Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is a game by a different developer, that manages to feel exactly the same as Borderlands 2. There are some differences like new characters and so new skill trees. Generally speaking though this game hasn’t innovated, which is fine if you liked Borderlands 2. If you thought Borderlands 2 was pretty boring, then you are in trouble. Which means that I am in trouble. Of course there’s the entirely fair question, as to why I bought this game. The honest answer to that question is that my friend has a lousy PC. So in the search for co-op games we ended up on this one. Is it fun? Nope.

I’ll skim through the rationale for why I didn’t care for the game. Which should be fairly obvious between my last reviews and the TL;DR at the top. Essentially Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is a looter shooter with bad loot and bad shooting. The cherries on top are of course; the weird vehicle controls, the annoying dialogue, the poor quest design and the generally tedious nature of the game’s level scaling system. There are some bright spots, like decent variety and the fact that the whole thing works in co-op, but generally speaking this game is a game for idiots. Combat is basic, the jokes fall flat, the game manages to feel extremely repetitive, most of the content is bland, it’s just a mess. Why this series became the series for co-op players is beyond me.

As for what this game adds to the series, well it has some background for the perennial favourite character of Handsome Jack. Who isn’t particularly interesting here, and is basically trying to be a hero but becomes a villain. The way this happens occurs slowly across missions, but essentially he goes from normal person to paranoid dictator in a gradual fashion. Yet it’s not handled very well, and it’s hard not to get the impression that our characters shouldn’t have sided with him once he started randomly executing civilians for the lols. The story also involves the vault hunters from previous games spoiling his plans to take control of the world, but they don’t do much. Honestly if you were a big Borderlands fan then I imagine you’ll find this game to be lacklustre in terms of exploring the characters.

Especially as the game otherwise doesn’t add that much. There are one or two new vehicles you get to use a handful of times. Plus the O2 mechanic, wherein you need oxygen to breathe but can also use this oxygen as a impromptu jetpack. Otherwise I can’t really think of anything outside of the new character classes. These are fine but I’m not playing through the game to max level 6 times. So the only thing I really noticed is that you can play as Claptrap. Which is about as much as fun as you’d expect.

With those new additions out of the way, I’ll just reiterate that Borderlands: The Pre-sequel really is more of the same. Just with Australian accents. The combat is the same, the weapon looting system is the same, the UI is the same, most of the enemies are the same, the mission is the same, the dialogue is of the same quality and so on. There really isn’t a lot that’s new. To the point that the O2 system which is arguably one of the biggest additions doesn’t do much. It gives you a new character item slot and it introduces some risk/reward to the game. As you need to breathe (albeit not if you play as Claptrap), you need O2. You can spend it to jump slightly further or revive your companions faster however. Outside of this though, it just makes the outdoor areas a bit tedious. As you need to camp near the O2 stations every now and then. The game does at least still have an appealing art-style. Outside of that though I can’t think of anything it does particularly well.

I mean for goodness sake, this game has missions where you need to hunt for audio logs that are hidden in an office, and then have to listen to them. There are missions where you need to guard a box as it slowly trundles along a conveyor belt while it’s under attack. Even finding these stupid missions can be a pest as they’re scattered around the world, and once you are a few levels above them they give you no XP. So if you need to keep up with the game’s level curve (lest you be punished by health sponge enemies), then you’ll need to quick travel to an area. Then possibly go to a new area from there. Then run to a bulletin board. So that you can pick up a quest that sucks. It’s just not a very well paced game, and even for a mindless shooter there’s so much downtime.

There are some design decisions that are questionable, like co-op making the game harder but these can be hand-waved away or at least justified. Yet the moment to moment gameplay feels at odds with itself. You want to shoot the dudes, but then you need to loot the dudes. So you need to open the inventory screen and faff around there. Then you need to slowly trundle towards the next objective. So that the game can give you another objective. Then another one. So that you can complete a quest that doesn’t give you enough XP. Meaning you need to run to a fast travel station and then fast travel to somewhere near another quest. That will involve shooting dudes, and looting the dudes, and looking at your inventory… and so on. It’s just a tedious game and I have to give credit to Borderlands 3 for improving on it.

In conclusion, I’ve run out of things to say and ways to re-iterate the main point. Namely the Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is a pretty boring game. It doesn’t change much, and essentially feels like Borderlands 2 again. Which will be great for some people. I shudder to imagine who those people are, but they must exist. As for everyone else, if you want a co-op game look elsewhere. At the very least grab Borderlands 3 or Tiny Tina’s D&D styled mini-campaign before picking up Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel.

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Postal 2: Paradise Lost is a DLC I bought by accident, when I wanted to have Steam copies of both Postal 1 and Postal 2. While I wasn’t a huge fan of Postal 2 due to it’s lame combat, weak humour, weird pacing and frequent fannying around in lieu of gameplay, it’s a game that has it’s own surprisingly passionate fanbase. I guess being able to start urinating at any time is a big draw for those who think the game’s childish sense of humour is endearing. Unfortunately the FPS combat that makes up most of the game is pretty lousy, so you really have to gel with the tone to overlook the fact that most gunfights are underwhelming at best. As for why I wanted to re-buy Postal 2, well to be honest it was included with Postal 1 and I’ve heard good things about that one. Which I wanted to own on Steam for the princely sum of $1. Then when I bought this Postal pack from Fanatical, I found out that I had bought Postal 2: Paradise Lost. This meant I was somewhat obligated to give it a fair chance. Which I have done, playing through the whole thing on the normal difficulty over the past two days.

Which leads to the million dollar question, is Postal 2: Paradise Lost better than Postal 2? I would personally say yes, because it’s slightly more amusing and has better boss fights. This means that if I had to recommend one of them, I’d go with Paradise Lost. The problem is that, well, Postal 2 is in the bargain bin for me alongside such fine games as Legendary. So a better question might be, would I recommend Postal 2: Paradise Lost? Well my honest answer would be “No“. Why? Because it’s not a very fun experience and I say this with love for the small developer studio that made it. Yet after having played through it for around 7 hours, I can say that I enjoyed maybe… 2 of them? Postal 2: Paradise Lost has it’s moments but they are unfortunately few and far between. At this point I think it’s prudent to mention the bad, before we get onto the good.

And believe me, as much as I can respect small development studios this game has a lot of dumb decisions. Not even just the dumb writing, which can occasionally be amusing. Admittedly it’s rarely amusing and most of the time is just obstinately stupid and lazy. To give an example, in the first part of the day you go to get some food from an Asian restaurant. Now if you had to write a lazy joke about a Chinese restaurant, what might it be? Be honest. Did you think “haha the food is made from dogs lmao”? Well then you’d be right, and I assume you wouldn’t labour the point with 5 different puns about it being doggone good and then have the restaurant get attacked by dogs and then the dogs kill the restaurant workers and then you have to escape this whacky escapade. There’s a lot of dumb humour like this, and most of the time it just feels overly dragged out. Brevity is the soul of wit, and generally Postal 2: Paradise Lost is witless. Which is a problem for a humour based FPS. Remember Eat Lead: Matt Hazard and how it’s mediocrity was not improved by it’s inability to land jokes? Well Postal 2 was it’s predecessor, in all it’s glory. For me personally, I’d say Postal 2: Paradise Lost manages to be funny around 1% of the time. Considering that the game is throwing out jokes, there are still a few amusing moments. But I’d be lying if I said the game’s wicked sense of humour was a selling point.

Similarly the combat is pretty bad, with enemy AI being so basic that it occasionally wraps around to being challenging again. They will bum rush you en masse, but sometimes they’ll get stuck on terrain or keep respawning or just otherwise cause trouble. To the game’s credit, it is aware of this and explicitly tells you to stand around corners and wait for the enemy to filter in one-by-one towards you. To the game’s discredit, there are some truly weird design choices. For example the zombies have been given a weirdly accurate projectile attack that they just love to spam. While some enemy animals have been given ridiculously large health pools. One last pet peeve is that some enemies get a homing rocket launcher. Which is always utterly tedious to deal with due to their ability to just spam rockets at you from far away with little in the way of repercussions or recourse. At least Postal 2: Paradise Lost has a lot of enemy variety and weapon variety. Yet most combat encounters are rubbish even excluding the weird way that damage scaling has been implemented. You see, some of the dozen different melee weapons are actually pretty good. While guns on the other hand, are often weak and inaccurate with one or two exceptions.

Then you’ve got the general pacing of Postal 2: Paradise Lost, which could be generously described as a mess. At the start of each day, you’re given a list of tasks and the freedom to do them in any order. Yet these tasks almost always boil down to: go to X, grab Y (or pay for Y), CHAOS ENSUES BIG FIGHT PEWPEPEPWPEWPEPWEPEWPEWP until you can escape. There are one or two exceptions, but this is basically how the entire game is structured. You wander around between locations, enter a building, go to the back of the building, something CRAZY happens and then you fight your way back out onto the streets. It’s not the worst way to handle things, but it does extremely repetitive and boring after a while. Especially when the combat isn’t great. The game also has a weird checkpoint system that often overwrites itself between attempts, alongside unskippable cutscenes. If you can get past all of these issues, then I do have some good news. Which is that Postal 2: Paradise Lost does have some good things to say about it.

First and foremost, while the general combat frankly sucks there are some boss fights that are actually enjoyable. They aren’t terribly common, but when they do happen they’re generally and make for a nice change of pace. These bosses have plenty of health and some unique attacks, which makes defeating them a fun challenge that requires a bit of improvisation. Due to these boss fights being some of the highlights of the game, Postal 2: Paradise Lost manages a rare trick. Namely that the tail-end of the game, manages to be a nice culmination of the players skills and lets them try out some of the better guns they’ve accumulated. Too many big budget have final boss fights that are just glorified Quick Time Events, whereas Running with Scissors have managed to implement them correctly. Ultimately I’d much rather have a boss fight than more of the fairly brain dead combat that exists in the rest of the game.

Alongside the boss fights, Postal 2: Paradise Lost tries to keep the pace up with a few dumb, if memorable set-pieces. They’re hit or miss, with sections featuring abrupt platforming challenges and out-running a mining drill being off-set with weaker sections featuring out-running zombies and a mining cart roller-coaster ride. In spite of the hit-or miss nature, these sections are at least proof that the developers were trying. As for the moment-to-moment gameplay, there is a somewhat decent risk/reward mechanic that rears it’s head. For context, you’ll always be short of money in Postal 2: Paradise Lost. Yet if you have enough money through selling cats of all things, then you’re able to complete quests “properly” and avoid combat. For example, instead of stealing a quest item you can pay for it and avoid a combat encounter. This is more useful as the game goes on, because when you fail to pay for quest items, you’ll often antagonise certain groups. Which means that from that point onwards, they’ll be hostile whenever you encounter them in the overworld. As such you often have to consider whether you have enough health and ammo for large fights, or whether it’s worth playing things through in the law-abiding manner. This is one of the game’s most successful unique selling points, even if doing things the legal way is often incredibly boring.

In conclusion Postal 2: Paradise Lost is a game with a few good ideas that are let down by two significant issues. Namely that it’s a humour focused FPS game with poor FPS combat and generally unfunny humour. Fortunately it’s a game that still has some merits, including a good variety of enemies and weapons alongside fun boss fights and a unique quasi-morality system. Yet in spite of the good parts, I feel that the bad outweighs the good with this game. As a consequence I struggle to recommend it to anyone, although I will give the small developer studio credit for making a product that’s better than Postal 2. Especially one that manages to be so madcap and varied, even if I found it to be ultimately as dull as many of the more bland games that have come out.

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Quick Note: My screenshots didn’t save for some reason, but that’s OK because this is a very short review.

Alright so I recently played through the BF3 campaign and found it to be pretty underwhelming and an FPS experience I couldn’t really recommend. As this blog is about me and my one-man-mission to rise up clear my games backlog, I also remembered I had Battlefield 4. So I decided to play through it while my memory of BF3 was still fresh. To my surprise, the Battlefield 4 campaign is actually decently entertaining and while it still can’t really compete with the better Call of Duty campaigns, it’s better than some of them! This might not sound like praise, but considering how much BF3 and especially Battlefield 4 have been trying to emulate the success of those CoD campaigns, it’s nice to see that DICE finally managed to make something that succeeds in this regard.

I’ll try to keep it concise, much like the campaign. Because Battlefield 4 has a grand total of 7 campaign missions – that’s it. In them we play as a silent protagonist muhreen who is fighting to save the world from a coup in China. The levels are fairly linear although you can sometimes find an empty vehicle or turret to use. The enemy variety is minimal, as you only fight enemy soldiers and the occasional enemy vehicle. There are a lot of bombastic quasi-cutscenes where things explode/collapse near/onto our protagonist. As for the gameplay it’s what you’d expect. You can carry two weapons (and two pieces of gear like mines or grenade launchers). Your health regenerates. The enemy is all over your ass 24/7 and there are a handful of opportunities to use vehicles and turrets. You always have a squadmate or squadmates with you, but generally they are absolutely useless unlike in BF3. I’m not sure why your squad is so useless now, but sadly they really are hopeless. It’s no wonder that you get chosen to be the new squad commander/overall badass. The enemy AI isn’t great, although they are freakishly good at using grenades. There are a couple of positive changes that Battlefield 4 has made to the single player formula though. So I’ll give them credit for the following.

First things first, there are now collectibles in each level and they are exceedingly well hidden. Nothing fancy, I think every CoD has done this since the Xbox 360 came out. Yet it’s something “new” that wasn’t in the previous game. More importantly, you now gain score just like in multiplayer for killing various enemies and the multiplayer score-streaks carry over. So multi-kills, headshots, “adrenaline kills” (ones that occur when you are near death) etc now give you bonus points. These points then unlock 3-tiers of medal for each mission. Each medal gains you access to new weapon unlocks, in the myriad gun-cases scattered around every single player level. This is another new idea and one I actually quite liked. Basically the way it works is that you can take any unlocked gun out of these gun cases. This lets you swap your load-out frequently, and lets you experiment with every gun in the game. They also reload your ammo, and as you can’t carry much at a time they are very useful. There are also equipment cases which do the same thing except for your gear. Unfortunately these always have an arbitrary restriction on what gear you can use. You can’t unlock the RPG by being swagtastic on the 3rd mission for example. You can also spot enemies with some cool binoculars, which lets you tell your squad to ENGAGE certain enemies. This is the big new gimmick, as it lets you tell your squad which enemies to focus on. In theory this would be pretty useful. In practice your squad sucks and they will barely even ENGAGE enemies you haven’t told them to. Seriously if I had a single great British pound for every time my squad failed to deal with the one enemy who flanked me – despite that enemy being right in front of them – I’d be able to buy every battlefield game.

Other than these new additions and tweaks, the campaign hasn’t changed too much. Fortunately the Quick-Time-Events are now totally gone (thank God). Plus as mentioned the visuals have been improved at least for the Xbone/PS4/PC versions of the game. The story is a bit weaker almost as if to compensate, with more of a focus on your squad’s characters. By which I mean, the character called Irish. Seriously he could be mistaken for the protagonist if he wasn’t absolutely useless at shooting people. Fortunately I don’t think anyone was too enraptured with the BF3 campaign narrative. Especially as this game basically shares nothing in common with the previous one. Well except for a single returning character who you only see for a total of one mission. In terms of smaller gameplay changes, your character does feel like they have more health so you can actually run-and-gun as the game expects you too, which is a welcome change. As for the soundtrack, it’s still fine if nothing particularly special. That’s about it honestly, as there isn’t much incentive to replay missions. While I could make snide comparisons between the prison level in Battlefield 4 and the gulag level in CoD: Black Ops I won’t bother.

In conclusion then, the Battlefield 4 campaign is better than the BF3 one. It’s nothing amazing, but there are some solid gunfights if you can look past the Michael Bay explosions. The narrative has some weirdly dark moments for a game that generally doesn’t take itself that seriously, but other than that it’s a standard 7th generation console shooter. You run around, you regenerate health, the AI is dumb, your squad is dumb and the action is constant. It’s not a bad experience by any means and the smaller tweaks add up to make a campaign that’s much better than the one in BF3.

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I can understand anyone who thinks it’s churlish of me to review the Battlefield 3 campaign experience solely on it’s own merits. After all, the main selling point of the game was the multiplayer mode which has been the main selling point of every Battlefield game since the series began. Indeed the series entries I played the most of while growing up are BF2 and BF2142, neither of which has a campaign mode (at least on PC). So why bother reviewing the Battlefield 3 campaign, considering the fact that it was at best an extra little bonus like the co-op missions? Well because that’s all that remains of the game for most players as of the year 2024. Sure you can technically still join a game on PC and I think Xbox 360, but the player-base is tiny at this point and if you bought it on PS3 then… that’s a shame! As a consequence, I think it’s only fair to review the campaign, which is probably the only way you’ll get to “enjoy” the game going forwards. Unfortunately for Battlefield 3, the campaign makes Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 look like a visionary single player experience, one that it’s desperately trying (and failing) to emulate. Let’s go through the checklist together, dear reader;

• Contemporary FPS game: Check
• Regenerating health: Check
• Two weapon limit: Check
• You swap between characters to see the full scale of the conflict: Check
• The game is extremely linear: Check
• The game’s engine spawns enemies in pairs to mask hardware limitations: Check
• The main bad guy is using middle eastern rebels as fodder to initiate WW3: Check
• After a certain point in the game you start shooting Russians: Check
• The campaign takes about 6 hours: Check

After playing through both campaigns, the main differences that Battlefield 3 offers are an increased emphasis on Quick Time Events, less max HP for the player and slightly better vehicle sections. Otherwise you could honestly be forgiven for thinking that this was just another Cawadoody game. To be fair, there is also some environmental destruction going on, but it’s basically a gimmick and never really helps (or hinders) you. Expect for one section where you need to run up onto an overpass while infinitely respawning enemies shoot at you and all the cover on the bridge gets ruined in like two shots. Which is hardly a point in the game’s favour, let’s be honest.

Now as the gameplay is so standard, I think it’s fair to briefly mention the narrative. The way it works is simple, you spend most of the game being interrogated and your flashbacks serve as each individual mission of the campaign. This is a bit of a hazy mechanism when it comes to the multiple other characters who you don’t know anything about, but let’s ignore that for now. Essentially you are a MUHREEN and after bumbling around the Middle East you chase the head of a terrorist group, then the even more evil guy who was using him as a puppet. To the game’s credit the final mission is actually cool (QTEs notwithstanding seriously why does this stupid game love them so much) even if a lot of questions aren’t really answered. As for the rest of the narrative, it’s nothing special but nothing terrible either – par for the course for games of this genre and generation. Most characters are cool soldiers who are stoic and do soldier things but you have a designated smart ass in your squad and an overly ambitious colonel? major? Who cares. There are also two moments in the game when a character gets sad because their friend dies, which must have been a mandatory part of getting a game published on the Xbox 360. Overall I’d give this game an OK/10 for plot, it could’ve been one of those lazy Sunday afternoon rental movies although I think it would’ve been a bit too cliche.

As for the other aspects of the game that support the not-great combat, you’ve got an acceptable OST that is totally forgettable outside of the two times when they drop the Battlefield theme. These moments were cool, I guess, but if you didn’t care much about the series (understandable considering the last big release was BF2142 which was PC exclusive) then this probably didn’t do anything for you. The graphics and visual style are… fine but nothing really special and there isn’t a huge amount of environmental. You’ve got desert, forest, a nice villa and brown-and-bloom urban warfare. I can confirm that I didn’t encounter any bugs, which is good and everything generally ran fine on my humble Xbone although Battlefield 3 does seem to have some weird issues with frame-drops during areas with abrupt changes in lighting. Otherwise everything is just OK.

But my main issue with the campaign really is the gameplay, outside of the generally enjoyable tank mission and OK/10 jet mission it’s not great. A lot of set pieces involving enemies spawning in waves while you’re stuck in a position, or getting told to flank the enemy while your squad frantically try and order a pizza or something. The shooting feels OK, although the flinching from damage makes most weapons kind of a hassle to aim considering just how freakishly accurate the enemies are. There’s a stealth section of sorts, where you only have a knife and it kind of sucks. Fortunately it doesn’t last very long at all so swings and roundabouts. There are a lot of different weapons you can use, but it doesn’t matter much and you never run out of ammo so that’s either good or bad depending on your perspective. Occasionally you need to use a special weapon against vehicles, but don’t worry because you always magically regain more shots in the event that you manage to miss. Really though the combat is OK it’s just not great. Your squad will occasionally just start shooting a wall in front of them instead of the enemy, although they do actually deal damage unlike myriad other lousy FPS games so they can clear things up. As for the enemy, they love to either zerg rush your position or camp like boy scouts. Either way they’re kind of annoying, as they are extremely accurate and keep respawning in hard to predict ways. Was that the last enemy, or is another one about to materialise with little warning? Is there still one camping somewhere, and if so will they nearly insta-kill me as soon as I see them? These are the questions you will ask yourself at least once every level. Speaking of insta-kills, not only are there multiple QTEs in Battlefield 3 that you must pass successfully first time, but also some sections where not being in exactly the right place will instantly kill you. As will RPG enemies shooting vehicles that are near you, which would be fine if they didn’t just get spawned out of nowhere on multiple levels. Generally this is a game that wants you to go fast, but punishes you for doing so. Except on a couple of occasions, where if you don’t go fast enough you fail and have to go to the last check point. It’s just an inconsistent game.

So are there any parts of the Battlefield 3 campaign I actually quite liked? Well aside from that tank section (or section-and-a-half I suppose), I did find the two Spetnaz missions kind of fun although the bit where you need to chase that guy was annoying. I’m trying not to spoil anything, but if you play the game you’ll know which part I’m referring to. As mentioned the story is fine, probably not as good as the one in Cawadoody:MW2 but not terrible or overly tedious thanks to some decent voice acting. I suppose I should mention that the CHEEVOS for the game are actually implemented pretty well and offer an incentive to replay the campaign levels while the multiplayer ones aren’t totally rubbish. Finally I thought the first and last missions were a nice way of tying up the narrative, while the rest of the game had a decent pace and got stronger in the latter half. With all that being said, trying to copy Cawadoody is a mugs game and as a consequence the campaign just feels a bit… hopeless. The AI acts weird, the highly linear levels feel like an artificial constraint, there’s minimal gameplay variation between most parts of the campaign and generally it’s all just a bit lackluster. Not terrible but not good, is how I’d sum up the Battlefield 3 single player experience.

Therefore the most important question remains, would I recommend the Battlefield 3 campaign? No. I wouldn’t really recommend it to anyone and would just skip it unless you have a decent amount of nostalgia for the game. It has a few areas where it’s successfully above the average and a couple where it’s honestly slightly below average. The game is basically the same as this review, a meandering mess that doesn’t really go anywhere or answer any pertinent questions you might have. It’s just some filler, that distracted you from better things.

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Section 8 as the TL;DR covers, is a pretty standard and long dead FPS game that lived and died by it’s multiplayer modes. With that being said, it had a few tricks up it’s sleeve which I think made it a pretty fun and enjoyable game, even if it wasn’t going to set the world on fire. Before diving into those though, I’ll just quickly rattled through the surrounding layers that aren’t really worth covering in detail. Firstly the graphics are fine for the era, nothing special but the variety in locations is appreciated and it avoids the near-ubiquitous BROWN AND BLOOM approach favoured by it’s contemporaries. It even avoids the near mandatory urine-filter that makes all the blues washed out in favour of a “nice” yellow layer. Instead this a game that just looks kinda nice. The soundtrack, such as it is, doesn’t really have a much of a role in this outside of the menu screen but it’s inoffensive so gets a pass. The weapon selection is about what you’d expect, namely assault rifles, pistols, sniper rifles, a missile launcher, a shotgun and an SMG. Finally the AI manages to be both kinda bad and also adequate at the same time, they’re good shots but tactically brain dead so swings and roundabouts. Oh and obviously the writing sucks and the voice acting isn’t very good because this is a game on the budget end of the spectrum.

With that out of the way, why did I like Section 8? Well the first thing that was really cool about the game was the fact that you spawned in by jumping through space!!! The way it works is simple, you pick a place you’d like to respawn and the game obliges by booting you out of a space ship. You then hurtle down towards the battle field, with the option of either crash landing like a badass or initiating a space-break that gives you some control over where you land. Either way getting the whole battlefield while you rush towards it is genuinely pretty cool and a nice idea. One that even ended up becoming part of the Medal of Honor series via MoH:Airborne, shortly before they went full “let’s try to be even cooler than Call of Duty” and died. The other twist that Section 8 has to offer otherwise jaded FPS fans is that you get two mobility gimmicks. The first is that if you hold sprint, eventually you’ll enter SUPER SPRINT after a few seconds and then switch to third person view while running at a very silly speed. As a bonus, you can damage both friends and foes by barrelling into them at Mach 4. Which is honestly a great addition to any game. Then the other great addition to any game is the humble jetpack, which doesn’t last for very long but everyone gets one so Section 8 gets a thumbs up from me if only for that. To compensate for the fact that everyone gets regenerating shields that take a while to go down, plus these movements options the game also has a limited auto-aim feature. Essentially every now and then you lock-on to the enemy for a few seconds, which ends instantly if they go behind cover or line of sight is otherwise broken. The timing has been handled pretty well, as you can’t just abuse it due to the long cooldown and it doesn’t guarantee a kill as generally you’ll only whittle down the enemy’s shields or at least a big chunk of them. As a consequence of these ideas, Section 8 is a fun little multiplayer shooter that gives players the ability to flex on the baddies while still having some crutches for noobs. Plus the multiplayer modes while limited, do feature two variations on “players vs overwhelming numbers of bots” which you love to see in a game. Anyone who has tried playing the Star Wars Battlefront 1 & 2 galactic conquest modes knows how fun standing off against legions of the AI can be, even when the AI isn’t particularly bright.

Unfortunately as mentioned earlier, the Section 8 multiplayer modes are super dead and no one can buy the game. There is a discord community that has jerry-rigged the LAN mode and sometimes plays the game, so click here if you’d like to join them. Otherwise you’re stuck playing against the bots in a pale imitation of MP, convincing a group of your friends to play a LAN game or “enjoying” the campaign mode. Which is why I’m writing this review, because I’ve only recently gotten around to playing the campaign mode after barely thinking about this game for around 12 years. How is it? Well it’s pretty mediocre in pretty much every way imaginable. Now notice that I didn’t say bad, I just said mediocre. This is because the campaign mode can’t really be considered bad, as it’s too bland and inoffensive to be actually objectionable. It’s fine, it even has one or two interesting (not necessarily good) ideas and it functions as a nice enough tutorial for the multiplayer mode. Which is unfortunately dead, but if we consider it in the context of when the game was relevant it’s a forgivable offence. I mean Battlefield Bad Company had a campaign, and it was OK, but people only really cared about the game for the multiplayer mode. So what makes the campaign so bland I hear you ask?

Well first thing’s first, the campaign is just a collection of 8 maps where you basically play normal skirmish matches against the AI. There are some restrictions to your load-out at least initially, and the occasional (short) cutscene but generally speaking these are pretty standard missions. You spawn in to the designated area, move forward, shoot the handful of AI enemies, press the action button to hack something and then either more enemies spawn while you defend the objective or the map gets bigger. When the map gets bigger, you go to the next objective. Rinse and repeat for almost every part of this very short campaign. Should you die, you can just respawn back in. There are no penalities for dying at all. The enemy variety is very minimal, because the enemies are just AI bots and occasionally AI bots in vehicles. Sometimes you even get a vehicle too! The plot is basically an irrelevance, your squadmates have zero personality and neither does the protagonist. In fact the only thing I can think of as being noteworthy is the bizarre way that your squadmates interact with the enemy. On the one hand, they are invulnerable. On the other hand, they only deal damage in rare instances where they are allowed to, or when you’ve dealt a decent amount of damage to an individual enemy who they are then allowed to finish off. It’s quite common to see a squadmate and an enemy locked in an elaborate duel to the death, where both run into each other, unload multiple magazines of gunfire and neither take any damage. This does make them effective distractions, but the enemy will prioritise you if you get too close. Unfortunately, a squad of 5 enemies can all deal damage whereas your squad of 3 buddies is much more limited. As for why I described it as a glorified tutorial, well that’s because over the course of Section 8’s eight missions (in hindsight, was that intentional on the part of the developers?) you are gradually introduced to each mechanic that will be in the multiplayer mode. You get to play as each class at least once. You get to call in turrets and vehicles. You get to pilot each vehicle precisely once and you have to fight each “enemy type” (namely infantry, mechs and vehicles) multiple times. The whole thing is a pretty basic and barebones story stretched over a couple of maps that play like a more scripted version of a multiplayer battle.

And at this point there really isn’t much more to say about the game. The campaign is basically a blur and I finished it in one sitting, without any difficulty. The fact that you can respawn infinitely and that each completed objective causes a supply point (which regenerates ammo and health) to drop in at your location makes it a pretty easy time. The final boss fight is just a mech with some tougher enemies escorting it, while the only real fearsome gunfights occur during “defend the objective” missions. But you can keep respawning, and the enemy AI is pretty dumb, so I never failed a mission. As mentioned the plot is super basic, you are a MARINE in SPACE whose squad dies fighting the BIG BAD GUY and so you are MAD at the BIG BAD GUY and eventually you find him and SHOOT HIM. That’s about it, there’s no world building or side characters or ambiguity or choices or anything. It’s as simple as it gets. There is one cutscene that is unintentionally really funny because the protagonist keeps saying he’s gonna COME but I chalked that up to me being immature. I will note that the environments look kinda nice and uh… the shooting is fine even if playing against bots isn’t as fun as playing against real people. I guess I should point out that Section 8 is weird in the sense that explosives don’t deal that much damage, and as a consequence enemies are surprisingly durable even if they are unsurprisingly dumb. There’s not much more to elaborate on there though, because this is a very simple campaign for an enjoyable if fairly simple FPS game.

In conclusion then Section 8 is a good FPS game that has been largely lost to the mists of time. If you were to pick it up today, you’d get a mediocre campaign and some matches against AI bots that are pretty dumb. You’d also get the potential for a fun LAN party, but let’s not kid ourselves – that probably won’t happen. So would I recommend Section 8? Not really. It’s a game I enjoyed back in the day and playing through it wasn’t a bad experience, but unless you are someone like me with fond memories this is a short and insubstantial experience. As mentioned the game is sort of free, because it’s abandonware and the truly dedicated reader can join a discord group and maybe get an online match out of it. Alas Section 8 is a game that came and went, that I can’t in good faith endorse to anyone except those who are exceptionally curious about the dead games of the 7th console generation. If you are one of those eccentrics, then it’s a fine experience with some nice ideas. For everyone else, press F to pay respects.

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Call of Juarez: The Cartel is a game that didn’t get off on the right foot, and as a consequence has basically faded from relevance entirely. It was an attempt to gently reboot the series into the frankly crowded field of contemporary FPS games and one that essentially failed. Call of Juarez: Gunslinger would come out a few years later and would actually be a success, both critically and commercially. Which means that Call of Juarez: The Cartel, for it’s merits and (numerous) flaws basically ended up as a dead end and quite possibly killed the series as a serious $60 AAA contender in it’s genre. Remember, Gunslinger was a budget game with budget aspirations, whereas The Cartel was a full budget game with the pre-requisite $60 price tag. So what caused Call of Juarez: The Cartel to be considered such a stinker?

Well to start off, it wasn’t the graphics which are nothing special but again aren’t particularly terrible and are basically fine. It also isn’t the writing, which while unintentionally cheesy and occasionally hilarious (again unintentionally) is mostly fine and actually delivers a surprisingly competent narrative. Of course by the standards of any other genre, Call of Juarez: The Cartel would be bad. We’re not talking about any other genre though, we’re talking about a FPS game, specifically a FPS game during the Call of Duty Modern Warfare era so having some occasionally interesting twists puts this game in pretty good stead. No the main issues with the game are simple and frankly what you’d expect. It’s a FPS game with regenerating health, inconsistent enemy damage, friendly AI that could charitably be described as useless, a strict 3 weapon limit (1 real gun and 2 pistols), wimpy grenades and an incredibly linear experience. To give an indiction of how the moment-to-moment gameplay feels, you are in a back alley shooting at clones of the same 4 guys who say the same handful of lines in every encounter. They will die in like 2 hits, but all the guns are inaccurate and aim-assist is for girls so if you’re playing on console then shooting is slightly tricky. Meanwhile your AI squad mates are shooting at the terrain that the bad guys are standing behind, and every 15 seconds will either say “DO U EVEN PRACTICE WITH DAT PIECE” or “TRY AIMING” if you miss, or “LEAVE SOME FOR US” or “U DONT HAVE TO DO DIS ALL BY URSELF” if you don’t. Rinse and repeat for around 4 and a half hours. Sometimes you drive a car (because the AI can’t) which handles badly and very occasionally you get to ride shotgun during scripted sequences, which are the same as the rest of the game but you can’t take cover. That’s about it.

Now to be fair there are three other mechanics which Call of Juarez: The Cartel brings to the table like an oblivious fat guy bringing hot dogs to a vegan BBQ. The first is that sometimes you kick a door down, which starts a slow motion sequence (just like the Matrix!!!) where you get to shoot some guys with your pistol. Then there are some cover shooting sequences where your heroic partners lay down covering fire while you flank a machine gun, which basically consist of the game saying “GO GO GO” or “NO GO NO GO” at the bottom of the screen. If you go while it says NO GO then you take a billion damage very quickly. Then once you flank the machine gun you uh, shoot the bad guys and the game carries on. These sections have their own unique backing track which gets abruptly shoved into the music mix while they’re taking place, just in case you struggled to read the only text on the screen. Finally the real meat of the game so to speak, is the “hidden agendas” mechanic. In theory it’s pretty cool, in practice it’s badly implemented so… points for trying I guess? The way it works is simple, you and your two shady cop partners each have little side objectives to complete. BEN MCGRAW the stern, angry, cowboy guy is basically stealing things for a prostitute he’s trying to get clean. EDDIE the loud mouthed hispanic is also swiping things because he’s in a lot of debt because he’s a gambler. Finally THE GIRL (Evans?) is swiping drugs because her brother is in a gang or something. What happens is occasionally someone calls your character mid-mission and says “hey bro can u steal something xoxo”. Then you are meant to PRESS X TO STEAL THING while no one else is looking. The problem is that this is the only way to level up your character, which gives access to better guns. Therefore I can only assume that you’d have to be a dumbass to deliberately screw up your buddies ability to have better guns. In practice it doesn’t really matter, because the starting guns are pretty much equal to the unlocks anyway. Also, in reality the AI is really dumb as established earlier. As a consequence, they are either following you (making this almost impossible because you have to do it sneakily) or are really far away. So you swipe things when they’re not up your butthole, which can be triggered by moving forwards to the next batch of baddies. I’m not sure what my partners in crime thought of me randomly running away during a bunch of gunfights only to return 2 minutes later with noticeably enlarged pockets, but hey whatever I wanna level up. I assume when playing with real people you basically steal them to look away for a sec, although my understanding is that you can gain XP by stopping them from stealing things. Again though doing this when within punching distance of the guy who actually bought the damn game is probably a bad idea.

So with the handful of “new” mechanics basically being the same as the rest of the game, we have an issue. Due to the fact that the core shooting isn’t great and that everything else is basically just a novelty, Call of Juarez: The Cartel struggles to really distinguish itself. Which if it were an honest to God cowboy game, wouldn’t be a big problem because there aren’t many of those. Unfortunately the series was trying to become a contemporary shooter, and there were a lot of those. As a result Call of Juarez: The Cartel got middling reviews and was deemed forgettable enough that it’s the only game in the series to be delisted from sale. I would complain about how seemingly every damn 7th generation console game seems to be suffering this fate lately (including Devil May Cry 4 and Spec Ops: The Line at time of writing) but that is par for the course now. If you don’t buy a game within 10 years of it being released, then it’s a total crap-shoot as to whether it’ll still be available for sale, or have received a half-arsed remaster, or just deleted entirely outside of piracy. I guess I should elaborate a bit on the plot, if only because there’s very little else to discuss other than the obligatory 7th generation totally dead multiplayer mode that no one cared about. So I’ll note that your three characters are each from different agencies, all of them are frankly a little but suspicious and all of them specialise in different weapons. In real terms this last bit doesn’t matter at all, but if you want all the CHEEVOS you’ll need to beat the game 3 times (once with each character) and then invent a time machine so you can go back to 2011 and maybe play this game online. The character dialogue is about what you’d expect, in the sense that it’s very silly and trying itself very seriously and has 3 stereotypes (Stern cowboy, goofy Mexican, sassy independent Black woman) yelling at each other because they’re all a bit crooked. Fortunately as mentioned the plot has a couple twists, that aren’t huge but are enough to keep things interesting and ensure that you can’t be certain as to what the heck is going on. It’s not amazing, but having news reports during the loading screens blabbing about what you’ve been up to is amusing and the game does a decent job of conveying it’s central point. Namely that the institutions your characters are serving, are just as dysfunctional as they are.

Now I could briefly mention that the driving sections are annoying because you keep getting shot constantly but can’t really do anything about it, or that the weapon selection is pretty boring, or that you have the ability to dual-wield your pistols (which kinda sucks honestly), or that you have a very limited “slow mo” concentration mode (with laughably bad “quips” that get used when you activate it), but honestly who cares. The game is fine. It’s a 7th generation console FPS with all the issues you’d expect, a slightly above story and the ability to play it in 3-player co-op. That’s about it, the plot is largely what you’d expect from Crooked Cops vs Cartels and neither the graphics nor soundtrack are noteworthy. In conclusion then, Call of Juarez: The Cartel is a mediocre 7th generation FPS with an OK plot and serviceable shooting. If you didn’t play this game, you didn’t really miss anything. If you want to play this game on the back of glowing review then you’ll need a 360 or PS3 (or just pirate it who cares, UBISOFT of all people won’t even sell it on PC). Would I recommend the game? No. Did I have a terrible time? No. It starts off badly and then becomes OK and has some occasionally interesting moments. That’s about as far as I’ll go, much like the series.

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After finishing up Half Life 2 I realised that it’s actually fun, if you can withstand the glacial initial levels. As such I decided to give the episodes a shot. Now I know this won’t be a surprise, but they’re generally fine even if they don’t change much. In Episode 1, we essentially repeat a bunch of Half Life 2’s more memorable moments. While in Episode 2, we actually get some new features and ideas, even if they’re not particularly mind-blowing. There’s one thing to bear in mind across Half Life 2: Episode 1 & 2. Namely that they weren’t intended to be the last parts of HL2. Instead they were really just teeing things up for HL:EP3/Half Life 3. As such they’ve got fun little chunks of gameplay. Yet as they didn’t have a huge amount of development time we don’t get much in the way of substantial changes.

Starting with Episode 1, we basically get a few new ideas interspersed among three different scenes. During the first part of the Episode we’re back in the combine’s citadel, amidst the newly liberated City 17. You’d think our job is over, but now we have to prevent an intergalactic meltdown. This involves dealing with one new “enemy” type who aren’t hostile, before we successfully prevent a core meltdown. After this glorious use of Gordon’s scientific background, you then get a quasi-Ravenholm section which drags on for a while. This is where we get the only new enemy introduced in this episode, namely the Zombine. Which is a zombie, but a combine. The main twist is that they have wayyyyy more health and also try to suicide bomb you. This section involves a lot of using the flash-light, alongside a platforming puzzle where you hop over a bunch of radioactive goop. Eventually it culminates in a holdout scenario where hordes of zombies keep spawning and trying to eat your dork ass while you wait for a lift. After all that nastiness, you waddle around City 17 helping rebels, checking out a hospital full of zombies and eventually lead a bunch of rebels to safety via the train station. These rebel sections are probably the most entertaining, although I did quite like the hospital section. Oh and for die-hard RPG fans don’t worry. Because this section repeats the strider battles, and a gunship battle. Some might consider this a bit lazy. But again, Episode 1 was bashed out in a little over a year so I’m inclined to be relatively forgiving. Generally though Episode 1 is… just fine. Nothing particularly special and outside of a few pieces of characterisation there really isn’t much here. One new enemy, one new quasi-enemy, a bit of lore and a couple of memorable set pieces hidden amongst the three-ish hours of content.

Then we’re onto the second of the two episodes, which starts off with your bb girl getting stabbed to fuck. No you didn’t teleport to Glasgow, instead you were assailed by a new type of enemy. Don’t worry though, because you spend about an hour fannying around an Antlion hive. This is done so you can get the doohicky that will save her. During this section, there is a cool idea where you need to avoid an Antlion guard on steroids without killing it. Alongside a bunch of slightly boring sections where you have to deal with another new enemy. This one being an antlion with a ranged attack! That also damages you if it’s too close to you when it dies. So that’s… cool. There’s also another hold-out section, but this time against loads of Antlions. You then escort a Vortagaunt around for a bit, before getting to play a driving section. Now you might remember how the vehicles were kinda jank in the first game. Fortunately they are exactly the same. Yay! Then you fight the aforementioned Antlion guard on steroids alongside his friend, before dealing with a shorter zombie section and a bit more driving and then you eventually get to the rebel base. Up to this point, there really isn’t that much new outside of that annoying acid spraying Antlion.

Then the episode abruptly comes to life, at least a little bit, as you survive an ambush containing those new hunters that were teased so much. In terms of gameplay, they’re a cross between the Antlion guards and normal combine because they have plenty of health and a range of strong-ish attacks. Much like the base game, this DLC has a somewhat slow start with all the Antlion cave nonsense but picks up towards the end even if it hits many of the same notes. Ambush, Sniper fight, Gunship fight, Strider fight set piece, abrupt ending. Bish bash bosh. There’s also some plot shenanigans going on where the G-Man basically says “hey once you’re done with this Episode some crazy shit is gonna happen”. Why? Well that’s a fair question, basically the Combine (not the Zombine) are going to open a super portal and screw up Earth… again. So you need to shoot a rocket into space to stop it. This will apparently have “unforeseen consequences”, which apparently means the cancellation of Episode 3. So as of the time of writing, I can safely and definitely conclude (at least temporarily) that Half Life 2: Episode 1 & 2 are more of the same. I don’t hate them, although I have to confess that they have reduced the shine of Half Life 2’s last chapters a tad. You see, while the narrative is still interesting and definitely has it’s moments, knowing it ends on that unresolved cliff hanger dulls it’s impact. It’s a great hook for the next instalment, but alas that instalment will seemingly never come.

With all that being said, the weapons are still a bit rubbish. While the handful of new enemies are a mixed bag. The Zombine are just zombies, but if you leave them for too long they’ll try and suicide bomb you. The Antlion guardian is just a guard, but with more HP. The acid spitting antlions are just antlions, but a pain in the arse. Finally the hunters are an interesting idea for a stronger, hybrid enemy but frankly they manage to be both over-used and not used enough. You see they’re an interesting addition to a squad, but often you’re only fighting them. Generally speaking, while the extra levels aren’t bad and do have their moments, there’s rarely much that’s special. I mean these episodes serve as vehicles for the plot. But the plot doesn’t get resolved, so only the gameplay is really left. And that gameplay is both very similar and yet slightly tweaked. Alas those tweaks are only really good when it comes to the set pieces. Which are still entertaining, and the dialogue is still good but… In many levels you’re basically just standing in an area, waiting for enemies to stop spawning.

So in conclusion, it’s hard to recommend Half Life 2: Episode 1 & 2. If you are looking for more Half Life 2, then it’s a no-brainer but you don’t need to tell you this. The writing, set pieces and world design remain as strong as ever. At the same, the combat, weapons and variety are fairly weak. These episodes are primarily made for existing fans to hype them up for the next instalment, so if you aren’t an existing fan then there’s not much to recommend here. There are some nice scenes, but we all know it’s not going anywhere. If you really wanted more Half Life 2, then here it is. Otherwise I wouldn’t really bother. Either way, Half Life: Episode 1 & 2 are available for just over £1 during the Steam sales so I’d grab them then (and only then) if you are interested.

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Half Life 2 is one of those games that will forever life in fame, or perhaps infamy depending on your opinion of our forced march into a digital-only future. Despite being an incredibly HYPED game and one that generally remained popular for years after it’s release, these days it’s mainly known about because it’s never ever getting a sequel. Which is a bit of a shame, because Half Life 2 is a decent game and while it’s various revolutionary features are now par for the course, that doesn’t mean it’s bad or unable to compete with those games that came after it. The facial animations are still pretty good, especially for the era and it’s gravity and physics shenanigans are still capable of producing enjoyable moments. It’s a shame that the game has so many see-saw “puzzles”, but at least it gets the memo that we’ve done it already by about the halfway point. Plus to be fair, at the time all this physics was genuinely pretty cool and for better or worse, the combat wasn’t quite so hot at time of release either. All of this makes reviewing Half Life 2 a bit of a pain, because you can view it in a few different ways that all equally valid. You could see the game as a linear 6th gen FPS experience in which case it’s fine. You could look at it through the eyes of it’s time in which case it has really cool features. Or you could view it as the harbinger of the current Steam quasi-monopoly which has not only dominated the PC gaming space but has influenced the console space to the point that Microsoft/Xbox are abandoning physical games. After getting in trouble for trying to abandon 2nd hand games all the way back in 2013. Vindication for Don Mattrick at last?

Regardless of Half Life 2’s wider ramifications, I’m just going focus on my experience playing the game. Which was years after release and my first time playing the game would have been in 2009, after my TF2 clan-mates (throwback) were SHOCKED that I hadn’t played it. Due to the fact that Half Life 2 was one of THE big PC releases of the time and was still a big deal all the way through to the release of the Orange Box. To be honest, I never bought The Orange Box because I didn’t care about Half Life 2 at all and instead ended up buying a physical copy of TF2 for fairly cheap (think it was 15 pounds?) and then getting Portal a year later for Christmas because it seemed cool. As such I got gifted a spare key for the game from someone’s copy of the Orange Box, played it for a couple hours and was baffled as to why everyone cared so much about the game. This was due to two reasons, firstly the opening of Half Life 2 could be charitably described as slowww and also the game really was seen as one of the greatest FPS games EVAR at the time. As such I just thought people were silly and moved on, kept playing TF2, enjoyed L4D1 and L4D2 (after whining about the $60 price tag of the latter). Only now after combing through my backlog and deciding it to give it another chance have I actually enjoyed the game. AFTER making it through the first third, which was also really slow and only gives you the crap weapons.

Which is one of the bigger issues with the game, because if you strip away the narrative and the physics then you’re left with a FPS game that has… uh… not great combat. Especially when the early levels only have a handful of different enemy types, with a handful of weapons you can use to deal with them. That’s not to say that the game has bad combat because it actually gets pretty good later on and there’s an interesting section towards the end where the game really leans into it’s physics based combat. Just that your crowbar, pistol and SMG all suck. Honestly take it from me as someone has finished literally hundreds of FPS games, the basic HL2 weapons are really bad to use. Adding insult to injury, the game has a low maximum ammo pool for most weapons, so you’re only able to get through around 5 magazines of SMG ammo from the absolute maximum. Which is a problem when it’s not very accurate and doesn’t do that much damage, much like the pistol. Fortunately the game picks up especially around Ravenholm when you get the Shotgun which remains pretty decent. Speaking of which Ravenholm introduces a bunch of zombies and really encourages you to use the gravity gun, so it’s where the game starts to come together. If you can make it through Ravenholm, then all of a sudden you’ll be in a hybrid D-Day / Starship Troopers battle, conducting a prison break and fighting a civil war in the streets. The game really picks up in the second half, so I can see why I thought it SUCKED after getting bored by the early stages of Ravenholm. If only I’d had a little more patience, and eaten a couple less pies my adolescence probably would’ve been better. Oh well, hindsight is 20/20 after all.

So how does the game get better? After all, the first couple of hours would seemingly be what the game’s all about. Namely the occasional vehicle section, punctured by physics puzzles, faffing around and getting in combat encounters. You’ve got the zombies, some bugs and the combine who are mainly human soldier guys with the exception of some cyborg combat vehicles (half alien half pewpewpew). Well the main thing it does is stop locking you in rooms while someone talks to you, which it still does later on but with less frequency and with more interesting chatter. It also continues to introduce new enemy types, up until the closing stages of the game which are used to make combat encounters more interesting. The game remains highly linear, but with a few exceptions this isn’t a huge deal as areas make it fairly obvious where to go – and when you get lost, there’s some bonus ammo lying around. In an interesting nod to how games used to be, I found that a couple of times the route you were meant to take was actually somewhat hidden away. A small vent tucked in a corner or a door that seems to be blocked off, but is actually covered in physics objects that can be moved with the gravity gun. As a consequence the game flows well, but still requires you to think a little. As for the combat, as you start getting better guns it shockingly enough gets more enjoyable. You’re organically juggling through your weapons as the situation requires, instead of just using the SMG until you run out of ammo for it. It’s one of those cases where more is actually more. You learn more about the world, there are more enemy types to deal with. You have more weapons to deal with them, which requires juggling your ammo due to the tight maximum ammo restrictions. As a bonus the later stages are just more interesting in my opinion, obvious Ravenholm is cool and unique but the rest of the game hits a similar level.

Which means that OK the combat is good once you hit the halfway point, but what about the rest of the game? Well the graphics are perfectly fine for the time, although the Xbox version does have some long loading times and choppy frame-rates compared to any quasi-modern PC running the Steam version. The price is exceedingly reasonable these days, because it is a twenty year old game but still worth mentioning in a world where Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 1 (the original) is still asking for 30 quid. The soundtrack is actually enjoyable, somewhat dated in terms of how it’s used, but it’s good at creating at an atmosphere and some of the tracks are certified club bangers. I’d even go so far as to say that the writing is good, as the characters are relatable and feel organic. Most of them are only used sparingly, but are still memorable due to strong performances. As for the setting and lore, it does a good job of showing not telling and many aspects of the game are deliberately left vague. The only thing I can really fault outside of the game’s slow start would be the noticeable gear-shift that the game has under the hood for it’s multiple loading screens. It’s not a huge deal, but the game does have a little moment every time you hit a stage transition (with multiple per level). The music abruptly stops, the game hangs for a moment, and then you pushed forward with the physics and power usage of your flash-light resetting. It’s especially noticeable when you’re in a vehicle, because the abrupt shove to the game’s physics often leads to some jerky handling.

In conclusion then Half Life 2 is a pretty solid game that has a very slow start. Seriously I can’t get over how much the game actively redeems itself once you get to Ravenholm and especially once you’re got to the latter stages of that level. Up until then it’s pretty bland, but once you actually get interested in the setting and can fully utilise the combat mechanics Half Life 2 really opens up. Everything else about it, aside from the console port is pretty good for the era. As for it’s much touted physics simulation, while it does add something to the gameplay I’d say it’s on the edge of just being a gimmick. The real reason to play the game is for the setting and maybe for the latter combat encounters. It remains very linear throughout, but that’s not always a bad thing. As such I’d give Half Life 2 a modest recommendation, with the caveat that you need to be willing to sit through the first 5 or so levels before it opens up.

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Call to Arms is one of those games I was pretty excited about, until I made the fateful decision to actually play the damn thing. Which isn’t to say it’s a bad game, because it’s not, but it languished in my Steam library for years before I decided to finally give it another go and try to figure out what made me drop it in the first place. Honestly I’m not sure what caused me to get butthurt the last time, although I think I played it during early access and as such there were only 5 campaign missions which may have been entirely different from the ones in the base game. After playing through the campaign I can say that it’s alright, the mission structure will be incredibly familiar to anyone who’s played a Men of War game (any of them, even Faces of War the unofficial member!) because they all fit into a handful of standard roles. You’ve got two stealth missions, where you have barely any guys and have to crawl around the map dodging patrols until you can start shredding fools. Then you’ve got the defence missions where you hold a position against waves of baddies, and a couple of standard attack the enemy piece-by-piece missions where they keep adding new objectives while you have not quite enough men or material left. Finally there’s a proper assault mission which is saved for last, in which you not only attack various objectives but also get to call in reinforcements. The main twist in this campaign is a mission where you can only use Direct Control over a tank, and you drive around with some buddies shredding the defenders of an airfield before shooting down some jets and taking piece in a steadfast defence against waves of enemy armour. Most of these missions are pretty fun, although some of them (such as the 3rd mission) are much, much, much easier if you utilise direct control to a level I’ve never seen before.

Those not familiar with the Men of War series will no doubt be asking WTF is Direct Control? Well it’s when you assume direct control of a unit in the game, with the option of controlling them in 1st or 3rd person. You can control any unit at any time and the only catch is that while you’re laughing it up as a tank, you can’t be directing the rest of your forces. This feature has also been in previous games in the series, but the first person view and controls are entirely new to my knowledge. It’s a fun little gimmick and directly controlling an Abrams tank is pretty fun, I’m not going to lie while the soldier controls do let relieve your Rambo 3 fantasies on those nasty Global Revolutionary Movement baddies. One other caveat with this feature is that you have to bind both all of your 1st person controls, and all of your RTS controls on the same keyboard and mouse which means that the direct control erm controls are frankly a bit weird. Crouch is ALT, grenade is Mouse button 4 and so on. To make things even trickier, you still have to worry about your limited inventory because in Call to Arms like in Men of War every unit has their own inventory and consequentially their own amount of ammo. Unfortunately the other thing making direct control slightly tricky is the fact that it seems kind of… bugged? I don’t know why, but quite often when using an automatic weapon it would just keep shooting continuously for a while of it’s own volition. Then sometimes it wouldn’t fire for ages, again for some reason that I can’t quite figure out. Ultimately it’s a cool feature, that gets a lot of emphasis in the campaign but does lack a bit of polish. It’s also kinda over powered, because you can absolutely start shredding the enemy while in first person to the point that you’ll often find yourself racking up huge body counts with each soldier.

In terms of other changes to the game, Call to Arms sadly falls short. You do get two new factions in a contemporary setting, but the “bad guys” the Global Revolutionary Movement are pretty boring and so-so as they’re just a generic middle eastern “rebel” movement. You’re not getting something like the Global Liberation Army from C&C Generals which was oozing flavour and fun, but instead you’re getting the generic baddies from a war on terror game. So they’ve got some soviet-era tanks, a bunch of generic middle eastern dudes and nothing in the way of excitement. Then you’ve got the US Army, who are fine but have a pretty limited roster as they only really get the Abrams, Bradley, Striker and Humvee vehicles alongside a couple of types of infantry grunts. Compared to Men of War Assault Squad which let you play as (WW2) Germany, Russia, America, the British Commonwealth and Imperial Japan each of which had as many, if not more units each it’s a bit disappointing. You’d be forgiven for thinking “oh well this is the new baseline just like Men of War only had Russia and Germany”, but you can jog on because they’ve used Call to Arms as a gateway to introduce a new WW2 subgame (Gates to Hell) which has reintroduced all the WW2 factions (except Japan I think). So it’s kind of a small game, considering that you get only one campaign unless you upgrade to the Deluxe edition for an extra 750 Great British pennies or roughly $10 with only 10 campaign missions in the base game. Then it’s just skirmish and multiplayer maps against other players, so there isn’t too much to run with here.

As for the rest of the game, it’s really just a shinier version of Men of War as mentioned already. This means that you get an OK/10 soundtrack that you won’t listen to outside of the game but is fine enough and fits the mood. That means that the voice acting is bad, although it’s slightly better and no longer has laughably direct translations from Russian (so no more Americans shouting “FOR THE MOTHERLAND” and “HOORAY” when they get into combat). That means that you’ve got the armour penetration system with different shots and angles having a huge impact, which is still great although I must confess that it feels like battle tanks are well… tankier than they used to be. Finally it means that individual squads are alright at looking after themselves and will use grenades and medkits without too much prompting, although there is one big change that kind of got on my tits. You see in the other Men of War games, infantry had Anti-Tank grenades which meant that they could deal with unexpected enemy armour reinforcements without much trouble. Of course they’d quickly run out, but hey a decent amount of enemies had them too so you could just scavenge for them when there was a quiet moment. In Call to Arms these have been removed entirely, which doesn’t impact the enemy much because they get lots of Anti Tank rifles such as RPG’s mixed in with their squads. You don’t though, and the few AT missiles you do get tend to be wasted nearly instantly by your squad members as soon as they spot an enemy technical. You know, those jeeps with machine guns on them which the game LOVES to throw your way CONSTANTLY and which are even annoying to deal with in Direct Control mode because the driver will magically teleport to the gunners seat and back to the drivers seat endlessly making sniping them a total pain in the arse. The lack of AT grenades also means that your infantry, especially in the earlier missions will be totally bloody useless against any enemy tank and your own tank will be outnumbered 10-to-1 while dealing with swarms of enemy infantry with RPGs. It’s a weird downgrade and kind of annoying to be honest. Aside from this weird decision, combat is pretty much identical although there is a noticeable shortage of anti-tank cannons this time around.

And that’s about it really. There’s some new in-game monetisation stuff going on but honestly I can’t even pretend to care about it so make of it what you will. There was also some sort of controversy about the Season Pass not including the WW2 stuff, but again I don’t care because what sort of chump buys content that’s not out yet? Well me because I bought it during Early Access for a fiver but that’s totally different (honest). Aside from those two changes that I am frankly oblivious to, there’s not anything else to discuss. Call to Arms is Men of War but prettier and featuring ‘Murica against the generic middle eastern bad guys. Direct Control is a lot better, everything else is slightly better but there’s also a lot less content to go around. Make of it what you will. For existing Men of War fans it’s a fun little quasi-sequel, for casual RTS fans who haven’t played a Men of War game I can give it a modest recommendation whilst on sale and for everyone else I wouldn’t worry about it too much. It’s a perfectly fine and modest RTT experience with some fun missions, not a huge amount of content but you can always play it in Skirmish or MP or buy the DLC that doesn’t that much these days. Therefore I’m giving Call to Arms a singular thumbs up. Huzzah!

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Quick Note: This game is slightly glitchy if you start fannying around with co-op settings. If you get stuck you can always force the game to close by opening the Steam overlay and making it quit the game that way.

The House of the Dead: Remake is a game that came out of nowhere and was quickly snatched up and thrown into my Steam library around the time I first saw it was available, as for whatever reason it’s been the only HotD I haven’t played yet. Much like it’s sequels the game has the campy charm of a low quality release while still offering a variety of fun enemy encounters, a short-enough game length that it’s great for co-op while having enough unlockables and collectibles to still offer a decent amount of playtime. Unfortunately the port job hasn’t been conducted without any issue, as the game’s port by a motley band of developers I literally haven’t heard of has resulted in a Unity port that does little to dispel the negative conception of that particularly ill-fated engine. The two main issues I’ve encountered (and fortunately I haven’t encountered the “bug” where the game just flat out refuses to work) are surprisingly long load times and occasional instances of the game failing to load anything visually aside from the enemies. Fortunately these issues are fairly minor, as the game only fails to load the level briefly at a time and the actual loading of each level while slightly tedious only needs to take place when you’re booting up the game for the first time, or loading the game’s gallery mode. As such the game itself is able to operate on a fairly speed basis, with enemies jumping through windows, falling down from ceilings or clambering across walls and water features without any delay which keeps the pace up. The House of the Dead: Remake is therefore a fast paced game and were it not for the fact that it only includes 4 levels you would be in for a roller-coaster ride of an experience, but alas the game is over almost as quickly as it starts once you’ve figured out how the bosses work.

Which is kind of the game’s jam, for want of a better way of describing it. The House of the Dead: Remake is deliberately designed to be a short but intensive thrill ride which has the player basically unable to take a breather at any stage of the experience, as even when there are no enemies on screen there are hidden paths and collectibles scattered around that need to be shot to be unlocked. While this is great for keeping the pace up and ensuring that any co-op partners will find it hard to come up with an excuse to leave mid-session, it does also mean that the game has to be kept short enough that you’ll want to keep on rolling with the punches. Which means you get 4 levels per playthrough, of which 1 is a glorified boss-rush that barely lasts a few minutes because you should know how to deal with the bosses by now. In fact the bosses actually get easier as the game goes on, with the possible exception of the final boss who’s “weak spot” is hidden during the intro-screen. Fortunately the bosses are still fairly intense as they move quickly and you’ll need to keep hammering away at them to stop them for dealing a ton of damage to you, but they’re really more of a show-piece than an immense challenge – at least on normal difficulty.

As for the gameplay itself it’s an on-rails light-gun shooter where your character moves at their own pace through a variety of shooting galleries, with monsters appearing from all sides often with minimal notice. There’s a decent amount of enemy variety considering there are only really 3 stages, but on subsequent playthroughs there isn’t much in the way of variation unless you take the alternative paths. With these paths often being fairly well hidden, or at least requiring some intuition. Your character’s glance might quickly switch to a button for example, which you can shoot within the 2 seconds given to cause an elevator to appear or for a locked door to be shot down. Otherwise your character quickly moves on to the next series of targets. That’s about it for the gameplay, as outside of researchers occasionally getting in the way there isn’t much to it. These researchers are essentially civilians who you can shoot, but you shouldn’t as they give you extra points and sometimes healing items. In addition if you’re able to save all of them then you get a “secret” bonus room during the final stage. The House of the Dead: Remake also comes with an optional horde mode, which I had initially assumed was some sort of last-stand or defensive side activity, but which is instead just the same levels as the base campaign but with considerably more enemies on screen at any point.

With all that being said there isn’t too much to discuss about this House of the Dead remake, as while the graphics are perfectly acceptable they’re not worthy of extensive coverage. There’s a new soundtrack due to licensing issues with the original, which sounds fine to me but which can be replaced with the original’s via modding (on PC) for those who dislike it. The gameplay is enjoyable, faithful and frantic even if it’s fairly straight forward. There isn’t a huge amount of content but there is some replayability via the 3 different endings, different stage routes, achievement hunting (which unlocks additional weapons and even cheat codes) and the optional horde mode which provides a challenge for more hardcore gamers. It’s therefore a serviceable port of the original which features a handful of extra features, but which is sadly let down by the lack of online multiplayer and the lack of alternative game modes. So it’s short and sweet, but not particularly filling unless you are the sort of person who cares about 100% completion. One last thing to mention again is that you can unlock multiple different weapons and cheat codes which are fun to mess around with, but of course you can only play through the 4 included stages so many times before they begin to get a bit tiresome. Horde mode alleviates this slightly by mixing up the enemy spawns, but changing the difficulty doesn’t seem to have much of an impact.

In conclusion then The House of the Dead: Remake is an enjoyable co-op game and a decent enough single player experience, albeit one that most players won’t spend too much time with. While I’m glad that the game has been successful and that a sequel is in development, I am hoping that the House of the Dead 2 remake gets a bit more extra content to help add some meat to the base game’s bones. Unfortunately while The House of the Dead: Remake is a good remake, it does have some weird quirks like the lack of online co-op and some graphical bugs which haven’t been patched by the developers. As for whether I recommend it? Well yeah I do, I think it’s a fun little game and it’s not particularly expensive – plus having a local co-op game that’s not lengthy or overtly complicated is always a good thing. I do just wish it more content however, as playing through the campaign takes under an hour and once you’ve done that you’re just replaying through largely the same handful of stages with the same bosses, even if the alternative routes offer a sliver of much needed variety. The unlockable guns are great, the gallery is cute, the voice acting is still appropriately bad and the visual upgrades are nice, but it’s just oh so short and it’s replayability is near solely dependent on whether you can convince someone to come to your house and give it a go.

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