Games that will make you punch people in the street.
By Video_Game_King 1 Comments
Alien Storm
( By which I mean "beat em ups.") After all, what's the point of all beat em ups? Exactly: jamming a fist into anything on screen. What more could you ask for? Well, in my case, quite a bit. Unfortunately, me and beat em ups have had a sordid past. Sure, there were some fun times in my childhood with Turtles in Time, but things went sour when I realized the gameplay was kinda same-y between games. Hell, my worst game ever is a beat em up! So where does Alien Storm rank? Among the greats like Turtles of Time and The Simpsons, or at the bottom with Cyborg Justice? The answer is "somewhere in the middle, like most of them." And like most of them, the gameplay consists mostly of mashing "attack," heading right, and repeating this until you see a high score screen. Also like most of them, you get a choice of three characters, but it doesn't make much of a difference. In fact, the only difference I noticed was that your special attack is different. It still destroys all enemies on the screen, but each character does it in their own way, like with air raids or suicide bombings. However, each use of these attacks drains your energy, and once you're out of energy, it's game over. OK, it's not an automatic game over, but trust me, when you run out of energy, you might as well hit the Reset button.
Granted, you can refill your energy with small canisters, but they don't refill enough of it and you rarely see them in the actual beat em up portions of the game. I said "portion" because there are non-beat em up parts of the game, which caught me by surprise. In between beat em up sections, you'll go to some weird light gun thing where you shoot everything in sight, hoping that one of the things you shot was holding an energy or health packet. It's the only reliable way for you to get heatlh, but don't misinterpret that as me insulting it. If anything, these were the best parts of the game; they're frantic, distinctive, and while there is a hint of button mashing, relying on it will send you down the exact same road to game over that running out of energy will.
What I'm saying is that either way, you're going to see the Game Over screen at some point. What this means is that the game is hard, and a lot of that is because the game is cheap. Often times, there are more enemies on screen than you can handle, and it's not like they don't know; they'll gang up on you from both sides, and your only defense is a useless roll/dive move that just relocates your body straight into another alien tentacle. So of course, you'll repeatedly die until you run out of lives. On that note, NO EXTRA LIVES. ANYWHERE. CAPS LOCK. I know it's an old school game, but even Ghosts 'n Goblins, in all its cheapness, had extra lives. Alien Storm, however, has no extra lives. What the hell, Sega? Between the lack of extra lives, the scarcity of health and energy, and the fact that suicide counts as a special attack, I'm getting the impression that this game wants the player to die. Interesting....I think I'll give it the Kefka Award for Sadism. That's funny, isn't it?
Review Synopsis
- Pedestrian beat em up sections.
- Despite not actually using a light gun, the light gun sections are the best part of the game.
- Oh, and there are running/shooting sections I forgot to mention. Probably because they don't warrant mentioning.
This is how fucked you are as a species:
F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin
( This was originally supposed to be Final Fight 3, but I beat F.E.A.R. 2 first.) I'd change the title, but I'm just too damn lazy. Anyway, as I've done with most Xbox 360 games that aren't mine, I'll explain how I came to play this: I borrowed it and had nothing better to do. OK, I actually could have done a few other things (like get around to beating Okami), but I don't turn down an opportunity to beat a game, no matter how bad. What I just said does not mean F.E.A.R. 2 is a bad game; it's both a good game AND a bad game, depending on how you look at it. Speaking of looking, there was something odd that I noticed when in the car ride portions: your character's neck is apparently dislocated. I could look all over the place, and is body and shoulders would remain stationary. I struggled to come up with any sort of logical explanation, but I managed to create one: given that the protagonist is also bald and perpetually wearing sunglasses, this must obviously be Vin Diesel after having done something so badass, it snapped his spine into five pieces. However, his badassness does not stop there; his mission, should he choose to accept it (although he can't refuse it, being mute and all) is to stop a psychic teen by the name of Alma from ruling the world. If the prospect of Vin Diesel beating up pregnant teens sounds quirky and weird, prepare for a standard story. It's not bad, but it's not very notable. In fact, the only things I actually noticed about it were that Otacon gained a lot of weight and a G.I. Joe fetish, and the bad guys apparently build their secret labs underneath schools.
So I stopped paying attention to the story about halfway through that paragraph, and focused the rest of my blog on the actual gameplay. Standard shooter fare, you shoot enemies and swipe their weapons, two things you'll do a lot. I have no problem with the shooting sections, they're as enjoyable and properly-challenging as ever; what I do have a problem with is the weapon swiping. You can only hold four weapons at a time, but it's not like Gears 2, where you can only hold one weapon of each type; instead, it's more of a free-for-all, where at least two of your slots are always going to be reserved for whatever the hell the enemies are using. It feels cheap and makes the weapons seem less various than they actually are. Of course, with limited weapon inventory comes the cover system. The unofficial part I've no problem with (I used it quite often), but the "knock over tables" part, while a noble endeavor, comes off as counter-intuitive; I'd often knock over a vending machine with my Vin Diesel manliness, crouch down, and discover that half of my body was still exposed. And then I was shot.
Before any of you start yelling at me, let me say that I liked the shooter parts of the game; what needed improvement, in my opinion, were the survival horror aspects. The two things you need for any horror are spontaneity and vulnerability, and while it certainly has the spontaneity part down, any sense of vulnerability was blown away when I was walking the streets in my ED-209, along with several platoons of soldiers. However, even when you aren't piloting a death walker, enemies go down quite easily. OK, I know I said it was somewhat challenging previously, but it's hard to feel weak or vulnerable when all of your enemies explode like armored ketchup packets.
One of the characters said:
OK, to be fair, I only included that line in here because it's so funny. And to be fair again, F.E.A.R. 2 isn't a bad game. Sure, the horror aspect is as fleshed out as a skeleton and there were some instances where the fire button seemed to kill me, but it still had quite a few elements that all good shooters have/should have (decent AI, destroyable levels, etc.). However, there's also the issue of the lack of horror, which I would have ignored if the game didn't have the word "fear" in the title. Hmmm, conflicting ideas. Which one do I go with?....*closes eyes, points finger, spins around, opens eyes* "Decent shooter." OK, fair enough. I guess that means it deserves an award. How about the Me Award in Honor of Pizza Love? No? None of you guys understand that joke? Screw you, I love pizza. That's the joke. Now be angry at me."You're like free pizza at an animé convention. She can smell you. And she wants to consume you."
Review Synopsis
- Something about Vin Diesel fighting naked psychic teens, I can't remember.
- The actual shooting parts are good, if a bit nondescript.
- The horror parts, however, need a lot of work.