Call of Duty: Black Ops

Black ops differs from the other cod campaigns because its the beginning of a trillogy  sub plot about Alex Mason being brainwashed of some sort.  since youve been brainwashed , the game jumps around all over the place through various time period and thats probably the games biggest strength.   some missions youre in world war 2, others vietnam, others russian prisons and thigns like this, other levels youre hopping across buildings fighting government agents and others youre  fighting sections of a boat.  The constant change of pace is what keeps the missions fresh and exciting. it stays true to its name  in the sense  that its a bunch of different opearations and countries that you visit and experience.

The story does seem rather contrived and military style 'romdrom'  (romantic drama, but for men)   but its fine albiet  a bit silly at times THE NUMBERS MASON etc.   the biggest complaint I have  s that theres a lot of sections where the game takes control away from you, or little gimmicky  sections , theres too many to name.   like every 5 minutes theres another section where you have to climb a rope and do quicktime events,  or drive a vehicle,  or breach a door in slow mo, theeres just tons of them. and it feels like distractions from the actual game play.  theres a handful of driving / flying sections that i never enjoy in these games and it just feels like filler.

Also it appears theres a lot of  like 'smoke and mirrors' going on at times, where it appears theres a lot of stuff happening, but really youre not doing any of it.   like theres all this combat happening,  and it seems intense at first, but really all you have to do is walk forwards a little bit  and nothing else.      or like sections where enemies constantly respawn unless you inch forward.

theres some silly stuff shoehorned in such as Ice Cube voice acting and character similar,  president kennedy,  and its a bit bizarre to see them in a outlandish game like this.

it seems the main draw to Black Ops is its crazy MK ultra  story, and it is entertaining enough,  but after awhile you start to get a headache with all the flashing effects and flashbacks and crazy psychological shit all over the screen . its non stop. i get that it makes you want to feel like youre in his spot, but its very seizsure enducing.

and it does become numbing  the nonstop screaming constant machine gunshots and "niner niner bravo alpha multiple attachments" jargon.  the sound effects are particularly not great.  theres never a moment without the constant sound effect of thin  dull machine gun fire its like they program all the NPC's and enviorment to seem like its an intense hell zone with constant barrage of sound effects and explosions, but really its just an illusion.

theres only a dozen enemies to fight at once, and really the combat doesnt feel too great.  theres no hitmarkers when you attack enemies and theres no satisfying 'oomph' when you kill them, the guns sound tinny and lack a punch, and you have so much ammo that the best route is to usually just spray n pray constnatly.  You can literally hold down the mouse button and spray constantly and you will never run out of ammo cause you will keep picking up ammo in abundance. 600 bullets.

most of the guns youll be using are machine guns and theyre not that enjoyable because of the lack of satisfying kills, no hitmarkers, and general abundance of ammo. you just spray everywhere.  also since its mostly machine guns using single shots isnt that great or effective espeically since you cant even tell if youre killing anyone half the time.  its fine, but a bit below the standard cod gun play I would say.

it has a checkpoint system like all other cod games, i played on hardened and some checkpoints are just stupid. enemies will spawn behind you and you end up playing some checkpoints 10x in a row not because you suck, but because the game saved at an unfortunate point.

The  campaign is enjoyable, mostly for the story and all the twists and turns, the gunplay is kind of sub par for cod, and the level design and variation is its strong point. the twist at the end is fun, but kind of predictable. but really, i dont care how good the story is. I dont play cod for the story, or even games in general for story. I like to have constant control, and feel skillful and experience the gun combat. so games like doom for example, no story, no bullshit, no frills, just you and the mechanics. call of duty tends to take you out of that often, and throws a lot of cutscenes at you, takes control away, introduces gimmicky sections constantly, etc.

6.5/10

Obscure

 obscure is completely inspired by early resident evil and B movies. the voice acting and story must be extremely corny and cliche on purpose. its just a highschool with a mysterious undertone of something gone wrong.  theres 5 characters you can play from and they have slight diffeerences i guess?

you also play with 2 characters, one you control and the other AI (or coop partner)

theres  a special ability button  and one of the short hair girls  has an ability that tells you exactly what you should be doing, so i mostly used her so  I don't wander around aimlessly.

the other abilities are like, one guy can lockpick otherwise secret doors, another guy can sprint, the black girl is good with guns (???) or something,  and the other guy tells you if theres anything left in the room.

mostly just used the  short hair girl (Tells current objective) and sprint guy
so what do you do?  well it takes all its hints straight from resident evil 1-3.
and there is permadeath, so if any of these 5 characters die, they are gone for good. its best to just reload a save if anyone dies.  unfortunately there are "Gotcha!" stupid scripted moments like an elevator falling ontop of you unless you do a sequence just right, and thats how I lost one of my guys permanently.


youre in a school, with a sort of hub zone in the court yard (you can press a button to warp here at any time infact)
in this school, like RE fasion, theres items you must collect, doors you must unlock,  puzzles to solve, and enemies to avoid or kill. probably the best thing about the game is the level design and the atmosphere
the combat is nothing special but its not tank controls.  its modern 3d style control, but I played with keyboard only.
Theres no mouse support. so the pc port is pretty shit,  i should of used controller but whatever.

so , for the combat it mostly comes down to either baiting the enemy into swinging at you, then running past
or what i did most of the time:  just killing them.
 it seems there is actually enough ammo in this game to pretty much kill every monster you come across and still do fine for it. its not that stressful in that sense.

i was never completely out of ammo or struggling  despite pretty much killing every monster i came across.
for the first hour or 2 you have melee weapons which suck and you always take damage but after that it gets better.
theres not that much in the way of weapons i found,  theres standard pistols, a shotgun, a revolver that i never got to use, and a laser (only 1 load of ammo, use for last boss)

theres apparently some flashlight mechanic where if you hold a button it makes enemies weaker or something? i could never really figure it out. or if I did figure it out,  I didn't notice it helping too much.

the controls are prety shit but i didnt use a controller like I was suppose to.  its keyboard only  with annoying inentory system where you hold button and scroll through items (Q for items E for weapons)  and more oftne than not found myself fumbling around infront of enemies fighting with the controls working against me than for me most of the time.

so thats combat and mechanics. whats left?

well the atmosphere is crazy. theres constantly really bizarre wacky chanting music playing and totally loud insane screams of people in random places its totally oddball.  you'll enter a basic looking room and just start hearing babies screeching or people screaming at top of their lungs.  at first  you start freaking out thinking  youre in danger, but its just the ambience.

the graphics are early 2000s  but  with good use of fixed camera angles RE style. no complaints and the right amount of grit and disgusting stuff all over the place, darkness, etc.  monster designs are totally insane and bizarre too.

the save system is with limited CD items like RE, but you can use them anywhere you want.  and there are a few times where i kind of 'save scummed'  where you save  getting into a dangerous place, and re-play the event multiple times until you get desired outcome.

there are a lot of "are you fucking kidding me?"   stupid moments where theres just too many monsters coming at you, or you fall through the floor and instantly die, or you walk half across the entire map and realize you had to walk 1 step in the other direction to originally trigger a cutscene etc. found myself getting pretty frustrated and annoyed at certain points, not because it was challenging or i was failing to do something, but just because of poor design and trial and error.

like these stupid 'boss' enemies that just sit on the floor and shoot maggots at you and you have to bait him into swinging to tire him out then just pelt him with shotgun bullets.  i dont know, that shit happens like 5 times and its lame every time.

something that knocked off enjoyment was  that you have to collect 4 statues for the end of the game, and I missed one of them. and there was no direction  of where I had missed one.
"There is another statue outside the dungeon, I know it!"
well that means it could be anywhere in the entire game. so what do i do? i had to look up a walkthrough, and none of them were useful.  i had to watch youtube videos for about an hour before i found where the statue i missed was. not fun.

well after I did that and got through the ending boss fight (which took a dozen attempts) i got the bad ending because one of my guys died in a scripted event.  its ok,  not much difference in the bad ending just slightly different cutscene. and i'm left feeling like i've completed a corny, yet memorable, campy b-horror type game that didn't seem to take its self too seriously.  but unforunately the controls, and some bullshit moments and slightly underwhelming combat doesn't make this a home run or anything for me. its a cool spinoff for people who have already played a lot of classic resident evil, and for that it was a decent experience
 

7/10

Alien Isolation

the game shows you all it has to offer in the first 4 or so hours out of the 12 hour campaign. being:

- Move around dark enviorment looking enviorment for panels, computers, buttons, switches. Press them.
- Look at your tracker and follow the objective to next button/switch.
- Crawl from savepoint to savepoint, in between enemy encounters.
- You have 4 enemy types: Alien, human, robot, and facehugger

- For anything except Alien its a minor annoyance.
The humans you crawl past,
the robots you can sprint past.
Neither of these one hit you, which brings me to the next point:

- Alien:  this guy one hits you. Instant death every time. If he sees you, unless you have a flamethrower, you're toast. you cant escape. Now this is pretty amazing the first 10,20, maybe 30 times. But when you do the same cat and mouse chase, and death animation for the 50th time? It starts to lose its wonder and turns into a bad trial & error loony toon. To make it even more annoying, there is tiny little globs of spit dripping from the ceiling and if you happen to walk under them in the pich blackness, its instant death.
Reload checkpoint, sometimes for the 10th time in a row. Trial and error this time, learn where to crawl, learn where the buttons are you need to press while crawling past the alien. Proceed to next save point. Repeat.

You have limited defense options against this guy, the only viable one being the flamethrower, but its always a guessing game how far away you can be while you desperately tap the mouse button hoping he'll piss off. Because you cant kill him. He just will tempoarily go away.
Other than that, you hide in lockers and wait and wait for him to go away. Its pretty tense the first few times, but after that it becomes a novelty and tedious.

There are other weapons, but none of them do anything against him. And they're hardly worth using against the other enemies as well. Easier to just go past them.

- Facehugger: Same as alien, just about the size of your foot and even more annoying. You have to flamethrower them. And they can appear in multiples.  Most of the  time you dont even see them before they instantly one shot you.

So whats left after you've seen all these mechanics? well, not really honestly. you repeat this same cycle for the other 75% of the campaign, finding switches, computers, terminals, hitting E on things, watching an animation, crawling to the next save point avoiding the alien, or if you're lucky sometimes you'll get Alien+Human combo,  or Alien+Robot combo. 

The vast majority of the game is just crawling around in the dark and looking for buttons. No combat, no mechanics, just crawling and pressing switches. And looking for saves. Lots of saving.

It's not like its really bad or anything,  it just lacks mechanics that keep the gameplay fresh. Everything else about the game is pretty stellar, the graphics, sound design, enviorments are top notch and very immersive and make you feel stranded on this hostile lonely ship in the middle of space. So for that alone the game is worth crawling through and experiencing. The story is enthralling to, true to its name which is all I will say without spoiling anything.

And lastly, since you see everything the game has to offer  in the first 25% of the campaign, it starts to drag a bit towards the end. After doing the same encounter for the 100th time, in  a slightly different enviorment, it doesn't quite hold the same edge it use to. There is a lot of 'walking simulator'  space suit outside in space sections, and they don't really add much. Sometimes they can last 40+ minutes with zero threat, just sliding along at a snail pace, pressing E on random buttons and objects. So you can see why the campaign drags on.

Even just for the environment and story experience its worth a play through and wont be forgettable anytime soon

6/10