Review: SUPERHOT [2016]

I normally don't do indie games. I have nothing against them, they play a very important part of the gaming ecosystem but sadly the efforts of individuals or small teams on a shoe-string budget are unlikely to grab my attention away from my Overproduced Famous Franchise Offering VI because basically I'm a snob and I have a goal of trying to find the end to my AAA infested backlog before 2035.

I can't imagine a scenario where I'd actually buy any indie game, but thankfully Tim Sweeney is under the delusion that offering free games every week will make everyone want to buy from his Epic Games Store. Newsflash: The vast majority aren't. Also naturally while some of the free games are AAA titles that people want - the overwhelming majority are indies that most wouldn't bother with... even for free. There are a few exceptions however and one was SUPERHOT.

SUPERHOT is an FPS what was created as part of a 7-day game jam, funded by Kickstarter and finally officially released a couple of years later by the independent development team. It has two draws over most traditional FPS, it's art style is exceedingly minimal, all environments are white with grey shadowing for depth, all enemies are a red/orange palette and all weapons are black. The second draw is that your enemies move in very slow motion, even less than Max Payne bullet time but when you move - they move in real time. Needless to say it take a bit of getting used to but is a pretty unique way of playing a genre that hasn't changed much in 30 years.

The concept is that you're some sort of office worker or something and a colleague communicating using a quaint DOS like interface gives you access to a game on the corporate servers. You play its levels and report back on how great the game is. I dislike this concept because it encourages time wasting when someone should be diligently working and being paid for work, not misusing company resources. But in the end it's part of the game so I just continued, I didn't progress any story beyond that point.

In the FPS game environment you navigate, though well I say navigate but I only saw maybe three rooms per level and they're occupied by your red enemies which you need to kill. In some situations you start with a pistol that unrealistically has about 4 shots but you can acquire weapons from fallen foes. Guns, base ball bats, bottles and even pool table balls. You don't have any sort of HUD, you don't need a health bar - if you're shot you die in one hit, but so do your enemies who splinter into shards of red glass when killed.

The gameplay loop is that you kill everyone in the room(s) which automatically completes the level and displays a trippy replay of your actions in the level and allows you to upload your sequence to a server for sharing with everyone. Difficulty increased slightly with each iteration and by the time I was about 6 levels deep I had enough; partly due to the fact there was really no reason to continue but mostly I was already reaching the point of my skill level and would likely only have been annoyed with it from that point on.

Final Verdict: An interesting and unique take on the tired FPS genre and I'm reminded that while indies don't offer photorealism or cinema quality cinematics, they are capable of delivering a game to have a little bit of fun which sadly needs to be short lived as my AAA titles forever call to me.

SUPERHOT is available from Steam or GOG for €22.99. Review copy provided FREE from EGS in Sep 2019.

Replay Review: Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault [2004]

It has been more than three years since I went back and played Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault, as great as it was, this one Medal Of Honor: Pacific Assault is my favourite of the  franchise because it moved the action from the European theatre - where most of the U.S. campaigns of WWII shooters take place - to the Pacific and also put you in the boots of a U.S. Marine. This had been done the year previous with the substandard Medal of Honor: Rising Sun for the consoles, but Pacific Assault was the real deal and was generally far more well received.

Graphically Pacific Assault was superior, upgrading from Allied Assault's id Tech 3 to a modified Lithtech Jupiter (from Monolith Productions) with some additional Havok physics. It was released just shy of three years since Allied Assault and it represented a lot in terms of more modern FPS games. No longer could you single handedly "win" WWII by running and shooting everyone; here you had to take cover, aim your weapon properly and rely on your AI team-mates to which you could issue rudimentary commands for covering fire, intel on enemy positions/attack vectors and even healing. Now admittedly it didn't do any of these things brilliantly, the level of AI required to make this a seamless experience was a bit away yet but this was one of the first to do so and you have to start somewhere. That said it is a bit frustrating when your own men walk into your line of fire.

Let me say that the game's "training course" is also one of my favourite training courses in any FPS. It starts off with an appropriately loud drill instructor who waxes lyrical about his beloved Corps and how much better it is than all the other services. He then puts you through the paces of learning how to play an FPS in the decidedly Marine way: with live ammunition! One of the essential lessons you learn is taking control of a fixed weapon positions such as mortars and machine guns. The game is littered with mounted weapons of different types that you take control of, certainly more than any other FPS, so it's something one should get used to.

Pacific Assault's real draw was the different setting and not having to shoot another 1000+ Nazis during it's 11 hour campaign. The Japanese adversaries here were not just reskinned Germans either, they obviously appeared as Japanese soldiers, yelled in Japanese, used appropriate weapons and equipment and best of all would occasionally Banzai-charge you with their bayonets! Missions involved Pearl Harbor (1941), Makin Island (1942), Guadalcanal (1942-1943) and Tarawa (1943), the tropical jungles and golden beaches of the Pacific islands presenting a welcome respite from the bocage and hedgerows of France.

While the setting was one of it's greatest draws, it was ultimately a little too realistic. About half the game had you wandering through dense jungle  eliminating Japs in ramshackle wooden villages. While the objectives were varied with regards to gathering intelligence, eliminating radio towers, fuel containers or ammunition dumps etc. these took place in jungle clearings after a slow trundle though the surrounding foliage eliminating enemy patrols first. A very rinse and repeat cadence to it all - much like the USMC's war accounts from the period. It's not to say of course that the game is unexciting, just a little more repetitive than others of it's ilk and for many players it wasn't an interesting experience and certainly not whet they were used to.

While the Medal of Honor franchise took a more sombre, realistic stance than Call of Duty's more cinematic games, Pacific Assault still didn't showcase the brutality and sheer inhumanity of the Japanese which far exceeded the calculated the industrial genocide of the Nazis. It would have been a very different experience to have the player rescuing those captured by the Japs as opposed to Nazis (again). However as few allied POWs taken by the Japs lived to tell the tale, it would likely have been an unrealistic expectation for a game that of course must end on a victorious note.

Final Verdict: Pacific Assault allows you to experience WWII from a different angle for once, here the first half of the U.S. Pacific campaign. However it will likely seem far to bland to someone who may not have studied the war in the Pacific and a little substandard in gameplay/AI quality to similar titles due to newer concepts of the time. According to in-game statistics I personally eliminated 1368 Japanese soldiers as a Marine Raider, so I'm as happy with it as I was originally.

Technicals: 10h 37m playtime though EA App in 1600x1024 @ 91FPS (Engine cap) on RTX3070Ti/4070Ti in Windows 11. Windows HDR enhanced visuals.

Bugs: None.

Availability: Medal of Honour: Pacific Assault is advailable through the EA Store for €9.99 or GOG for €9.39. Review copy was obtained from EA Origin free givaway in March 2016.

Medal of Honour franchise:

• Medal of Honor [PS1] (1999)
• Medal of Honor: Underground [PS1] (2000)
• Medal of Honor: Allied Assault [PC] (2002)
• Medal of Honor: Frontline [PS2/Xbox] (2002)
• Medal of Honor: Rising Sun [PS2/Xbox] (2003)
• Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault [PC] (2004)
• Medal of Honor: European Assault [PS2/Xbox] (2005)
• Medal of Honor: Vanguard [PS2] (2007)
• Medal of Honor: Airborne [PC/PS3/X360] (2007)
• Medal of Honor [PS3 / X360 / PC] (2010)
• Medal of Honor: Warfighter [PC/PS3/X360] (2012)
• Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond [PC - Oculus VR] (2020)

Retro Gaming Attempt - The Elder Scrolls: Arena [1994]

I have yet to play Skyrim! In fact I've never played a game from The Elder Scrolls franchise. It's become something of an embarrassment at this stage but it's something I intend to get to as soon as I can. As I am fairly clueless about The Elder Scrolls franchise as a whole I said I would investigate it from the beginning and install the original game in the franchise in order to organically learn the lore.

Arena sounds like a title that would have been given to some melee free-for-all fighting game and bizarrely that's what it was originally supposed to be. However it did incorporate some RPG style side-quests as you were supposed to be a travelling gladiator and Bethesda decided these side-quests were actually far better than the gladiator part and instead linked them all together with a true epic RPG plot. This was just done far to late in the release schedule and the game was already being marketed as Arena, so they just tacked on the mystical sounding "The Elder Scrolls" well before anyone even thought of what the scrolls actually were.

But before The Elder Scrolls: Arena achieved the level of success that warranted four sequels with another in development, an MMO and various ancillary games - it was just this first-person RPG and sadly however, in my case without the nostalgia of experiencing it as an old beloved game from my past, it almost immediately became obvious that it was just not something that I was going to be able to play. The dodgy gameplay coupled with the woeful graphics had me awestruck. It was not only awful looking in comparison to other games of the year, but it was exceptionally difficult as I died several times without leaving the "training" dungeon - I think I actually got further in Dark Souls in the same amount of time.

Character creation was interesting you could choose a class if you knew what you were doing or do one of those psychological tests that identifies you as a coward, pacifist, thinker or psycho etc, only here it is supposed to determine the class you're most likely to survive as. Stats are rated out of 100 with 50 being the 'norm' for Strength, Intelligence, Willpower, Agility, Speed, Endurance, Personality and Luck. Appearance was limited to just a few different sprites.

Combat was awkward with an idiotic system of moving your mouse in a sort of arc that was supposed to mimic a swing of your weapon. My hand was getting tired after a while as it's a very unnatural movement that would have seen thousands of repetitions over the course of the game and I wasn't going to do that.

It's one thing to play a 25 year old game for 5 or 6 hours and finish it, but one of the staple design goals of Bethesda and The Elder Scrolls series is length. While Arena itself is by far the shortest game in the series, it would still likely have taken me more than 30 hours to complete. I don't think I could have gone on in such a dated game for that long, but kudos to anyone who can.

Final Verdict: A product of yesteryear. Cannot be enjoyed without previous experience or nostalgia to make up for it's almost 30 year old shortcomings.

Available permanently FREE on GOG who have delivered a curated package which will easily launch the game without issue on modern systems.

The Elder Scrolls Series (mainline only):

• The Elder Scrolls: Arena [1994]
• The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall [1996]
• The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind [2002]
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion [2006]
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim [2011]
• The Elder Scrolls Online [2014]
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Special Edition [2016]
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Anniversary Edition [2021]
• The Elder Scrolls VI [202?]

First Play Review: Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered [2022]

My entire experience with super-hero video games was playing a buddies Batman (1989) game for a day, a demo of SEGA's godawful Iron Man game 20 years later around 2008, Gazillion's Marvel Heroes ARPG for a few months before it had its plug unceremoniously pulled by Disney and most recently in 2017 the serviceable MMORPG DC Universe Online which allowed me be my own dark-clad martial-arts powered vigilante superhero "The Duskmaster". I had intended to play Rocksteady's Arkham series to be the real Batman but Sony, as part of their aggressive push into the PC gaming market, published Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered with enticing gameplay, graphics suitable for 2023, so I started that instead.

Spider-Man needs no introduction, appearing in comic books since 1962 he quickly got to Marvel's A-list warranting merchandise, animated series, a live action TV show and a whopping eight live-action cinematic movies! There are many iterations of the character between (and even within) each medium as most recently seen in Spider-Man Far From Home where three versions of Peter Parker from the Sam Raimi movies, the James Webb movies and the MCU met and interacted. This game takes place in Earth-1048 for those that pay close attention to these things. Here, 23 year old Peter Parker, research scientist at Octavius Labs began operating as Spider-Man at the age of 16. Today he helps combat crime in Manhattan with the assistance of NYPD Captain Yuri Watanabe. After defeating Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin, the city was targeted by the villain Mister Negative and his gang with a vendetta against Norman Osborn, the city mayor. 

I like games that have a tutorial as part of the overall narrative that are a bit more fleshed out than a generic obstacle course. This game has a good one that serves as a prologue where you take down The Kingpin and an army of his goons and in doing so learn the main mechanics and moves that Spider-Man has at your fingertips. The control scheme on keyboard and mouse felt a bit clunky at first, much more so than my recent experience with God of War but I expect that may be the case with many action adventure games especially ports. I did plug in the Xbox controller for a bit but I fared much worse with it as opposed to better as was immediately seen with Dark Souls so returned to mouse and keyboard and persevered, mastering it before too long.

Combat here looks awesome. You'll recognise a lot of Spidey's moves from both comic-book and movie versions. Some actions you don't control 100% so you kick or punch an enemy depending on how long you've been attacking, or where the enemy hit-box is in relation to you. Enemy variety maxes out before too long with the common pitfall of having the same enemy AI and move-set reskinned to the latest goon faction but there is tremendous variety in how you deal with them. Variety above basic attacks in combat is provided through two different ways. As you level up you gain access to new attacks and moves such as webbing enemies to disarm them or use them as a weapon to clobber others. The second way your combat is customised is though your suit or gadget upgrades.

As the game progresses you get access to a huge arsenal of gadgets and upgrades taking many different forms. So your gadgets (weapons) are mainly web attacks some do different things like unique web bolts or technology based attacks like electrified webs to name but a few. You also gain access to different Spider-Man suits from all media, comics, films, animated etc which not only change your visual look but some also provide special abilities. The interesting thing is that you can use the ability once you've unlocked the suit so you don't need to use the suit the ability comes with. You upgrade your suit though employing passive or active gadgets of which there are dozens of different combinations that you can swap at any time out of combat. My personal preference was the Stark-enhanced suit from Avengers: Infinity War which came with"Iron Spider" mechanical arms that make short work of groups of mobs that the game throws at you.

Combat aside, it was movement and traversal in this game I found most unique. I was able to scale, jump and 'float' from buildings in DCUO but the range of controlling and manipulating your speed and movement here was far superior to that. The signature 'Thwipp!" of your web-singers signified another strand was added to your journey atop the Manhattan skyline. Performing acrobatics without the fear of "falling damage" that prevents such stunts in the majority of games I play was most refreshing. So unique was the experience that I often found myself web-slinging or parkouring across rooftops with no aim towards an objective, traversal through the game was just fun.

Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered has one map, it only needs one, in this case a fictional representation of the borough of Manhattan. Some things are pure fantasy such as the Osborne or Roxxon buildings and of course the monolithic Avengers Tower but other structures are recreated almost perfectly from reality like Freedom Tower, Madison Square Garden and The Empire State which begs to be climbed. Earth-1048 differs in other ways in that New York seems much cleaner, there's less people and less traffic but these are likely game engine limitations so we won't worry about those to much. At various points you do get to adventure inside buildings, but these are primarily as part of the story, the vast majority of the game is the open world city-scape with an incredible array of icons to tick off which you only mostly need to do if you want to achieve maximum level and make the game easier as with many other game experiences today.

HDR Screenshots are borked but this presents the scale of Manhattan - you can go anywhere!

With all that, dont forget we have a cinematic quality story and performances here. John Paesano (Mass Effect: Andromeda) returned to score for a Marvel superhero since making a name for himself as Neflix's Daredevil composer. Veteran animation and anime voice artist Yuri Lowenthal voices Spider-Man/Peter Parker (with Ben Jordan as capture/likeness). In addition to Wilson Fisk, Mister Negative and practically the entire rogues gallery of Spider-Man villains, it's no spoiler to say that once we see Otto Octavius developing octopus-like appendages to help the disabled we're gonna see Doctor Octopus, given life by the voice and facial capture of William Salyers (Mass Effect 3). I must mention TV and film actor Mark Rolston (Aliens) as Mayor Norman Osborn and TV actress Nancy Linari as Aunt May both of whom delivered sublime performances (and likenesses) to their characters. Miles Morales portrayed by Nadji Jeter (The Last of Us) and Laura Bailey (Star Wars: The Old Republic) (voice) and Stephanie Tyler Jones (capture/likeness) as Mary Jane Watson round out the cast and interestingly are temporarily controllable in a few "stealth sequences" which advance the larger narrative. Finally I must mention the true star of the game Darin De Paul (Doom / Star Wars: The Old Republic) who voices J. Jonah Jameson former Daily Bugle editor turned radio show host who pops into your headphones condemning Spider-Man as a menace and berating his studio assistant in hilarious fashion about once every 5 - 10 minutes. It's truly the icing on the cake for this sublime Spider-Man experience.

DLC: The City That Never Sleeps is a three part adventure that adds several hours of story and gameplay the game. It's worth playing through the story as it fleshes out the story for Black Cat, and Silver Sable as well as pitting you  against Hammerhead. The extra open world content isn't worth it if you've already maxed out your abilities and gadgets from the main game. It should be noted that while this was DLC for the PS4 version, it's bundled in with the Remastered version.

Final Verdict: Interesting and varied combat with great moves and gadgets to mix it up despite enemy variety becoming predictable before too long. I felt that wile the open world gameplay and icon hunting does get repetitive after a while, in this game it was worth it to level up, get more gadgets and to unlock cool Spider-Man suits. Compelling story and performances, coupled with a breathtaking rendition of New York city cements the immersion that you are indeed Spider-Man!

Technicals: 45.5 hours playtime (including DLC) through Steam. Full UW support granted 3440x1440. Custom settings favouring high end options with RTX3070Ti. HDR and Ray Tracing was enabled in game and DLSS was enabled to provide adequate frame-rate of about 65-80FPS

Bugs: There were a few crashes, I fiddled around with frame rate and graphics settings enough to fix them.

Availability: Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered is available from Steam for €59.99. Review copy purchased for  €40.79 in Oct 2022 from Green Man Gaming.

Insomniac Spider-Man Releases:

• Marvel's Spider-Man [PS4] (2018)
• - Spider-Man: The City That Never Sleeps DLC [PS4] (2018)
• Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered [PS5] (2020)
• Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered [PC] (2022)
• Spider-Man Miles Morales [PS4/5] (2020)
• Spider-Man Miles Morales [PC] (2022)
• Marvel's Spider-Man 2 [PS5] (2023)
• Marvel's Spider-Man 2 [PC] (2025?)

Replay Review - Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix [2002]

Id Software licenced the id Tech 3 engine to developers following their own release of Quake III in 1999. Between 2000 and 2003 about 10 games used the proprietary licence with Raven Software producing several quality releases including Star Trek: Elite Force, Star Wars - Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast (and it sequel Star Wars Jedi Knight: Academy), but the best one not involving two of the largest sci-fi franchises in the world was the sequel to the highly controversial, but instant classic Soldier of Fortune. 

After a prequel prologue, Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix takes place a little after the events in SoF. The basic plot here is that John Mullins is placed on the trail to prevent a dangerous biological weapon from being unleashed on the world. His violent globe-trotting adventures bring him to Prague, Colombia, Hong Kong, Kamchatka and Switzerland among other locations and are actually quite varied for a game of this era. Levels include a Train Station, Cargo Tanker, Multi-level Russian Weapons Facility, Jumbo Jet and a busy Airport.

SoFII was a very different game to it's predecessor. The tone changed from mindless murder simulation with questionable politics and wafer-thin plot to more of a quasi-realistic action spy-movie game with global conspiracy punctuated with automatic weapons. In Soldier of Fortune Mullins was sent in to shoot and kill everyone aided by his buddy Hawk. With Hawk's death in that game, SoFII has Mullins mostly on his own save for a sequence where you have a squad of U.S. Marines cutting up the jungle with you, making me feel right at home. The gameplay takes a semi-stealth approach which unlike Sam Fisher's Splinter Cell missions a year later, stealth here is very badly implemented and you always end in a prolonged firefight. But it's Solder of Fortune, what would you expect?

Sadly the defining gore which made the original banned or censored in many countries was toned down a little for the sequel. Don't get me wrong, you could still dismember enemies with shotguns, suspend bodies in mid air with sub-machine gun fire as you riddle them with bullets and cut people literally in half with heavy machine guns, however the agonizing death screams of dying enemies was lessened and the animation of lower intestine poking through a ruined abdomen was very rare now and I think something truly artistic was lost. Additionally the controversial mechanic of the original game punishing you for killing U.S. civilians but allowing the death of Iraqi civilians without consequence was also removed and shooting any civilians is considered an instant fail in SoFII.

Soldier of Fortune writer Kenn Hoekstra penned a far superior story this time around which had all the hallmarks of a Bond movie and to his credit it can still be enjoyed to this day as something pretty unique in the FPS space. Of course as with any story it's only sold through the acting performances of its impressive cast including the great Todd Susman (Beverly Hills Cop II) as John Mullins with Mark Hamill (Star Wars), Earl Boen (The Terminator) Dee Bradley Baker (Star Wars: The Bad Batch), Nick Jameson (24) and Rosalind Chao (Star Trek: The Next Generation).

Final Verdict: It was nice to revisit an old school shooter of a bygone era with some of the most interesting examples of level design and array of locales in one game. While the gore was toned down from the original slightly, the gunplay and violence was and arguably is still among the most visceral video game violence ever released, earning several prestigious "banned list" positions or heavy censoring at the time.

Technicals: 15hrs playtime though GOG Galaxy in 3440x1440 @ 91FPS (Engine cap) via OGL on RTX3070Ti in Windows 11. No HDR.

Mods: ReShade for shader post-processing. Ultra widescreen fix. Ultrawide HUD fix. Ultrawide FOV settings enabled.

Bugs: None.

Availability: Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix is only available from GOG. Normal Retail price €9.99. Review copy purchased for €4.49 in June 2019.

Soldier of Fortune franchise

• Soldier of Fortune (2000)
  
• Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix (2002)
  
• Soldier of Fortune: Payback (2007)
  

First Play Review: God Of War [2022]

Note: This game was originally released for the PlayStation 4 in 2018. It is not to be confused with the 2005 PlayStation game God of War. 

God of War wasn't the first title that peaked my interest when Sony PlayStation announced it's push into the PC game market in 2020 but it was something that I saw a lot of media about and felt it was worth investigating. Now as you may know, I really hate starting a series of books, TV shows, movies or games that have a serious 'history'. I need to start from the beginning of anything. However in this case I was advised by multiple sources that while the previous God of War games are referenced in the story, the new game presents it such a way that newcomers to the franchise are served the lore well. In fact some argue that not knowing the saga beforehand is actually an advantage as you learn Kratos' history alongside Atreus, Kratos' son. 

What I did know was that the God of War franchise in the PlayStation had three main games which detail the story of Kratos, a Spartan soldier tricked by Ares into killing his family. So Kratos killed him in revenge becoming the new 'god of war' in the process. He had another two games where he fought both The Titans (who betrayed him) and  The Olympians (with a special beef with Zeus) and eventually bogged off somewhere in in 2010. It was not until 2018's soft reboot that people learned that he went to Midguard of all places!

The new setting of Norse legend as opposed to Greek serves as a soft reboot of the series making it accessible to me as a new player. You're quickly introduced to Kratos and you discover you have three things going for you: you're voiced by Christopher Judge (Teal'c from StarGate SG-1), you have a stunning red beard and you have a "Leviathan Axe" that is part tool and and part weapon and returns like Marvel Thor's hammer! However a lot of this is instantly offset by the fact you also have an annoying whiny son and you have to tolerate him because his mother Faye just died and you're forced to give him attention now.

The game's intro prologue which sets your quest to bring Faye's ashes to the peak of a nearby mountain, served as a pleasant hand-holding exercise which was most welcome as this is the kind of game that wasn't originally designed for a mouse and keyboard. At the end of the tutorial prologue you are suddenly thrust into a major boss-battle with Baldur, Thor's half-brother, brilliantly portrayed by Jeremy Davies (for which he won a BAFTA to add to his Justified Emmy). It hammered home the point that your otherwise simple-sounding quest would be wrought with challenges and adventure.

God of War is played over the shoulder third person which is best for melee combat, and there sure is a lot of it. The Leviathan Axe is the main weapon for the vast majority of the game and in the hands of Kratos it is as powerful as Thor's Mjölnir hammer and can be thrown about just like it. This results in deeply satisfying combat with enemies that while are not overall as varied as I'd desire, are nonetheless fun to do battle with. Your skill with the axe increases as you gain XP and spend it on powers and moves, and you can even upgrade it with runes and materials you collect along the way. Gathering these materials to enhance your weapon and armour isn't a chore (unless you want to deliberately take on the higher level challenges outside the main game narrative) and you collect them as you follow the main and side quests.

God of War is not a game you can get lost in, your main path/goal is ever present but you are rewarded for exploring unknown areas of the the open-world map that becomes littered with icons as you unveil more tasks to complete. Most of these are optional but the more you complete, the easier combat becomes as you gain XP and equipment as well as flesh out the story and the world which is admittedly more interesting if you have even a passing interest in mythology. Some of the extra tasks are not unique in scope but are completed in different environments making it different enough to not be tedious. I was particularly happy with the puzzles which can only be completed after you've gained certain abilities. The rewards from such puzzles are appropriate to the level you have to be to have the feature to solve the puzzle - but so are the enemies you encounter as a result, if any!

As the game progressed I found that I began to get used to my "son" which ran parallel to Kratos' 'acceptance' of him. Atreus gains some moderate powers and abilities as Kratos actively levels up and the boy can be used as a passive companion in battle and can be ordered to use an active component by shooting arrows at targets designated by you for combat or puzzles as the situation demands. Atreus goes though his own character arc and emerges a much more tolerable and stronger character then in the beginning. In fact he gets far more character development than Kratos himself who barely progresses from grunting and shouting "Boy!" for the game's duration. It was however the relationship between father and son and their interaction with the ancillary characters of the story that made it matter much more than the purpose of the main quest.

Final Verdict: God of War is a masterclass into what a visually cinematic, well designed and polished adventure game is. It's progression systems are carefully calculated. It's environment, although fiercely linear for the main story, still takes place in a majority of an open world which begs to be explored. The performances from the games actors elevated the game's average story and making it more about the relationship between the characters than the achievement of a goal. It's only left for me to say that God of War soared above any expectations I had of playing it.

Technicals: 43.5 hours playtime through Steam. Full UW support granted 3440x1440/160FPS. Used Balanced DLSS 1996x836 to render 3440x1440/120FPS for greater stability. Custom settings favouring high end options with RTX3070Ti. DX11 renderer under Windows 11 and impressive HDR enabled though Windows implementation.

Bugs: Some instability occurred at 160FPS+ causing crashes. One bug workaround required full game reinstallation (with no loss of progress).

Availability: God of War is available from Steam for €49.99. Review copy purchased from Fanatical for  €39.42 in Feb 2022.

 

God of War series:

• God of War [2005] PS2
• God of War II [2007] PS2
• God of War III [2010] PS3
• God of War: Origins Collection [2010] PS3
• God of War: Ascension [2013] PS3
• God of War III Remastered [2015] PS4
• God of War [2018] PS4
• God of War [2022] PC
• God of War Ragnarök [2022] PS5

Obituary: Troubled actor Tom Sizemore 1961-2023

From the time of this blog's inception as The Colonel's Eagle in 2005 until 2007, actor Tom Sizemore was a regular subject to be reported on, so much so that he even had his own link-label. It wasn't so much for his acting prowess but rather his colourful and nefarious antics that ended a stellar Hollywood career after some 40 major film roles between 1989 and 2003.

Sizemore's first credited movie role was in the Sylvester Stallone starring prison movie Lock Up. From '89 to '91 he expanded his portfolio in movies such as Born on the Fourth of July with Tom Cruise and Point Break with Keanu Reeves. 

I first distinctly recall Sizemore in 1992's Passenger 57 where he plays Wesley Snipes' wisecracking boss. He furthered his career considerably over he next three years by working with some of the greatest directors of the day such as Tony Scott in True Romance, Laurence Kasdan as Bat Masterson in Wayatt Earp, Oliver Stone in Natural Born Killers and Michael Mann in Heat.

After recovering from the 1997 flop The Relic which was also his first leading role, he portrayed one of his best and most memorable roles as SFC Mike Horvath in Saving Private Ryan which would also become his most financially successful project.

Sizemore had a string of flops at the turn of the century with the disastrous misstep Red Planet, narratively flawed Pearl Harbor, and bomb-disposal thriller Ticker for which the director has publicly apologised for.  He had one more hit in 2001 when he played real life U.S. Army Lt.Colonel Danny McKnight of the 75th Rangers as part of an award-nominated ensemble cast for one of the finest war movies ever made, Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down. 

The last movie I recall seeing him in was 2003's Dreamcatcher but it was by this point that Sizemore's Hollywood career had crashed and burned at the foot of his conviction for domestic violence against "Hollywood Madam" Heidi Fleiss and repeatedly failing drug tests while on probation. He continued his substance abuse and domestic violence tendencies throughout the following twenty years despite appearing in some 150 low-budget, direct-to-video or short film projects.

After his exile from Hollywood, Sizemore did make a number of Television appearances including CSI: Miami, Crash, Entourage, Hawaii Five-0, Law & Order: SVU, Lucifer, Shooter and Twin Peaks, Season 3. His TV roles ended in 2017 however, following allegations of sexual assault against an 11 year old girl on the set of a movie in 2003.

While my respect for the man waned and turned into morbid curiosity as the 2000's went on, there was a time when I would have wanted him to portray me on screen should there ever have been a movie of my life in the Corps. Few actors could spin from the intensity of my battle-hardened death-stare to my charismatic lady-killing smirk on a dime like Tom Sizemore. That dream was permanently laid to rest on March 3rd when he passed away following a brain aneurysm at 61. 

May he find the peace in death that he clearly hadn't in life.

Console exclusivity is slowly coming to an end

Console Exclusivity! The phrase evokes pride in your console of choice - if you get the exclusive but sometimes envy in those who devote themselves to a rival console. I mean PlayStation users would probably like to play Gears of War and Xbox players yearn for God of War? Right? I wouldn't really know, I'm a PC player and can play both like a boss!!

Console exclusivity is practised to varying degrees by Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo to maintain interest in their respective console offerings. Super Mario is only available on the Nintendo's consoles. Sony keep Gran Turismo firmly on PlayStation. No Halo game has has a red or blue box, it's always Xbox green. Console exclusivity usually means exclusivity to that particular console however; it doesn't always mean that the console itself is the only platform the game is for; there is of course the PC port.

Console games getting a PC port down the line isn't anything new. I first obtained a PC port of the PS1 title The Die Hard Trilogy as a present in 1997. It was awesomely shit and barely held my interest for a day. It was such nonsense in comparison to any real PC game I ever played that it put me off console ports for years. It wasn't until 2003 when former Xbox exclusive Splinter Cell was released that I changed my mind as it was awesome and unlike any game I played before.

I pretty much dismiss Nintendo as the "kiddie console" but it's a moot point as Nintendo have always completely ignored the PC. Microsoft has obviously continued to support the PC by supporting Windows versions of the majority of their Xbox games (ensuring that gamers stick to the Windows OS of course) so I have access to the vast majority of Xbox "exclusives". My only real source for any measure of console envy was really for PlayStation. I'd have liked to have played some Metal Gear Solid or SOCOM games back in the day and I remember being dismayed that Quantic Dream announced their future output exclusivity with PlayStation back at the beginning of the 2010's. Times have changed though and it seems now that the days of hard PlayStation exclusivity are coming to an end.

In 2019 Quantic Dream released PC ports of it's PlayStation game catalogue. A year later 2020 Hideo Kojima's Sony funded PS4 game Death Stranding's PC port was released. While both were welcome, and they were not the first games to be developed in conjunction with Sony to be released on PC but they were signalling a massive shift in Sony's focus. Also in 2020 the unprecedented happened: a PC release of a tentpole first-party Sony studio developed PS4 game Horizon: Zero Dawn was both announced and released! Additionally, Sony also announced in it's earnings report: "We will explore expanding our first-party titles to the PC platform, in order to promote further growth in our profitability." 

Since then Sony have aggressively marketed and ported several more of their first-party games to the PC including Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered, God of War, Days Gone and Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection among others. It seems that there will be an ongoing effort to support the PC with additional titles going forward. Sony themselves predict about half their new releases will be made available for the PC by 2025 with live service games specifically singled out as having near same-day releases with the goal of properly establishing their communities.  For now, Returnal has just released some days ago at time of writing, The Last of Us Part I will release on March 28th. Ghost of Tsushima is only rumoured for now but I'd expect and announcement about God of War: Ragnarok and The Last of Us Part II before year's end.

Are Nintendo even needed on the PC now? The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild would be welcome. It also has a sequel, Tears of the Kingdom in development to be released in May. Perhaps the time has come for Shuntaro Furukawa to take a look at Sony's PC success and rethink his company's posture?

Retro Review - Hitman: Codename 47 [2000]

After sampling being a historical assassin in the Assassin's Creed franchise I thought it was high time to try out being a modern day one. Danish outfit IO Interactive created the Hitman franchise in 2000, well before Ubisoft made the first AC, but for various reasons I never got around to playing. That changed recently when I decided to start from the beginning and check out the game that made Agent 47 one of be better known characters in gaming.

In Hitman: Codename 47 you take on the role of a the mysterious "47" who apparently wakes up in a medical facility/prison and is for some reason trained to use weapons (in the story-driven tutorial). He escapes his imprisonment and is shortly contacted by "The Agency", an shadowy organization who offer him jobs as an assassin. Basically 47 gets contracts and he must use stealth, subterfuge and disguise to take out his mark.

Having been a Recon Marine and after playing Assassin's Creed, Splinter Cell and favouring the stealth options in Metal Gear Solid V, I do like and appreciate the stealth approach as it's "not the norm" in the videogame world. From what little I knew of Hitman (ignoring the movies, especially the second one) I expected a rewarding experience on that front, and I got one, but only to an extent.

Hitman: Codename 47 is a 23 year old old game and has not aged well. As I hadn't played it before there was sadly no feeling of nostalgia to prop it up as there is with games I played and loved from that time such as Max Payne. The time for this game passed a long time ago. The graphics were as expected for a game of this era, a little batter than Quake II and perhaps more on par with games using the first Unreal engine. The interface and mechanics of the game however are atrocious and don't scale well to modern resolutions. On 4K it's near-impossible to read menus and the experience isn't that much better on 1440p.

The technical issues aside it's just basically not a great experience, the difficulty is too high, win conditions are too specific and the save system is unforgiving. The same things seem to not only annoy me, but apparently recent players and even did back in the day as well. People who have played later Hitman games can't play this again because this game doesn't have the quality of life fixes that the sequel and later games in the series implemented and so this is considered broken by many. Average game time suggests 12 hours, which is about an hour a level but after 3 levels in 5 hours I had to call it a day.

It's not all bad. It was one of the first games with rag-doll physics and created at a time when 3D engines were sill in their infancy. The concept and the atmosphere are sound and grew from the ideas observed in Hong Kong action movies which obviously developed from that simple premise into the mopre complex one shipped. Jespyr Kyd (who would later score Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and Assassin's Creed for Ubisoft) produced a score was ahead of it's time and used urban soundscapes and ethnic instrumentation to deliver a score that I heard on the internet and actually imported a CD of back in 2005.

Final Verdict: Meh! I paid €1.59 last year to get this game so not going to complain it was a dud too loudly. This was the game that launched a franchise despite selling just 500,000 copies. I know from reviews and word of mouth that the sequel Hitman 2: Silent Assassin mostly corrected the gameplay elements, so nice to have a baseline now to compare. Additionally, as only 10% of Silent Assassin players actually played Codename 47, Codename 47 was largely remade into a third game Hitman: Contracts so all is not truly lost. Hitman: Codename 47's time is done but my adventure with the franchise has yet to truly begin.

Technicals: Played for 4.7 hours on Win 11 @ 4K, 1440p and 3440x1440 resolutions. Graphics options are minimal.

Bugs: No technical bugs but HUD doesn't scale well to modern resolutions.

Purchase Options: Available on Steam for €7.99 or GOG for €5.99. Review copy purchased for Steam from Humble Bundle for €1.59 in January 2022.

Franchise [PC only]

• Hitman: Codename 47 [2000]
• Hitman 2: Silent Assassin [2002]
• Hitman: Contracts [2004]
• Hitman: Blood Money [2006]
• Hitman: Absolution [2012]
• Hitman [2016]
• Hitman 2 [2018]
• Hitman 3 [2021]
• Hitman: World of Assassination [2023]

The Economy and Ethics of Game Purchasing - Part 4 - Analysis

Continued from Part 3

Analysing a choice

Let us illustrate the available choices using this point-in-time look at the market on January 22nd 2022 for the standard edition of Assassin's Creed: Valhalla which has an MSRP of €59.99:

• Ubisoft Store: €19.80 (in a "Lunar New Year sale)
  
• Steam: €59.99
• 
  GOG: Unavailable
  
• Epic Games Store: €59.99
• Microsoft Store: Unavailable
  
• Fanatical: €17.99 (in a "Lunar New Year" sale)
• Green Man Gaming: €17.42 (in a "Lunar" sale)
• Humble Store: €19.79 (in a "Winter" sale)
  
• GamersGate: €17.61 (in a timed sale)
• CDKeys: €16.59
• G2A: €18.49
• G2Play: €17.69

While the cheapest price is clearly CDKeys remember that through this site, the publisher/developer only benefits from the original sale price of the game in the Third World country where it was purchased. We can presume this could be less than the equivalent of €16.59 as CDKeys obviously don't operate at a loss.

The same game price as of February 6th 2023:

• Ubisoft Store: €59.99
• Steam: €59.99
• GOG: Unavailable
• Epic Games Store: €59.99
• Microsoft Store: Unavailable
• Fanatical: €59.99
• Green Man Gaming: €52.79 (Standard sale)
• Humble Store: €19.79 (Limited time sale)
• GamersGate: €59.99
• CDKeys: €16.59
• G2A: €19.96
• G2Play: €17.18

In either case, just by spending at most about €3 more purchasing from an authorised key vendor instead of the grey market means Ubisoft receive the the revenue they expect from your purchase.

Forspoken, the most ridiculously priced new game has a different story as its a recent release. Square Enix is not directly selling it on their site so it redirects purchasers to Steam, Microsoft or Epic.

• Steam: €79.99
• GOG: Unavailable
• Epic Games Store: €79.99
• Microsoft Store: €79.99
• Fanatical: Unavailable
• Green Man Gaming: €63.99 (Standard sale)
• Humble Store: €79.99
• GamersGate: Unavailable
• CDKeys: €54.69
• G2A: €56.18

Here the price advantage of CDKeys is more evident as the price difference is more than €25 which is a difficult offer to ignore for some. The moral choice however is getting a €16 discount from Green Man as Square Enix have authorised them to sell Steam keys for the game.

By using key vendors like Green Man Gaming and Humble Bundle, and not a key reseller, the key vendors prove themselves and can continue providing excellent customer value. Third World gaming price inflation will not increase due to the immoral practices of CDKeys and will allow Third World gamers to buy games at their regionally acceptable prices. Most importantly you have an authorised guaranteed legal Key that you can have much more confidence in actually working at the end of the day and you should be proud of yourself that you are continuing the sustainability of the games industry.

"It's always Weather Balloons" - SPEARHEAD

On the heels of a third UAP being downed by U.S. fighter aircraft in as many days, the commander of NORAD General Glen VanHerck, U.S. Air Force was asked yesterday if he had ruled out an extraterrestrial origin for them. "I'll let the intel community and the counterintelligence community figure that out. I haven't ruled out anything." which the world's media will now assume to be confirmation that the U.S. military believes aliens exist.

The Pentagon stated that China operates surveillance balloons on a global scale collecting data on military bases, including the balloon downed last week. However the last three objects shot down have not been confirmed to be linked to China - or anyone else for that matter.

 

A visibly irate Major General "Whopper" Creedon, SPEARHEAD Deputy Commander for Global Security was questioned by press in the UNHQ Monday and he responded with "It's not aliens and Glen never said it was," shaking his fist "It's always Weather Balloons! Nothing to see here! Go home!"

The Wall Street Journal reported the third UAP downed on Sunday was octagonal and hovered at 20,000 feet which the Pentagon said posed a "hazard to civilian aviation."

The Economy and Ethics of Game Purchasing - Part 3 - Get Your Keys

Continued from Part 2

Digital keys have been used to authenticate software purchases for decades. They survived the end of physical disk media era and are used by software vendors to authenticate software download before being able to access your purchase. When you purchase a game using a digital platform it always comes with a key but often the process is hidden because the act of purchasing the software from the platform you're using to access the game simultaneously authenticates the product. However if you're not purchasing from that platform directly then you can purchase a key either from an authorised vendor or from the grey market.

 

Authorised Key Vendors

These are entities that have direct publishing deals with the game publishers. The publisher gets a cut from the sale. The publisher or developer gets the same cut from the full price as if you bought the game from the platform the key is for. While the vast majority of games are for Steam (and where Steam, GOG and Epic have the same games available keys are 99% likely to be Steam keys) other publishers like Ubisoft and EA use these services as well. Be aware that often keys for some titles will run out as publishers only authorise a finite numbers of keys for each vendor.

There are quite a few stores in this space such as itch.io, Voidu and Gamesplanet to name but a few but many cater to specific genres like indie games or are ones that do not support my geographical location. The four detailed below are my go-to vendors:

Humble Bundle: Since 2010 US-based Humble Bundle's business model was primarily offering bundles of games at a price determined by the user often with a charity sponsorship. While bundles "Humble Choice" are still offered, the Humble Store, robust digital store-front grew from their activity to become one of the most known key vendors in the marketspace.

GamersGate: Not to be confused with Gamergate, Swedish outfit GamersGate is a digital store-front that grew from Paradox Interactive's native digital distributions system. Since 2006 They've made news in conversations arguing against intrusive DRM and have been critical of Steam's acceptance of DRM in many of its titles.

Green Man Gaming: In 2010 UK company Green Man Gaming operated a business model that allowed the purchase of games through a client and later trade them in for credits to spend on other games while the original game key you owned was resold as a "pre-owned" game. This activity was later retired and Green Man now operates one of the best places to find bargains with aggressive sale prices.

Fanatical: This had beginnings as Bundle Stars, like a UK version of Humble Bundle. Since 2017 as Fanatical they still offer significant bundle content that can be selected to include some or all of a selection of games as desired by the consumer. They also offer a lot of digital graphic novels, books and IT manuals/online courses for subjects including networking and programming all through the same process to redeem video game keys.

I've been using these four stores, mostly the latter two, for many years without issue.  The revenue cut is the same as the actual store being used, e.g. Steam, the publisher/developer is guaranteed to get paid and I as a consumer get the best fully legal price available in most cases as discounts are near-perpetual.

 

Key Reselling Stores

These include HRK, Instant Gaming, MMOGA and Gamers Outlet among too many others but the main player in this space by far is CDKeys. These people are known for taking keys out of retail copies of games in countries (such as the third world where optical media is still used) and re-sell them to you (as you don't need the disc obviously) to redeem them on whatever store. The publisher will get however much they would have got from a boxed copy sale in the region it was for, which is almost always less than direct from the distribution platform where the key is eventually redeemed.

While it's amazingly not actually "illegal", it is morally dubious in my personal opinion. Basically you are paying the third world price of a game, set by the publisher to be deliberately low to be afforded by people in a region where the equivalent price in the West could be more than a week's wages!! This eventually causes the price of the games in that region to rise and prohibit its affordability my many. Additionally due to the regional nature of the purchase you can run into issues with the key not working. I predict publishers will take significant steps to prevent this practice before long.

Authorised key vendors are are both legally and morally sound but an unauthorised key reselling store like CDKeys may be legally sound it's more than a little morally dubious and is a practice I do not support as while I'm clearly motivated by a good deal or offer, this is only on the provision that it's not damaging to individuals who are far less well off than I am.

 

Key Reselling Platforms

Now if you find some of Epic or CDKeys business practices somewhat morally dubious you've not heard of the true "grey market" - Key Reselling Platforms. These entities include G2A, Kinguin and G2Play. These sites are not stores like all the others, the sites do not sell products themselves but facilitate transactions between customer and a third-party much like Ebay (without the auctioning). Here anyone can sell keys that they have obtained from anywhere, including obtained for free or even those that may have been stolen. Of course because anyone can sell anything, the opportunity for crime and scamming is rampant.

Key Reselling Platforms also sell a type of insurance service so that if you buy something obtained via fraud and the key gets revoked, the site will replace it for you. The process (for G2A at least) includes filing a police report before you get a refund! This is dodgy as sin as it's assumed that the majority of people won't do this for the sake of a <€20 transaction.

As the publisher/developer gain absolutely no revenue from sales on these platforms they are rightfully maligned in the industry. In fact some developers have gone on public record as preferring that people not intending to buy their game from authorised platforms instead actually pirate their games rather than use G2A so that G2A nor the sellers don't profit in any way.

Needless to say I will never engage with or support the use of key reselling platforms in any way.

 

In Part 4

Conclusion and Analysis

The Economy and Ethics of Game Purchasing - Part 2 - Digital Games Platforms

 Continued from Part 1

Publisher Direct Sales Platforms

Basically first party sales where you're buying directly from the publisher. The most prominent game publishers have their own online store-front where they sell their own games directly. They also have downloadable game clients which are used to access the games for downloading, maintenance through patches, cloud saves and to track achievements. 

The platforms currently include include Ubisoft, EA Games, Rockstar and Activision Blizzard among others. It also includes Valve when selling their own games like Half-Life though Steam and CD Projekt Red when selling The Witcher or their other games through GOG. Additionally Microsoft and Epic are included in this category when selling their own IPs though the Microsoft Store and Epic Games Store respectively.

When buying directly from the publisher of the game then the Publisher/Developer get 100% of what you're paying and the 'saintly' moral choice is that publishers and especially developers get the maximum compensation for creating the product. However, the consumer cost is normally 100% of the MSRP, unless the publisher is having a sale on their games.

 

Third-Party Distribution Platforms

Publishers who don't have their own stores and/or software clients use one or more 3rd Party digital store-fronts and clients such as Steam. Some Publishers with their own direct sales platforms also put some of their games on 3rd Party digital store-fronts because they reach more users or it's economically viable for certain games. For example, Activision Blizzard sell Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II on their BattleNet but also on Steam.

For the most part, games sold on these platforms use the client from that distributor and the resources of that platform for sales, downloading, maintaining through patches and for cloud saves. Others such as with most games by Ubisoft for example use the platform for sales only but require an account with the publisher and the publisher's client such as Ubisoft Connect to use services such as downloading or cloud saves.

 

The following are the major players in the third-party digital distribution platform space

Steam: This is by far the largest platform for PC Gaming distribution with about 70-75% of the market share and over 62 millions users daily. Almost all major publishers and developers with the notable exception of Epic games, have a Steam presence for some if not all their titles. Steam is the most seasoned operator in the space and has the most fully developed store site and client application design in the market and includes the necessary community contributed content for forum/discussions, reviews and ratings. The consumer cost of a game on Steam is normally 100% of the MSRP. Steam has frequent sales by genre or publisher and has key sales usually once a season.

GOG: Formerly "Good Old Games" have built their reputation on bringing old games back to life on modern hardware without the burden of DRM. Soldier of Fortune, Diablo, Warcraft 2 and many Star Trek games are exclusive to the platform and playable in the 2020's due to GOG's curation efforts. Every game is DRM free, offline games can be played offline, every game can be backed up on your own system, archived and transferred etc. You paid for it it's yours! is the GOG way. Unfortunately GOG has limited game selection (only about a tenth of Steam) and as most publishers want to maintain their DRM and feeding data to them this is not likely to change much.

Epic Games Store: While many titles can be purchased through the Epic Games Store, there is really no need to ever do so as it splits your collection from the vastly superior Steam and better deals are usually available elsewhere particularly through key vendors. Its anaemic feature set barely qualifies it as a serious platform and it's legal but heavily anti-consumer business practices should never be rewarded with your money. Epic does give you free games every week, though that's really all they're good for. I have elucidated my thoughts on EGS in greater detail recently here.

The Microsoft Store: There are many PC gamers who don't realise you can buy games from the Microsoft Store. Do we really care though? Do we play Minecraft? The store is an app that comes with Windows and I'm only mentioning it here to be thorough. There is an "XBox Game Pass for PC" thing the people use but such subscriptions don't suit my habits. My adblockers are working great because Microsoft hasn't reached me with their marketing assuming they do any at all.

With all third-party distributors, they take a cut of the revenue made but the percentage differs per platform. Steam and GOG take 30% from digital sales while Microsoft and Epic charge a 12% cut. In all cases the publisher and developers do not benefit from the full revenue generated (unless the IP is owned by the distributor).

In Part 3

We discuss key vendors and resellers.

The Economy and Ethics of Game Purchasing - Part 1 - Introduction

 

The 70-dollar game

The fall of 2022 saw Activision announced that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II's MSRP would be $70. It was like a flare being lit with the likes of Sony, Microsoft, Ubisoft and EA announcing to commit their AAA MSRP also at $70. This may not be universally welcome (what consumer wants to pay more?) but it was expected and in a way is probably a little later than expected. Video games are consumer products and their industry has no immunity to inflation. While inflation itself has has eased now to 8.2 after a 38-year high of 9.2 in Oct 2022 and the US rate has eased more considerably from 9.06 in July to 6.45 now, game MSRPs don't come down, ever, and are here to stay. 

In this part of the world it means console game prices rise to €80. Activision have charged this for Modern Warfare II, EA will charge it for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and Square Enix did most recently for Forspoken.

I don't and will unlikely play on a console however so why the interest in console game prices? Well whenever console game prices rise, so to their PC counterparts. PC Games are usually €10 cheaper than console games and this is a continuing trend to the current prices. Modern Warfare II released on Steam and Battle.Net for €70, EA will launch Jedi: Survivor at €70. Square Enix however brazenly charged €80 for Forspoken on PC as well as the PS5 in an unprecedented move as it's a brand new IP not another Final Fantasy. It was hoped before it was discovered that the game wasn't all that great that this brazen action would be rewarded with poor sales and act as a deterrent to similar activity in future and notions by other publishers.

Nonetheless in 2023 it will be important to know where and when to get the best PC gaming value and I feel it's necessary to share my thoughts on the matter with regards to direct sales, authorised vendors and the grey market of resellers. While the initial choice may be ease of use for a platform, for the price of just requiring multiple accounts for some authorised vendors one can make considerable savings and piece of mind without touching the nefarious grey market.

Why purchase individual titles?

In the era where subscription services can save you money, why do people make individual purchases at all? Well purchasing titles individually is what I do because it's the model that has most catered to the way I consume games, especially as I replay a lot of games and play games that are not available on subscriptions services.

In 2022 I purchased just two games that were released for the PC in 2022, God of War and Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered. I paid about €40 for each while on sale. Neither are available on any PC subscription service so I'm "forced" to purchase individually.

In March this year, with the release of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor I may sample the XBox PC Game Pass as EA Games now appear on it (although they also have their own subscription service EA Play available separately). 

That said, game subscription services are not the focus of this discussion and will be discussed at a later date.

In Part 2

We will discuss the digital platforms available to make individual game purchases.

Replay Review: Call of Duty 2 [2005]

Following on from my Classic Review of 2003's Call of Duty in February 2020, and after a time in a fictitious representation of WW2 in Return to Castle Wolfenstein in recent weeks, I said I would return to the 'realism' of Activision's WW2 shooters in Call of Duty 2 and see if it hold up today. This was Infinity Ward's second World War 2 outing after the original CoD (or third game counting Medal of Honour: Allied Assault as most of 2015's developers went to IW after EA gave them the shaft) and it was clear their experience and expertise was what made the games special as Infinity Ward produced 9 in the currently 19-game franchise, while Medal of Honor died on the barbed wire fence 10 years ago.

Call of Duty 2 mimicked it's predecessor somewhat in so far as it featured not one central protagonist as most other games but gave you slices of the war through the eyes of several fictional soldiers who fought with real units in dramatized but historically researched encounters. For the Russian campaign, you are  Private Vasili Koslov of the 13th Guards Rifle Division, who after the defence of Moscow takes part in the final assault to recapture Stalingrad in 1943. As Sergeant John Davis of the 7th Armoured Division in North Africa you assault the trenches and machine gun nests in the Second Battle of El Alamein in 1942 later taking the role of British tank commander, David Welsh, engaging German forces in Libya. Finally you are Corporal Bill Taylor of the 2nd Ranger Battalion who climbs to assault Pointe du Hoc on D-Day, later takes Hill 400 and finally the Rhine River crossing in 1945.

As with Call of Duty there is no suggestion that you win WW2 all by yourself, you are constantly supported (or sometimes hindered by the AI of) your ever-present squadmates. If you are sent somewhere alone it's literally into a bunker or a building to shoot a bunch of Jerries, your team mates are less than 30 feet from you if not shooting and throwing grenades into buildings. There is an active "chatter system" where both friendly and enemy soldiers will call out the position of each other as they shoot. And shoot you will, you are once again restricted to being able to hold just two weapons such as a Lee Enfield and a Sten Gun, while you will eventually run out of "allied ammo" as you progress, one does best to pick up a German rifle and a machine gun for both far and closer-range enemies.

In every respect Call of Duty 2 is a step up from the original. It uses an enhanced IW Tech 2.0 engine a version of idTech 3 with a skeletal animation system, which was useful when depicting the Jerries getting blown into the air from grenades. The game was also an early example of true volumetric smoke effects especially useful for smoke grenades and the desert tank battles of it's British Campaign in North Africa. CoD2 also featured a regenerating health system preventing the action from being 'paused' as you went foraging for heathpacks. The game also introduced the franchise staple of the 'grenade indicator' letting you know that a grenade was near and to run or take cover. While the game did not have big-name voice talent this time, Hollywood composer Graeme Revell provided a remarkably less martial but more fitting score for the seriousness of the game than was achieved by Giacchino.

Final Verdict: Call of Duty 2 brought more dramatic realism to the WW2 FPS genre using carefully researched locations and astounding development technology to bring a teeth rattling, visceral experience though awesome sound and breathtaking visuals. While obviously aged Call of Duty 2 surpassed what came before and was as one would expect, surpassed by it's later successors. It was the best of it's time but is still great to look back on a fun shooter in 2022.

Technicals: 7 hours (approx) playtime using a Nvidia 3070Ti @ 3440x1440 with max settings on Windows 11. Windows HDR provided a negligible amount of superior lighting.

Bugs: None.

Call of Duty 2 suffers from the same prohibiting issue as it's predecessor in that it is available from Steam for €19.99 which for a 17 year old game is fucking ridiculous. This is the worst thing I've personally experienced with Activision - while the game certainly was worth the full price in 2005, today most 17+ year old games are under €5 when on sale but the pricing of Call of Duty franchise, even when the maximum 50% off remains premium and thus prohibitive to this day. 

Series (PC Only):

Call of Duty [2003]
- Call of Duty: United Offensive [2004]
Call of Duty 2 [2005]
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare  [2007]
Call of Duty: World at War [2008]
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 [2009]
Call of Duty: Black Ops [2010]
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 [2011]
Call of Duty: Black Ops II [2012]
Call of Duty: Ghosts [2013]
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare [2014]
Call of Duty: Black Ops III [2015]
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare [2016]
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered [2016]
Call of Duty: WWII [2017]
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 [2018]
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare [2019]
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War [2020]
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered [2020]
Call of Duty: Vanguard [2021]
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II [2022]