with a very obvious red. Why they decided to do this I don't know but it really made the whole game trivial as I could just quickly hit the scope button and instantly know where all my foe are and take them out with ease or just run past them. There is also a compass which shows any enemies in the enviorment which makes the game even easier.  You can also infinately hold Shift to slow down time and make it further more simple.
 
 The sniping in general feels really meh. You have a few  different snipers that each mission will randomly assign to you, the silenced 10 shot one is by far the best because it has the least recoil and the best looking scope.
 Another thing that kind of makes the combat super trivial is the fact that the game gives you 400 bullets for every sniper, every mission. Why would I even bother to take careful delicate shots when I can just spam the damn button and hit everyone cause I have so much ammo? A lot of design choices in this game really hurt it and it could have been a lot more tactical and a lot more engaging but as it stands its a mindless trivial shooting gallery where you turn your brain off and just sprint to the next objective.

 And all the objectives are really typical stuff. Cover these guys, plant C4 here, clear this outpost, steal the intel, kill the general, etc..  Nothing memorable, but nothing too bad either. Generic action movie stuff. It is what it is. I don't mind it.  

There are a few half assed stealth sections which were the worst parts of the game just because it offers nothing interesting and only serves to slow down the pacing and progress and punish you for wanting to get with it.


Something that almost helped the games enjoyability was the levels being so damn short! Most of the levels in the game are about 5-10 minutes long. And there are only 18 of them. I completed the whole game in 2 hours!

So as an extremely short, mindless shooting gallery, with really cheesy, short, and stupid cutscenes it's not so bad. It's akin to watching a dumb cheap action movie from the 80s.


5/10

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel

I Think Gearbox is one of my least favorite developrs. I have beaten most of their games and truly dont like a single one

Ive beaten Borderlands 1 and 2 and hated them the whole time.
 Now After finishing 'The Presequel' I hate this too. Wasnt expecting otherwise

The entire artstyle, mood, graphics, and humor is awful. The tone is an eyesore to look at. In The presequel all of the enviorments take place on some multi colored neon planet with low gravity.  The graphics Suck and the art style is even worse.  None of the enviorments or level are memorable but quite the opposite  . its a mind numbing slog and eyesore and makes you feel pozzed for even looking at any of it .

The gameplay is horrible. The gun play is so thin and weightless. The guns operate off a stat system and you spend mind numbing minutes going through a Piss poor Interface that is so clunky and barely works  just to select a gun  that slightly does more damage . but still all the guns feel like they shoot cardboard pellets and every enemy takes multiple magazines to kill.

All of the guns look stupid like some rediculous amalgamation of random metallic pipes and pieces slewn together. its truly unappealing to look at and even less fun to shoot. There wasnt a signle gun in the entire game that I thought was cool or fun to use. The enemy design is boring and even less appealing. its either mecha shit or some random alien looking comic book crap. These games suck so fucking much I dont know what the appeal is.

Worst of all is the dialogue  nonstop over exeatturated TOO RANDUMB humor yapping in your fucking ears  by what sounds like 20 something year old numales and women. its like Reddit the game. All borderlands are like this. I Coudlnt even review BOREDOMlands 1 and 2 after I finished them because I couldnt stomach thinking about them anymore. This game can serve as my review for those too. Theyre all the same fucking shit. This iS the same engine and gameplay as boredom lands 2 but with a different map which takes place in space and honestly IT might be even less appealing than boredomlands 2. 

I Was playing this game co op and for the literal first 4 hours we were both sitting in silence and falling asleep. It was such a fkin bore. The gameplay cycle looks like getting an objectie on your minimap, going through awfully tedious combat where you dump magazine after magazine into waves of boring uneventful enemies,  going DOWN CONSTANTLY and going into a 'last stand mode' where you get a kill and get revived. Repeat.  none of the missions are memorable, none of the objectives fun.

The only good things I can say about the game is the jetpack dash thing thats kind of fun to control but even that can be a pain in the ass when you use it and you go too high to fit through doors.  Why shoudl I even write anymore? I dont like boredore lands series. They fking suck and are totally unappealing uneventful and stupid fking games iwth AWFUL art style graphics and 'story' and dumb fking humor> I Cant even Imagine the type of human being to find the 'jokes' in these games to be funny or something. Its so god damn stupid.  

 Also The only reason  I played any of these games is the CO OP and I would never Touch this single player. For That is another positive I can Give is the co op exeprience , just to be able to talk shit about this dumb game the whole time was atleast enjoyable.  The boss fights are also dumb as hell,  even if you die you just respawn over and over dumping miniscule amounts of ammunition into them until completion. The skill trees are inane and are a slog to even read and get through, usually they just give shit like more ammo or reload speed or some shit.   

TL;DR

- Tedious combat system that works off constantly collecting marginally better weapons, and going through an awful UI to figure out which one works better

- Except all the guns look stupid as hell like childrens NERF guns and none of them are enjyoable to use

- All of the shooting feels like youre shooting cardboard and sucks

- Graphics and artstyle are shit and looks like a dumb marvel comic. Not appealing

- Story and dialogue stupid as fuck constant TOO RANDOMB jokes and over the top 20 something year old numale/women voice acting

Positives:

+ Controls feel ok mostly just the jetpack thing

+ Co op campaign, fun to talk shit about the game while playing it with co op buddy.


SHIT GAME. shit franchise. shit developer.

3/10

Shadow Warrior 2

Shadow warrior 2 is a departure from both the dos game (obviously) and also the most recent Shadow warrior 1. No longer is it just a stock standard run and gun mindless shooter, no, now it is kind of a borderlands style 'looter shooter'
I will just list the pros and cons

+Controls feel really fun, you go extremely fast zipping and dashing and flying all over the place at sonic speeds. feels fluid and exciting

+ Huge variety of enemies to fight. Every engagement feels new and unique, you almost never fight the same enemy twice really.

+ Big variety of locations you fight in, although none of them truly stand out

+ Gigantic arsenal of weapons, you are constantly finding some new toy to play with, teres so many weapons you can barely keep track. It's a constant juggle of swapping between weapons, depleting your ammunition and going to the next, watching your enemy healthbars go down. Shooting off rockets, then machine guns, then shotguns etc..

+ Gameplay loop is basic but enjoyable, go to hub world, get a quest and listen to dialogue, then teleport to new zone and fight waves of enemies while picking up tons of loot

+ Graphics are techincally pretty decent with a varied color palette

+ Some of the humor can be slightly funny at times

+ Great co op campaign and doesn't get boring. Really enjoyable oldschool style DOOM type shooter fully playable co op experience

+ Skill trees are pretty interesting but on the flip side I only really got basic stuff like more ammo and stuff like that.

+ Constantly getting all sorts of new loot, gear, armor, stat upgrades etc which is pretty satisfying and enjoyable.


+ Tons of boss fights, although many of them are just circle strafing in an empty room while depleting all your ammo into him without much of a challenge.


Neutral point: Played the game on Second hardest difficulty and it wasn't really much of a challenge at all, despite the game constantly warning me "you are not high enough level are you sure you want to proceed!"  because I didn't want to grind sidequests. 


Some things I didn't particularly enjoy

- Since it is a looter shooter, combat is based off ever changing rpg statistics. And more often than not, enemies are extremely heavy bullet sponges. Expect to have to shoot 10+ rockets at a single enemy for them to go down.  It's almost a pro and a con, it makes engagements last longer, and It can make the flow of fighting a group of enemies fun, but at the same time circling around that one guy for 40 seconds dumping ammo into him slowly seeing his health bar go down can be a little stupid

- Story is stupid and actually kind of annoynig, the characters (especially female) constantly interrupt you yapping in your ear and every single dialogue is a forced attempt at humor, which it rarely hits the mark. Yes its inspired by the DOS original game,  but the difference is that game had no cutscenes, and worked off random voice one liners, whereas here you are constantly watching a cutscene or dialogue of some character 1 inch away from your face ranting for minutes on end about shit you don't care about for the sole purpose of making a dick joke or something. it gets old fast.

 - The weapon upgrades and loot in general is kind of bloated. There is so much multicolored pinyata stuff flying around with such strange names you don;t know what any of it does. it's mostly used to upgrade your weapons, but at a glance its impossible to tell what youre picking up. And the weapon upgrade system is cool, but I feel its a little convuluted, you have to manually go through this huge list of upgrades for every single weapon and stare at tons of different stats  , but really all you end up doing is looking at the DPS number and tediously going through every one to get the highest DPS. it could of been a little streamlined, I didn't think spending 10 minutes manually going through huge lists of upgrades to get slightly more damage was really a big bonus to the game, but felt a little tedious at times. Not that big of a deal but worth nothing.

- The art style in general is questionable especially the weapon design. There is only like 4 weapons that look anything close to traditional, and the rest are extremely over the top bizarre looking crap that take up half your screen. Personally I prefer traditional looking weapons than crazy over the top shit, but atleast they were fun to shoot.


Overall a fairly enjoyable co op campaign oldschool shooter with tons of varied monsters and weapons to loot.

7/10

Halo 3

The halo 3 campaign is probably a highlight of the franchise.
The whole game has been re polished with a new hud and various changes in the mechanics. The controls are even more solid, and the graphics have been touched up for the next generation 360 console.

The main thing about Halo 3 that makes it stand out is the level design and the locations. Throughout the campaign there is never really a dull moment or copy pasted area. You have some homages to Halo 1 levels, such as the level where you start out with a sniper, there are grassland levels full of enemy vehicles are lush beaches, snow levels with dozens of flood enemies in an epic gauntlet battle, and epic sections where you have to board an enemy ship to blow it up. Areas where you enter the flood hive almost turn into horror moments and it gets pretty cool. The driving sections are awesome too, with many huge scopes and sights to see where you'll be flying off cliffs and ramps and doing awesome stunts all the time. Compared to Halo 2, I think the level design is more memorable with less dull moments.

Halo 3 is also pretty short, shorter than 1 and 2 I think. It is also the easiest game on Legendary, as now when you die you can respawn, sometimes instantly, as long as your friend is still alive.

A big gameplay change in Halo 3 compared to 1 or 2, is that no longer do you fight Elites, instead, they are now your ally. In Co op, the second partner is an Elite. it's pretty cool to hear his input and dialogue all the time, and the story and cutscenes in H3 are probably the most interesting and fun to listen to/watch. 
 So since you no longer fight Elites, the difficulty is far easier. As on Legendary, the Elites were the biggest threat in previous games, because of their massive shield which required a plasma pistol to take out.  But now, In halo 3, you are mostly fighting Brutes (which have no shield) or Flood (which also have no shield)  So this makes the combat feel drastically different. Enemies don't feel like bullet sponges anymore, and even on Legendary they go down fast with only a headshot or 2.

Halo 3 being so short could be a flaw, but it might also be why its so solid. The campaign doesn't have a dull moment, and the difficulty on Legendary is just challenging enough to be really fun and engaging, without any of the tedious frustration of Halo 2.

8/10

Quantum Break

Remedy Entertainment is a pretty awesome developer making stuff like Max Payne 1 and 2.
So going into Quantum Break I was hoping it would be more of that.
 Well unfortunately I'm not sure if I am the intended audience for this title.

The most obvious thing to note is that this is almost more of a story than it is a game. I would say 75% of it is cutscenes and dialogue and even a teleivison show after every chapter, and 25% of it is actual gameplay.

I will briefly comment about the story;

1) The premise is not that interesting to me, cliche time travel stuff which allows many childish liberties with fictional storywriting

2) It is totally nonsensical at times. It is like a child making up random plot devices on the spot in fantasy land, allowing just about anything to happen.

3) I never was that invested in it because its just so nonsensical and fantastical. Quite the opposite, I was just left bored and at times finding it really cheesy, especially the acting and forced romance stuff.

4) I didn't want to watch a real life television show after every chapter, but I figured this is the way the developer intends you to experience this, so I will go ahead.

5) However, some of the characters and writing are kind of interesting such as the Martin Hatch guy and the main villain, but they don't really appear in the game that much, only in the TV show (lol)


So that is the 75% chunk of the game, the story, cutscenes, dialogue, and tv show.

Now I will comment on the remianing 25%. The actual gameplay:

Out of the 25% you have:

15% Combat.

- The combat consists of guns with really piss poor accuracy having to slowly tap the mouse button or your bullets go random. None of the guns are all that exciting to use and while they do handle differently, none of them feel fun.

- The enemies are varied, but honestly I found it annoying. There are weak military guys without helmets that you can easily headshot, and then you have huge bulky guys that take half a dozen magazines to kill or they zip and zoom around the screen like spiderman, teleporting all over the place. More annoying than anything.

- The visuals during the combat are just a fucking eyesore. You have these time abilites and everytime you use them it spams all sorts of tidal wave multicolored shit all over your screen, that ontop of constantly spamming V for 'Vision' button to highlight all the objects in the enviorment...it just becomes a cluttered mess of multicolored shit and half the time you can barely tell what the fuck is going on. It is not visually appealing to me.

- The controls are clunky and suck and can be super frustrating. Your character feels like hes walking around with bricks tied to his legs, constantly you will run into walls accidentally or try to jump somewhere and just smack into it instead.. it feels like shit to control.
 Also you have like a dozen 'time abilites' but they are randomly mapped to all sorts of buttons, and it doesn't even say what buttons they are on screen, so most of the game I still didn't know how to fucking activate most of them, and they aren't fun to use anyway.  The best one is the 'sprint' ability (lol)  which just temporarily freezes your enemies/time.  and the other one is 'dodge' ability which basically does the same thing but you zoom around the screen, which also controls like shit and you will constantly accidentally slam into a wall when you're desperately trying to not die, thus resulting in you dying.


That is pretty much all of the combat scenarios. It is also very easy and I never really died ever, except for:


the other 10% of gameplay:

- Wandering around the enviorment, looking around for prompts to 'rewind time' or do some platforming, or the worst of all certain scenarios where there are enviormental hazards and you have to fumble around with the controls to 'pause' them to progress past them, but it controls like shit and these are the only real times ive ever died. 

-Walking around listening to dialogue, following NPCs, opening doors, looking for switches.


And that's about all Quantum Break has to offer. None of it is truly bad, but It did kind of feel like a slog to get through. Everytime I thought about playing this game, I realized an average session would look like me sitting there for 40 minutes before I even saw any gameplay or did any combat or anything of substance. Every session you boot up the game and usually sit there watching cutscenes or watching a TV show or something. It takes forever for anything to actually happen. The game is pretty boring. The combat isn't awful, but it isn't good either.

 The best thing about the game is how polished it is as a Tripple A experience, it feels very hollywood and the graphics are pretty impressive except when the screen isn't being colored in visual spam. 
 Oh, and the entire game was super easy but the last boss was suddenly a massive frustrating pain in the ass and took me like 10 attempts so fuck that shit.

5/10