Crysis: Warhead has a pretty rough start - it's one of the uglier FPSs I've played so far, and its level selection borders on the generic - a beach level, a train escort, etc, but it's beefed up enough and your character has enough interesting abilities that it eventually becomes an enjoyable bargain bin game. Its story is underwhelming, the character's abilities underutilized, and the game is a breeze even on the maximum difficulty, but it seems like a good basis for a multiplayer experience. For me, I've played it once, I'm not going to play it again. Enemies are bullet sponges, AI either horrendous or can see you through solid objects, and early levels are a breeze. For most of the game all you have to do is avoid conflict and sprint from checkpoint to checkpoint. During the train escort I ran alongside the train, jumping from side to side to avoid enemies, instead of engaging them like the game told me to. In segments where the train stopped and I had to man a machine gun to protect it, I simply camped and waited for the game to continue. If you go the route chosen for you by the game's creators, you'll encounter dozens of enemies. Take shortcuts, and this game is a breeze. You barely need to pick up weapons, and your health replenishes. You have a special suit that can allow you to become invisible, jump past high obstacles, fall from heights without a scratch, run really fast and more. It's very easy to become invisible, and reach an objective without engaging a single enemy, or simply infiltrate an enemy base, and shoot the troops point blank. There are some nice weapons, but you get so many, they get lost in the shuffle. There are also interesting vehicles, but they need to be enjoyed in a different setting - during combat they're an easy target for your enemies. My only major gripe is that sometimes the scope on the guns seems to be off, making you miss an enemy by a mile. Small confined levels, with progression and events set in stone. A 5 dollar game.
Timelapse is yet another collection of puzzles set in a 3D environment you cannot freely traverse. Luckily it's the most relaxing and pretty example of its genre I experienced so far. Instead of focusing on some mechanism made out of metal, most of the game seems to rely on the beauty of nature, with each area being augmented with some animals going by - a cat, some birds,etc. It makes the world you're in feel alive, despite being incredibly quiet. Due to the nature of the game, you seem to explore civilizations long dead, so you'll spend your time visiting empty houses and locations, so the occasional living thing keeps it from being depressing. Audio cues are also fairly nice, if repetitive at times. Audio and video is good enough I wish it had a new render - not a remaster, but the old visuals not as pixelated, and the audio exported to a higher quality. Sadly, Timelapse seems to suffer from every problems present in this genre, with a couple extra on top. The first problem being the slideshow nature of the game. If done right, it isn't a problem, but in Timelapse it's easy to miss entire portions of a level, or miss interactable items, or get disoriented. It makes the puzzle solving even harder. Generally, the puzzles in Timelapse aren't too difficult - early on you can collect a journal containing clues, and a camera to record the clues you discover throughout a level, but it's best to have a pen and paper ready. But from time to time, Timelapse has puzzles too clever for their own good - puzzles best solved by trial and error. There's also one impossible puzzle where you have to shoot an arrow in windy conditions, and it can cause you to rage-quit. Timelapse also makes it hard to know what is interactable, and what you can pick up and from which screen. It's not the most intuitive game. You can know what to do, but get stuck by not clicking things just right. The game also likes to crash from time to time, so save often. A game too rigid for its own good.
Wolfenstein: New Order can be enjoyable, if you forget it's a Wolfenstein game, and you don't mind a corridor shooter. Enemies are fairly dumb and predictable, ammo, health, weapons and other pickups are plentiful, even in higher difficulties, levels are short and linear, and the plot has so many twists and turns, it seems to copy itself after a while. Early on you'll encounter so many types of weapons they'll become meaningless, some with endless ammo. In addition, every idea the game's creators had about a futuristic third reich is thrown into this game - from the childish to the sensible. After a while, nothing about this game seems to excite, nor is there any sense of dread. The only difficulty arises from enemies who can instantly spot you, or from bullets that seem to be able to turn 90 degrees to hit you while you hug a wall. There is stealth in the game, but it's fairly pointless, since the easiest way to get past a level is to brute force your way. You can carry so many weapons and have so much ammo lying around, it doesn't matter how many soldiers there are or how hard it is to kill them. You can duel-wield weapons and fire non-stop, meaning eventually some of those shots will connect. If you encounter a soldier that's tougher to kill, more often than not they'll move so slowly, you can either run away from them or flank them. The only difficult part is towards the end, when you're thrown more and more into situations where you're surrounded and have nowhere to hide, and your weapons are stripped from you. But a lot of times if the enemy doesn't have a direct view of you, they seem to ignore you. Especially the tougher enemies, which seem to forget about you once you hide behind a wall, allowing you to attack them without repercussions. New Order is easy to get through, but just difficult enough that you won't lose interest. There are occasional slowdowns - when lots of people are shooting at once, but this game has nothing to rage-quit about.
