BioShock: Infinite - Burial at Sea: Episode One Review

Written by: Ice Cold Tabasco

After playing it, the only way I can sum up the entire experience is IMMENSELY disappointing.

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Oh dear god…

Look, I have a deep love for the BioShock franchise, with the first nearly ranking as my favorite game of all time. I even picked up System Shock 2 a few days ago and I’m having a ball with it. So I went into the first episode of Infinite’s Burial at Sea optimistic. I had high hopes that it would invoke the same sense of mystery and intrigue, all wrapped up with Infinite’s solid combat in a two to three hour experience. 

Presentation is everything.

After playing it, the only way I can sum up the entire experience is IMMENSELY disappointing. While it does manage to sustain interest early on, giving you glimpse of what the writers had in mind for the DLC. It is swiftly buried under the frustrating play styles it attempts to blend into a coherent whole, being the more old school BioShock (being a resource management shooter) and Infinite's more modern style (more tactical;ammo aplenty). So you are able to carry more than one weapon, akin to the first BioShock. I quite like this approach, having all your weapons at your disposal is virtually always a good idea, but has the habit of over powering the player.

So to compensate, ammo is scarce, alla BioShock. While this can benefit the challenge of a game, here it is just unfair. Playing on the hardest difficulty, Burial at Sea will bend you over repeatedly, as running dry on a murder frenzy is inevitable and infuriatingly frequent. There is no Dark Souls-esque challenge here, it’s ones futile attempt to try and swim through a sea barbed wire. You might gain some ground, but the accumulative blood loss will stop you every, FUCKING, TIME. 

Having only three bullets to take out the opposition happens more often then you'd think.

There is no strategy, there is no way around it, you will possibly suffer brain hemorrhage from how often you will die. If you’re going to endeavor to pick this game up, putting it on Medium difficulty might lessen the frustration, but I wouldn't place any bets on it.

The story is also a dribbling mess, with a more mature, grown Elizabeth essentially seeking revenge on what is supposedly the final Comstock, the antagonist of the main game. The whole thing is just dull, with the twist at the end only invoking the question, “Why was any of this necessary?”. While, yes, it might as well be required that the first part of something have a cliffhanger,but, it's so poorly done here that the only satisfaction that you receive is from finishing the bloody thing.

So yeah, Episode One a complete mess with little to bring to the table narratively, and delivers broken combat ontop of it. I even found it to be a tad on the short side. Ultimately, just skip it, and spring for the second episode. Which is HOPEFULLY, proper compensation for this wreck 

Verdict

3/10

Just Plain Bad

Max Payne 3 Review

Written By: Ice Cold Tabasco

After playing Alan Wake, it's rather refreshing to find a game that appreciates the platform it was brought into...

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After playing Alan Wake, it's rather refreshing to find a game that appreciates the platform it was brought into, being the PC, which is notorious for subpar console ports. Forcing anti aliasing and having a very limited graphics options menu does not equate to a great port. Reason being why I should gush over how buttery smooth Max Payne 3 ran on my rig, with its rather extensive graphics menu and fantastic optimization. You never really appreciate a good port until you run across a shit one.

Anyway, lets get down to business…

Fuck. You. Alan. Wake.

Theres a lot of good in Max Payne, and quite a bit of bad to compensate. One is something the franchise has never really been able to accomplish, being, having an engaging narrative. Max, finding himself in the crosshairs of a New Jersey mob boss, travels to Brazil with a man named Passos, promising tons of cash and escape from his current predicament. What ensues is, from what I’m able to muster from my playthrough was just a fuck ton of noise and bullshit. It’s standard action movie fair, with little creative flare. You’ll end up forgetting this the entire thing, along with its unique setting.

Forgetting my two sentence limerick, I like Passos. He’s a funny guy and always has your back in the middle of a fire fight. But everyone else are simply cardboard cutouts, completely two dimensional with zero personality. Whenever someone is killed off, you don’t really give a flying fuck. You just want you mate to stop crying so you can move onto the next shootout.

That’s another issue, as Max Payne 3 seems to fall into this cycle of moving from shooting gallery to shooting gallery. While, yes, that pretty much describes every single FPS in existence, they at least offer engaging combat mechanics and enemy variety to compensate. While bullet time remedies the issue slightly, a dude with a gun is virtually the only dude you're going to kill. Still, it retains tension and is engaging with the bullet time (effectively slowmo) mechanic, which is a godsend in hotter fire fights. Longer play sessions will tend to get grindy and feel as if Paul W. S. Anderson was behind development.

It's quite the visual spectacle as well.

Going with the theme of combat, the gun-play is fan-FUCKING-tastic. Whether it be magnum, pistol, shotgun or assault rifle, every round expended has kick and power. When you clear a room of enemies, you can’t help but feel like god. Contributing to this is the expertly balanced difficulty here. Powering through on Hard Mode, I couldn't help but feel a sort of Dark Soul’s type of challenge in which it is completely fair and challenging. If you die, you died because of you, only amplifying the euphoria of victory.

Now, using what I learned from Alan Wake, is that only animating a character models lower jaw and hiring the most inept voice actors does not lead to a satisfactory audial or visual experience. So, I feel I should note Max Payne 3 has some pretty good talent with is animators and voice actors, feeling very close to real thing. And NOT the atrocities that walk Bright Falls, with cold, unfeeling eyes. Expressionless faces and barely moving mouths, you can understand why Alan Wake was a horror (as well as learning) experience for developers.

Moving away from the mechanical aspects, the game looks fantastic. Its has a widely variant color palette, with bright colors and high contrast for sunny Brazil. To the drab brown and greys of a snow blanketed Hoboken, Max Payne 3 is quite the visual treat. You’ll often be left in awe at the detail that was carved into the world. Bullet impacts, soaked fabric, creasing cloth, and trash on city streets all contribute to the immersive side of the overall experience.

Definitely a looker.

Despite its forgettable story, characters, and shooting gallery mentality, Max Payne 3 is still an enjoyable experience. With tight gun-play, bullet time mechanic, and decent voice acting, I’d dare to say that Max Payne 3 is a pretty good game overall. Though, don’t expect much to think about when you set it down.

Verdict

7/10

Good

BioShock Review

Written By: Ice Cold Tabsaco

I can’t really live with myself if I didn't say BioShock can be considered a genre benchmark.

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I hate flying. Even with the facts that indicate a accident is far, FAR from likely, I’m still on the edge of pissing myself. It’s not what could happen during a flight, its the fact that I’m spitting distance from the fucking stratosphere. Thats kinda what I feel about Rapture. Beautiful and nearly flawless in concept, but essentially enabling UNREGULATED, UNSTABLE, ADDICTIVE SUPER SERUM use in a goddamned fish tank, makes the whole thing far from desirable.

BioShock is one of those games used as a shining example of gaming as art, or how an interactive narrative should be done. While the narrative is rather fantastic, I don’t see how adding an art deco style to something makes it artsy. A pretty damned good design, but thats where it stops, as it’s simply design. Going with the theme of what’s “pretty damned good” about BioShock lies mostly with it’s strong story and combat.

Still, BioShock oozes style.

Finding yourself victim to a plane crash over the city of Rapture, you soon delve down into the briny deep to the underwater dystopia for sanctuary. What you find is a dying city, full of genetically spliced psychopaths, are a range of weapons that don’t really deviate from the standard formula of melee weapons, pistols, shotguns, machine guns, explosives, and exotic weapons. What I do enjoy is your not restricted to two weapons, leaving you with an entire arsenal at your disposal. Compensating for your ability to break into Fort Knox, ammunition relatively scarce, resulting in a very balanced and cohesive experience, complemented with satisfying gun recoil and accuracy. All modifiable at one time use upgrade stations, offering sizable bonuses to damage, ammo consumption and capacity.

Still, plasmid use is what BioShock seeks to bare its teeth. Essentially powers that rely on a mana bar for use, plasmids offer an interesting spin on game play, giving you a second option if your ammunition drys up. While there are a quite a few to choose from, you won’t really need to deviate beyond some core combat powers, being fire and lightning attacks. Rendering other options rather muted, being used once for experimentation and never again. All also upgradable for a certain amount of ADAM, which acts essentially as money.

Plasmid's at work

Going with the theme of genetic manipulation, the player is granted a variety of passive buffs in the form of gene tonics. Each can either improve combative abilities, aid in hacking mini-games, lower store prices, or increase the time it takes a camera to spot you and alert security. It’s rather marginal in practice, but Irrational Games needed some place to cram those pesky RPG elements. 

Complementing BioShock’s solid combat mechanics are the surprisingly variant baddies to murder. Be it the hulking Big Daddies, gun toting Lead Heads, or wall crawling Spider Splicers, they all offer a certain depth to combat, giving every weapon and plasmid a purpose. Making larger fights rather tense and exciting. Though, enemy types tend to be grouped together early on, dampening the game a bit. 

Big Daddies WILL fuck your shit up. Stock up prior to combating them.

Storywise however, BioShock shines brightest. It offers legitimate intrigue and speculation early on, helped along with the absolutely stellar voice acting lent. Providing a clear cut objective that ties in with the world that you find yourself in, as you interact with various key political figures of Rapture’s glory days. Providing a twist that was so smartly written, you can’t help but feel it was hurt by it being told through a cut scene. As you are almost always behind the controls, YOU are the one that is carrying the story along, not a cut scene. It’s very reminiscent of Half Life in this respect, keeping you engaged with the plot the whole way through.

Having given this game non-stop praise, the only negatives I can find is with it's later half, which is more level padding and far from necessary. Everything else is spot on and virtually excellent, with it’s tight and engaging story and characters, coupled with it's solid combat system, I can’t really live with myself if I didn't say BioShock can be considered a genre benchmark.

Verdict

10/10

Genre Benchmark

Fallout 3 Review

Written by: Ice Cold Tabasco

Easily one of the best games of 2008, and of all time.

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Given to me as a gift when I was around ten, Fallout 3 was such a strange experience for me, one that made almost zero sense at the time. All that I amounted doing was walking aimlessly down the road south of Megaton, trusty baton in hand. To be murdered only a few raiders at some bridge, clueless and dazed. I restarted again and again, never really gaining any real ground in the game.

Since then, Fallout 3 has held a strange, mystifying identity for me. It signaled my transition from a purely FPS gamer to a RPG aficionado, and I’ve loved the genre ever since. Playing it for the millionth time at a much older age, I’ve come to appreciate the game as pretty damn awesome. From a purely critical lense, this game manages to hold interest with it’s abundance of content, enemies, and weapons, but falters when you stop and take a look at lackluster questing and story.

I like this game. I REALLY like this game. So let me just go on a bit of hypercritical rant of the atrocity that is the main quest. Seriously, I feel like Bethesda said, “Hey, you know those first two games this one is based on? Let’s NOT ground it in California, AND steal the plot of both games and mash ‘em into one.” Really, little creativity is brought  to the table in terms of actual narrative, with it literally being the plot of the first two. I was hoping this is where Fallout 3 would have shown some muscle, rather than this paper thin mess. Still, the narrative isn’t really the strong point of Western RPGS, case and point with the ENTIRE Elder Scrolls franchise. Its the quantity and/or quality of side quests available.

Regardless, the Capital Wasteland is still rather fun to explore.

To demonstrate the exact volume of questing available to you, I’ve been playing this game for over six years, and I’ve STILL encountered new content. I doubt anyone has encountered every single quest in the game, let alone scrap the surface. The variety is unquestioned in this department, from you delivering some Naughty Nightwear to a shifty stranger, to blowing up an entire town with a nuclear bomb. Even with it’s variety, I find that questing in this game is more synthetic than others, nearly half having the “go to location”, “kill some baddies”, “and come back to get a cookie” formula. For every "HOLY SHIT THAT WAS AWESOME" quest, there's at least five acting as filler. While engaging, questing is marred mostly by a quantity over quality mentality, making it feel a bit grindy over extended periods of play.

While activity a tad lackluster, Fallout 3 compensates for this deficiency by supplying you with an arsenal of weapons and a combat mechanic called VATS. From plasma rifles to rocket launchers to even miniature nukes, the weapon variety (while not as varied as its predecessor) is something to salivate over. 

VATS was more subdued in the earlier titles, not really incentivising to use it. This time around, the “v” key will be your best friend in this game, capable of getting you out of tight spots with most of your body intact. It effectively puts you in a slow motion sequence, where your character auto fires on a selected body part of an opponent, usually without them firing back. And therein lies it’s only major flaw, VATS in late game can get rather godly. So much so that if five enemies are present, five rounds will be expended and the battle won.

This might not be VATS’s fault, but largely a developer based one. Implementing a turn-based leveling system and combat mechanic to a real time RPG is bound to have mixed results. By level 17, it took little more than a glance at a charging raider to have him implode into conveniently segmented body parts. Leveling is a bit of joke as it wasn't really built for the real time combat, enemies never standing a chance at later levels.

VATS at work

While on the topic, enemies are surprisingly variant here than most RPGs. You’ll find yourself combating giant, mutated mole rats one minute, to blowing the head off a Hulk cosplayer the next. Enemies are unique, various, and quite the challenge during earlier levels, becoming little more than an annoyance later down the line.

Fallout 3 still manages to maintain that charm it had on me over six years ago, having an insane amount of content, keeping weapons variant and satisfying, and enemies numerous and challenging. Disappointingly, the game suffers with an uninspired main quest, semi-grindy side quests, and little late game challenge. Even with Liam Neeson voicing the character’s father, no particular set of skills or actual necessity was brought with the role. Regardless, Fallout 3 is fun and engaging, having aged extremely well, maintaining replay-ability, and decent graphical design. Easily one of the best games of 2008, and of all time.

Verdict

9/10

Excellent

Fallout: New Vegas - Dead Money

Written By: Ice Cold Tabasco

Indeed, once you play this expansion, the most infuriating thing is not the enemies, melee oriented gameplay, or tedium, its letting go of some of the best characters Fallout has ever seen.

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The first piece of DLC for Fallout: New Vegas, Dead Money, was met with mixed reviews, all with legitimate reasons as to why it was great or not so. In my opinion, Dead Money did a lot right when considering the story and characters, but less so with gameplay.

Being dumped outside of the Sierre Madre casino, stripped of all your equipment and given a unique energy weapon, you are tasked with breaking into the Sierre or die. Now, this aspect of Dead Money is rather interesting, being stripped to only the bare essentials with a seemingly impossible task to complete. It creates a tense, nearly palpable atmosphere as you hunt for a few more bullets for your revolver or a single stimpack to bring you back up to speed, transforming an RPG to a survival horror romp. With limited success in many areas.

The heist of the century.

That tense atmosphere is brought mostly by the fact that you are equipped with an explosive collar, through the entire length of the DLC, that can be set off by various radios placed around the map. These things are the worst, fucking things, EVER! While it’s a straightforward addition when its introduced in the early game, it gets unfair later on, with these radios even becoming indestructible, forcing you to roll with the punches. You will die more times by stagnant radios than an actual enemies. To add on to this bullshit is this red mist that does damage to you once you step into it (In my case, playing in Hardcore mode will have your health degrade, regardless if you're in the Cloud or not). Not being as bad as the radios, but enough of a nuisance to make you double take and question developer decisions.

Oh, and the FUCKING enemies! Called Ghost people, they are often equipped with melee weapons and explosives, doing sizeable damage in single digits. But in numbers, they WILL fuck your shit up if you travel alone. Also, with limited ammo and weapons available at your disposal, they need to be dismembered to actual kill them. You will often fight with a knife taped to a stick to get by, as Dead Money foolishly favors the melee skill. The one no one uses, because guns exist.

Fuck. These. Guys.

While this can encourage the player to manage what limited resources they have, you can’t will ammunition into existence. You WILL need a gun, and you will need AMMO, using a makeshift spear is only a quicker way to get yourself killed. What I recommend is saving your ammo early on and going Kratos on everything that moves, then your sorta set, as you will run out of ammo, but with less frequency.

One remedy for this problem were the companions that are given to you as protection. Each with passive buffs like reducing the time it takes for a radios to blow your head off, or guaranteeing Ghosts die after they first fall. All wrapped up in genuinely interesting backstories, personalities, and motives for why they want to get into the Sierre Madre. They contribute to the phenomenal story and writing given to this expansion, only having me long for more of it when it was my time to return to the Mojave.

All in all, Dead Money does its job with providing a fantastic story and cast of characters, but is hampered with the gameplay aspects it attempts to erect. Indeed, once you play this expansion, the most infuriating thing is not the enemies, melee oriented gameplay, or tedium, its letting go of some of the best characters Fallout has ever seen.

Verdict
6/10

Above Average

Mirror's Edge Review

Written by: Ice Cold Tabasco

Mirror’s Edge is fun, when everything is working right.

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A year or so ago, Mirror’s Edge used to rank highly with me, being one of my favorite games of all time, up there with the best of ‘em like Portal and Fallout. While it is still a rather fun and enjoyable experience, coming back to playing on PC, issues started to surface.

Before we get to that, I just want to toss a bit of praise toward the art design behind the game, with high contrast colors and sharp shadows. The Frostbite engine hasn't aged a day, making Mirrors Edge one of the best looking game out there, pleasantly blending a bright, anime-ish style and realistic models and lighting. You will often finding yourself looking around at the sprawling city around you, with light bending over windows, smoke stacks wafting through the air, and the city bustling beneath you.

It's a looker.

Besides that, the games primary mechanic, first person platforming or parkour, manages to give you sense of speed and fluidity. When it’s working correctly. You will in frustrating frequency that a path that you have taken is a dead end or not traversable. Forcing you to break game flow for a path that you can take, which you would've never known otherwise. Either that or dying because of shoddy collision detection will have you plummeting to your death more than once. Regardless, if everything works in your favor, good times are to be had, providing a real sense of achievement when you pull off a course nearly flawlessly.

Where I wished Mirror’s Edge would have bared its teeth a bit more was with its story, which becomes rather forgettable and generic. What works for the story are the cartoon animated cutscenes that tell it, all being a nice little treat visually between levels. The animations are fluid and organic, forms flexing and relaxing in a realistic manner, all tied in with its anime influenced art style. I found myself racing through courses to get to the next animation.

Just plain awesome art direction.

Another thing that works for the game’s detriment in the gameplay department, is the combat system. While it has a fast and simple melee system which is quite good, disarming opposition of their firearms and using them is another story. You will occasionally find yourself getting slapped with the butt of a gun due to, once again, shoddy collision detection. Especially in particular sections where you NEED to get a gun to progress. It’s fucking infuriating and hurts the entire game.

Other than what was covered, there’s a few nitpicky things like a minor lack of level variety late game, level padding, and some hyper accurate enemies in various instances. These issues don’t occur often, but enough to annoy if they arise.

With the samey, generic military shooter released year after year, Mirrors Edge was a refreshing take on a wholly new concept that accomplishes it with mixed results. While the art design is stellar, gameplay fun and animations interesting, the ever present shadow of bipolar collision detection, generic story, and pissy combat takes a huge toll on the game’s enjoyability. Mirror’s Edge is fun, when everything is working right.

Verdict

6.75/10

Enjoyable

Fallout 2 Review

Written by: Ice Cold Tabasco

Fallout 2 is one of the greatest title I have ever played

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Originally released in 1998, I never really had the chance to play Fallout 2, mostly due to the fact I was too busy being born. Having gotten wrapped up into the Fallout 3 hype train, I became rather enthralled in the franchise itself. So, several years later, I picked it up and…

...in an attempt to not color my already vibrant opinion of the nearly twenty year old title to nothing but what can be considered fellatio, let me just be a bit hypercritical about the game. The most glaring “problem” is what Fallout: New Vegas suffers from, by basically being the same game twice, effectively Fallout 3 2.0. While it didn’t work to the determent of the more modern entries, it hurts the overall visual experience of Fallout 2 with sprites being rather noticeably polarized. Most are ripped straight from the original, built by pixels and with limited frame to frame animation. Then you have the newer 3D rendered sprites with smoother animation, creating an immersion breaking experience. 

Thankfully, these sprites don’t really appear in the same cell often, but when they do it is noticeably. Another problem they never fixed was the FUCKING INVENTORY UI! It's clumsy and finicky at best, with the mouse cursor deciding the change sensitivity like a pregnant women. You will work around it eventually, but it just infuriates me how this aspect was never fixed. Its horrid but manages to get the job done.

Sorting was to much to ask...

Getting down on my knees, everything else is, the world, leveling system, characters, weapon variety and quest are, to put it broadly, FUCKING FANTASTIC. While the characters are a tad uninspired and two dimensional, and the story uncreative, Fallout 2 is possibly one of the best Western RPGs ever made. The leveling system grants satisfaction, managing to maintain this by having “Perks”(effectively permanent stat or combat boosts) that you receive every other level. You can’t help but wanting to progress with the prospect of nearly sawing men in half with not much but as dainty slap.

The world can be summarized as a sour salted candy advertised as extremely so, its daunting at first and WILL kick you ass once you pop it in you gob, but will eventually become remarkable sweet. Southern California is huge, being exceptionally difficult during the early game but incredibly rewarding later down the line. The only problem I have with the world is the lack of variety, but I feel the questing can make up for this. 

Ripe for the plunder!

I feel developers can live or die by the hand holding die. Choosing to do so makes the game a breeze, and choosing not to has the potential to make progress come to a screeching halt. Fallout 2 gives you just enough information to get on with the quest without some patronizing arrow pointing out where to go. And can even have you thinking about solutions for the rare puzzle here and there. Quest are satisfying and varied to an insane degree.

Fallout 2 might possibly be one of the few games in which you likely won’t see every weapon or outcome. If you fuck up, you fucked up and there is no turning back, with some things being consequently cut off. Prompting actual thought and replay-ability, I love this idea. The weapons on the
other hand, are insanely variant. Its not the fact that a quest outcome closes them off from you, its the fact there are so fucking many that you're unlikely to even find them all. Whether this works for the games prosperity or detriment.

Regardless, with its negatives and positives in check, Fallout 2 is one of the greatest title I have ever played. Even with its missteps, no matter how small, they pale to what the game does right. Of fantastic value, Fallout 2 is a must buy title, no matter its age.

Verdict

9.5/10

Fantastic