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Call of Juarez: Bound In Blood Game Review–Good But Only In Isolation

I’ll admit up front today, folks, that I actually enjoyed Call of Juarez: Bound In Blood on the Xbox 360 for what it was–a surprisingly well-done, a surprisingly intuitive, first person shooter that brought plenty of action right from the word go, and a story that actually held my interest.  But there are still problems to be had here, and we’ll get into those directly.

First, the plot itself.  A prequel to the original Call of Juarez, this time we’re with the McCall brothers as they fight their way through Georgia at about the same time William Tecumseh Sherman began his infamous March to the Sea.  With Georgia in slowly burning ruins, the McCalls, despite their spectacular valiance, aren’t able to repulse the invasion.  It even gets personal when Sherman’s March takes the McCall family farm with it.  Thus, two out of the three brothers McCall turn outlaw and go off to find the legendary gold of Juarez.  Along the way, they’ll tackle a variety of enemies–an Apache connected to the gold, a Mexican bandit and his lovely concubine, and even the Confederate army they went AWOL from in otder to turn outlaw.  The McCall brothers will thus launch a swath of lawlessness and destruction that will in turn leave its mark on the entirety of the old West forever.

I know, it sounds like an awesome story.  And watching it unfold, it really IS an awesome story.  But this is not where the aforementioned problems come into play.  The problems themselves come in on the actual gameplay end of things.

The controls are solid enough–no real problem there–but the biggest problem is that Call of Juarez: Bound In Blood is so very limited.  For instance, in the first level, you’re mostly crawling around in some trenches, trying to piece together where exactly you’re supposed to go.  Sure, you’ve got a marker giving you some idea where to go, but it’s still tough to tell if you need to take this corner or that corner back there and go around the long way, if you get my drift.

I’m convinced that I’ve become somewhat spoiled by Fallout 3 as I wind up comparing every first person shooter I play to it.  And sure enough, stacked up against an opening act like that, pretty much everything else will have to pale in comparison.  There’s just no two ways about it–you can’t eat a porterhouse steak then go chow down on meatloaf and say it’s on par with the best beef ever.  So what you have to do in response is take everything in isolation.  By itself, Call of Juarez has a decent multiplayer mode with lots of options, plenty of wild action, lots of gunplay and explosivesplay and all the things that make a shooter game solidly entertaining.  The graphics are at least fair, and the sound is solidly done.

And yet I still find myself somewhat let down, because I’ve seen what first person shooters actually can be. I’ve seen the kind of fun that can be had when you put someone behind the gun and let them roam wild and free over a huge map.  Every maze-crawler, every railroad run, every point-a-to-point-b game that follows is just a sad, sorry imitation.  Call of Juarez: Bound In Blood may be good enough for a play, but it’s definitely not as good as it could be.

Fallout 3 Point Lookout Game Review–They Really Mean It, Folks

I know, it’s something of a non sequitur and a pun all at the same time, but basically, when they say Point Lookout, they mean, look out.  Because for some reason, they’ve stuffed some serious baddies in that swampy ground, and it’s not going to be easy to get through.

This time in the greatest first person shooter that man has ever known, you’ll board a riverboat bound for Point Lookout, Maryland (which is, apparently, an actual place, unless I’m being hoaxed.  This is possible as I’ve never been to Maryland, but a cursory net search suggests that there really is a Point Lookout) with a goal in mind before you even get off the boat–to find a young woman’s missing daughter.  Of course, once you’re actually in Point Lookout, you’ll discover that there’s an incredible opportunity to be had here, as there’s virtually no one in sight when you actually get off the boat.  You can loot as you please!  And there’s PLENTY of loot to be had here–you’ll walk into a mostly abandoned seaside town / amusement park complex where there’s only one person, and she’s tending a shop.  But right away, you’ll notice there’s something very wrong with Point Lookout, and it’s not just the psuedonuclear shambles that every other place in the Capitol Wasteland is.  The Point Lookout motel contains scenes of horror even a raider would shrink from.  The Pint-Sized Slasher even makes a bit of a reappearance (he’s not just a newspaper blurb any more!) and the secrets, lies, and mysteries contained in that swamp are more than you could ever imagine.

There’s all manner of new equipment to be had here, but most of it is a little on the mundane side.  An axe, a shovel, a lever-action rifle that fires 10mm rounds and a double-barrelled shotgun will all make appearances, as will simpler things like workman’s coveralls and a Confederate cap, which is somewhat ironic as Maryland was a border state that leaned heavily toward the Union with only a few dissenters.  In fact, a whole LOT of Point Lookout seems to be done in that antebellum style of the Civil War-era South.  The huge manor houses, the relentless bayous…a lot of it just screams Louisiana.

Now, just so you know, I didn’t go in there cold.  I had recently reset my character to get the full experience back when Broken Steel came out, so I was a bit behind, but I took the riverboat at level fourteen, with the full loadout from the Project Anchorage vault.  I had my Chinese stealth armor, I had my Gauss rifle and a laser rifle with plenty of microfusion cells, I even had a Gatling laser, and I was getting chewed up at virtually every turn.  I don’t know how these “swamp people” who seem to have no more armor than their overalls are managing to absorb metal pellets fired at near-relativistic speeds when I’m blowing away Enclave troops in powered armor within three hits with the same hardware.

That’s about my only real gripe here–Point Lookout is some amazing fun, even if I do need to bring the equivalent of a light armored division or maybe Liberty Prime itself just to pacify the populace.  I love the darker tone and the subtle infusion of horror gameplay, something that game companies should definitely take note of.  Imagine this game with ZOMBIES.  And I’m not talking ghouls, but actual zombies.

One thing, however, remains crystal clear–Fallout 3, and by extension Point Lookout, is still the best action RPG I’ve ever played.

Red Faction Guerilla Game Review–The Best Red Faction Game Yet

Recently, a game landed onto the Xbox 360 that left me a little cold.  It was called Red Faction; Guerilla, and was yet another sequel to the first person shooter original and first sequel.  And when I first laid hands on this one I sighed in the deepest resignation and dragged out my thesaurus hoping I could find a new word for “craptacular”.   Seriously, I’m so very tired of first person shooters.  There are so few good ones.

But then I got it in, and I’ll tell you, I was pleasantly surprised.  Surprised is almost too weak a reaction, but is it really possible to be pleasantly shocked?

Anyway, you play a miner whose focus is in demolitions freshly landed on Mars a while after the earlier events of Red Faction.   The Earth Defense Force, which for some reason isn’t even ON Earth any more, is acting as an occupation force on Mars, backing up pretty much ever evil move that the Ultor Corporation (THQ just loves the name Ultor, I guess) makes.  This is doubly odd since, originally, the Earth Defense Force was a collection of GOOD guys who assisted Red Faction.  So much for that, huh?

So now you’re on planet, and the EDF just wiped out your brother for “crimes”.  No one really bothered to tell you what they were before they blasted him with what looked like a vulcan cannon, or before they came after you and discovered that you had explosives in your trailer (you’re a mining engineer with a demolitions specialty, remember?) so you, in response, joined Red Faction out of necessity and the desire to get payback for your dead brother.

The game itself plays a lot like some other titles, especially Saints Row, Grand Theft Auto, Just Cause and Mercenaries, and offers many of the same elements.  You can steal cars, which look a lot more like moon rovers and have apparently enhanced suspension to handle the rocky terrain better.  You’ll roam around a map with multiple zones, blowing things up, knocking things down, and shooting holy hell out of the EDF in an effort to wrest control of Mars away from them and put it back in the hands of the people.

There is a truly incredible variety of things to do in this game, make no mistake about that.  Within my first few minutes I had blown up several abandoned buildings, collected scrap from said buildings to upgrade my weaponry and hardware, and shot about thirty five stormtroopers—err…EDF troops.  I do enjoy a game that’s about more than walk from point A to point B and shoot whatever wanders in front of you.  As a result, this may actually be my favorite Red Faction game just by the sheer fact that it actually includes something different to do.

Granted, it’s not that much different from a first person shooter—its biggest difference may well be just a matter of perspective (no pun intended), but with the addition of driving and setting explosives and collecting items, it does elevate the game slightly above its predecessors.  It’s a good rental, no mistake there, but whether or not it’ll be a good buy depends on just how much you like shooter games with some solid action.

Call of Duty: World at War Game Review–Leftovers In Shiny Foil

So by now you may have heard about Call of Duty: World at War, otherwise known as Call of Duty 5 for the PC, DS, Wii, Xbox 360, and Playstations two and three.  It’s a game that manages to fuse together the mundane and the unique.  The down side, of course, is that it mostly fuses the mundane to itself to make some horrible ironmongery of stuff you’ve already seen a couple hundred times before.

But before I get right down to business, it’s time for a plot rundown:  we follow a series of different soldiers in all different parts of the Allied forces as they rampage their way across the Pacific Theatre, up into Russia, BACK to the Pacific, back once again to Russia before taking on Berlin, and accomplishing a series of missions, including calling down rockets on Japanese Ha-Go tank forces, handling a Russian T-34 tank and running the guns on a PBY Catalina flying boat.  You will be effectively a part of the last and loudest hours of World War II.

And, in case you didn’t see this coming by the big number five on the title, yes, this is yet another in a long, long, LONG (and growing…) string of first person shooters.  Sure, they’ve got some additions of new gameplay in here—when’s the last time you got to drive a tank in first person?—but let’s face it; there’s only so much variety you can get out of this particular chopped salad mix.  There’s only so many ways you can make the same old baloney taste new and different.

However—if you’re willing to gut your way through a highly realistic, blood-spattered, downright gritty World War II simulation with more gunfire and explosions than even Saving Private Ryan could muster, presented in a format so eye-wateringly predictable that there’s almost no reason to play, then this time around, you’ll get a special bonus.   It’s called Nazi Zombies mode, and, though they may not specifically be members of the Party, the mode itself comprises a series of maps, some of which are downloadable, in which you and possibly some friends attempt to hold a building against a legion of zombies bound and determined to break in.

The down side of that, of course, is like I said: you have to play your way through the ENTIRE CAMPAIGN to get access.  I’m irritated by this.  I’d personally like to see more first person shooters involving zombies (and ZOMBIES, not second-rate 28 Days Later knockoffs like Left 4 Dead, thank you very much), and the fact that these bastards made me slog through a hell of their own making just to get a crack at some zombie killing fun makes me furious to the point of derangement.

So let’s sum it up:  Call of Duty World at War is not really a BAD game, it’s just more of the same.  They offer some excellent graphics, and some fantastic realism, and even some unique features buried in all the warmed over leftover crap that is their primary campaign mode, but let’s face facts—aside from a pretty new paintjob and some fancy bells and whistles, this really is just more of the same. It’s up to you if you want to take another foray into the same crap you’ve been playing over and over for years, but if you love the first person shooter and just can’t get enough, then this is definitely the game for you.

Shellshock 2: Blood Trails Game Review–War Is Hell. So Is This Game

As a wise man once said, folks…war is hell.  And if you ever wanted a down to the minutiae idea of what war was like, go get your hands on a copy of Shellshock 2: Blood Trails.

Bear with me–I’m going to explain that one like no tomorrow and you’re going to be amazed by the time I get done.  But first we’re going to have to tackle the plot, and that’s going to just confuse you blind as to why I call this a really accurate simulation of war.

Shellshock 2: Blood Trails, is a Vietnam-war era first person shooter game revolving around the  Walker brothers, one of which went off into the deepest jungles of Vietnam to recover something called White Knight.  The cargo plane carrying White Knight was shot down by the North Vietnamese in a brief aerial battle.  One month after Caleb Walker went into the jungles in an attempt to fetch White Knight, he emerged from the jungles a gibbering lunatic. Thus, when his brother was drafted and sent to Vietnam, HIS first mission was to try and get something–anything!–out of his now-insane brother.  But brother Caleb wasn’t in the talking mood, and by the time brother Nate showed up, Caleb burst his bonds and rushed out of the facility where he was being held. Now, Nate, along with a few other GIs, are left to hunt down Caleb and solve the mysteries surrounding White Knight…including why the dead in Vietnam seem to be coming back to life.

Yes, that’s right, folks–there’s ZOMBIES afoot.  Now, we’re already a little left of center of reality—not even the Viet Cong thought of harnessing the sheer might of the walking dead.  But there’s realism here in that, much like the actual Vietnam War, when you play it, you very seldom have any idea who’s shooting at you and it’s very clear that those in charge of the game really don’t want you to win.  So you see what I mean—it’s very much like the ACTUAL Vietnam War, just with zombies.

Seriously, I played through this sucker and, even in the very first level, I was getting shot at from a whole lot of different avenues and I could barely even tell where the fire was coming from.  By the time I got to the SECOND level, I couldn’t even see the muzzle flashes anymore.  I was just taking incoming fire, as evidenced by brief flashes of white in my heads-up display, for no clear reason from no clear direction.  I was inside BUILDINGS and still getting hit from all sides.  It was as though the very game around me decided that it wasn’t having me continue to ADVANCE, so it was going to shut me down, one way or another.

So despite the fact that they’ve got zombies going on in here, the really amazing part of the whole mess is is that this is almost EXACTLY like what we hear about the Vietnam War.  The only downside is that this not only makes for a really bad experience for pretty much everybody, it also makes for a really lousy game.  There’s nothing worse than trying to exist in an environment where unseen people shoot at you and you have absolutely no idea how or where to return fire.  Bad enough to get shot at, how much worse to get shot at from random directions?

That sums up my experience with the whole thing nicely—this game is so badly flawed that it’s almost unplayable.  There’s absolutely no reason to play this misbegotten wreck, so don’t even try.

Unreal Tournament 3 Game Review–Fun In First Person

I have to admit that when I played Unreal Tournament 3, I was expecting the worst.  I was expecting yet another half-baked, warmed-over pile of leftover sludge in the form of a first person shooter, which are rapidly glutting the market in job lots.  But actually playing Unreal Tournament 3, now available for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC, became something interesting–it became FUN.

In Unreal Tournament 3, you play as the Ronin, formerly the defenders of the Twin Souls mining colony until said colony was wiped out by an attack from the Necris.  The Necris, just for background, are a subspecies of humanity that genetically modified themselves thanks to the Phayder Corporation as Black Ops forces par excellence.  Anyway, the Necris launched an attack on Twin Souls for reasons that I’m not a hundred percent sure of, and left the Ronin without a home.  They took up residence with the Izanagi Corporation on their home planet, and became a mercenary unit.  Now, they need to curry favor with Izanagi to get the necessary resources and equipment to go hunt up the Necris and get some terminal payback on the homewreckers.

There are actually several OTHER races in the Unreal Tournament universe that will make an appearance in the multiplayer classifications and as ancillary parts of the story, including the Axon and Malcolm and the Thunder Crash team (or Thunder CASH, as Malcolm likes to call them), so you can’t fault this game for a lack of storyline.  It’s got storyline almost in excess, really.  But the gameplay is the important issue here–and surprisingly, the gameplay is actually pretty entertaining.

You’ll engage in a series of different kinds of fights, including straight battles, a duel system, and even a variant of capture the flag in which FlAG is actually an acronym for FieLd Ambient Generator, if I remember it correctly.  That may be the most innovative use for an old retread that I’ve ever seen.  It’s like someone took apart a water heater and made a woodburner stove out of it–this kind of recycling never fails to impress me, because even though it’s nothing new, it’s a completely new use for something old.

The controls are smooth, the arenas are sufficiently open that even I don’t get motion sickness very often, and with selectable difficulty levels you can customize the gameplay to feel like an invincible genius or like a hard-bitten warrior.  Multiplayer is also well-present, and if you want a good party game, you could do a whole lot worse.  Despite the fact that you’ll be essentially playing the same games over and over again–deathmatch, team deathmatch, VEHICLE deathmatic, capture the flag, et al, it’s still surprisingly fun, and it’s actually worth playing the single player version to get properly accustomed to the various maps for multiplayer fun.

There’s a lot to like about Unreal Tournament 3, and in all honesty, I don’t have this much fun with first person shooters often.  For once, I can actually recommend a first person shooter, and that feels both strange and good at the same time.  Hot action, a dash of adventure, and lots of shooter glee combine to make a title that even I can enjoy.