succsessor to games like thief though its much much easier. decent story doesnt get in the way of interesting missions
there has been so much added that I can't really reccomend anyone play intravenous 1 as I know that all of that games content and levels will soon be ported into a remastered edition. The only thing I did not like about this game was as with the first one its narrative. Its so silly and edgy with profanity and its just nonesense. I felt compelled to read through all the dialogues and they are truly horrendous. As with the first game: if your going to do story, do it well or don't. several endings based on your choices: ok who cares they are all bad and the moral* choices are so obvious and black and white they lack any kind of depth at all. Now onto the good which is really just improving and refining the original game the stealth is now much much more flexible. Enemies have more nuanced AI than just full alert lets form a possey and run around endlessly looking for you or camping which is what they did in the original. you can now put silencers on everything heh heh. as with the first game the throwing knife is OP which is a good thing. You can solo the game with it if you want. there is a new slo-mo mechanic which like the saves has limited uses...i completely forgot about it and did not use it...but its there and its well implemented. Overall the game is alot easier than the original: you have many more tools to use; fire, silencers etc, slo-mo and a constant guide line that shows you where your aim will collide with terrain (possibly the single most useful addition to the game) In addition to these new techniques the level design is alot more forgiving. This game took me 3 hours less to complete than the original because there are fewer scenarios where you have a single entry and exit point to the mission objective. the casino level in the original was brutal, as was the final mission.
I had fun with Intravenous despite its discordant design elements. There are some strange design ideas that don't mesh. While most stealth games rely on the player having more awareness and knowledge of enemy position than the AI Intravenous hassles the player in ways that seem annoying rather than deep. For instance, the player can see through walls having complete awareness of the map, You can zoom the map out to see even more of the gameworld but doing so makes actually playing and aiming tedious and overly difficult. Unfortunately there is no quick zoom out command. So you either play with the proper camera placement and have a dubious awareness of where enemies are or you zoom out and your looking at ant level stuff. Another weird choice is the night vision. When enemies are in dark areas they are practically impossible to see so you use night vision....ok but then any light areas are blown out to the point of blinding you. Is that realistic? sure, but why then give the player omniscience to see enemies and environment through walls? I played on the "true" difficulty which makes the enemies lightning fast in their reactions and they almost never miss their shots. If not for running and shooting which will cause some spray they will always hit you. The AI is fairly realistic in the sense that they will examine opened doors, lights that have gone off, noises etc. They are however overly aggressive. If they notice an open door they will not only investigate but will start roaming the map and recruiting other NPCs to form a posse. You can try to exploit the AI in various ways and one clever addition to the game is the AI behavior when you try to camp in a building, after a few rushes they will start camping too and take positions surrounding your holdout. Ghosting is the optimal route. I would prefer if the player did not have omniscience, being limited to a cone of view with slower enemies would make the sim element and stealth more realistic.
A fantastic and addictive RTS in the styling of classics like warcraft and command and conquer Tooth and Tail breathes new life into the genre with a mix of well thought out mechanics, colorful graphics and a very tight control scheme that translates extremely well to a game pad. Tooth and tail's unique hook is that your traditional RTS "cursor" is actually a character that you will have to move around the map to build structures and command units. This "cursor" brings a very competent level of control to the game, using the limitations of the game pad to focus the game on the core strategies inherent to the genre instead of the ridiculous min/max actions per minute level of proficiency that is required in games like starcraft. Tooth and Tail is a great value for both local and online multiplayer and the game includes the expected if not all that revolutionary campaign with a satisfying level of challenge and depth. Tooth and Tail does have some issues with balance but hopefully these issues can be ironed out. This is a great way to spend some time gaming on a couch with friends.
