Since Far Cry is well-known, no point to going into great detail. CryTek can render vast outdoor areas that impress, there’s a thought-out roster of weapons coupled with good gunplay, movement feels alright except for low stamina, and the AI is passable. All the basics are covered and they work well for the most part. I think much of the dislike comes from the clash of two different play styles. The game releases the player in the middle of the jungle, giving free reign to reach your objectives as you see fit. Dare going in guns blazing, or do some flanking and take out patrols one by one with the MP5SD? Can do both and more. As in Crysis 2007 (this game was a prototype for), these levels are never truly open but have sufficient freedom of maneuver to stimulate the player’s creativity and problem-solving skills. Perhaps Linear Lite Sandbox would be the proper term. Then the tone of the game shifts abruptly and dramatically once mutants are introduced to the story. Suddenly, it's a corridor FPS with survival horror atmosphere and level design. Supplies are getting scarcer, and even the most basic of mutants can run up and kill you in one of two swipes despite full body armor and everything. And there’s lots of them and that’s only the baby variety too! When judged on their own merit, both components are at least acceptable. But in the same game, the same campaign? There’s glue holding it together but the bond is weak. Far Cry has other issues which are objectively a problem. Story and the voice acting are poor, vehicle physics are flaky, there are numerous instances of questionable level design and spiteful enemy placement, and rocket spam is just plain annoying. And this game is hard even on the lowest difficulty. Entirely reliant on health pickups, lowly grunts can take you out in seconds, and the going only gets tougher (a lot!) with mutants around. And without a little custom script you only get checkpoints.
I picked Hover Ace up on sale, not knowing anything about the game. After completing the two championships, I can say it wasn't a bad experience for what is is, a budget combat racer released in 2001. Hover cars racing around futuristic circuits at breakneck speed littered with various pickups and powerups, such as ammo, health restore, temporary speed boost, invisibility and the like. Sometimes, there's also environmental hazards. Points are awarded for racing performance, fragging the opposition as well as blasting various pieces of scenery. All perfectly serviceable. There's a usual fair of primary and secondary weapons, passive and active accessories and more futuristic additions like shields or afterburner. You can pick from a handful of hover cars sorted into three tiers (light to heavy), through in practice I barely noticed any changes on track except for top speed. That may as well be due to, I think, aggressive rubberbanding: no matter how well I drove, no matter how many people I blew up, the AI was always riding my bumper with little effort on their part. In terms of car-to-car collisions, the slightest bump tended to send me off into the wilderness, while AI racers seemed almost completely unaffected even when I did have the rammer upgrade installed. The game has other modes aside from the championship, but I didn't find anything worth replaying. On a technical level, Hover Ace was fine. It makes every race an audio-visual spectacle with stuff blowing up left and right; almost overwhelming at times! Hardly outstanding graphics even by 2001 standards, but it got the job done at 4K 60FPS on my monitor. In short: if you have about two hours to kill, Hover Ace isn't a bad choice. Just don't expect anything special.
For context: I played DX and DX2 for the first time in 2024, so nostalgia wasn't a factor for me. Didn’t expect the same production values or level of refinement from HR or MD, but all core mechanics were already in place and the lineage clear to see. GMDX did smooth out some of the rougher edges and made it a supremely playable experience even today, though granted HR and MD generally do everything just a little bit better (as they should as AAA releases). Most levels were very large with few loading screens in between to interrupt the action (unlike DX2), with multiple ways to accomplish one’s objectives through stealth, combat or both. I really did enjoy the large degree of player freedom, but the game certainly didn’t do any handholding! It was up to me to figure out how to solve any given objective and manage my resources very thoughtfully as they’re very scarce in GMDX. Almost softlocked myself on multiple occasions because of that, but discovering a way to progress regardless felt very rewarding. Navigating numerous environmental hazards or around them added to the feeling of tension and danger in face of overwhelming enemy opposition. No minimap either. While I was free to pick whichever perks or augmentations I wanted, it appeared to be a good idea to specialize in one or two areas due to the increased difficulty overall in GMDX and limited number of skill points. Guess it also made more sense from a narrative point of view. While I could question some of the story points as being a little over the top (HR and MD were more subtle and believable in their representation of conspiracies), it didn’t detract from my experience and was immersed from start to finish. Voice acting wasn’t all that great, but dialogue was delivered in a much more natural fashion than DX2. Sour points: the poor gunplay, lack of enemy variety and almost-instakill bullshit like plasma weapons or alien death rays. Otherwise a fantastic old school RPG experience worth your time.
For context: I played DX and DX2 for the first time in 2024, so nostalgia wasn't a factor for me. Coming from the original game which was far from perfect but still supremely playable even today, DX2 felt unpolished, heavily compromised, buggy and oh-so janky by comparison to the point of being unable to take is seriously. Of all the games in the franchise, I had the hardest time immersing myself here. I was left wondering where it went wrong during development since they obviously had all the ingredients for a great sequel: rich lore, memorable characters, a great sequel hook and the Unreal 2 engine. But I just didn't see those puzzle pieces coming together. On a technical level, DX2 felt extremely small and constrained compared to the open levels of DX, leaving little opportunity to sneak around because all environments were so tiny and despite that, there's multiple loading screens for pretty much everything. Hub areas were the worst offender: exit a building (LS), walk across the street into another building: LS. And these were far from instantaneous even on a modern PC which was terrible for my immersion. This isn't a fault of the Unreal 2 engine or the original Xbox since both are more than capable of rendering large open areas. DX2 did bring some noticeable improvements (dynamic lighting, gunplay, alt-fire for guns, futuristic items, augmentation wheel) which I did appreciate, but the environments and story honestly just left me as flat and emotionally detached as Alex Denton’s voice lines. Even life-changing revelations didn’t faze him. Despite a more talented cast, the delivery of most dialogue somehow ended up worst than DX to the point of being utterly distracting. The story also felt convoluted and incoherent. Disappointing conclusion of my DX journey starting with The Fall. If you’re looking for a futuristic DX, I’d wholeheartedly recommend Project Snowblind instead. A much better and refined game.
Coming from Rogue Trooper (Rebellion's other 2000AD shooter), I was pleasantly surprised they put in the same effort to craft an immersive world full of neat little details and atmospheric lighting, coupled with dark humor and good voice acting. Gotta love Dredd's one-liners! My recommendation would be not to rush ahead too eagerly, look around and take in the scenery once in awhile. There's many tiny pieces of world-building to find if you keep your eyes open. And well, the SP campaign is rather short... From a gameplay perspective, I've found it to be pretty comparable to other XBOX games circa 2003. The HUD is large (transparency can be adjusted), the field of vision narrow, and the gun models huge. Sometimes one can find side-routes in certain levels, but it's a pretty linear experience overall. Gunplay is also pretty typical; a cone-of-fire type of affair with random spread depending on the weapon and your stance. There's a good variety of weapons (some more useful than others) and also various ammo types for your police standard-issue sidearm, like ricochet or incendiary. The developers also went the extra mile to put in nicely detailed reload animations, but reloading in general is pretty slow! As is weapon switching, so better think ahead. Arresting criminals is an interesting mechanic, though largely pointless other than the admittedly hilarious flavor text and Dredd's voice lines. As far as higher difficulties are concerned, health and sometimes also ammo seemed to be in short supply. Enemies generally hit hard and Dredd can't absorb too much damage despite his self-recharging personal shield. I did like the balance on Normal. Main complaints of mine: - Mouse aiming and look felt a little loose and imprecise, especially in close combat. - Too many escort missions coupled with pathfinding issues. - Only one autosave/checkpoint slot. Don't press Restart by accident! If you liked Rogue Trooper, you may want to give this one a try.
Picked up Rogue Trooper not expecting much more than mindless shooting action, but came away pleasantly surprised. The plot moved along well paced, dialogue was funny and the majority of the voice acting well delivered. The game didn't really bother to explaining the world in-universe if you don't know anything about 2000 AD (like me), but was still easy enough to follow: it's a revenge story. I also missed some sort of resolution or reveal after the final boss fight which just didn't happen. There was also more tactical depth than I thought. For one, the salvage system (we manufacture all our battle supplies) forced me to make hard decisions in terms of ammo/grenade conservation vs. saving up for upgrades. Though going back to loot every corpse was tedious and broke the flow of the combat on occasion. The three main special abilities were also fun to use... who doesn't like a sentry turret taunting the enemies? All firearms generally felt good to use and sounded great; soundscape was well done in general. Also couldn't fault the level design or variety except for feeling too narrow and linear sometimes. Campaign is about six hours long. I've found the game's biggest problem to be the controls. They're clunky and unrefined. Snapping to cover (and the right piece of cover for that matter) didn't seem to work reliably which is a problem in a cover shooter, but it's manageable to avoid enemy fire by using regular crouching etc. Aiming grenades to throw them further was very awkward and slow, and left me wide open to attack because you can't move while adjusting the arc. You'd also expect mouse control in the ability wheel (like Crysis), but nope... movement keys again. There's also a basic stealth system with silent takedowns in the game. Seemed pretty pointless and unreliable to me. Overall, I'd say there's a decent and funny cover shooter in there if you can look past the control issues.
Coming from EF 1, I found this game to be a little bit of a mixed bag. Despite coming from a different development studio, they still managed to capture the look, sound and feel of the Star Trek universe very well. My Immersion was also greatly improved as their new game engine can provide convincing lighting effects and shadows even today; an area were EF 1 was lacking. It also worked much better as a FPS for me, with tighter and precise controls, and the level design was also of a higher and more consistent quality. Was also nice to see more enemy variety and boss fights with at least a little bit of strategy; their AI seemed a little buggy though. Weapons felt alright and I liked the new tricorder and its interaction with various environmental hazards. Some objectives were too easy to miss and get right on the first try, like "find that tiny unmarked panel on the dark wall in 10 seconds or we all die" or random difficulty spikes. I also lamented the removal of the optical zoom function of my old hazard suit and the ability to lean around corners AND shoot. Overall, still a much improved FPS experience. Were it felt like a downgrade from EF 1 was the plot, dialogue and character development. Voyager's story could very well have been an episode on the show, but here I really struggled to suspend my disbelief. Peaceful (or so we're told) and powerless vassal state turned crazy-prepared supervillain suddenly has the means and knowledge to cripple key Federation assets during a chance encounter? Gimme a break. Such an operation would take months of meticulous planning especially after the Dominion War. And their motivation? Unconvincing. Team mates might as well not exist as do-everything Munro ends up going on solo missions 90% of the time. Thus hard to bound with new characters. Conversations also felt a lot stiffer and less natural than EF 1, and some VA were quite cheesy. My overall conclusion: better executed FPS, but worse Star Trek experience.
I though this was a great Star Trek experience that felt just like an episode on Voyager. Plot could be right out of Season 6 or 7, all voice actors did a good job and were true to character, the dialogue was delivered in a natural and believable fashion, and there were tons of lovely references to other events, locations or people in the Star Trek universe. The majority of the level design felt suitably alien and was obviously made by people who love Star Trek. However, I don't think this makes for a great FPS... mainly due to using the Quake III engine. You either move too slow or too fast (walk/run), you're asked to do quite a bit of stealth as well as precision platforming and the engine just cannot deliver here. I assume because of technical limitations, environmental lighting and shadows are also really quite poor and do the level design a disservice. Didn't help my immersion! Enemy AI is primitive and mostly amounts to rushing the player in waves. Klingon Honor Guard could do both things better and that one came out in 1998, but it had the Unreal 1 engine. Makes all the difference. I also felt that the overall quality of the level design degraded towards the end of the campaign, which is a relatively short affair (about six hours if you don't rush things). Same looking corridors with bland lighting and textures, moving from elevator to elevator with little in between, that sort of thing. An elevator ride means you have to wait for your squad to move onto the pad, slowly, one guy at a time. You don't have to worry about issuing orders to your team mates in Elite Force and they do offer some fire support, but you'll be doing the brunt of the fighting and the enemies tend to focus on you and only you. And yes, they do get in your way sometimes. Boss fights and weapon selection were nothing to write home about either. Loved EF for the atmosphere and nostalgia, but I don't think it has aged very gracefully when it comes to being a good FPS.
To be clear, I'm writing this from a perspective of someone who's more used to old-timey FPS games of the 90s and early 2000s which generally didn't hold your hand. Picked up CoJ: Gunslinger on sale because it looked neat and came away pleasantly surprised, but couldn't fail to notice the hall marks of an 2010-era FPS: - Very linear levels with little to no player freedom, walking from set piece to set piece. - One-way drops leading into obvious combat arenas with enemies surrounding you from all sites. - Sudden and frankly disjointed QTEs that tend to also disable your movement keys. - Game slowing down your character (no more sprinting) or even time to make sure you hear that piece of dialogue. - An abundance of dialogue in general you can't hear or follow over the gunfire. - Frankly pointless skill progression system. So not exactly what I was looking for. Regardless, I did enjoy my time with this game and it managed to absorb me into the story courtesy of superb voice acting, well-crafted cut scenes and the overall ambience. Essentially boils down to an old cowboy sharing his life stories while getting drunk with strangers, so everything tends to be ridiculously over-the-top spaghetti western style nonsense. Who cares about historical accuracy? I love it! There's also an underlying dark theme to it as Silas is a broken old man with a troubled past and many regrets. A relic of the past without a purpose in life. The last two missions kinda ruined the experience, however. Movement and gunplay were also excellent. Silas controls like a human being rather than a featherweight super soldier. All guns felt great to use with some believable weight to them, but I certainly did miss clouds of black powder smoke! Silas' "Concentration" superpower worked well enough for me. I also enjoyed the instant action arcade mode, which uses slightly modified levels from the campaign but with way more enemies. I did not like any of the duels, though. Recommended.
Not much I could add to Direct Action that hasn't already been said. Very playable overall, well-paced and engaging campaign with good voice acting, FMV cut scenes and a sensible computer opponent. All coupled with excellent game mechanics that can be as small scale as you'd want them to be. Tank-rushing the enemy RTS-style works, but you can also take a selection of dudes and focus on small unit tactics supported by a handful of vehicles. Move into ambush positions, flank, hide in buildings, make best use of every unit's special ability. You also don't necessarily need an entire blob of artillery or tanks because, individually, most units are quite powerful in their own right when used properly. High Treason on the other hand seems to hail from a different reality. There have been worthwhile changes and widescreen resolutions are now supported, but as for the single player campaign... oh boy, was this even designed by the same team? - Absolutely over-the-top difficulty to the point of being unplayable even on "easy" - Mission scripting that goes awry all too often, game-breaking bugs on certain missions - Frequent reloading coupled with very long load times - An AI that will most definitely, relentlessly spam you with large infantry squads, ground and air assets EVERY TEN SECONDS from ALL DIRECTIONS. There also doesn't seem a limit as to how many it can order - Sometimes, there's also a barracks (or two, or four...) in the middle of the wilderness just to spam more units. Or just infinite respawning enemies at the map edge, that also happens - By contrast, the player is put at a crippling disadvantage in most missions. Severe restrictions on which and how many units you can build, defensive structures declared "unavailable", too little money to defend AND attack, no prison/hospital to generate money from POWs You get the idea. It really isn't as simple as "get good". My advice: save yourself the headache and play Direct Action. It's a much better game.
