Recent reviews by BinaryMessiah

Hard Reset is a cyberpunk game set in the future about a war between AI machines and humans. You are an agent of the CLN trying to stop this, but the story is kind of just vaguely tossed together and doesn't really make any sense. You also don't get much sense of what's going on in the world. The characters are uninteresting, and the messy comic style cut scenes are uninspired and sloppy. Besides this the game has some solid shooting, but even that has issues of its own.

There are only two guns and each one has its own different "add-ons". The energy weapons let you shoot plasma, mortars, a smartgun which shoots through walls, and EMP grenades. The CLN gun has a machine gun, RPG, shotgun, and grenade launcher. This is great and all, but this system is flawed. Switching between two weapons and then to the right attachment is stupid. Not only are the gun switching animations slow, but having to do this costs precious seconds in which you're dying. This also rolls into the biggest problem with the game: It's too damn hard. Sure I like a challenge, but just a few hits and you're dead, but there are tons of enemies thrown at you and they don't go down easy. Expect to restart dozens of times almost during every fight unless you're on easy.

Why would a game have a weapon system that works against itself? Who knows. You can buy these attachments and upgrade them by finding XP lying around everywhere, but the progression is slow and by the end of the game you will barely have bought 10 upgrades. My other complaint is that there are only about 6 different types of robots you can shoot and it gets old very fast. The first couple of levels are pretty awesome then that wears out when you get to your first fight where you die about 10 times.

There are a couple of boss fights, but they are almost impossible to beat on any difficulty but easy. I haven't played such a hard FPS that I can remember. It actually makes the game not very fun at all, and even the most skilled players will struggle. I can't even believe they put an insane mode in here. One hit and you're dead which makes it impossible to go past the first fight in the game. Go figure. The objectives are all the same with you pressing this button, shut down this thing to go past that thing. There are secret areas you can find to improve your end of level score, but who really cares? You'll be lucky if you can get through the damn game.

The game looks pretty damn good with a nice Blade Runner type art style, but it's wasted on linear levels. The overall feeling of the world has lots of potential with kiosks hocking items in robotic/half failing voices, holograms with propaganda and ads everywhere. I like the style, but it sure went to waste. Overall Hard Reset is a decent shooter for a weekend sit down, but the extreme difficulty practically kills it. There's also not multiplayer which is a surprise so after you finish the game once you probably won't go back.

What can I say? This is a culture phenomenon. Even non-gamers know what Portal is. This is the puzzle game that changed all puzzle games forever. You are now thinking with portals.

Graphics: 8/10
Gameplay: 10/10
Story: 9/10
Replay Value: 8.5/10

Overall: 9/10f

Another World War II game, but wait this came out 7 years ago during the subgenre’s peak. Why should I play this? It’s just another Call of Duty. Before you go making drastic decisions Call of Duty started out as a WWII series way before the Modern Warfare explosion. Call of Duty was known for great cinematic atmosphere, tight gun play, and excellent story telling. United Offensive is the expansion to the award-winning debut game in the series. Offensive is just superb and even hold up on all levels today.

The game has three campaigns that run between America, England, and Russia. You play as three different faceless soldiers, but the environment is the main character here. Each campaign has an amazing opening scene as well as some memorable moments like the escape on a Jeep in the American campaign, the gripping plane scene in the England campaign, and the tank scenes in the Russian campaign. There is never a dull moment in Offensive and everything from sound, great voice acting, and realistic sounding war effects bring together a riveting experience that I truly have not found in any other WWII game (even in later CoD games).

Instead of trying to pack every scenario into one game (including weapons) we get some long battles that feel challenging, but not terribly hard. Some scenes can last up to 20 minutes (like the plane scene in the British campaign), but it holds you out just enough to make you feel the terror of war and a little helpless. Some battles require waiting a certain amount of time before reinforcements arrive and then a wonderful orchestral soundtrack picks up and makes it that much more intense.

The gun play is solid and feels great with favorite weapons like the MP40, M1 Garand, MP44, and the Springfield sniper rifle. We’ve used the weapons dozens of times but each weapon feels different which includes power, accuracy, and mechanics of the gun. I feel the grenades still have no weight, but there are a variety of them. Each level and scenario feels different and gripping, but you never get attached to any characters because the environment is the main attraction.

Mutliplayer would keep you coming back, but due to the age there is no one playing online ever so you have to stick to LAN. War games just aren’t like they used to be, and United Offensive shows how to put across the feeling of war as well as realistic feeling weapons. United Offensive stands up graphically as well thanks to tiny details. The only thing dated are the low poly models, low resolution textures up close, and some static lighting. Most of the time you won’t notice because you’re sucked into the experience too much. If a game from 2004 can suck you in after playing modern war games then that really shows how much a games stands up.

The Good: Excellent visuals, great controls with lots of action, nice variety of challenging enemies, fun four player co-op

The Bad: Gets repetitive quick, can be very hard, levels are too long, can only equip four upgrades, very short with only 7 levels

Twin stick shooters are running amok on mobile devices, but the best tend to be on consoles. Renegade Ops lets you choose from a variety of characters with a special weapon each. You can level up and unlock new upgrades while trying to mow down as many enemies to rack up a high score. The story is actually really cliché and stupid with a commando leader named Bryant trying to stop the evil Inferno from taking over the world. The cut scenes are drawn in nice comic book style stills, but the dialog is as cheesy as it can get. No matter how you try to kill Inferno he always seems to survive and it's just one of those "You'll never kill me Bryant! MWAHAHA!" type stories.

Besides the cheesy story the action is really fun with some great graphics and physics. You drive around your vehicle using the right stick to shoot with your machine gun. Along the way you can get pick-ups to make your machine gun stronger as well as secondary ammo pick-ups like rocket launchers, rail guns, and flamethrowers. There aren't many pick-ups which is a real bummer, but this is just the start of what else there isn't much of. The enemy variety is interesting with varying degrees of difficulty, but it leads to the game being very difficult most of the time. You start off with 5 lives per level and if you lose them all its game over. The levels are very long and you will be infuriated if you have to go through all that effort again.

My main concern about the game is that it gets very repetitive very quickly because all you do is drive around and shoot. The graphics are excellent so you could get some cinematic scripted scenes going, but instead you just follow an objective arrow around all over the place and kill everything in front of you. There are secondary objectives that lead to achievements, but they span the entire level and take way to long to complete. You are also timed on primary objective so if you don't get it done fast enough a 3 minute timer ticks down and if you don't complete it by then it's game over. This means you have to abandon the secondary and makes things just more frustrating. When you die you lose your machine gun pick-ups so you start with the weakest form and can die easier that way because it takes longer to kill enemies.

There is a lot of fun to be had here with destructible environments, and four player co-op which makes the game easier and more fun. The upgrades are disappointing because you can only equip four at a time and this leaves a lot of useful upgrades unused. There are only 7 missions so you will beat the game in less than 5 hours, but most people probably won't go through again due to the difficulty and repetitive nature of the whole game. Twin stick shooters should pick this up and rejoice, but don't expect it to change the genre.

~Score: 8/10

The Good: Great atmosphere, clever enemy design, looks amazing

The Bad: Super slow pacing throughout, lots of glitches, requires monster rig to run, needs better shooting mechanics, can be really hard at times, story is hard to follow

I love first person shooters with great atmosphere and Cryostasis pulls this off well. While the story is pretty confusing and never really makes any sense at all (even at the end) you at least know why you're here. You are moving through a Russian nuclear ice breaker that was destroyed after hitting an iceberg (sound familiar). You walk around finding dead bodies and upon touching them you can relive the moments leading to their death and try and prevent it so you can continue getting through the area that is blocked. This also provides more back story on how the ship actually did hit the iceberg and why.

The game is a first person shooter so you get some guns, but the game is slow paced and not a high octane shooter like most people like. You move very slowly and you have to take your time aiming since these guns don't exactly fire at a high rate. You get several different types such as bolt action rifles, a tommy gun, a water cannon (that uses icicles!), and even a flare gun. The aiming is slow like I mentioned and you just feel like your shooting in slow motion. This isn't entirely bad since you can take your time and aim because ammo is a tad scarce. You do, however, never feel like your guns are very powerful even on the weaker enemies. But you don't get guns right away since for a good 25% through the game you get to use melee weapons.

The enemies in the game are pretty unique and not just average cannon fodder. These enemies are pretty creepy and look great and behave decently towards your actions. Some swing axes and some shoot back, but they are all pretty hard to take down especially the bigger guys later on.

The game doesn't really consist of puzzles but the game is a linear maze some times. You do flip switches an activate heat sources (more on that later), but there's no actual puzzles in the game. This game makes things a bit dull and feel monotonous since the tone of the game never really changes and even the atmosphere wears thin before the end. You're opening a lot of doors, flipping a lot of switches, and shooting some bad guys and that's about it. This game is really only for people who are into atmosphere and story.

You can use any heat source such as lamps, lights, heaters, fires, you name it to recharge your health. There are two meters and the outer one shows how warm the room is or the heat source. You can only heal up to where that meter stops, and then you have your endurance gauge for sprinting.

The game looks pretty good and you need a monster rig to run this with DirectX10 and get the best looking settings. The textures are highly detailed, and you can even watch the ice melt and watch the water run down walls in real time. Of course this was one of the very first DX10 games so there are plenty of glitches. The PS4.0 has a problem making animations jerky so you have to fiddle around with minimizing to the desktop and changing it from 3 to 4 to get it to stop. The game will crash at random some times, and there is some weird out of no where glitches throughout. This makes the game very frustrating to play even if you have a hefty rig.

The game can feel like a chore towards the end because the pace never changes and is just deliberately slow and the story just never makes sense. However, it has something about it that makes you keep playing regardless of all this, but people who like fast action should stay away. Cryostasis could have been a lot better with a more stable engine, better shooting, and a more steady pace instead of just slow throughout. If you have the rig to the run this game and the patience then Cryostasis is your thing.

~Score: 8/10

The Cthulhu series from H.P. Lovecraft hasn’t seen much love in the form of games, but indie developers Zeboyd picked it up and turned it into a whimsical/parody 8 bit RPG and it’s done very well. You play as Cthulhu and pick up many party members along the way, but the whole point of the game is the great dungeon crawling that harkens back to the 80′s. You can attack like any RPG, but you have Tech attacks which are more powerful, magic, and then you can Unite with other members to combine devastating attacks. There are a ton of different attacks you learn when you level up, and you get a choice between two different things to level up with either stats or an attack, so by the end of the game each member has a huge arsenal to use.

The game is very close to the mythology with bosses that are from the story, towns named after the exact towns from the stories, plus the art style matches. The music is amazing with sweeping orchestral scores (in 8-bit midi audio mind you) that really moves you and sounds great. The story is hilarious with Cthulhu trying to redeem himself and become a true hero to raise his city of R’lyeh, but his interaction with characters in the world is really funny. Of course the game wouldn’t be complete without a huge over map to explore that has some secret dungeons, plus the environments and dungeons vary with lots of loot and chests to find.

However, the game’s biggest flaw is the extreme difficulty later on in the game, as well as the constant random battles which really drag the experience down. The devs tried toning this down by disabling random battles after you do 25 of them, but you will probably go through a dungeon before you hit that number. I also didn’t like how if you don’t level up high enough the end boss is impossible to beat, but each dungeon just really racks up the difficulty and requires you to grind a bit to get through the dungeon. I also didn’t like how you don’t really need a strategy to beat the enemies because you can just use the same one over and over through several dungeons. This causes the feeling of repetition to set in and makes you want the game just to end a little faster.

While the visuals are nice and give you a feeling of nostalgia they don’t look good in HD and the lack of battle animations, and everything that goes along with 8-bit graphics grates on your eyes after awhile. However, the Cthulhu license is rarely explored so any game to do so is welcomed, but this game is probably for hardcore RPG fans.

One thing that Bastion does differently from most games is the strong and unique narrative. A man narrates the boy’s every step and action in Bastion and this is a very interesting way of telling a story. It’s like you’re playing an interactive story book especially since it looks like one too. You are trying to re-build The Bastion which is a safe spot to run from The Calamity and throughout the story you find out what this is and why this boy is trying to find these shards to build this thing. Rucks (the narrator) guides you through the story as it unfolds, so you don’t know anything until it actually happens like a story book, but it’s happening while you’re doing it.

With the excellent narrative aside the combat is top notch and responsive. You can use a regular attack, special attack, block, and a projectile weapon. There are plenty of weapons and you can upgrade them to add different attributes and bonuses. As you progress through the game you unlock six different areas which include an arsenal to swap weapons, a forge to upgrade your weapons, a shop to buy upgrades and special powers, a shrine to make the game harder, and an “achievement” area where you can meet requirements for extra shards (in game currency). The customization and upgrades are deep and will keep you busy for a long while thanks to the proving grounds which are unique challenges for each weapon. If you meet certain criteria you get prizes based on your performance. These are not easy by any means and a few were almost impossible to beat for me.

Combat is very responsive and challenging. The enemies are quick, smart, and vary from stationary, fast moving, slow moving, heavily armored etc. I should probably say that the balance is perfect and you slowly get introduced to tougher enemies as the game progresses. You really have to use a combo of everything to stay alive because you will gulp health tonics constantly if you don’t use block and dodge a lot so stay on your feet. The action gets hectic and you start realizing this game is for hardcore action fans and not the casual gaming crowd that the visuals might seem to cater to.

There are a lot of levels and the length varies from 5 minutes to 15, but one thing I can’t get over are the visuals. As you run through the levels the walkways appear under you and seem to float in the air. The levels vary so much and not a single one looks the same. The hand drawn visuals are just gorgeous, plus you can’t forget about the amazing soundtrack that is something you stick on your MP3 player and listen too. This feels like a high budget game, but only an indie game can deliver something on this side of creativity and originality. Bastion is a unique game and nothing is quite like it in terms of narrative and visual deliverance. Every action fan should own this, because it’s $15 well spend.

The Aliens vs. Predator license has struggled for the past decade, and this recent entry tries to revive the brutality and haunting ambiance of its predecessor (Aliens vs. Predator 2 from 2001) but falls flat on that main aspect. The original game was a bit slower paced and slowly wrung the fright out of you with jumpy dark corridors, and haunting atmosphere, but this game just falls flat, and I'm talking about the Marine campaign. The weapons don't really pack a punch, and there are only a handful of weapons, and you only kill Xenomorphs (Aliens) and only once do you encounter a Predator. The original game really made you dread wanting to fight a Predator, and when you finally did you were scared out of your pants by it. This game just throws one at you and that's it.

While the Marine campaign was the strong point in the last game it's the worst in this one. However, the Predator and Alien campaigns really shine and make you feel like those creatures. The Predator allows you to stalk humans with thermal vision, turn invisible, using your shoulder blaster and proximity mines, and witness brutal kills that will make you cringe. Watching the Predator rip off ahead with its spine attached and put the spine in admiration is gut-churning, but it's awesome and never gets old. Jumping around trees and high cliffs is a great way to stalk prey, and the distraction ability is great for isolating a Marine from a large group. Being a Predator is just so awesome and it's a shame the campaign is so short.

Playing as an Alien is just as cool with fast movement and the Xenomorphs deadly fatalities that will also make you cringe. Stabbing someone in the eye with your tail or eating their brain with your tiny mouth is nasty, but satisfying. You can crawl on walls and ceilings with the touch of a button and jump towards enemies from afar and lash out is awesome all the time. While these two campaigns pack a serious punch I just wish it were more cinematic instead of just kill, kill, kill. Also, the environments all look the same in every campaign and this is a shame.

The story really takes a back seat as well with you trying to stop Weyland from unleashing some powerful artifact or something...it's never really clear, but the story is seriously lacking despite the decent voice acting. In the Predator campaign, you're just trying to recover the fallen Young Bloods' technology completely disregarding what's going on between the humans and Xenomorphs. In the Alien campaign, you're freeing yourself as well as your siblings and the Matriarch.

Despite the huge disappointment of the Marine campaign, the game looks amazing with DirectX11 and all the features that go along with it. If you have the powerful rig to run it you will be treated with astounding visuals that really make the game pop and the creatures come to life that was only seen in the movies. The multiplayer is decent, but won't last too long, and I just wish the Marine campaign wasn't so boring! The previous game's campaign was just so amazing and spooky it really makes the game fall quite a bit. The game is worth a purchase just for the creature campaigns and the visual aesthetics, but in the long run, the game could have been so much more.

The original F.E.A.R. (you know it stands for First Encounter Assault Recon right?) was marked as an excellent shooter due to it's scary atmosphere, solid shooting, and (at the time) system pushing graphics. Two installments later the game has fizzled out as an above average shooter and has lost most of its scare value over the years. The game also feels more paramilitary than paranormal with the same generic soldiers, mechs, and the occasional tough boss. At this point if you haven't played the first game you will be completely lost in the plot. Even people who played the first and second when they came out might want to search Wikipedia for a plot refresher because F.E.A.R. has always been known for its holy plot and confusing endings.

The game feels a bit different from the last two games, but not by much. The game is more tight ended with a better cover system, a couple of new weapons, and slightly updated visuals. You have your standard affair of weapons from assault rifles, sub-machine guns, shotguns, rocket launcher, and the few original weapons. The weapons feel solid though yet the aiming is a bit touchy. Every gun feels different and you must really use them at the right situations. This isn't a stick-with-one-gun type of game. The slo-mo is back, but you can now upgrade yourself by doing things you normally would in the game and earn points. F.3.A.R. is based around co-op this time around so you can play as either main protagonist Point Man or his dead brother Fettel who follows you around the story.

You get points by collecting weapons, doing kills, headshots, using cover for a certain amount of time, finding the rare Alma dolls, dead bodies that give you Psychic Link points etc. Throughout the campaign whoever scores the most points gets to see that ending of that brother. It's a neat way to do co-op, but you can still enjoy the game by yourself. The game brings back the awesome mechs and they feel better than ever. You get to use them more often than the last entry so look forward to some awesome mech sections.

When it comes to atmosphere I feel Project Origin pulled it off the best. That game was downright scary, but F.3.A.R. loses it somehow by concentrating too much on the action. Sure there are some points that make you jump, but Alma doesn't appear nearly as much, and those truly scary points are far and few between. The ending is even disappointing and still doesn't answer anything, but just concludes Point Man's journey to find Alma and his dad. Alma is what made F.E.A.R., but due to her lack of exposure in this final entry it just feels like an almost generic shooter. Not only that, but the campaign is really short with only 8 levels that can be beaten in about 8 hours.

has the best multiplayer suite in the series with the head mode being F****** Run! where Alma's contractions (play the story to know what I am talking about) brings the walls down on you and you have to well...run. Its to bad no one is playing online anymore so you probably have to stick to LAN on this one. That's a bummer despite the game being so recent compared to the thousands who played F.E.A.R.'s separate mulitplayer mode that was released months later from the original. There are other modes to be had in the game, but if you can't get a LAN party going then you're stuck with co-op or just the single player.

Overall F.3.A.R. has decent visuals, but for some reason the game has serious performance issues even on high end systems. Constant stuttering, complete hang ups and other issues bog down the experience a little. The game is enjoyable at best, but I doubt you will run through the game a second time (even with a buddy) just to see the quick second ending (that's what YouTube is for). I recommend this for long time F.E.A.R. fans, but new comers should start at the beginning or move on.

The Warhammer series, being an extremely expensive table top game, has grown to be more popular as an RTS game than anything else. Space Marine is the first outing out of the genre, and with lots of speculation, was deemed to be a complete failure. Relic proved everyone wrong by delivering a good game that has tons of action, gore, and a good story that the RTS games pack in. You plays as Captain Titus of the Ultramarines. You are the leader of the elite force who are part machine and can take out whole battalions of troops that regular marines couldn't. The Space Marines believe in a religion of the Machine God and anything else that isn't machine related is heresy. You, and your three squadmates, are fighting back the Ork invasion and are trying to reach the Titan Manufactorum that holds the most powerful war machine ever built. On the way some weird twists happen and you end up fighting the Order of Chaos and Daemons towards the end. How that happens I'll let you find out for yourself.

The story is decent, not very deep, but its entertaining and the voice acting is superb. Relic got the art style and feeling of the Warhammer universe across, so the game looks good, but technically its nothing special (using the Unreal Engine 3). The fighting system goes two ways with melee weapons and guns. There are a lot of cool guns to shoot and they are unlocked slowly throughout the campaign. They each feel different and powerful and you have to mix up your strategy of how you're going to use what weapons for what situation. You can't just use the same ones through the whole game. The melee weapons are less in numbers but just as cool to use. The chainsword allows you to tear enemies to shreds and executing awesome kill moves is fun. This is actually how you get health, but its flawed in a way. When no ground enemies are around you can't heal and have to rely on your shield charging, so it's a unique idea, but we need a way to heal up when fighting aerial units. You also get to use the Thunder Hammer, and the Axe which are all great weapons to use, but the hammer only lets you use the pistol and bolter, so no heavy weapons can be used (I'm assuming a balancing issue).

While you chopping down Orks by the dozens you will get to use the jet pack a few times. Launching into the air and pounding the ground while enemies fly around is great, but you don't get to use it enough. What is enough (actually too much) is everything else. The same Orks come at you through 2/3 of the game and the same execution moves are repeated over and over again. By the time you get 1/4 of the way through the game you wonder if there is anything but Orks that exist. A few different types show up throughout, but not many and the game just gets harder and harder as you go along instead of throwing in variety. Towards the end you can't really do much melee and you start relying solely on guns because charging in will just get you killed. I didn't like this form of balancing because melee is much more satisfying and fun then shooting everything.

Overall, the game would have been even more amazing if there were some scripted events instead of just the same run and kill scenario over and over until you puked. The muliplayer is ok, but just has two modes and gets boring after a while because it's the campaign, but with human players. I loved the characters, story, and world of Warhammer, but let's add some more depth to the action, some more enemies, and make the game feel more intense besides ramping up difficulty. We didn't even get to use the Titan! Sure you get to be on top of it for a few minutes, but these are the events we need to make Warhammer an amazing action experience.