Darkest Hour (Mod Review)

Overview: Darkest Hour is one of the “Big Three” mods for Red Orchestra, a Realistic WW2 FPS that originally began as a UT2003/2004 mod. When it was first released, it was a nightmare due to some hidden bugs that caused the Mod to become nearly unplayable. Now that the patch came out, is it worth the download?

Plot: It’s WW2 on the Western Front!

Gameplay: The overall gameplay feels like the mod version of RO: Combined Arms. Realistic and gritty. Since this mod takes place on the Western Front, it brings in a lot of original content. 2 new sides (Americans and British), new skins, new vehicles, new guns, and plenty of new maps. Before the patch, the game tended to crash every few minutes, but now that ain’t a problem now.

Graphics: It’s starting to show off it’s age due to the fact that the UT2004 engine ain’t exactly brand new, but it has it’s charm. It looks really gritty and dirty, which is suitable for a realistic WW2 game like RO.

Sound: Before the patch, the guns all sounded underwhelming and generic. That’s probably because the team didn’t really have a full fledged Sound Engineer working with them at the time when they were developing the mod. Now with the new patch, the guns sound a lot better, but it’s still hit or miss.

Reviewer’s Final Opinion: If you’re a hardcore vet of Red Orchestra, this mod is a must-have.

Links: http://www.darkesthourgame.com/

Chuck Norris: Super Kicks (reviewed by Consumerist)

Overview: Even though I never played it I am sure that it is completely awesome.

Plot: As you know I never played this game as I wasn’t even alive during the 1980’s. But I expect it to go something like Mr.T amassing an army of T-ninjas (Sort of like the black guy who thinks he is Japanese in the last dragon and opposes the black guy who thinks he is Bruce lee, except Mr.T isn’t into that nonsense foo. Also Chuck Norris is quite clear on his ethnicity and has in fact killed Bruce lee.) and Chuck Norris trying to stop him. I’d probably expect a scene where Samuel Jackson is on the roof of Chuck Norris’s base and he yells down to Chuck: “The ninjas are coming!”. Then Chuck Norris would burst of out of the glass skylights on a jetpack with akimbo revolvers that for some reason never run out of ammo as he attempts to mow down the ninjas. Unfortunately the ninjas block it with their ninjatos. So then Chuck Norris throws them at the ninjas hitting on in the head causing the gun to fire and shoot another ninja in the foot. Then he pulls out dual sawed off shotguns and mows the ninjas down as the shots spread so they can’t be blocked. And then as Chuck Norris flies through the air on a jetpack another ninja would jump at him, trying to stab Chuck in the head, and chuck would turn around to block the blade with his beard shattering it into pieces. Then Chuck Norris would roundhouse kick the ninja. Followed which by a surprise encounter by Bill Cosby who is Mr. T’s evil minion and general of the first ninja division. But he is actually possessed by Billy Mays whose lust for fame and oxi clean has led him to learn arcane arts.^[1]

Graphics: They didn’t focus too much on the graphics so as to perfect the gameplay!

Game play: You are Chuck Norris. You kill shit. With your super kicks.

Sound: It’s beeps and boops.

Final opinion: This game should be distributed only on golden cartridges! It is your duty as an American citizen to hunt down that Atari cartridge pile and dig out all copies of this game to give to starving children in Africa! But not to Vietnamese children. Never to Vietnamese children. Unless by this time Chuck Norris has reintroduced democracy to south Vietnam after mowing down countless Vietcong and rescuing thousands of POW. What I am trying to say here is don’t support communism. Also we could of won Vietnam if congress hadn’t voted not to go back in there to save the south’s ass.

(Note to editor: Disturbingly enough this is an accurate description of the game even though I never played it. Look at videos of the game on you tube. Also please make sure my foot notes are at the bottom.)

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^[1] If any Hollywood producers or Chuck Norris, Mr.T, Bill Cosby, Samuel Jackson, or Vin diesel read this please make this movie.

Age Of Chivalry 1.1.0 (Mod Review)

Overview: A semi-tactical, semi-difficult, all-heroic medieval mod for Half-Life 2. Team Chivalry has delivered in the past, with a small fanbase and a mediocre report. However, with their newest update (1.1.0) they have fixed all but the tiny tolerable bugs that made their earlier version receive such a disgraceful opinion. They have polished their work to a fine sheen, and added many personal touches that make the newest version of Age Of Chivalry yet more epic in every way.

Plot: The Mason Order versus the Agathia Knights. The plot is loosely set, with generally the Masons being “evil” and Agathians being “good”. The description of the maps on the Loading screen seem to tell a larger tale, but one I couldn’t find on their main website (located here).

Gameplay: I found the gameplay to be slightly more intriguing since it’s 1.0.0 release. New weapons such as the Warhammer make load-out an interesting array of choices, but I tend to always stick with ball-and-chain. Since there is no crosshairs, aiming with throwing knives, throwing axes, crossbows, bows, and catapults can be daunting at first, especially since you are using your eye and not a helpful line on the screen. The objectives still drive the maps along, although there seems to be too many “Break this with your giant sword” tasks.

Graphics: This game got a definite polishing. The menus, HUDs, and other various interfaces have all been updated to a sleeker, yet appropriate design. New maps have been introduced, including the famous Helm’s Deep which most people seem to enjoy. The animations still need some work, like when loading a bolt on the crossbow or one of the random times you seem to kill your enemy without your sword moving. It still looks better than most mods out there, and much better than AoC 1.0.0.

Sound: Still a breathtaking clamor of metal striking metal, screams and shouts and arrows whizzing by, complemented by great music and inspiring battle-cries. You will feel like you’re in the Middle Ages.

Reviewer’s Final Opinion: This mod guarantees many epic moments and battles. If you enjoy knights, swords, and castle sieges then this mod is for you. It’s fun, cinematic, and very well-done.

Wii Fit (Wii Review)

Overview: Wii Fit is about maintaining and losing a small amount of weight. The games/fitness exercises are fun and challenging, and the game is best played with a group of friends or family members.

Gameplay: When you look at the big box and read “Wii Fit” you think about fitness equipment and really working out; a game where you lose a lot of pounds and get stronger. This hardware/game isn’t meant to replace your exercise equipment or the gym membership you bought/signed up for but never used. Wii Fit is all about having fun, creating goals, self-awareness of weight (most likely fat) and losing a few pounds. Wii Fit has a nice variety of games/fitness exercises; yoga, strength training, aerobics, and balance games. Wii Fit is really fun and unique, however, there is one downside; only a small amount of games in each category. The games are fun and very challenging (varies depending on the person) and you can also increase the difficulty if you want more of a challenge.

Graphics: About the same level of detail as Wii Sports. Nothing amazing nor spectacular, but it does it’s job.

Sound: The sound quality is pretty good and what you would expect from Nintendo. The music is nice and the sounds are just right.

Reviewer’s Final Opinion: Overall, Wii Fit is aimed at making fitness fun and exciting for the whole family. It was not created to help lose huge amounts of weight, but instead giving people self-awareness, creating goals and maintaining/improving your health. Wii Fit is too expensive for what it offers. It would have been nice if they would have included a few more games in each category.

First Strike (BF 2142 Mod Review by Consumerist)

Overview: First Strike is basically SW: Battlefront 2, but for Battlefield 2142. It’s somewhat underwhelming as it doesn’t really take much advantage of the engine.

Plot:

Gameplay: Imagine SW: Battlefront 2, but with better graphics. All this mod amounts to is a shoddy copy of Battlefront 2 or a simplified Battlefield 2142. You’d think they would’ve exploited the Titan Mode for awesome capital ship battles in space. Sadly, all the capital ships in the space battles are uncontrollable and pretty much motionless, and the mod doesn’t even use the commander feature either.

Graphics: As I said before, the graphics are much better than SW: Battlefront 2 but they aren’t as good as Battlefield 2142’s graphics. I’m not a graphic sage so I usually don’t have much to say on this subject.

Sound: Instead of using the iconic actual Star Wars soundtrack, they replaced it with mediocre filler orchestra music. John Williams will NOT kill you in your sleep for using his music in a Star Wars mod. In my playtime, I only heard the Star Wars theme once, which is disappointing for a Star Wars centric mod. Surprisingly the sound effects are much better. Sure the X-Wings don’t sound like X-Wings, but the guns are pretty accurate.

Reviewer’s Final Opinion: I’m aware of the fact that the developers of this mod did a lot of hard work in creating this, it just seems merely average to me. Nothing really new. But if you’re a devoted follower of Star Wars games/mods, you should definitely download this and give it a try.

Haze (PS3 Preview)

Overview: Haze is a First Person Shooter which is developed by Free Radical, where some of their members were behind the famous Goldeneye 007 game for the N64. After suffering through countless delays on their release date, Free Radical decided to release a demo of Haze on the PS3. I decided to download the demo to give you guys my first impressions of the game. Keep in mind that it’s just a demo, and due to that, it won’t be a representation of the final product.

Plot: The game takes place in the near future, a chaotic future. You play as a man named Shane Carpenter, a member of the Mantel Global Industries Private Military. Shane and his group has been sent to a South American country to quell an uprising led by the “Promised Hand” rebel group. Nectar, the drug created by Mantel Global Industries, plays an important part in the Plot.

Gameplay: You have the option of playing the full single player by yourself or with up to 3 other friends. I personally chose to go it solo in the demo. The gunplay is extremely solid, all the guns feel useful and they pack a solid punch. Really satisfying, kudos to Free Radical! Also worth noting is the usage of Nectar. The game really encourages to use the Nectar to slaughter your foes. When using Nectar, you gain some new abilities/skills, such as a one hit kill melee attack, and the ability to view the enemy through thick foliage. It will also increase the overall damage that you dish out. Due to that, it changed my old tactical, wary play style to a reckless, dangerous play style. But there’s a catch to Nectar. If you overuse it, you’ll overdose and will proceed to lose control over your character & will automatically shoot at any humanoid creature (You can’t tell the difference between friend and foe during this). The enemy can also cause your buddies to OD and will cause them to turn on you and your other friends.

Graphics: Right now, the textures look merely average and bland. But in doing so, the overall frame rate stays at a consistent 30 FPS. Free Radical did some deliberate things in the game, like overdone bloom. If you hate that, don’t worry. The overdone bloom will be gone at the second half of the full game.

Sound: The guns and explosions provide a meaty sound. The voice work is also excellent. Again, Free Radical did some deliberate things in the game, like giving the Mantel Troopers gung-ho voices. You’ll understand why they did that in the full game.

Reviewer’s Final Opinion: Haze looks like it won’t disappoint and fall over from the hype. Also, wait for our upcoming review on the First Strike mod for Battlefield 2142!

Get a Life (Mod Review)

Overview: An obscure mod for Half-Life 2 was recently released. Sporting an intensely-convoluted plot, HL1-ish weapon skins, and the most hilarious voiceovers you will ever find in a game, Get a Life reminds everyone who plays that you should never release a game 50% complete.

Plot: You are Alexander Somebodysomething, a pale-faced leukemia victim with expert knowledge of weapons handling, medical aid, and absolutely no fear. A billion zombies, gigantic poisonous hairy tarantulas, and watching your fellow man die horrifying and nightmarish deaths does not sway you the least. You live in a swanky apartment with your cheeky scientist sister and her pet spiders. You wear a baseball cap for fun, listen to the radio, and work at a job that could use a regulation protocol or two. Apparently leukemia victims can handle complex machinery that regularly explodes into fiery bursts every few minutes, but somebody’s got to do it, I guess.

Gameplay: The game runs on a painfully linear path, with 9 out of every 10 doors being locked. The puzzles are childishly simple, with cut-scenes directly showing you where to get the next puzzle piece; the difficulty is reduced to being led by the hand. Firefights are uninteresting. Zombie levels always became a game of Whack-a-Mole. Healing never took a break. I found myself popping medkits every chance I got. It was a pain.

However, the bullet-time ability (though it wasn’t explained at all) was interesting and new, but nonetheless completely devoid of usefulness.

Graphics: The flashlight is replaced by a flare gun, the flares being unable to bounce off grates or zombies without dying into a few pitiful sparks. The crowbar has evolved into a rusty pipe. Zombies now wear name-tags. Headcrabs became spiders. Fast zombies are now Nemesis look-alikes, the Antlion guard fell into some red paint, and somewhere along the way G-Man joined the Combine army.

Most of the guns have the Half-Life 1 feel to them, especially the grenades. Get a Life doesn’t try hard enough to cover up the Half-Life defaults that came with Hammer SDK, almost everything either being directly stolen or ridiculously disguised. The only original graphic would be the skin of the protagonist.

The level design was beautiful for the most part. Fluidity was lacking, though, as backtracking was inevitable. After the boss battle with the red-painted Antlion guard, the game took a dead halt in level progression. There were two not-so-obvious puzzles that I believed were just the level designer being superb at subtleness, but I was wrong. Let me explain:

I was in a large warehouse with nowhere to go. After defeating the antlion boss, I tried every button and door. Nothing. I saw these barrels stacked up next to this cleverly constructed mountain of boxes. Using the barrels as stairs, I carefully climbed the mountain of boxes only to find myself trapped in a glitched void. So I tried another path, and after a long loading screen, found myself in a red-lit underground ventilation nexus. There was an unbreakable wall of barricaded planks that my pipe couldn’t bust, and about a dozen scattered explosive barrels. Naturally, I gave the level designer credit for such a crafty puzzle. I stacked the explosive barrels against the wooden barricade, and blew them up. It did nothing. I then got a little upset and went back outside, and after a long loading screen, was in the warehouse once again. I saw the debris piled up from when the antlion guard fell through the ceiling. I thought, perhaps, this is the puzzle the level designer has been drawing me towards. I tried climbing the debris and got pinned between two broken walls, stuck and motionless. I gave up and quit.

Sound: Music was swell, but didn’t have enough.

Voiceovers, horrible. The British cottonmouths who did most of the voices had no feeling, and no intelligence. The sentences written in the subtitles had more emotion than the dead-faced voice saying them. Every character rushed through his lines without pause or break between periods. It must’ve been a poor department during development, or its quality was completely ignored and the sound files thrown in with a cringe from the team.

Reviewer’s Final Opinion: You can download it, if you want, but you aren’t missing anything. There’s no inspirational storyline, no new and exciting graphics, and definitely no satisfaction in playing.

Metal Gear Online Beta (PS3 Preview)

Overview: The Metal Gear franchise has been one of the best ever made in history. But does it succeed in the next-gen online multiplayer experience?

Plot: As usual, there’s really no plot in a online only game. This particular online game takes place in the Metal Gear Solid 4 universe, where PMCs (Private Military Companies) battle each other across the world for money and profit.

Gameplay: It’s fantastic. The gameplay is heavily based on teamplay and/or stealth. Before a match starts, you can choose a set of up to 4 ’skills’, which will allow you to specialize in many tasks. In some scenarios, you may be allowed to purchase extra attachments to your weapons, and personally I think MGO’s version of that feature is much more better than Call of Duty 4’s attachment feature since you can add more than one attachment to a gun. There is a catch though, you have to acquire “Drebin Points”, points that are required for you to buy the weapons/attachments which is an excellent balancing system. The SOP System is also a great feature of MGO, it really helps to enhance teamplay with it’s notifications of your teammate’s current statuses. When you’re currently in a match, you can also perform certain co-op moves with nearby teammates to gain an edge over the enemy, such as boosting one up to an otherwise inaccessible area so he/she can snipe away at enemies. If you’re the lonewolf who would rather sneak around, no problem. The game will provide you with skills/items that will help you with your sneaking gameplay, including the Play Dead (Saved my skin in several occasions) and the Cardboard Box (You’ll be surprised at how people constantly miss players who are hiding in the box). Some players would probably be turned off at the controls (a bit clunky, but once you get used to it, it’s great) and the slow pacing of the game.

Graphics: The game looks good, but not amazing. If you’re thinking that MGS4 would look like the same, don’t worry. The MGS4 team made a statement that the graphics in MGO have been downgraded for multiplayer reasons, and that MGS4 has been untouched.

Sound: The sound effects in MGO are extremely good. The gun sounds pack a lot of punch, the explosions make a satisfying “Boom”, and the character voices don’t sound terrible like other Japanese games that have laughable English Voices (Resident Evil). Players with 7.1 Surround Sound setups, though, will definitely love it since you’ll get to hear everything in true HD sound.

Reviewer’s Final Opinion: Metal Gear Online has provided me with one of the best Online gaming experiences. It’s an awesome tactical game that values teamplay and stealth over mindless stupid strategies. Throw in the legendary MGS charm, and you got yourself a winner. Thanks for the beta key CodeFire!

DAVID HAYTER – LEGENDARY HELLDOOMER OF MERCEDES

Overview: This guy sucks.

Plot: Snake Plisken’s bitch.

Gameplay: Old guy who is Snake Plissken’s bitch.

Graphics:

Sound: I’d rather floss my dick with barbed wire than hear this man.

Reviewer’s Final Opinion: He should become an hero.

Gran Turismo 5: Prolouge (PS3 Review)

Overview: Welcome back to the fast and furious lifestyle of GT5:P. We have a watered down version of what we can expect GT5 to be. Unfortunately the game is seriously lacking what troubled GT4.

Plot: You drive cars for money. That’s it.

Gameplay: The cars for once handle not like a real car would handle. There is massive under steer and over steer which hasn’t been present in previous games. Otherwise it makes for a great game.

Graphics: With all Gran Turismo Games you expect a certain flash of realism. This game is no exception. Each car is finely made like your favorite piece of china. BUT WHERE’S THE DAMAGE MODELS? Once again we are left with nothing at all that can satisfy our taste to smash a Nissan Skyline going 220 into a Ferrari Formula one car and watch the pieces fly.

Sound: Imagine a sunny day in Sonoma and you live right next to the track at Sears Point. Now take the sounds you hear in the distance and put them right next to your ear

Reviewer’s Final Opinion: If your a die hard fan of the Gran Turismo series then I’m sure you already own the game and love it. But for even the faithful to the game it seems like a waste of money. Overall I’d say unless you have an extra $40 to spend it’s only a rent.