Senran Kagura 2: Deep Crimson Review

As a game collector, I occasionally stumble into titles. Games I have no prior knowledge of. Or very little knowledge of. Like some of you this will begin online, and end in a storefront. Earlier this year, Mark Bussler over at Classic Game Room did an episode on Senran Kagura: Estival Versus for the PlayStation 4. A very bizarre, over the top hack n’ slash action game with an emphasis on endowed characters. I like to think I know a bit about esoteric games. But I had no idea that this was actually a series.

Imagine my surprise one day when I saw this sequel for the 3DS sitting on a store shelf. “They put a sequel out, on Nintendo’s handheld?” I thought. Well yes. Except this ISN’T the sequel to the PlayStation 4 game. After some research I discovered that the series oddly enough, started on the 3DS in Japan. So this game is the sequel to THAT game, and the one Mark reviewed on his show is actually a spin-off.

PROS: Great graphics, responsive controls, a simple combo system that isn’t mundane.

CONS: Some of the content isn’t for everybody. Can get a bit lowbrow.

COLLECTIBLE: Apparently the print run for this game wasn’t very high in the USA.

Senran Kagura 2: Deep Crimson is an arcade style hack n’ slash game. You’ll go through a variety of stages fighting hordes, and hordes of enemies. There are also, of course, bosses. As you play through the campaign you’ll be introduced to a wide variety of characters. Many of whom you will be able to take control of throughout the game.

The controversial gimmick in this series is where some folks may have some reservations about picking one of these games up. When you’re fighting enemies, you’ll find your attacks will rip their clothes to shreds. When they’re just about dead, they’ll be down to their undergarments. Your characters are subject to these rules as well. Take enough damage from opponents, and your clothes will be ripped to pieces. When you’re completely out of health you’ll be down to your underwear as well.

The game plays the gimmick more for laughs, and less for eroticism. Even if the camera angles during transformations are peculiar. But like an R Rated B movie comedy on Cinemax in 1995, it can come off as kind of crass. Of course humor is subjective. Some are going to laugh at how over the top it is. Others are going to be totally confused. While some may even feel a little offended. The game is absolutely unabashed in its presentation. So again, this game is most certainly not for everyone.

Fortunately, there are enough good things about Senran Kagura 2 that action game fans may want to check it out. The fighting system isn’t the most technical, it’s actually fairly simple. But not so simple that things feel mundane. It feels a bit like the Rocksteady Batman Arkham games. You mix up attacks with a weak, and strong button which result in some really awesome combos. They aren’t deep, but the animations are brisk, and smooth. There’s also a nice variety of moves during these sequences as well.

You can also jump, and do air attacks using the jump button with the attack buttons. There’s also a dash you can use. Finally, there’s a transformation sequence you can perform once you earn enough scrolls while playing. These are reminiscent of the transformation scenes from the old Sailor Moon anime. The off-putting difference being where the characters place their scrolls during these sequences. Once transformed you can then perform a super when you have enough of a meter filled. You use these by pressing the L button along with other buttons which do a variety of crazy animations. These are normally the kinds of things you can see in fighting games like Street Fighter V or Marvel Vs. Capcom 3.  There are even tag team combos you can do in some levels where you’re forced to toggle between multiple characters.

Senran Kagura 2 also has a couple of camera options when playing. By default the camera will stay fixed, and you can target enemies with the D-pad if you feel more comfortable locking on to them. If you’re playing on a 3DS (Sorry 2DS or 3DS XL owners) you can also use the optional Circle Pad Pro. This lets you run the camera freeform like a mouse, or a second thumb stick. The newest 3DS can also do this with its built-in Circle Pad Pro replacement. As I own the 2DS I really couldn’t test this option out, but I was able to play fine with the fixed camera.

All of this makes for a hack n’ slash beat ’em up game that feels really good. Again, everything flows smoothly, and quickly. You quickly find yourself going from enemy to enemy seamlessly, and racking up crazy combos. Whether you come from classics like Double Dragon, Streets Of Rage, and Final Fight or modern games like God Of War, Devil May Cry, or Dynasty Warriors you’ll likely enjoy the fighting system here. Tamsoft were also the developers behind Onechanbara. But where that series can sometimes feel mundane, and repetitive this game doesn’t.

I think a major reason it doesn’t is because there is a wide variety of enemies on display, each with a different set of strategies needed to defeat them. There are various monsters, ninjas, soldiers, other students, and storyline characters to go up against. The vast number of playable characters also helps. Each character plays completely different from the rest of the cast. Some characters are faster, with attacks that do minimal damage, but also stun enemies so you can get in more hits. Others are slower with far more powerful attacks. Then you have others that fall somewhere in between. It can again, feel like a fighting game in that regard. You can try using the entire cast, or you can settle on one character you feel most comfortable with. Of course the campaign will make you play with each character as there are scenes that require particular characters for the storyline.

The game has a fairly extensive campaign where you’ll follow the adventures of several stables. These are good, and evil students of Shinobi who rival one another. But as the story goes on you’ll discover that they also have common enemies. I don’t really want to give anything away, but it’s a halfway decent romp. It isn’t the most original story, and there are a lot of events you’ve seen dozens of times in other games. But I will give it credit for at least attempting to give each of the characters some personality beyond being simple eye candy. There are actual motivations, cares, fears, and some moments of genuinely funny dialogue. It has its share of common archetypes mind you. There’s the super serious personality, the hyperactive personality, the one that second guesses themselves constantly, the brash personality. But there are some original takes on them here.

Don’t get me wrong, you’re not going to hold up the storytelling in Senran Kagura 2 alongside revered tales told in Portal, Half-Life, Deus EX, or System Shock 2. This is still a very silly, over the top game. But it does at least try to be more than a soft core button masher. That said, some of the extras don’t, like the  game’s costume decorator where you can pick the two outfits for any given character. You get to unlock new ones as you play the game. Some of them are actually pretty cool looking, while others are right out of Bikini Car Wash Company. Rounding out the extra features is the AR photo mode. This mode lets you take any of the player models, and super impose them over a photo you take with the 3DS camera.

Senran Kagura 2 also has a Co-Op mode, where you, and a friend can sync up your 3DS systems, and play the campaign together, or replay individual missions together. Back on the single-player  front, you can go back, and play any previous stage with any character to level them up. At the end of every stage you’re also given a rating. The better you do, the higher your score, and the more unlocks you’ll receive. Senran Kagura 2’s difficulty does start to really ramp up around halfway through the game. So going back, and replaying earlier levels with some of the newer characters you unlock isn’t the worst idea.

In between levels you can also go back to a hub level, which changes between chapters. There are 5 chapters, each with several missions. Senran Kagura 2 is a pretty long game all things considered. The hub level lets you communicate with the characters for some back story dialogue. You can also choose to enter one room to go on missions, one for each of the various modes, as well as the options menu. Here you can change audio, and visual settings. You can also turn off the clothes tearing sequences if you want. You can also use the sub-menu on the touch screen to jump to any of these rather than walk around the hub.

All in all, Senran Kagura 2 is actually a pretty fun, and challenging game if you can get past the exploitation B movie vibe of everything. There’s no full frontal nudity or intercourse on display so this doesn’t get into anything overtly pornographic. But it isn’t embarrassed about its suggestive camera angles, or dirty jokes either. Which is why  it still isn’t something for everyone. If, however you can look past the risqué elements you’ll find a pretty good action game, and R rated comedy underneath it all.

Final Score: 8 out of 10

Energy Warrior Review

Well, after RetroWorldExpo, I was thrust back into a lot of back-breaking labor. A coworker had taken time off just as I was getting back in from the fun, and excitement. The good news: I picked up a bunch of hours to cover them. The bad news: I am completely wiped after doing so. The worse news: The game I found at the convention wasn’t too good. But to be fair, I wasn’t expecting it to set the world on fire.

Mastertronic was a pioneer in games in a number of respects. They were a really big deal in the UK for a while where they were founded. They even helped distribute the Sega Master System in Europe toward the end of their days. They were so successful in doing so, that the Master System dethroned the NES. Sega ended up buying their business. But before distributing consoles, they were known for publishing budget games for home computers. A lot of publishers were in this market. Notably, Firebird, and Cosmi (which is still around today.) Mastertronic eventually published games in the US, as well as in Europe.

PROS: Box art. Nice graphics.

CONS: Uninspired. Monotonous.

BOX ART: Where can I see that movie?

Most of Mastertronic’s titles were hit or miss. Some of their games were really fun, others not so much. Unfortunately Energy Warrior is one of their misses. That isn’t to say there isn’t anything good here. There is, but it ends up being banal in spite of those things. First off, I love the cover art. A soldier with a plasma rifle grimacing, as three menacing ships fly in from the background. Oh sure, there is definitely a B movie feel to the art, but it’s a great example of how important box art used to be in gaining interest. When you fire up the game, you’ll see some pretty nice visuals, and some excellent music.

Then you start playing, and well, there isn’t much to say. Energy Warrior is one part Defender, one part Sinistar, neither of which is a part that is really executed well. Visually it looks closer to something like R-Type or Turrican. But if you go into it expecting any of those games you’re going to be disappointed. The game splits up things into zones, each with ten areas. The areas basically look the same but with a few minor background changes, and different color layouts. You can go left or right for around 20 seconds before hitting an invisible wall, and being forced to go back.

During this process, an arbitrary number of enemies appear, and you have to shoot them. Eventually, a boss character will show up, and if you kill it, a tile is left in its place. The tile will have a bunch of symbols cycling on it. Some of them restore energy to your ship’s health meter. Some give you more smart bombs which kill everything on-screen, But most importantly is a key. Getting a key moves you to the next zone area. As you move between zones the enemies become fiercer, and the game adds a little bit more variety to their designs. Sometimes you may see a mothership zip by, but shooting one down inexplicably does nothing for you. Really you’ll just want to kill the grunts, and bosses.

If you do manage to get through all of the areas, and consequentially, the zones the game just starts over. There is no ending whatsoever. While this may sound okay, the game becomes really boring pretty quickly. Which is a shame. There are plenty of vintage arcade games that have you do the same thing over, and over. But they have something to grasp players, and keep them pumping in quarters. Space Invaders, in all of its simplicity, is an engaging game. Defender can become a pretty addicting shmup as well, because it juggles the archaic shooting with rescuing humans from becoming abducted. Even with their rudimentary graphics, those games have iconic characters, and they have smooth control.

Energy Warrior may have wonderful backgrounds. But none of the enemies are inspired at all. You shoot at skulls, clusters of circles, an eyeball, some individual circles, a diamond, and one cool looking fighter. That’s it, other than the bosses, which are usually dragons composed of circles, and a head. The enemy sprites aren’t even designed in a way that seems to fit with the rest of the game. Except for perhaps the mother ships that again, give you no points for taking them down. Moreover, while things may look fast, it can also feel sluggish at times, making it brutally hard to out run a huge cluster of enemies. Even if this had been purely about scoring points rather than a goal, it falls horribly short when you compare it to any version of any high score focused shmup. Gyruss, Defender, Galaxian, Galaga, and Phoenix all beckon you. The fact the game gives you a goal of going through 34 levels means you’re going into it with something to shoot for, like an ending. This game also came out at a time when Home Computer, and Console games were doing just that. In 1987 The Commodore 64 had seen some really great original games, as well as excellent ports of games like R-type, and Life Force. All with a goal of reaching an end, or deep experiences in other genres like adventure games, and RPGs. Which also explains why some budget publishers eventually had trouble. Some of those excellent games saw eventual price drops that made things like Energy Warrior less appealing.

That isn’t to say Energy Warrior is the worst game you can find for your Commodore or other 8-bit computer format. Or that there is no fun to be had. There are plenty worse games you can find. But the fun that is here wears off really quickly. If you’re a collector who simply must have every retail game ever published for the Commodore 64 then pick this up. If you’re like me, someone who buys old games to actually play what you missed, then put the money toward a different title. That box art sure is cool though.

Final Score: 5 out of 10

SiN Retrospective Part 3: SiN Episodes: Emergence

2006. Valve had been talking up the idea of episodic gaming. The company had decided that a series of games could be released in chunks at a time at a discount. Then, much like a TV show, each episode could end with a cliffhanger getting the player hyped to see what happens next. They eventually tried this with Half-Life 2. But Valve wasn’t the only company sold on the idea. Ritual Entertainment thought that SiN would be a great franchise to use the idea on.

PROS: Level design. Voice acting. Innovative A.I.. Soundtrack.

CONS: Short. Will likely never see a conclusion.

BIANCA BEAUCHAMP: Portrayed Elexis Sinclaire at E3 in 2006.

SiN Episodes was supposed to be the heavy hitter for the episodic model. The game takes a bit of a departure from the original game’s wide open maps. Instead, the game follows the Half-Life model of intricate maps, with linear routes. So much so, that it was one of the first games that licensed the Source engine from Valve. Everything is built on the foundation of Half-Life 2’s tech. While at first glance that may seem like a step backwards, it does help move the series toward the TV feel the developers were going for. The game opens up with Blade waking up on an operating table. Elexis Sinclaire, and her latest henchman, Viktor Radek.

Before they can finish whatever they were doing to blade, HardCORPS shows up, and starts taking down the cartel’s minions. Elexis, and Viktor escape as a new character, Jessica Cannon (Played by Halo’s Jen Taylor) emerges to rescue Blade. She gets him out of the building, and into her car. As she drives we learn that Viktor’s cartel has gotten control of large sections of Freeport. He’s suspected of leading a U4 operation (SinTek’s mutant creating drug).

Blade has a weird dream about a scantily clad Elexis in a pond, before coming to. Jessica, contacts JC about an informant, and takes Blade to go meet him. Despite JC’s objections, and pleas to get Blade examined. Blade ends up going through a development sector. Things seem on the surface like a housing revitalization project. But the large number of SinTek security officers, and mercenaries suggest otherwise. The trail then leads to the Freeport shipping docks. Blade meets the informant who leads Blade to a tanker where the U4 is being made. Before he can finish telling Blade everything he needs to know, one of the informant’s men betrays him. SinTek forces show up in droves, and Blade has to escape. After going through a gauntlet of forces he meets back up with Jessica briefly. After getting armed she forges ahead to get in contact with JC, while Blade makes his way to Viktor’s base.But it is here that Blade finds out that U4 is only part of the secret operation. Viktor is also dealing in a number of military grade technologies. SinTek is shown to have continued its mutant research. After making his way to Viktor he learns that Viktor has the antidote to whatever Elexis injected him with. But that Viktor has no idea what the concoction is, other than it has powerful results. The tanker base begins to self-destruct, as Viktor escapes. Elexis appears as a hologram to taunt Blade, before he has to start fighting his way out of the secret factory.

After getting through some secret sewer tunnels the trail leads back to the development sector. Blade discovers that SinTek’s largest building in the area, Supremacy Tower is a potential stronghold.  He meets up with Jessica after he defeats a giant mutant. Jessica picks up Blade in her nearly totaled car. With the supremacy tower being heavily fortified, Jessica sees no stealth option. She drives the car through the front of the building. The two of them make their way to the top. They also discover SinTek’s data servers on the way. Jessica patches JC into the network while Blade continues to track down Viktor. Jessica gets the data to JC, but not without being captured by Viktor. Viktor meets Blade near the top of the tower in his helicopter. He rambles on to our heroes about how he has 5 data servers across the globe, and that losing one to the police is of little consequence. After some sarcastic dialogue from Elexis Sinclaire, he tosses Jessica out of his helicopter onto the roof after injecting her with some sort of poison. He then gets away after calling in an attack chopper.

Blade climbs to the top of the tower to try to shoot it down, but is confronted by another giant mutant. After barely defeating the mutant, he manages to take down the vehicle by the skin of his teeth. Then we get a trailer for the next episode. Jessica is put in an infirmary at HardCORPS, and JC explains that thousands of the monsters Blade barely defeated on the top of the Supremacy Tower have run amok. We get a montage of them killing civilians, police, and even SinTek’s own private army soldiers. Elexis can be seen laughing victoriously, as the end credits start to roll.

SiN Episodes Emergence does what it sets out to do. It delivers a short game in the vein of a television serial. As a game, it uses a lot of design ideas, and play we’ve seen in countless shooters since. The thing is, there are a lot of things under the hood here that were actually pretty revolutionary at the time. The interactive objects that were novel in the first game, are back with a few improvements. You’ll still be typing on computers, and using keypads. The game borrows Half-Life 2’s companion idea too. Jessica Cannon is this game’s Alyx Vance. She shows up similarly, finding alternate routes, and expounding  story information to you. She also fights with you in the last stage. But the biggest innovation the game added is an A.I. scale. The better you do, the harder the enemies will become. They’ll stop standing in the open if they see a comrade go down. They’ll change their attack patterns if a certain technique doesn’t work out for them. Similarly, they’ll become easier to defeat if you’re consistently failing, and continuing. It eliminates the need for the typical Easy, Medium, Hard layout traditionally seen in gaming. (There is also a HardCORPS mode that you unlock upon beating the campaign. This tasks you with beating the  game with no save states, on one proverbial quarter.).

The A.I. isn’t perfect mind you. Jessica doesn’t always go where she’s supposed to. Sometimes even an otherwise difficult enemy will bug out, and do something dumb. But it still reaches a level few games have in recent years. The game also has a pretty wide range of enemy types considering the short length. There are a number of variants on the mercenaries, and SinTek security forces. The mutants from the original game also return, alongside the different NPC’s like construction workers, guards, and so forth. The game can be completed within four to six hours depending on how good you are, and how you’ve set the Artificial Intelligence sliders. But it’s an insanely fun four to six hours. Most of your favorite weapons return from the first game, each with their own feel mostly intact. All of the weapons also have new secondary functions you can use provided you have the proper kind of ammunition. While the game has gone more toward the linear cinematic route instead of the original’s focus on exploration, there are plenty of secrets. The game has a number of Easter eggs, hidden weapons, and more if you’re the type to try to go off of the beaten path. It feels different, but also keeps the spirit of the cult first game alive.

The game also retains the brutality of SiN’s gun fights. Headshots often result in decapitation. Explosions will many times turn enemies into giblets. Fires will burn enemies alive. Some of the scripted animations will still amaze you today if you’re seeing them for the first time. Malfunctioning jetpacks sending guys off into the distance. Bad guys failing to stop, drop, and roll. Bad guys calling in for back up, or regrouping. It all makes for the B action movie feel the franchise is known for.

The game doesn’t have a multiplayer mode. Where the original SiN had a run of death match maps, and variants this game gives you something called Arena Mode instead. Arena is basically a single player horde mode. You are put into a map, and have to keep fighting bad guys until you die. You can compete for a high score on the leaderboard, but this really feels like an afterthought, and isn’t worth playing more than a few times. Supposedly there was going to be some form of multiplayer added later, but it never was. Another positive thing about the game is its music. The soundtrack is one of the best scores in video games. The title track What’s the world come to? features some wonderful vocals by Sarah Ravenscroft. The soundtrack has a very James Bond feel. It was even popular enough to see an actual album release.

The storyline isn’t a big upgrade over the one in the first game. But once again, it’s voice acted very well, and nails its B movie target. Even though it gets a bit campy, you’ll still want to see what happens. Unfortunately, we probably never will. Episodic gaming ended up going the way of the dodo pretty quickly. Mainly because the few studios doing it found they couldn’t finish the episodes fast enough. The development time for these budget games ended up being almost as long as a full priced game. Moreover, Ritual was purchased by Mumbo Jumbo not long after SiN Episodes, released. Upon the buy out, the company was told they couldn’t work on the second episode. Instead they had to focus on budget priced casual puzzle games. Most of the staff at Ritual left Mumbo Jumbo after the buyout, and so much like Half-Life 2 Episode 3, remains in limbo.

It’s a short ride, and it’s a sad note to go out on. But SiN Episodes: Emergence is still a historical gaming footnote you should look into. It’s a lot of fun to play through, and delivers the Popcorn movie action in spades. At release the game even included the original game, albeit with some content edits. Still, for anyone looking for an entertaining cult series should pick this up if they missed it way back when. With that, is the end of the SiN retrospective. It’s unlikely the series will ever see another entry, but on the other hand other games have taught us to never say “Never.” Here’s hoping if that day ever comes it continues the fun B movie camp of two excellent action games.

Final Score: 8 out of 10

Insurgency Review

It seems as if modern military themed shooters are a dime a dozen. Call Of Duty 4 turned the series into a nearly guaranteed seller every year. So big a seller, that over the last decade many games have taken that theme. Even games that never competed directly with its mechanics, or action movie narratives. EA’s Battlefield certainly altered itself over the years to compete with it. Other games crashed, and burned in their attempts to clone Activision’s 800 pound gorilla. So here comes an indie game looking to nip at the heels of those big budget war shooters.

PROS: Challenge. Gear mechanics. Stellar map design. Old school tactical mechanics.

CONS: High difficulty. Graphics won’t satisfy those with unreasonable expectations.

MOD SQUAD: This joins the list of video games that started life as mods for popular titles.

The developers started Insurgency as a mod for Half-Life 2. Over time, and setbacks this eventually led to the creation of an entirely new game in Source engine. If it sounds like a familiar story, that’s because it is. Many other games in recent memory have followed a similar path. The original Counter-Strike is probably the biggest example, launching not only an entirely new franchise, but the careers of developer Gearbox Software.

Only time will tell if New World Interactive will follow the same trajectory. But Insurgency has the potential to  become a pretty big franchise if this title is any indication. Let’s get one thing out of the way, the entire focus here is multiplayer. There is no story driven campaign of scripted events to really speak of. There is a tutorial that has a little bit of exposition, and context. But it doesn’t go into any deep territory. There’s nothing that will remind you of more serious war movies like Platoon. It just explains that you’ve joined up with some contracted mercenaries who have been hired to fight off terrorists. The game doesn’t reference any groups or nations in order to avoid too much controversy. But just like Call Of Duty, Battlefield, and Counter-Strike you’ll be fighting in environments inspired by real world locations.

While there’s no doubt Insurgency borrows from other games, it seems to take out loans on only the good modes. There are several different modes to choose from in both , competitive, and cooperative styles of game play:

Push is fairly similar to the Rush mode you’ve likely played in any of the last few Battlefield games. There are three objectives on the map for the attacking team to claim, while the defenders have to stop them. If the attacking team succeeds, the defenders are pushed back, until they either successfully hold a position. Or, until they’re pushed back to their final position, and destroyed. There are no nodes to destroy in this mode, but the game mode works largely the same as in BF’s Rush.

Ambush is much like the Escort mode you’ve seen in Team Fortress. There are extraction zones on the map, and one team has to escort an assigned player to one of them. The assigned player has a limited load out to defend themselves. The opposing side wins if they can manage to kill off that specific player before they can make it to an extraction zone.

Firefight, and Skirmish are similar to the Conquest modes you’ve played in Battlefield. The difference between the two is that Skirmish adds a weapon cache to the mix. If destroyed, it deals a blow to the opposing team’s ability to have reinforcement tickets. Firefight replenishes tickets for a team when they capture a node on the map.  In both modes though, capturing all three nodes is essential to keeping the enemy team from being able to replenish tickets.

Strike changes things up from the other modes. By making an attacking team go after weapon caches, while defenders try to stop them. If the defenders can’t stop them they lose. They’ll also lose if they are wiped out while trying to stop the attacking team. It’s a little bit higher on the stress factor than some of the other modes as a result.

Occupy is essentially a king of the hill mode, where both teams try to hold a single position on the map. When your team is holding the position, you don’t have to worry about losing waves of lives. But the second you’re on the losing end, trying to reclaim it you do. So the game goes until time runs out, or until one side is out of lives.

But the game doesn’t end with these modes because there are a few cooperative ways to play as well. The most noteworthy mode is Hunt mode which feels like it was heavily inspired by Rainbow Six 3. In that game teams would enter a map, and plan a way to use stealth to take out computer controlled terrorists. If all of the players failed to do so they lost the game. But if even only one person was left standing at the end, the mission was successful. This mode is very similar except the maps are much larger, being a war game. It can be especially tough when dealing with night versions of the various maps, and ridiculously accurate snipers. But if you can pull it off it feels very rewarding.

The other cooperative modes aren’t quite as fun, but they will still have their fans.  Checkpoint is a lot like Push except you’ll have all of the human players fighting against the computer. In addition to that mode is the Survival mode which is effectively a horde mode. Teams try to survive against waves of computer controlled enemies for as long as humanly possible.

Once you’ve decided what kind of game you want to play you can either use the Source browser list, or you can invite friends into a group, and have the game find, and connect you to a server by itself. Having the game do it is a lot easier, and more convenient. However, it won’t always find you the closest possible server in proximity to everybody. So doing this does mean you’re going to end up on the occasional lag ridden game. Purists will want to use the Source browser to find a server to mitigate this possible problem.

When you do connect to a game you’ll be assigned to one side by default, and it is here you can choose to either switch teams or choose your class. This is where Insurgency really starts to veer away from the path taken by other team based shooters. In most games, you are given a choice of four classes, each with its own weapon tree. Over time you level up, and have access to more weapons, and upgrades for that specific class. Insurgency abandons that formula. Instead of only four classes, there can be several. Classes are dependent on the map in question, as well as the mode that is being played. They are also different in number. So there may only be three openings for say, snipers, one for an engineer, and two for other classes. Another interesting spin is that there are two sub groups in each army rather than squads of four people. Each of these subgroups can have one player lead them.

Once everyone has a class chosen, and the match is about to begin players can then choose their load outs. Each player is given a number of points to use. Each weapon, attachment for a weapon, explosive, armor, pouch, and so forth has a point value. You cannot exceed the number of points given. So you have to really think about what you want to sacrifice. Do you want to beef up your shotgun at the expense of body armor? Would you rather have extra grenades, and a side arm instead of a beefy machine gun? Perhaps you want to extend your life above all else, and you put more of your points toward armor, and pouches, instead of primary weaponry.  It’s a refreshing change from the weapon tree system so many games have used over the past decade. It hearkens back to the days of Rainbow Six where tactical games let you use whatever you wanted so long as you were going to be okay with the trade offs.

Once everyone is settled with their load outs the game will begin. Insurgency makes a lot of use of voice chat. It’s built into the game, and it’s highly recommended you take advantage of it. It’s a lot easier to be able to communicate with everyone than trying to type in the chat box. For those who don’t have a headset, you can still type, just remember you’ll need to find a good spot to hide. The game does allow you to mute individual players too though. So for those times you find you have an abusive or annoying player, you don’t have to listen to them. The game also makes very good use of Valve’s VAC anti-cheat system. It really cuts down on the number of cheaters. No game is cheater free, mind you but it does seem to be one of the better systems in place.

That said, you can expect to die an awful lot in this game. Because it does not hold your hand at all. Many of the things we’ve been trained to expect simply aren’t here. If by some miracle you survive being shot you will not regenerate health. Oh you may cease experiencing blur, but that’s only because they’re no longer shooting at you. One or two more hits from another combatant will probably finish you off. Most of the weapons in this game will put you down in three hits max. If you have the maximum amount of armor you may take a few more, but you’ll also move slower. There are no crosshairs. That’s right. No crosshairs. You’re going to have to really use your eyes, and learn to lead your targets here. You can use iron sights to make aiming slightly easier, but it is also slower. You also won’t always find time to use it when engaging three or four enemies at the same time.

Fortunately, some of the attachments for weapons like foregrips, and scopes can help you. But again, you will have to sacrifice something else in order to use them. The same can be said during night maps, where you’ll want to use night vision goggles in lieu of something else. Suppressive fire is almost as important in Insurgency as scoring frags. One of the cool features the game has to offer is the effect of debris. The game doesn’t have destructible environments, but it does have dust, and particle effects flying off of surfaces when bullets hit them. This can overwhelm people because they can’t quite figure out where they’re being shot upon from. So often times suppressive fire can lead to a retreating enemy, allowing a teammate to get them if you couldn’t. Which leads to another difficulty. Unless a server is equipped to do it, there are no notifications. If you kill someone, you won’t know without checking for a body. There are no kill cams. If you die, you won’t see a spy cam or a replay revealing who took you out. Again, a server may run a program that displays who got the jump on you, but it isn’t going to tell you where.

If all of this sounds frustrating, and difficult, that’s because it is. Very much so. But in a good way. When you think about it, it leads to much more careful plotting, and communication with your team. As opposed to other games where it’s easy to place a spot marker on someone, or consult a mini map to find an objective. In Insurgency you’ll have to pull up a large map, and risk being shot. It’s better to memorize the maps after several plays to remember where objectives are. There’s something really compelling about the ramped up difficulty. Especially if you’ve played a lot of the classic tactical games like Rainbow Six, Counter Strike, or Battlefield 1942. Doing well feels a lot more rewarding here than in many other modern shooters. Even if you do end up feeling frustrated, it’s still fun. You’ll still want to succeed, and you’ll probably want to keep playing until you do.

Insurgency doesn’t have all of the bells, and whistles of a major AAA title. Being a Source game, there are some rough edges here. Simple geometry in some areas. Decidedly, lower quality textures in others. If you’re the type who obsesses over what a game looks like rather than how it plays, you may be a little turned off. Nevertheless, Insurgency is not an ugly game. The game does a pretty respectable job at displaying lights, reflections, and shadows. The parking garage section in the Ministry stage comes pretty close to the look of the one in Battlefield 3: Close Quarters’ Operation 925 stage.  Player models aren’t highly detailed, but are on par with the ones seen in some of the older Call Of Duty games. There are also a decent number of options in the graphics menu. Making this something quite scalable.

As a matter of fact, the game has some of the lowest system requirements compared to many other games that have come out over the past 12 months. The minimum requirements list a Core 2 Duo E6600, (A processor that came out in 2006), a Direct X 9.0c compliant Video Card with 512mb of memory on it ( This version of DX came out around 2004), and 6GB of space on the hard disk. Suffice it to say, if you have a fairly old computer that can’t run most new releases, you may be able to run this. Albeit on the lowest settings.  Which still look surprisingly decent all things considered. Even in the world of independent B games, it’s rare for a new game to run okay on a nearly ten-year old computer. The game also runs on Macintosh, which should please those on Apple boxes.

But Insurgency does have some technical issues that keep it from dethroning the ARMA, Call Of Duty, Counter-Strike, and Battlefield franchises of the world. The worst problem the game has is lag. To be fair, all of those other great games certainly have issues as well. But this is a crucial area for competitive games. Being on par with the others isn’t going to help it climb the mountain. The lag issues aren’t nearly bad enough to make the game unplayable. But there seem to be nights when the hosting servers can’t seem to keep up with the traffic. It’s about as infrequent an occurrence as it is with many of the AAA shooters. But it will annoy you if it does happen during a play session.

The other problem it has comes up very rarely, but it will still infuriate people. Sometimes the game will simply close, and exit to the desktop on its own. You won’t see a box show up explaining that it has crashed. You will just see your desktop as if you had never launched the game. Again, almost every other game it competes against has bugs, glitches or crashes. It’s a shame though because it could be another chance for New World Interactive to have one over on its peers. One can only hope these connection issues, and random crashes are solved soon enough. One thing that is very encouraging, is the fact that NWI has been frequently supporting this game with updates. So hopefully they can iron out these problems.

Insurgency may not have the best in visuals, drivable vehicles, or an action packed campaign with Hollywood set pieces. But it has plenty of modes to keep you busy, a large variety of maps, weapons, and a very good communication software feature. It also has very low system requirements, widening the potential player base. The lack of hand holding is going to be very compelling for those who tire of red splashes, and kill cams. Players looking for a really good team based tactical shooter will really love Insurgency’s many competitive modes. Players who want a great cooperative mode will love the Hunt mode.  If you’re looking for a great shooter, with a ton of replay value you should definitely take a look at this game. So long as you don’t mind average graphics, and a high level of challenge. Insurgency kicks ass, and it will certainly kick yours.

Final Score: 8 out of 10

Marlow Briggs And The Mask Of Death Review

It’s almost guaranteed that if you come up with something wonderful, many will try to copy it, or improve upon it. Sometimes this leads to some really heated, and awesome competition. Other times, we see a laughable attempt at coat-tail surfing, and in the worst cases we end up with flat-out plagiarism. Today’s game really leans toward the former. It takes the base functionality of a modern classic, but changes nearly everything else. It even takes a few of its own chances. It results in something you’ll really want to check out even though it won’t become as memorable as the mold it was born from.

PROS: Controls. Tongue in cheek humour. Variety. Fun!

CONS: Low rent graphics in spots.

WAIT WHAT?: The conversations Marlow has with a mask.

Marlow Briggs, And The Mask Of Death is very much indeed; a God Of War clone. Like the Sony flagship spectacle fighter you go through hacking up thousands of enemies. There are various weapons wholly inspired by those of Kratos. The dual blades are here, the chain whip is here. Even some of the magic spells of doom are here. But that’s really where the similarities end. Because the other 85% of Marlow Briggs is a late 80’s direct to video action film.

Things kick off briskly, as Marlow Briggs meets up with his girlfriend, Eva Torres in a South American jungle. She works for a business doing research on ancient codex wheels, and artifacts. When she feels uneasy about continuing to do translation work for Heng Long,  she tries to quit. This only serves to enrage her boss who has Marlow Briggs killed on the spot.

His girlfriend is then taken hostage, and forced to continue her work. Why? Because her evil employer wants to uncover the steps to an ancient ritual. What is the ritual? A means for him to become a dark godlike creature who can take over the world.

Fortunately for Marlow Briggs, it turns out that the weapon he was killed with was magical. It resurrects him as a super powered warrior.

So like any direct to video action star, he sets out to free his girlfriend, kill the bad guy, and save the world.

When I say direct to video action movie, I mean it too. Marlow Briggs is a game that relishes the bit. It doesn’t hide from the cheesy story, or over the top action at all whatsoever. It lives, and breathes everything from Dolph Lundgren to Jean-Claude Van Damme, and never apologizes for it. It just expects you to go with it, and you will.

Because Marlow Briggs, And The Mask Of Death is fun. A lot of fun. Upon closer examination you may notice that the game is not a visual powerhouse. Characters are lower on the geometry, some of the textures are decidedly lower quality, and models lack some detail. But things also look good enough that it won’t bother you.  There are some nice bloom effects, here, and there. And the game runs at a pretty smooth frame rate, with little to no hiccups along the way.

It really isn’t going to matter to you anyway. Because the game is going to keep you busy with a lot of things going on. You won’t have much time to be counting the number of shadows on a minion’s costume because you’ll have to defeat him, and around ten of his buddies.

Voice acting is full of the wooden dialogue, and cheese in DTV, and made for TV movies. But in the context of this game it is a very good thing. Everything comes together, and the game’s amazing score complements the action really, really well. It truly does feel like the most epic B-movie turned video game.

Unlike most clones of God Of War, Devil May Cry, or other popular hack, and slashers this game gets something right. The play control. Many smaller developers, and even some larger ones tend to make entries in the genre that never seem to get the feel just right. Either there are noticeable breaks in the action, or a combo will feel sluggish. Other times timing or hit detection will be bad, or just off enough to make for slow, plodding, and unfair moments.

Marlow Briggs doesn’t fail here. Combos flow very nicely, with some smooth animations going along with them. Like the recent run of Batman games, there is a large enough enemy variety, and pizzaz during fights to make mashing X worthwhile. As in the games it cribs from, you can also upgrade your attack power, and spell power by collecting yellow orbs for point values. When these become high enough in number you can go into a pause menu to do this.

Pausing the game will bring up a screen where you can spend your yellow orb experience points to perform your upgrades. Often times you will actually be directed to go into this screen the moment you have enough of them. Each weapon, and spell can be upgraded up to three levels. Doing this buffs the damage output in your attacks.

You can also access a trainer from the pause menu. This lets you practice the various combos with each of the game’s weapons. It isn’t something you need to really do if playing on a lower difficulty setting. But if you are playing on one of the harder settings you may want to learn some of them to keep the waves of bad guys from hitting you.

As you go through the game, you will eventually stumble onto the various weapons, and spells by beating stages. Once you have them you can switch between them on the fly. The scythe is two ended, and is the first one you’ll receive. It does medium speed combos, and is the one that gets you started. The dual blades are a lot faster, and work great when you are being mobbed by waves of enemies.

The chain whip is pretty cool, allowing you to get combos that do hundreds of hits. It doesn’t do as much damage, but it has an insane range. There is also a hammer which is slow, but has a fairly high damage output. In my experience I found the dual blades worked out the best, though other players may prefer one of the other weapons more.

Spells include one that brings about meteor showers. One that brings about hurricanes, and tornadoes. Another one blasts the ground hard enough to pull up rock from underneath enemies. The last one does more with water, and ice. All of these can be upgraded, and they all do fairly large damage on the lowest grade enemies. Larger enemies seem to take different damage levels based on the spell.

You can also possess certain enemies after you do enough damage which makes them either help you out as an NPC or turns them into a vehicle you can control. The latter is especially fun as you can control giant scorpions. Enemy variety is also impressive. You will fight everything from mercenaries, to bird people, to wizards, to killer beetles. The list goes on, and on.

Using spells, and throwing knives also costs mana. This is measured by a blue bar on the HUD, while your health is measured by a red bar. There are red, and blue masks you can collect to refill these bars in the field. Game play is broken up between sections, and eventually becomes a formula countless games already use. First you will have a wave section where you have to beat down waves of enemies.

Completing these sections will lead into some platforming areas where you will climb walls, swing from cables, jump from place to place, and so on. These are pretty fun, and challenging sections in their own right. Many times these areas will task you with some puzzle solving. Again, it isn’t something tossed in “Because game X happened to have it.” Most of the puzzles actually take some thought to work through. They tow the seemingly fine line between “Why bother if they’re going to be this easy?”, and “Why is this so impossible?”.

There are also mini boss encounters, and boss encounters near the middle of stages, as well as at the end of stages. As in God Of War there are also some QTEs you will be tasked with. Thankfully, these aren’t over done in the game, used only during boss battles, or gaining entrance to certain areas.

The game also attempts to keep things from devolving into monotony with a variety of time trial sections where you have to get from place to place as fast as possible, while avoiding traps or other dangers.

It attempts to further mix things up with on rails sections. Some of them  involve collecting orbs, as you slide down an obstacle course, while others are turret sections. The turret sections work more in line with games like Sin & Punishment or Star Fox.

There are even two shoot ’em up stages near the third act that while not original, (Think 1942, Sky Shark, or Twin Cobra) are still pretty fun to play. These can also be played independently of the main game once you encounter them during your initial play through. Completing the game also reveals an end credits clone of Gravitar.

Marlow Briggs is also not a very long game either. Which is actually more of a help than a hindrance. Many spectacle fighters, and beat ’em ups can go on far too long for games of their type. In spite of this there is still a surprisingly varied number of settings. Jungles, caverns, industrial foundries, even an icy mountain stage.

A really good player can clear it in a few hours while the rest of us will probably do it in around 8. But what a fun 8 hours it will be. It has cheesy dialogue, one-dimensional villains, and a lot of over the top “Oh come on!” moments. It won’t wow you with its graphics. But it is a lot more fun than you might think it has any right to be. It is every definition of the phrase “Sleeper hit”, and one I highly recommend fans of hack and slash titles look into.

Final Score: 8 out of 10

Goat Simulator Review

Tony Hawk Goatboarding.

Seriously. That is what Goat Simulator often times feels like. Yet, the entire game is a sandbox of experiments to goof around with.

PROS: It’s funny. It’s fun to mess around with.

CONS: Lack of focus. It doesn’t take long to experience everything.

WTF?: Pretty much everything. But then it is called GOAT SIMULATOR

Goat Simulator is certainly a strange title. Sure there have been a lot of those over the past 30 years. But many have called this The Room of gaming. Or The Birdemic of gaming. The stand out example of “So bad it’s good” in the industry of video games.

I’m not quite willing to go that far with my opinion. But I can definitely see why a lot of players might. Right from its description on Steam, the developers pretty much admit that Goat Simulator is a joke game. It isn’t meant to present a deep narrative. It isn’t meant to have AAA visuals that only a Michael Bay fan could love. (Which it does make a joke about.)

What you will get with Goat Simulator is a recipe for chaos. On paper for all accounts GS is a terrible game. It’s one part experimental physics tools, one part Octodad, and one part Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. All set in one open world with a number of objectives.

These objectives range from jumping over a certain number of objects to finding hidden trophies to performing tricks. This is where the Tony Hawk influence really shines through. Even going beyond the insanity you saw in American Wasteland. The goat can bounce off of trampolines, and perform all sorts of crazy air tricks. The goat can climb up giant cranes. It can find jet packs. The game even rips off one of Saints Row’s mini games by allowing you to go into a rag doll mode at will after being hit by a car.

There are also a lot of hidden missions you can find by exploring the map. All of which are accented by the really goofy physics within the engine. When the goat is rag dolled about, expect to see a lot of the crazed stretching you saw in the cult Octodad titles. The collision detection is about on par with Octodad. Often times your goat will be stuttering about like Christopher Lloyd in Food fight.

All of this leads to some of the game’s problems. Sometimes the speed or angle at which your goat, and game objects zip around cause severe clipping problems. In my time playing through the game I saw my goat get stuck in the roof of a house, blasted out of the game world, and saw many bizarre collision problems between people, crates, cars, bicycles, and steel beams.

I was also able at one point to get into an inaccessible spot behind the map where I eventually fell under the map before spawning again. In any other title these would be the sorts of instances leading to an absolute death knell. Here, these are still very big problems, but since the entire package is also a joke it has the oddness of not bothering the player as much.

Nevertheless, it still shouldn’t be praised as a feature, rather called out as a blight in an otherwise decent attempt at a comedic game. The other major problem the game has is its brevity. It won’t take you more than a couple of hours to see all there is to be seen in Goat Simulator.

There are a number of achievements for collectors to shoot for, and the game does go for a high score approach. But unlike the Golden Age of arcade games where a time limit, or number of lives made getting a high score a challenge this game has none of that. You quite literally cannot lose at Goat Simulator. Well that’s not entirely true. There is a time trial mode, but you have to find it in the game world. It still could have been devised a little bit better than it was, focusing on having them for each mission once completed during the free roam. Instead it’s a generic green stop watch that essentially seems to randomly tell you which task to attempt.

Goat Simulator is an anomaly. It’s not a great game by any stretch of the imagination. But it has the foundation in place to actually become one. If the overall game had a little bit more focus with rewards, and punishments it could indeed be the sort of game those who loved the original run of Tony Hawk games would flock to. It would also be the sort of game fans of quirky titles would flock to. Having a number of open courses with various hidden Easter Eggs, along with a set of missions for each would have been welcome.

Goat Simulator does give players a number of laughs, so marrying this comedy with a bit more focused game play would have also went a long way to making a more memorable experience. As it stands the game ends up being shallow once the initial novelty of its silliness begins to wear off. So some extra maps, and fine tuning really would have helped the game be more than a momentary break from other games.

And yet, at the same time even in its archaic, chaotic, mess of a state it is something one has to see to believe. It’s buggy. It has a ridiculously stupid concept. By all accounts it really should have spent a bit more time in development to be ironed out.

 

But I’d be remiss if I didn’t admit that while this is a train wreck, it is a really fun train wreck.  I don’t know if it is the poster child for games that are so bad they are good. But Goat Simulator is in fact, so bad that it is actually good. It will genuinely make you laugh for the right reasons as well as the wrong ones. If it proves successful one can only hope future versions will feature meatier content, and a lot more quality control. It’s one thing to have a funny bad game. It’s quite another to have a funny game that is good on all of its fronts.

Be that as it may, Goat Simulator isn’t a great game, but you may want to see it anyway.

Final Score: 4 out of 10 (But it’s a really fun 4 to mess around with.)