Review: The Master Chief Collection - Part 2 - Halo 2: Anniversary [2020]

My successful play-through of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary last year meant that I would soon return to the Halo universe to continue the space-opera in Halo 2: Anniversary. While gun-play, vehicles and story were good I found a significant part of the original boring and lazy as it basically had you backtracking huge sections of maps. I was assured that there'd be far less of that here and that it was much better. I didn't need this affirmation, as I'd be playing it anyway, but it was good to know.

Like most sequels to new franchises it's something that thematically or narratively follows an original that itself was not necessarily designed to even have a sequel but Halo 2 slots in well after the events of the original. The developers were able build upon the technical success of Halo and enhance the experience with major improvements. The writers were able to pick up threads of story from the original and meld them into a new more expansive narrative so vast they even had to end the game on a cliffhanger like The Empire Strikes Back, and just like Return of the Jedi, there was no question that a Halo 3 wouldn't be too far behind it.

If Halo was "Combat Evolved" then Halo 2 is "Combat Evolved Evolved". Master Chief has his standard load-out of weapons, but dismally retains the two weapon limit popularised by 'realistic' WWII shooters but makes zero sense considering the arsenal you could carry in a powered suit of armour (as in other such fantastical games). That said, unlike a WWII shooter, the abundance of weapons strewn about the landscape after you kill your enemies is always more than you need and makes up for the anaemic load-out. In retrospect I think I ran out of ammo twice in the whole 10 hours. The smoothness of combat actions, and picking up an expanded range of weapons from the ground and dual wielding them was genuinely cathartic and I don't know of many FPS experiences like it. 

Halo 2's action is sublime, your shields regenerate faster, you can swap weapons with your AI team mates if you prefer theirs and take control of (or sit in the gunner's seat) of any vehicle - including your enemy's by yanking him out! Enemy AI improves to where they will duck, take cover, frag you and can be more aggressive, but your own shielding, melee attacks and superior dual-wielding firepower is usually more than enough to combat any banzai charge. Level design was more varied and environments more unique here and indeed there was no backtracking over familiar ground, it was always full steam ahead adding to your sense of progress.

It's not RPG quality obviously but for a shooter Halo 2's narrative quality was boosted beyond the original (which was already not too shabby) and delved just as much into the story of the Covenant and their motivations, trials and tribulations. For a lot of the game you take control of the Covenant Arbiter, voiced by the legendary Keith David (The Thing / Platoon) and experience his battles against renegade Covenant and The Flood. It's safe to say that the simple premise of the original has been blown wide open and you can see how Halo 2 sets up the saga for years to come.

Final Verdict: An overwhelming improvement over the original and well worth playing today even if I'm quite late to the Halo party overall.

Technicals
: Playtime 9.8 hours through Steam on RTX4070Ti, Max graphical settings @ 3440x1440 120FPS on Windows 11. Windows HDR provided solid enhancement.

Availability: Halo 2: Anniversary is available either as a stand-alone title from either Steam or the Windows Store (€9.99) or as part of  Halo: The  Master Chief Collection (€39.99). Review copy of The Master Chief Collection purchased in Apr 2020 for €31.99.

Series Releases:

Halo: Combat Evolved [2001] (Xbox)
- Halo: Combat Evolved [2003] (PC)
Halo 2 [2004] (Xbox)
- Halo 2 [2007] (PC)
Halo 3 [2007] (Xbox)
- Halo 3: ODST [2009] (Xbox)
- Halo: Reach [2010] (Xbox)
- Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary [2011] (Xbox)
Halo 4 [2012] (Xbox)
- Halo: The Master Chief Collection [2014] (Xbox)
Halo 5: Guardians [2015] (Xbox)
- Halo: The Master Chief Collection [2020] (PC)
-- Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary
-- Halo 2: Anniversary
-- Halo 3
-- Halo 3: ODST
-- Halo: Reach
-- Halo 4
Halo Infinite [2021]

First Play Review - The Last of Us Part I [2023]

Much like as I wrote for God of War, similarly The Last of Us also wasn't the first title that peaked my interest when Sony PlayStation announced it's push into the PC game market in 2020. It was something that I saw a lot of media about especially it's high standard of plot, but it was the push of a very well received live action HBO series that prompted me not only to obtain it, but to do something I had never done for a game in the digital-distribution era before: I pre-ordered it!

I've heard of, or seen for myself the recent substandard live-action movie projects that are usually created from video-game lore such as Assassins Creed, Warcraft, Uncharted, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City. Halo's TV outing is polished but would be better if it wasn't supposed to be a representation of the franchise. When I heard that The Last of Us had broken the trend and was considered great, I was left with a choice of playing the game or watching the show first.

After some deliberations I had to regard the "primary media" in this case as the video game. This is partly because it came first and also more importantly because a game experience, even a linear game is still partly a product of your input. You are not responsible for creating the game, just as you are not for a movie or a TV show, but you and your choices, your actions or inactions are part of your journey and interaction with the story. No TV or movie can replace that feelings and emotion of these interactions so for this reason, to prevent a "lesser" game experience by watching the show first, it was necessary to experience the game before the show.

I recently posted a thorough account of my pre-ordering experience and included data about the substandard state the game was released in. So other than that I will say that the first month of the game's release extensive patching was necessary to get the game to run and I even used it as an excuse to upgrade hardware. However, the game works flawlessly at time of writing so the current impression is the basis for this review.

The Last of Us is set some 20 years after a mutated Cordyceps fungus jumps to and infects humanity. The infection takes control of the brain them turning the infected into crazed, warped and relatively mindless individuals whose only purpose is to spread the infection by biting healthy uninfected humans. You are Joel, a man who has survived through this apocalypse by doing some questionable things and now reluctantly accepts the job of escorting Ellie, a young girl who may hold the key to a cure, across the mutant infested and raider occupied wasteland to her destiny. Much like God of War, you have a young companion who follows you around. At first Ellie aids you by tagging enemies you may have missed, but later she becomes armed and thus useful, not to Atraeus levels or anything but more than just a second health bar you have to keep an eye on when stealth fails.

The game is a third-person action/adventure, wandering through the post-apocalyptic terrain of both rural and urban United States. You employ upgradable ranged and melee weapons to engage gangs of lawless humans and hordes of Cordyceps infected mutants. Now while you can shoot and kill most enemies from a safe range, you have to be thorough enough at exploration to find enough ammo to do so. I'd not call this typical survival horror as you do collect (and can carry at once) about a dozen weapons and ammo, but if you try to Rambo it too often you'll likely fail and die. I found it much more satisfactory to take the Splinter Cell approach and use Joel's almost inhuman sonar-like hearing ability to pinpoint enemies, sneak up on them and take them out silently with either a shiv to the neck or a choke-hold. There was something truly wonderful about choking out a man armed with a shotgun who would kill you without hesitation with your bare hands and listen to him pathetically beg for his life before his life ends with a final breath.

 

 

The AI is different depending on the enemy type. Human raiders will take cover and take potshots at you, waiting until you're in the middle of reloading to assault while mutants will either instantly rush you in a frenzy or wait until you make a sound - then you better be prepared for them! You can also employ cover to hide by losing line of sight, throw objects to distract enemies or can set traps. I applaud that there are many solutions to a situation and it's entirely up to you to proceed as you wish.

As great as the story and as intense as the gameplay is here I think what cannot be overstated is how beautiful and extraordinary this world looks in its total decrepitude. The design work into realising a world that has lost the ability to properly care for it and has left it to rack and run for years comes through in every unique new area. Abandoned buildings, vehicles and artefacts of a world familiar to us now lie forgotten and unused. Joel 'collects' some books and notes from people who most likely met a horrible end and pieces together stories of their final days wheather it's diaries from when the infection was spreading to the fall of the quarantine zones where most of the uninfected human population of the world now reside. The detail of the world is staggering and tells its own story parallell to to the the one we take part in but it's no less an extraordinary part of the game.

DLC: The DLC "Left Behind" here is included with the game. It's a short story framed in the middle of the main game's journey but a lot of the narrative takes place just prior to the main game. In the DLC you take control of Ellie who wanders through an abandoned mall to locate medicine for Joel and flashes back to a previously visited abandoned mall with her BFF Riley. While not integral to the main game, it does fill in a notable gap in the narrative and is well worth playing to experience the whole story.

Final Verdict: This is truly a work of art which I believe will resonate as more frightening now in a post Covid19 pandemic world than it could ever have before. The story is compelling, emotional and at times tragic. It's gun-play and gameplay is well designed allowing multiple approaches to situations and some of the best stealth mechanics I've ever played. While it had a rocky technical start, provided you have good enough hardware you will enjoy this most welcome addition to Sony's PC gaming catalogue. I hope there will be more.

Technicals:  RTX3070Ti managed <60FPS @ 3440x1440 with High preset with medium textures with DLSS quality setting.  RTX4070Ti delivered 75+FPS @ 3440x1440 with Ultra Preset and with high textures. No resolution scaling. In game HDR on producing exceptional range.

Bugs: Daily crashes before patching to v1.0.4. Afterwards, no bugs to report.

Availability: The Last of Us Part I is available from Steam for €59.99. Review copy pre-purchased from Green Man Gaming for €49.19 on 25th Jan 2023.

The Last of Us releases:

• The Last of Us [PS3] (2013)
• The Last of Us: Left Behind [PS3] (2014)
• The Last of Us Remastered [PS4] (2014)
• The Last of Us Part II [PS4] (2020)
• The Last of Us Part I [PS5] (2022)
• The Last of Us Part I [PC] (2023)

My first digital game pre-ordering experience

I don't pre-order games. Actually I don't pre-order them now would be more correct. The last game I pre-ordered was Mass Effect 3's Collector's Edition from GameStop in 2012. This was only done because I wanted the physical edition which of course had a finite number of copies. It was the last physical game disk I ever purchased, as digital distribution was ubiquitous by then as well as easier and cheaper to manage overall. Digital editions however by their very nature do not ordinarily sell out in the same way. So unless there is some pressing need to play a game ASAP or you want some lame digital pre-order "boost" then you can certainly wait beyond release day.

Waiting is generally a good move, especially now. Some games thrive and maintain their original RRP for weeks if not months before a sale but others are released with these high hopes but alas do not perform to these hopes and we get what happened with Forspoken, a 33% discount for two weeks just seven weeks after release. Additionally an unfortunate common trend now is simply to wait before purchasing a game because it inevitably needs serious post-launch bug fixing and optimisation. So if this isn't done in a timely fashion, it may be best to actually wait for the game to be discounted before being able to enjoy an adequate experience. At time of writing I'm waiting for EA's Star Wars: Jedi Survivor's post launch bug-fixing.

So my first digital pre-order ever is now The Last of Us Part I, a PC port of a PlayStation 5 remake of an older PlayStation 3 game from 2012. I pre-ordered it because I genuinely wanted to play the game on release day, so that I'd be finished as soon as I was able, in order to watch the acclaimed HBO series which had just finished airing. After recently playing two of Sony's PC ports, God of War and Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered and reading that the developer Naughty Dog had released a successful port for an Uncharted game just a few months previous, I felt confident that there wouldn't be much of issue even though it might not be 100% there on launch day, I would still be able to start it and have it corrected in a few days or a week.

Originally the game was set to be released on March 3rd 2023 so I paid Green Man Gaming €49.19 on January 25th for my The Last of Us Part I pre-order. About 10 days later we got word that the PC release was being put back a few weeks to March 28th. There was little by way of negative reaction to this as there have been some high profile PC release failures recently and it was suspected that Sony/Naughty Dog had some polishing to do as they didn't want the negative publicity if things didn't go according to plan, such as releasing the game to a new market: PC gamers. Green Man Gaming sent me my pre-order key on Sunday, March 26th. This allowed me and others who pre-ordered the game the ability to pre-load - download the game data before the game unlocked on March 28th. Everything was going according to plan.

At about 17:00 on March 28th I loaded the game for the first time and was met with a great menu for me to examine as well as a shader compilation timer that seemed quite slow. The menu kept me distracted for a while as it was one of most feature rich menus I'd ever seen with a staggering amount of options, especially for graphics which for a new game are of high importance. Despite making selections based on it's own recommendations and doing some all important key rebinding which took probably over 15 minutes I noticed that the game was still building shaders! It hadn't frozen or anything it was just moving very slowly. I said I'd not interrupt the process by launching the game as I'd expect massive stuttering if I tried playing before shader compilation was complete, so I left it alone.

It was 45 minutes approximately before shader compilation was complete; It took less time for the entire game to download and install. But no matter it was ready to play now. It loaded up fine, but just a few minutes in, it crashed to desktop (CTD). Now obviously this is "almost" expected behaviour at this point and it didn't deter me. What did annoy me however was that it crashed twice in less than half an hour. When compared to God of War or Spider-Man that crashed only the same amount in 42+ hours I knew there was something wrong.

I examined the Steam page for the game and was met with hundreds of reports of system instability and crashing. The Steam score itself was negative. The launch was a disaster!!! I did try a few more times over the following couple of days, tweaking settings and graphical options but sadly the crashes persisted. I sent all crash and performance reports to Naughty Dog, and why not? I was basically a beta tester at this point. On April 1st I installed Patch v1.0.1.6, dropped all settings to medium preset, Turned DLSS off and capped FPS to 60 to bring VRAM usage to 7.3GB - as my limit was 8GB - and I wanted to be sure not to tax it. Sadly is crashed after 20 minutes.

Nvidia released driver hotfix 531.58 and the game had Patch v1.0.1.7 to install for April 4th. The shader building process that ran on day one had to be reinitiated due to the driver change. Thankfully the patch addressed this and they only took 24m 54s, an improvement but still far to long. I returned all graphics preset to high, with exception of textures to medium which wasn't the way I wanted to play but said I'd try it together with DLSS Performance. For the first time there were no crashes during a 1h 40m game session, so things are improved. I made no changes and there was no patches two days later on April 6th but it CTD again after 30 mins.

At this point I gave in, ordered and installed an RTX4070Ti in order to (a) have enough VRAM to use the high or ultra textures which have the most impact to how a game looks and (b) in the hope that it would be powerful enough to defeat the game's instability. Initially with patch v1.0.2.1 on April 12th and v1.0.3 on April 15th there was CTD but not before 90 minutes had passed this time, a serious improvement. On April 27th a Patch to  v1.0.4 started the shaders at 30% and took less than 10 minutes to compile. Subsequently there were no crashes at all following this and the game worked perfectly on multiple days through to the end credits.

Conclusion

While the pre-ordering process itself worked fine and did what it was supposed to and in the end I was able to complete The Last of Us Part I within 6 weeks of release, the purposed of pre-ordering: playing immediately was not fulfilled. It wasn't fault of the pre-ordering process itself but clearly the fault of the developer/publisher which dropped the ball. 

Had I not pre-ordered,  I'd not have purchased the game on release in the state it was in - and I have followed through on this notion with Jedi Survivor which is not apparently in an acceptable state. It's unlikely I'd be pre-ordering another title any time soon especially in the current environment of PC game releasing in a clearly unfinished/unoptimised state. It was however a good learning experience.

First Play Review - The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings [2011]

In 2011, Polish prime minister Donald Tusk gifted US president Barack Obama a copy of The Witcher 2. It’s that big of a deal there. I don't know if Obama played The Witcher 2 but if he did, he'd have undoubtedly been impressed with the quality game that CD Projekt Red delivered to further the adventures of Geralt of Rivia based on the novels of Andrzej Sapkowski.

I really want to play The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt now it has a 'next gen' upgrade worthy of my rig. However as I mentioned back in 2018 when I reviewed The Witcher,  you play the one character throughout all three games and some of your choices are recorded and used from the final save of the previous games. So before I can ever play The Witcher 3, I need to establish my own canon by playing the previous entries. It would have been better to play The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings on the event of it's 10th Anniversary in 2021 in order to be prepared for The Witcher 3's upgrade before Christmas last year, but that did not happen. Nevertheless the situation is rectified and I'm able to now deliver my thoughts on this, the second chapter of the franchise.

While The Witcher 2 did not release in as sorry a state as did it's predecessor, the sequel did get a free post launch upgrade a year later to The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings - Enhanced Edition which from what I read, enhanced both the narrative with some additions and corrections, fixes to the gameplay and interface, new tutorials and cinematic as well as a high quality graphics enhancement. 

Gameplay wise, I quickly saw that there were vast changes to combat and abilities over it's predecessor. While my thoughts on The Witcher's combat was that it was interesting because of it's uniqueness, for the sequel it was decidedly more complex and it's difficulty, even in the early game, felt like Dark Souls all over again (even on easy mode). I would later read that the developers were influenced by Dark Souls' progenitor Demon Souls. It would seem CD Projekt employ a reverse difficulty curve where combat at the beginning of the game is more difficult than the endgame when you've upgraded your abilities, magic and equipment. They also added ranged weapons and trap laying and a skill tree of complexity not found in most MMOs. Thankfully many on the Interwebs noticed as I did and have been crafting some "fixes" for the past 10 years that make the whole combat situation better and would allow me to progress faster by removing the need for about 75% of the bloated RPG mechanics that take hours to master and even detract from the main event, the story.

After Geralt's original adventure, he still has amnesia but has thwarted an attempt on King Faltest's life by another Witcher. Alas he was unsuccessful in preventing a second attack, is framed and is forced to flee to both apprehend the assassin and clear his name. Now the whole power fantasy of saving the world and all is fine, it's why we play, but it does get somewhat repetitive. What I really like about this tale that much like Dragon Age II, the middle chapter of that saga (for now) is that you (as Geralt) are not saving the world per se but just nudging it in a path. It's a relatively short contained story of social intrigue (with magic creatures) where your actions and choices change the flow of the story and the political landscape dramatically (from what I've read about choices I didn't take) and eventually put you on course for what is assumed to be the final and far more epic third game.

So, once you modify out the combat awkwardness and get to grips with the story, there's a lot to like about The Witcher 2, Sapkowski's world is as gritty here as in the first instalment and populated with some colourful characters who display various levels of bigotry against you - you're no "chosen one" revered hero here! Geralt is a monster hunter, a good one who kills monsters because that's his job - and he does it well. Rather than just getting a command to kill 10 rats or what have you, you have to research your quarry to find weaknesses and exploit them to vanquish your foes efficiently. Yes there's a lot of story and dialogue, but it does pale in comparison to the amount of combat you have to undertake in this game. Thankfully you have your trusty swords, which can be enhanced and upgraded as you find exotic materials once you take the time to explore and Geralt has access to a plethora of  skill and combat enhancements to make certain tasks easier.

CDProjekt ditched Bioware's Aurora engine used in The Witcher and created their own REDengine, the second iteration of which powered this game. I cant speak for the original version of the game but the Enhanced Edition available now is a genuinely beautiful game with regards to it's characters and environments which, while not as varied as most RPGs, are impressive considering the game's age. It certainly doesn't look as dated now as do the original release of say Skyrim (before the 2016 remaster) or Dragon Age II does today. 

Final Verdict: The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings was a genuinely wonderful experience on PC today for a decade old game. While the combat is still a bit dated and janky, this was easily "fixed" on PC and one can experience the true value of the game: it's incredibly complex but compelling and rewarding story that seems to branch wildly at several points. This is one game I know will be quite different when replayed, maybe after it's own inevitable remake in 2030 or so.

Technicals: 30 hours playtime through GOG. No UW implementation so Forced 1440p @ 175Hz. Highest graphical settings used with RTX3070Ti. Win 11 HDR provided brightness enhancement.

Availability: The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is available from both Steam and GOG for €19.99. Review copy purchased for  €2.89 in May 2015 from GOG.

The Witcher Franchise:

• The Witcher [2007]
• The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings [2011]
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt [2015]
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Hearts of Stone [2015]
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Blood and Wine [2016]
• The Witcher Remake [?]
• The Witcher IV [?]

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]