Zombie Shooter

The Short


Pros
- There ARE zombies, and you get to shoot them
- Improves on Alien Shooter's mechanics by adding gun upgrades, which is appreciated
- Enemies disintegrate in messy bits as you blast at them, which is a nice, nasty touch
- Graphics still look like Fallout
- Has an actual difficulty slider (Easy/Medium/Hard) which Alien Shooter really needed
- Weirdly addicting, though I can't exactly figure out why

Cons
- Almost exactly the same as Alien Shooter
- Seriously, everything is the same except you are shooting zombies
- Still runs at a crappy resolution, still is mindless, and still is just corridor after corridor
- Only about 3-4 hours long
- Has weird pathing issues in its isomeric view that can result in you getting stuck on the scenery, to the point where you have to quit and start a mission over

Call me messed up, but I think shooting zombies is funner than shooting aliens

The Long

So let's get one thing straight: this game is almost a cookie-cutter pallet swap of Alien Shooter. Don't believe me? Well, let's run some stuff down:

- Same title screen music

- Same two characters with same sprites

- Many of the guns are the same

- Many background assets are directly lifted from Alien Shooter

- Entire UI, menu, and leveling system is the same

- IT'S THE SAME, OK?

So this SHOULD be a really simple review, right? It's the same, "One out of Five" and all that? Well...actually no. Because despite myself, I think...I think I like Zombie Shooter.

THE HORROR.

It isn't a video game if you don't start by killing rats. 

So, if you skipped the Alien Shooter review, here's the concept in brief: duel-stick shooter, light RPG mechanics, boatloads of enemies and levels, super repetitive. Did I miss anything? Oh yeah, old graphics, same gray corridors for every level. So all that is exactly the same here in Zombie Shooter (though you do get a glimpse of the outside, and I think the graphics have seen a boost, but more on that later) but to my surprise it actually hits that "addicting" draw it was going for before. Not sure why, but let's break down why it's better than Alien Shooter, at least.

So first off the upgrade system has improved, if only slightly. Rather than having the only progression be leveling up and buying better guns, you can now upgrade your current guns. Which I appreciate, as it gives my money somewhere to go. Upgrading them significantly increases range, power, and lots more. It feels good to spend all your money fully upgrading a minigun and just breezing through a level blasting the undead.

Another improvement is there is a difficulty slider. Which may sound lame, but the original game kind of needed it. This is still a hard game - even "Easy" can get tricky - but at least now you can decide how badly you get stomped.

Wait, is that...actually a zombie? 

There's also a better sense of progression in this one vs Alien Shooter. In Alien Shooter, you cleared a room and just left. A prompt said "Press Space to Leave" and that was it. In this one, you have actual objectives and places to go to continue (though most are either "find a button to turn on the lights" or "get dynamite and blow a hole in this pre-determined wall") so it feels like you are going somewhere. It's a step in the right direction. 

But how I think this game works is that it succeeds at drawing you into its stupid, arcade, Smash TV style of just blasting tons and tons of zombies. Yeah, there's no depth here, and I still can often use the "stand in doorway shooting rockets into the room until everything stops moving" trick, but the game feels much more refined than Alien Shooter. Maybe it's having more upgrade options or the fact that I'm fighting zombies or something, I dunno. But I genuinely enjoyed my time spent with Zombie Shooter. It wasn't anything profound, but I'll probably play it again (and I didn't delete it from my HDD after quitting, like I did with Alien Shooter). 

The biggest problem I encountered, however, were the controls. I neglected to mention it in my Alien Shooter review, but playing with WSAD movement on an isomeric view isn't great, and it's exacerbated by the fact you can walk on stuff you aren't supposed to be able to, and then get stuck. Often it took some jiggling to get free, but once I was legitimately trapped and had to reload a level. That's garbage. 

How were there so many people in this underground facility?

Graphically, the game is similar but has a slightly better look than Alien Shooter. The environments are more colorful and dense and the blood n' guts looks much better. My favorite (if a bit gross) "feature" is the fact that after you shoot zombies for a bit pieces come off 'em, but they keep coming until you finish them off. Nice touch. You can also see your bullets/buckshot this time, which is appreciated in aiming.

Sound is also a bit better, though nothing spectacular. It recycles a bit from Alien Shooter but then adds some more of its own, so I'm fine with it.

How many of these guys are there?

I feel weird saying this, but I liked Zombie Shooter. Yeah, it's mindless, kind of shallow, and really repetitive, but it fits that "arcade shooter" itch that I have. While I'd have liked more upgrade options, having just four stats and gun upgrades has enough to keep me going without being overly complex. This is just some mindless fun, and the fact it's like 3-4 hours long makes it a good game to play in bursts and then pick up later. 

Yes, I'm actually recommending this game, though honestly I'd wait for it to pop up in an indie bundle (they tend to do that a lot; Indie Gala likes to re-sell it's old bundles with the current ones, if you are interested check them out). At $5 it might be a bit much (try a demo), but this formula works, so for cheap thrills you could do a lot worse.

Three out of Five Stars. 

Which means this game is as good as Final Fantasy VII, if you think all reviews scores mean the same thing. 

Alien Shooter

The Short


Pros
- True to its name, you do shoot a lot of aliens
- Retro-esque graphics remind me of the original Fallout games
- Plenty of blood n' guts and absolutely mind-boggling numbers of enemies
- Handful of weapons to purchase
- Long, so it's a good...value? At $5?

Cons
- Gets really boring, really quick
- Persistent leveling system is nice, but needed to be fleshed out
- Animations look poor and stiff, and it can be hard to see where you are shooting
- While I appreciate the retro look, the environments come off as bland and repetitive
- Highest resolution is 1080x720, with no windowed option. Great.
- Game was originally in Russian, so plenty of weird translation issues

If there's anything I hate, it's aliens

The Long


So indie games and dual-stick shooters seem to go hand in hand. I guess they are just easy to make or something, because I swear a good 80% of the indie side of my Steam library is just a bunch of dual-stick (or in this case, keyboard-moves mouse-aims) shooters. Now, I like dual-stick shooters a lot, so I'm actually pretty forgiving on this front. So I installed the four "Shooter" games I own and burned through all four. We'll start with Alien Shooter, the original "classic" from Sigma games.

And, to spoil the upcoming review, I'm going to say this: I'm not a huge fan.

Things start simple enough...

There's no story to speak of. You can pick either a dude or a woman with pre-determined stats (the guy has more health but does less shooting damage and isn't very agile, the woman is agile and does high firearms damage but has low health) and you are just dropped outside some facility. Once you are inside I really hope you like looking at similar gray corridors over and over, because you are gonna get a lot of that. 

After a surprisingly slow start you finally get to some aliens that you shoot. The initial batch isn't very intimidating and killing them is actually quite droll. Luckily the pace picks up quickly as you gather money to buy more weapons (you can carry an arsenal), level up and slowly raise stats, and encounter bigger and bigger hordes of enemies. If I can say one thing good about this game, it's that they make do on their promise: in the later areas, there are loads of aliens.

...but quickly you'll be going "HOLY CRAP!"

I'd say more but that's it. That's the game. Experience is basically dropped by enemies or boxes, so you have to shoot all of the many, many boxes around the world to both get ammo and level up. As you get more and more guns you get more powerful, making the old ones pretty much useless. It's a simple concept, perhaps too simple.

Alien Shooter's problem is that it is repetitive to the point of boring. While the above scene looks intense, you could easily beat it by equipping your best gun, standing just behind a doorway, and shooting through. I literally ate dinner while playing an intense firefight, holding my mouse button down in one spot while I ate with my other hand, and nothing came close to touching me. Aside from a minor amount of circle strafing (if you can't find a doorway to hide in), the strategy here is relatively low, at least early on.

Yes, you get to aliens that shoot back and require some dodging, but it's hardly strenuous. If anything they are more annoying and feel cheap; the rest of the little bastards never reached me, but those jerks never seem to miss. What a pain.

You have four stats to pump and nine guns to buy, but after that there's no real point to it all. 

Aside from getting bored easily, the graphics look...well, it's hard to say. They look old, which I guess is ok because this game came out in 2003, but they look like Fallout, which came out in 1997. And while I love this era of retro PC gaming (the isomeric, 256 colors just on the cusp of being able to render 3D graphics in game) it still feels clunky. Animations, especially, look bad, with both main characters being very uninteresting to look at in their bland, generic action-hero style.

Sound design is ok, with some decent music clips, but all the guns sound weak and as much as I love hearing the same alien death squeal over and over, it gets old.

But hey, at least battle aftermaths are nice and gory. 

As it stands, Alien Shooter is a relic of a not-so-ancient past. While it's sort of neat Sigma's design philosophy is to make simple, inexpensive games that provide lots of content in the form of time (and it's true; Alien Shooter is several hours long, think 2-3), it doesn't do me any good if I get bored if it in the first 30 minutes. Adding the fact that they've made like 10 of these things since this one, and you should probably just ignore the original Alien Shooter. I got it in an indie bundle so...whatever, but the $5 on Steam is still too high. It just really isn't worth your time when there are so many better versions of this available (and by the same developer).

Avoid.

One out of five stars. 

If anything, they deserved to die for being pallet-swapped. 

Hard Reset

The Short


Pros
- Fast paced throwback to vintage FPS mechanics
- Only two guns with dozens of upgrades streamline the system
- Massive numbers of robots to gun down
- Difficult but not unfair; even the "Easy" difficulty may prove a challenge
- Plenty of stuff to blow up constantly
- Excellent sound design and beautiful graphics

Cons
- Short; only two or three hours
- Actually quite linear
- Only a few enemy types that get recycled
- Story that is presented during load screens is boring and unimportant

If you hate robots, this is the game for you. 

The Long

Remember when shooters were just that: shooters? Where the point of the game was to grab a bunch of guns and just blast stuff without any semblance of story or reason for shooting them except they want you dead in return? The FPS genre has taken several steps away from that, first with Half-Life and next with games like Call of Duty 4 that replaced shooting with scripted events. A few games like Painkiller and Serious Sam have cropped up that took us back to our "roots," before our health magically recharged and we had to find cover constantly. Now we have Hard Reset, a homage to those older games, set to put you on a robot-blasting, high-octane thrillfest from start to end.

And guess what? It works almost perfectly. 

Plus you get to kill a jillion robots. 

Hard Reset is made by a group of guys that also worked on the previously mentioned Painkiller games. For those who've played those games, you know pretty much what you are getting into with Hard Reset. Painkiller was characterized by having massive numbers of enemies (like Serious Sam, but not quite as insane) that is threw at you, giving you tons of guns and weapons to deal with them and having you strafe, blast, and run backwards for a good chunk of the game. It was awesome and fast paced and no cover was required.

Hard Reset is essentially this with robots and about a thousand times more explosions. It also has some interesting upgrade-system elements as well as some streamlining of ammo that really does the game a lot of favors. 

Too many robots!

At it's core, this is what you do in Hard Reset: You shoot a crap-ton of robots. When you go to a new area, tons of robots start crawling out of the woodwork (and I mean tons) and it's up to you to blast them. Usually they'll keep coming for several intense, explosion-ridden minutes, until you finally clear the stage and head to the next area, where this battle arena repeats. If this sounds repetitive you would technically be right, but it never feels that way, mostly because of the excellent level design. Something Hard Reset does very well is fill the environment with things that blow up. Barrels that explode are placed liberally around the battlefield. Conduits and automated shops can be shot and emit a several-second long blast of electricity, frying any robots that run into it. Generators on walls can be rigged to blow, as can cars. Even some of the robots (the round little crawlers) blow up on death, which can cause huge chain reactions among their own ranks. Hard Reset is punctuated by explosions happening constantly with one of the challenges to not get caught in the aftershock. Because every area is unique and moves so incredibly fast you never get bored. Instead it's like one massive, jaw-dropping experience after another, and it's near perfect in its execution.

Your way is blocked by a few doors, but as a whole it doesn't keep you from shooting for very long. 

Another neat gameplay idea is the concept of only having two actual guns. You have your "lead shootin" gun and your "plasma" gun. Each uses one type of ammo ("Red" and "Blue," respectively) so it's simple with regards to what you have to pick up. However, thanks to a simple but still extensive upgrading system, your default weapons can be changed mid-battle into other types. Some are standard, like a shotgun or rocket launcher. Others are more unique, like a plasma gun that can fire an orb that time-slows any enemies trapped in it. All these guns can in turn be upgraded, so your shotgun will fire bouncing pellets that stun once it's powered up. All the while they still only use the two basic ammo types, so you don't have to go searching for shotgun shells or rockets; just use the same ammo. This also means you get to choose which gun you unlock when, so you can fully tailor it to your playstyle. Very cool idea. 

The cyberpunk robot dystopia of Hard Reset has a stunning art style, too.

Graphically, Hard Reset is gorgeous, especially considering it is technically an indie game. From the exquisitely clever and beautiful menus when you first launch the game to watching the rain drizzle across the sidewalks and buildings of a neon, flashy cyberpunk city, Hard Reset looks really, really good. I cranked it up to max everything and was shocked at how well everything animated, exploded, and just looked stationary (the guns especially animate and have very good looking effects to them). Unfortunately my computer couldn't handle it in high-octane situations (read: 90% of the game) so I had to turn the resolution down a bit, but even then it still looked very good, and when the framerate is staying consistent it's smooth as butter as well. If you have a killer rig this is a great game to show off, as it isn't technically all that taxing (though I don't know how they pulled it off) but has a killer art design and graphics regardless.

Sound is also excellent, with the exception being the voices. They are gravelly and bland as you'd expect from this type of game, but luckily they don't come up very often. Gunshots and robot noises sound excellent, however, and since the story only shows up during loading screens you can just ignore it completely (I did). 

Find upgrade points (cash?) around to buy new weapons and upgrades!

So what isn't good about Hard Reset? Well, it's short, clocking in at around 2-3 hours on the Easy difficulty. It's also worth noting it's called "Hard" Reset for a reason: this game can be very difficult, especially for those not used to the old-school FPS types of games. On Easy you could probably bludgeon your way through, but on the more intense difficulties it'll wipe the floor with you. Luckily it has an "EX" mode that lets you play again with your same weapons and upgrades, which makes things a little easier. So despite being short, at least it is very strongly encouraging you to go back for multiple playthroughs. 

Another problem is lack of enemy variety. You have the little crawly ones, the little crawly ones that explode, the charging big ones, and the big ones with guns. Expect to kill a trillion of these (with a few others mixed in, but not a lot) over the game's short single player. While that isn't bad as it just throws hordes at you at every possible instance, it wouldn't have hurt to have seen it mixed up a little. 

Lastly is that there is no multiplayer whatsoever. Which I suppose is fine seeing as I hate it when people tack multiplayer on to singleplayer focused games, but the gameplay in Hard Reset screams old-school team deathmatch to me. Oh well.

At least it lets me kill a trillion robots. 

As it stands, if you have any affection for old-school FPS shooters, you owe it to yourself to get Hard Reset. Like the Serious Sam games, it's a homage to an older era, but unlike the Serious Sam games it actually uses modern gameplay conventions to refine and perfect those old methods rather than simply giving it a pretty coat of paint. It's fast, fluid, and straight up fun. I honestly can't recall the last time I had this much fun in an FPS. At the incredibly low price of $20 standard on Steam, this is a game you really shouldn't miss out on. 

Four out of five stars.

Serious Blade Runner vibe, guys. 

Conan

The Short


Pros
-Violent, visceral combat that is very satisfying
- Three weapon styles that have their own trees to level up
- Reasonably long quest with tons of combat and a few puzzles
- Ron Perlman does the voice of Conan

Cons
- Ugly
- Gets dull and repetitive very quickly
- While voice acting is...decent, the script is so awful it doesn't matter
- Conan uses magic? Did these people even READ a Conan novel?
- Collectibles are topless women chained to poles. Pandering much?
- Rips off God of War shamelessly but doesn't come close to reaching its height
- Final boss is Viking: Battle of Asgard bad. Really, really frustrating.

That's using your head!

The Long

So...Conan. Lover of life. Lover of women. Lover of killing stuff. How is it they haven't made a billion games about this guy? Say what you want, Conan has been a relatively untapped market. Despite the recent movie starring Khal Drogo from Game of Thrones, Conan has had the short end of the stick for a while. Yeah, they made an MMO that quickly went free to play, but in terms of action games there's been a dearth. 

This is probably because this game, aptly titled just Conan, poisoned the well for most video gamers. Because, despite the fact that Conan is a character practically made for video games, Nihilistic brilliantly and totally ruined him in this mediocre, boring God of War knockoff. 

But hey, since you need me to prove my claims, here's the rest of the review!

If there's anything Conan hates, it's undead skeleton mammoths trapped in tar pits trying to kill him.

So there's a story in Conan, but it's not particularly interesting. Conan has magic armor (I thought he hated magic?) that gets stolen by some evil person and turned into demons or something, and so he has to kill guys and get laid a lot. Sounds like a Conan story. 

There isn't much here, but there is one rather big error: during the adventure Conan gets magic. Which makes sense if you are ripping off God of War, but in the Conan mythology Conan hates all magic. So there is no way he'd be seen dead with it. Did they even read the books? Why bother branding the guy if you can't even get that the one key element of his story right?

I think this is going to end badly for the one that isn't Conan. Which is how it usually goes. 

Luckily, the rest of the key elements are here, if a bit underplayed. Well, not the bloody gore of Conan; that is here and in spades. If they did anything right, it was the violence: this is a brutal game. Legs, arms, and heads must all be attached by spiderwebs and no bones because they fly off at the slightest provocation. Blood sprays all over the place like every person is a crimson fountain, and all the while Conan spouts awful one-liners like "Let Krom judge you!" or "One less dog in the streets!" Look, Ron Perlman, I think you're a good actor. Underrated, even. But you really did a crap job here. Your Conan sounds like a bored fat man, not a badass warrior who love life. You should be roaring in elation when you lop a dude's arms off and then lop both legs and his head off just to be sure (gotta double tap, you know). Instead he's just like...moping around. 

The combat is still the best part of the game, and has a few unique tricks. First thing is you have three unique fighting styles: duel wielding, sword and shield, or a double handed weapon (spears or axes). Basically the differences are speed vs power, with shield having the extra boon of more blocks (which you'll never need). Weapons are dropped all the time so you can switch styles at need, and the game forces you to for certain enemies which is both annoying and a good way to force people to variate. 

It's like they saw the hydra fight in God of War and thought, "Let's do the exact same thing. Exactly."

Another trick is the counter system. If you block at exactly the right time, an enemy will get a random button over their head and if you tap it, it's an instant kill. I actually think this is a great idea because the one thing I hate about these games is picking off the weak fodder. They are only there to die and make you feel cool, so why not make them really easy? It's too bad you don't get to pick what your counter kill will be, and they don't have nearly enough of them to remain interesting, but I like the mechanic. And lopping a guy's arms, legs, AND head off for no good reason other than to justify the M rating.

Speaking of justifying the M rating, this game has a truckload of boobs in it. Which fits, I guess, because Conan's stories were always about super-busty native chicks who don't understand the idea of a bra or public decency getting all up over Conan if he so much as looks in their direction. But here they are the "collectables" in the game, which basically means you find a topless bronze buxom babes just, you know, hanging out waiting to be set free and then disappear. So...ok. Seems a bit gratuitous, and it isn't like Conan gets any action or anything. I guess they were like "maybe the insane amounts of blood and guts won't hide the fact we are ripping off God of War enough, so if we add tons of boobs people will overlook it!"

Then Steve the intern raised his hand and was like "But, um God of War has tons of boobs too. And a sex minigame. So in truth we are really just looking more like God of War knockoffs." 

And then Steve was swiftly fired and Conan came out. 

Poor Steve. 

Going back to the combat: it's all well and good but it gets boring. You have a tech tree to level up but the changes never feel particularly significant aside the initial ones. You can spread your points across all three trees, but then you'll be a jack of all trades but master of none, so I'd just put everything in the fast duel wielding and call it good. While countering and lopping up dudes is great for the first hour, after that it's the same boring mess over and over again. It does throw in some harder enemies that you have to like, sometimes dodge I guess, but in truth the variety is sparse and the whole gratuitous violence thing gets old. 

And then you get to the final boss, and you realize just how unplaytested this game was. 

I couldn't find a picture of the final boss, so you get this instead. 

I mentioned in my Viking: Battle of Asgard review how bad that final boss was, but thinking back I honestly believe Conan's is worse. It's a battle of attrition you are set to lose, against a boss that has multiple forms and if you fail once you go back to the beginning. I'll spare you the details, just know it takes 30 - 45 minutes to beat this guy, and yes, you can lose all that progress by one little mistake. Never mind the hit detection is cheap, you are on a platform with ledges on all sides (insta-death), and hitting him does about as much damage as flicking his ears, but man...way to ruin your game. Seriously, I don't think it's possible on Hard. 

They should decapitate whoever designed the last boss. Seriously. 

This game is also downright hideous, even for an early Xbox 360 / PS3 game. Character models are bland and look like they are made out of plastic, backdrops have the same boring textures with no real bumpmapping to speak of, shadows are weak and uninteresting, and even the blood looks really stupid. They do get points for making Conan's face look like he's constantly going "DURRR," a dorky look only equaled by the new Prince's face in Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands. Also yeah, boobs, but only if you really get off with awful looking video game boobs, which if you do you are a bad person and really need to get out more. 

Sound is also mediocre. As stated, Ron Perlman phones it in with the awful one-liners Conan spouts out, and the supporting cast is poor at best. Sound effects lack punch (though some of the hits do feel nice and heavy) and as a whole the production values are just lackluster all around. Not a great game to show off your new TV with.

Unless you want to test your full "red" spectrum. 

I am kind of ashamed to admit it, but Conan was the first game I ever beat on my Xbox 360. At the time I actually had a decent experience, because I was fresh off God of War 2 and God of War 3 was a long ways out (and not on a system I had currently owned). However, even then I recognized this game as the cheap, middling experience that it was. 

Conan isn't completely awful. The first few hours are descent and it makes for a lot of great inside jokes (a friend of mine and I love to yell "ONE LESS DOG IN THE STREETS" for no reason in the awful, underplayed Conan voice) but as it stands it's just a mediocre product. If you really need a bloody hack-n-slash and already played Viking: Battle for Asgard, I suppose you could do a lot worse. But unless you can pick it up for like $5 you are overspending. 

Two out of five stars. 

I named this image file "wowgraphics." I think we'll just leave it at that. 

The Maw

The Short


Pros
- Silly little adventure about eating stuff to get bigger and than eating more stuff
- In that way, it's kind of like Katamary Damacy, only with a giant purple blob
- Charm and humor completely sell the game, and hit all the right notes
- Has a bizarre wit about it that will appeal to both kids and adults
- KING YUM.

Cons
- Short
- Gameplay is repetitive and a bit insubstantial
- DLC feels like it was cut from the game

HELLO. 

The Long

The Maw is the first game by the most excellent Twisted Pixel, maker of such fine products as The Gunstringer and not so fine products as The Adventures of Captain Smiley. They also sent me a Christmas card a few years back, so they are a-ok in my book. And that means this review is going to be totally biased. Whatever. 

Anyway, The Maw is a simple game with a simple goal: feed the Maw. Feed him until he grows, than feed him some more. It's essentially Katamari Damacy, only with eating instead of rolling. And I'm fine with that.

The characters are very expressive, selling the cute and silliness of this whole thing. 

The game is broke up into stages, wherein you have to feed the Maw to get him to a certain size, and when you do the exit magically unlocks. Yeah, that part is a bit...contrived, but the rest of it works quite great. The Maw takes a page from Kirby's book and can steal the powers of certain enemies he eats, turning into altered Maws with a wide range of abilities. He can float for some levels, breath fire, shoot lightning, and more. All of them incorporate into the simple puzzles and platforming the game has, and while it never gets very difficult it does tax you a little bit, so it strikes a good balance. 

You drive the Maw around with your remote (and if he gets too far you can call him to you), directing him to the food because he can't seem to manage that himself. Controls for jumping and eating are decent but not particularly refined, but they work because the game is simple. This ain't Mario or anything; it's a game about feeding a purple blob until he eats the entire world. Literally.

Flame on!

But enough boring stuff; here is why The Maw is awesome: it's hilarious. The Maw is a fat, greedy purple blob of joy, who will not hesitate in consuming even the cutest creature from the main character's mouth. He's also a massive coward, despite the fact that he could just eat anything, so he'll often run screaming from anything intimidating (in cutscenes), which is also entertaining. Even if he's bigger than them. Oh, Maw.

Both the Maw and the alien who has a name but I forgot have an excellent range of exaggerated emotions, which also goes a long way in selling the zany, silly humor. It's clearly a game aimed at kids, but plenty of the jokes also work for adults (or adults-in-progress) which makes the character endearing, entertaining, and hilarious. 

We liked him so much we got a plushie and put him on our Gingerbread house last Christmas. 

This is pretty much a perfect kid's game, with nothing offensive to be found and the humor being more silly than crude. The gameplay is simple and runs into repetition after just a few stages (though the stages with the most variety seem to be hidden behind DLC...which is a shame) but the draw of watching the Maw eat everything and get bigger and bigger to the inevitable crazy finale is worth it. It does depend a lot on your enjoyment of silliness, but if you play the demo and laugh at least once (love the Kill Bill reference in the opening, by the way) you should probably give the whole thing a spin.

Waaaaaaaaaah!

On a more self-indulgent point, that plush Maw is awesome (even if the plastic around his collar is starting to get worn). We have a truckload of video game plushies, but the Maw is still the favorite. Mostly because he eats everything (the red Angry Bird fits perfectly in his mouth) but he also has a tendency to attack my wife's face when she's sleeping. Bad Maw!

It's also worth noting that the bad puns ("You're MAW-some!") were another thing my wife latched onto, and we still make horrible Maw jokes nearly all the time. It's been like three years since we bought this game, and it's still going. I don't know if that says more to how endearing we found this game, or how pathetic we are as human beings. Um...the former. Has to be the former. 

Nothing good can come of this.

As it stands, I'll admit The Maw is not for everybody. It's very simple, repetitive, has only decent graphics (though the art is nice) and relies a lot on its charm to sell it. But for us, it really hit a chord. I still boot this game up and replay the first few (and then last few) levels and revel in the immense stupidity and insanity that is The Maw. It's an extremely charming game that should be a no-brainer to pick up if you have kids, but even us "hardcore gamers" who spend our days blasting noobs in Call of Duty might need a brief respite from that now and again. And The Maw is perfect for that.

Also, "MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWW!"

Four out of five stars. 

PS: Twisted Pixel: MAKE THE MAW 2! Seriously! With Kinect support! It would be awesome!

Plus, somebody should buy me this statue. For um...science. Or something. 

Medal of Honor

The Short


Pros
- Fast paced, gritty single player set in modern day Iraq and Afghanistan
- Solid shooting as would be expected from Dice
- Game looks really quite good at times
- Voice acting is solid throughout
- Has a pretty great soundtrack as well
- Multiplayer's "Points" system to earn perks and upgrades is a neat change from Call of Duty's formula

Cons
- Multiplayer attempts to merge Call of Duty and Battlefield and fails on both sides
- Seriously, the multiplayer is really broken
- Speaking of which, Online Passes are stupid when your leading competitor doesn't have them
- Single player is extremely short and has a completely unbelievable ending
- Runs at a solid 30 FPS, but compared to Call of Duty's 60 FPS it seems...insubstantial
- Aren't we getting tired of these "USA #1!!" games where we go to other countries and shoot up native residents?
- Does nothing to differentiate itself from all the other gray modern military shooters

That beard has heard the call of duty

The Long

It's no secret that Call of Duty is pretty freaking huge. Something about it's constantly rewarding, fast-paced arcade shooter action really clicks for a whole lot of people (mostly 12-year-olds who got their parents to buy the game for them) and it escalated into the juggernaut franchise it currently is. 

EA, publisher of Battlefield which could be considered Call of Duty's direct competitor, saw the bucketloads of cash Activision was swimming in and decided that they too needed a modern military action shooter, neglecting the fact they already had one. It was called Battlefield. So they went back to their PC roots and resurrected an old World War II shooter IP: Medal of Honor. 

The persistent pitch for this game was that it was "Call of Duty made by the Battlefield guys (aka Dice)." They also went above and beyond saying they interviewed Tier Two operatives who were currently on active duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, claiming they'd make this game as "authentic" as possible.

So...did they pull it off?

Yeah, cause running around killing hundreds of dudes out of cover is an "Authentic military simulation."

The single player is actually the best part of Call of Duty...er, sorry, Medal of Honor. Set in the modern day middle east, you play as a rookie (don't you always) to the Tier Two operatives, basically the badasses of the army. There's some plot involving a terrorist...something and...uh...actually I don't remember the story. While Call of Duty has gone completely off the rails recently in its stupidity, Medal of Honor tends to focus more on more "down to earth" problems and smaller missions, which I'm fine with.

I said I liked the single player, but for the life of me I can't remember why. I have fond memories, but looking back on the important details that make a story good I'm drawing a blank. I don't remember any characters (except awesome beard man, seen two pictures above). I remember doing lots of shooting down the sights, a mission where I was a sniper, a mission where I manned a turret, a mission at night, and a few vehicle sections. And I remember a final mission with an absurd level of guys I had to kill, like in the hundreds just in that mission. Realism my ass. As much as I respect Tier Two Operatives for having the balls to do their jobs every day (and I really do, honest; I couldn't do it) I doubt five of them could gun down thousands of terrorists in broad daylight without cover and emerge without a scratch. This isn't realism; it's Call of Duty.

Oh yeah, and a stealth mission. They really covered all their bases. 

Like Call of Duty's single player, it also got predicable. As mentioned above, it covers all the "necessities" of a single-player modern military shooter, and...not much else. This game really feels like EA came to Dice and said "Make a Call of Duty game, down to every detail"... and they did. Which is fine, I suppose, because the game is well paced and has a good blend of fast-paced shootouts with slower moments, but as  a whole it does nothing unique whatsoever.

Oh yeah, there was some politician who kept making stupid orders. I remember that, now.  Cliche!

But hey, you aren't buying this game for the single player (in theory, anyway), you are buying it for the multiplayer! Dice, legendary Battlefield creators, making an arcade shooter? It's like the best of both worlds! How could they go wrong?

Well, the first thing that they do wrong you see right when you open the box (or don't see, if you buy used): an online pass. Seriously, these things straight up piss me off. You market this game as the online "Call of Duty killer" and then make it so anybody buying used is locked out of online unless they pay an additional $15? Really? This is in addition to me paying for Xbox Live Gold (which I'm seriously wondering why I buy it at this point) and is you locking me out of a key feature of the game because I wanted to save a few bucks. Oh hey, what's that? Call of Duty doesn't have these stupid things, because Activision isn't as stupid as EA? What's that, EA puts these in single player games now, too? Wow, how totally insane! Well, I guess I know which multiplayer shooter I'll be picking up: THE ONE THAT LETS ME PLAY MULTIPLAYER.

Luckily I managed to "find" a code at my local Gamestop, so I was able to play the multiplayer while still having bought the game used. Guess what? It still sucks.

It isn't for lack of trying; more because of pigeonholing

At it's core, this is Call of Duty (or any shooter like it). You get modern guns with iron sights or red dot sites, aim down these sights for increased accuracy, and try to shot the guy before he shoots you. Pretty basic. It also has a killstreak system similar to Call of Duty, but with a twist: each level requires "points" rather than kills. Points can be earned with kills, assists, or capturing objectives. It rewards you for actually doing mission objectives (something Call of Duty just now figured out is a good thing to do) which means people in Domination might actually capture a point sometime rather than camp and play it like Team Deathmatch for some inexplicable reason.

Another cool thing (which Modern Warfare 3 stole) is when you get to a reward unlock, you pick either an offensive or defensive one. Offensive can be airstrikes or whatever, while defensive can increase your team's armor or provide healing or stuff like that. It's a neat idea, one that Modern Warfare 3 did a bit better, but mixed with the points system it actually shines.

Too bad the actual shooting in this game is totally broken.

Gee, this looks awful familiar.

Let me get the biggest issue out of the way first: spawning in this game is totally busted, as is sniper rifles. When, put together, you can probably guess the issue: spawn camping. Because of the way the maps are designed, often times you can spawn and immediately be killed by a camping sniper. Many sniper rifles are one-shot kills (or two, but are still semi-auto) meaning they can destroy you just a few seconds after returning to battle. Added bonus that the spawn points don't variate enough to provide you with any sort of surprise; you'll spawn in one of three very similar spots, and odds are somebody is camping it.

Nearly every match quickly turns into a snipe-fest. And unlike Call of Duty, there's a respawn timer in this game, which only exacerbates things when you wait 15-20 seconds, show back up, die instantly, and go back to waiting. It's completely awful. 

It ignores the customization and perks from Call of Duty in favor of a Battlefield-esque class system

On the very rare occasion that you get to a match that isn't a snipefest, the game still isn't that great. Unlike Call of Duty, which runs at a constant 60 FPS clip (making the action smooth and fast), Medal of Honor is locked in at 30, and you can tell the difference. The Frostbite engine, which allows destruction of building, is pretty neat but very underutilized; there's way more stuff in this game that can't be blown up than can. Actual shooting with regular person guns is also not particularly fantastic. Since you are limited to three classes you don't really get the freedom of choosing guns and attachments the competition (both Call of Duty and Battlefield) provides, so shooting never feels very personal. The actual aiming is decent but not great, and often I felt guys took way too many bullets to go down. It's like a weird bastard child of Call of Duty and Battlefield, while only keeping the worst aspects of both parents. It's like a slower, gimped version of Call of Duty that lacks the arcade feel; or a faster, less tactical version of Battlefield which loses the squad mechanics and cooperation. It's the worst of both worlds. 

Enough about the multiplayer. It sucks. Done. 

Graphically the game actually looks pretty fantastic. They do an excellent work with lighting especially to make things look both vibrant and realistic. Natural rocks in this game (especially ones with snow on them) look really really good for some reason, and the vistas you gaze over before going around to shoot a hundred more dudes are actually very majestic and pretty. This is a good looking game, minus a rare flat texture or weird graphical silliness caused by the allowed destruction in the Frostbite engine.

Sound is also very good, with voice work being top-notch (if very f-word heavy) but the real star is the sound effects. Every boom, bullet fired, or reload sounds great (if exactly like the Battlefield games) and packs a serious punch. It's Dice, they know how to make their war games look and sound great.

The game looks good. Too bad it doesn't play as such. 

As it stands, Medal of Honor seems like an experiment that failed. Nobody really picked it up, and the second Call of Duty: Black Ops showed up everybody abandoned it. When I played (which was a little while after Black Ops' release), there were only 1,500 people playing, only a few months after Medal of Honor's release. I'm sure the online pass thing didn't help, but compared to the hundreds of thousands on Call of Duty every single day, it's clear that this experiment didn't really work.

Then again, it sold enough that it's getting a sequel, so maybe I have no idea what I'm talking about. In either case, if you are thinking about picking it up: don't. This is a second-rate military shooter in a world cram packed with games like these. If you really want another single player that involves murdering a bunch of foreigners while screaming "USA! USA!" then this is actually a pretty good game for that. But if you want a solid multiplayer experience, look to the competition. 

Two out of five stars. 

BEARD.