Gaming with Buzzman

[Buzzman]

I think its called Hard, I forgot if they call it that or something else. But I always play the game on the 2nd to hardest difficulty first.

 

[A Tasty Burgerr]

Your presentation on these is great.

 

[Buzzman]

The Saboteur

A VSNDaily.com User Review
Author: Buzzman

What did you love about the game?
- The color-changing atmosphere
- The protagonist Sean
- The antagonist Dierker
- Assassin Creed-like Climbing

What did you hate about the game
- Repetitive Missions
- Driving system
- Weapons aiming
- The AI

Graphics – 8.5

At the surface, The Saboteur is an average looking game that doesn’t feature great graphics. The city of Paris looks a little bit plain and stale, the cars all look the same, and people are more or less the same person with different clothes if you look close enough at them. But Pandemic took a great route with the atmosphere of the game. The city of Paris starts off in black and white and has a Noire type feel to it. The war has driven the city to ruins and the people have lost hope. The only color with meaning is the red of the Nazi flags and signs. It’s a great sight to see. As you progress through the game completing missions, you start to give the city hope and the areas that you have cleaned of Nazi presence, begin to have life with them getting filled with vibrant colors that stand out on your television. Going from a area of the city without hop to one with it, is what makes this game’s atmosphere so great.

Sound – 8.5

The sound is alright. The characters all sound very well, but I can’t stand French people. Their accents sound annoying to me and for a game that is stationed in Paris; you hear a lot of it. This is why I love Sean Devlin so much. He’s an Irish racecar driver who spews out one liners left and right. The music is pretty attractive to the ears, but I can’t really narrow what type of music it is. When your driving and doing certain music a woman starts to sing, think back to the 30’s when she would sing with that big ass mic in the middle of the stage. On other missions, specifically blowing shit up, the loud Irish drinking music would blast, kicking up your adrenaline. About the weapons, they sounded good but did they have silenced heavy machine guns back then?

Gameplay – 8

The Saboteur plays like a cheap GTA clone. Its an open world game with missions setup just like GTA. The missions are very inconsistent. Some are very fun to play because they involve sneaking into a place and just going apeshit on the Nazis, but others are tedious like stealing a bottle of wine. Unfortunately, you get more bad ones then fun ones. On the bright side the fun ones last 3x longer then bad ones.

The weapon controls feel very slow when you first start. Its tough to aim, and at a distance you can forget about killing them with less then 10 shots. The recoil is extreme, and grenades are hard to throw. But after a while you get used to it all. You can use dynamite to blow up watch towers and tanks, which is pretty fun. The combat is very useful in the game. You can grab an enemy and throw them off the building, or you can just snap their neck ending them right there.

The driving in the game was terrible. The cars all felt the same except racecars drove a lot faster. They were hard to handle and had no physical damage unless you got shot at. It was a nuisance to drive. Another great thing that was cool, but had a few glitches, was the ability to climb like Assassins Creed. You could literally climb anything and everything, but sometimes you would climb the wrong thing you would fall for no reason. A great feature none the less.

The AI in the game was terrible though. You could kill a Nazi, get chased by the entire army, but turn a corner quickly, kiss a girl, and have them run right by and lose their tail that quick. They were completely stupid in situations of all kind. Then with the civilians, if you want to steal their car, go for it because once you pull them out they walk away like nothing happened. It was a minor thing that didn’t effect the game play, but it was a little annoying to see.

The actual story, despite being set in World War 2, doesn’t use it as the main driving point. It’s more of a revenge story that has the war as its background. The story is good at the start, then starts getting slow when you help the resistance, but has an outstanding finish that is up there with the best. The tone at the end takes a drastic change going from over the top action to horror that fits right in with Nazis.

Lasting Appeal – 8.5

The game takes about 15 hours to beat with three acts in total. It did feel like a short 15 hours because I was having a lot of fun with the game. There is plenty of stuff left to do after the game as long as you skip the side missions and just move along with the main ones. The side missions will likely add another five hours to the game and you have the choice to do them along with the main ones or just after the game. I recommend the latter. Along with side missions, you have a checklist of Nazi areas to take out such as watch towers, tanks, and generals. It’s a long list of things and if you want to color the whole city, the checklist needs to be completed.

Final Comments

The Saboteur is a great game but not without its flaws. Those flaws are enough to drive someone away, but if they can withstand and work with them, then they are in for one hell of a game. It takes the best ideas from games and outs them all into one, which for the most part works well. Pandemic closed right after making this game, but boy did they go out with a bang. They will be missed.

Category Scorecard
Graphics: 8.5
Sound: 8.5
Gameplay: 8
Lasting Appeal: 8.5

Final Score: 8/10

 

[Buzzman]

Kane and Lynch: Dead Men

A VSNDaily.com User Review
Author: Buzzman

What did you love about the game?
- The adrenaline-kicking situations
- The leads: Kane and Lynch
- The mature rating
- The dialogue

What did you hate about the game?
- The latter third of the story
- The shooting mechanics
- The clunky movement/cover system
- The length

Graphics – 8

Kane and Lynch doesn’t go above and beyond in the graphics department. It brings a stable engine that brings a variety of environments that generally look good. The problem was the actual items around you. Countless times you could shoot a wall and see no bullet holes, or shoot a desk and it looks perfectly intact. Not being able to control the place around you is disappointing considering this is a third person action shooter. That still shouldn’t effect someone all that much, but it’s a factor. While the last third of the game is disappointing, the turn into a jungle environment was the best part visually in the game with the rain bearing down on you and fire explosions knocking at you throughout your mission. It came as a little bit of a surprise since it moved so drastically from the environment you got comfortable seeing.

Sound – 10

Instantly, you get a sample of how good the sound is when you break out of a prison transport and have an entire police force trying to take you down. The guns are loud and fierce, the explosions leave your ear drums pounding, and the people around you are barking orders to help you escape. It’s audio setup a great introduction to the campaign.

The voice actors were great. Kane as a father filled with rage was badass. He was smart and remorseful in his hardest times. He sounded like a “in his prime” Ray Liotta. Lynch was the best of the game because he was a psycho. His dialogue was extremely well written and when he went into his black-out phase, he was hilariously awesome. The constant bickering between the two developed a chemistry that helped move the game along; something that is needed in a co-op game.

Gameplay – 7.5

*This is a 3rd person shooter*

The story started off like any Michael Mann’s fans dream would. A sweet ass prison transport escape, a bank robbery in the form of Heat, a nightclub shootout in the form of Collateral, and then a prison breakout like Public Enemies. It was adrenaline pumping action thrill ride that seemed destined for the classics. Then the latter third kicked in and everything fell apart. Trying to rescue your daughter and kill the rest of your old gang was just boring and completely out of place with everything else that happened earlier. Boring conclusion to an otherwise awesome story.

Since this is a third person shooter, a cover system naturally comes with it. It just happens to be terrible and clunky with your character not sticking to walls fast enough that end up getting you killed. It didn’t help the shooting mechanics felt slow and if the guy was at a distance you could forget about killing them. It was annoying as fuck and felt very broken, but still manageable enough to play through the game.

As long as you didn’t die often, the playback voice-over while you waited to get an adrenaline shot was pretty feature they had, but if you died at one part often, the words would get old very fast.

Lasting Appeal – 5

Kane and Lynch has a campaign that runs a little over 6 hours, so it’s a very short game and even on the hardest difficulty can still be user friendly, not adding any life to the game. The single player isn’t something you would want to replay, but there are certain missions you would and because they have it like an arcade style, you can just choose that level, which is always a great feature. The co-op for some damn reason was only off-line so unless your buddy was there with you, forget about playing together; such an awful development choice. Since day one the multiplayer was broken and dead you shouldn’t expect anything from it.

Final Comments

Kane and Lynch had a chance to be a classic the way it started out but the lackluster finish and its length drag it down mightily. At the price of $10 it is now though, it’s a great two day game that you shouldn’t have no regret paying for. Third person shooters that are playable don’t come often in gaming so when you get a decent one, you need to appreciate it. If you can get by the clunky controls, then you should have a enjoyable time playing.

Category Scorecard
Graphics: 8
Sound: 10
Gameplay: 7.5
Lasting Appeal: 5

Final Score: 7/10

 

[Juggernaut]

What did you love about the game?
- The leads: Kane and Lynch

This alone made me want to get the game, yet I'm not gonna allow myself to get suckered in again from K&L.

If co-op was also online, what would you have given the lasting appeal?

 

[Buzzman]

it would have only bumped it up one point.

 

[Buzzman]

Metro 2033

A VSNDaily.com User Review
Author: Buzzman

What did you love about the game?
- The “good” ending
- The atmosphere
- The gunner gameplay

What did you hate about the game
- The “bad” ending
- The stealth gameplay
- The linear path


Graphics – 9

Honestly, my first impression on the graphics to Metro 2033 were just average. Nothing ever seemed to really blow my mind. A lot of the environments looked the same and got a little repetitive. It wasn’t until after the game when I looked back onto it that I realized how detailed they went into making the levels for the game. The living stations despite all being stuck in the same giant metro system, all have a completely different look to them. Some are trashy with garbage everywhere while others, like Polis, are on the verge of recreating the cities on the surface.

As you travel along through Russia trying to reach the other side of the country, you run into all sorts of great stuff. Bandits have occupied parts of the Metro and set up cans and broken plastic all over the place so they can hear if someone is coming. Then you travel across the surface of Russia and all that’s left to see is the aftermath of the nuclear war. Buildings are worn out and destroyed, with only the creatures able to survive the harsh environments. The atmosphere they created here is fantastic and deserves recognition.

Sound – 10

The voice-acting is great by default. I think Russian accents make anything sound much cooler then it is. Here not only do you get a Russian accent, but you get a variety of them. They really couldn’t have done a better job here. Some of the best parts of the game were just listening to everything from the narration right before each mission to the people talking around. At times you could hear four simultaneous conversations. If you listened closely to some of these conversations, the story of the everything that happened before your times was told, but what made it so special was everyone had their own story on what happened so you never really the know the absolute truth.

The other thing the game did beautifully was the soundtrack. The tracks they used fit in perfectly with the environment they created. Each little area had its own set and the song featured in the very last mission kept you moving on.

While I never used the feature, you can have actual Russian language with subtitles, and while I heard its fantastic, you still can’t go wrong with the English version as well.

Gameplay – 9

*This is a first person story shooter, similar in play to Bioshock*

Let’s start with the story. It starts off extremely well throwing you right into the action in a creative way. You have to learn quickly, but the controls are pretty standard here. The missions are a little inconsistent, but they tend to keep them with a bad one then countered with a great one so it balances itself out. Whenever you feel lost on what’s going on, something will happen that kicks you back in whether it is in a dream sequence or a straight forward quest. The final mission is awesome, despite not using a gun, it was the best part of the game. The ending you can get can either be good or bad and even they are both ambiguous. I personally enjoyed the ending you get when you play as a good smart guy rather then the run and gunner.

The gameplay plays very similar to Bioshock. I really don’t understand where the idea came from that the shooting mechanics are bad, if you can aim the damn gun, you can kill the enemy. It’s pretty simple. It’s not as fast as normal FPS, but it’s neither clunky nor slow. You can choose to play as a one man army, or you can stealth your way through the game. The problem with the stealth strategy is it feels a little broken because silent kills are difficult to achieve even with silenced weapons. If you don’t have throwing knives you’re pretty much forced to run and gun.

The environment around you when you reach the surface and certain parts of the Metro are poisoned from the nuclear war, so you’re required to use a gas mask that can run out of air. It’s a pretty cool effect battling and having it break or when you start to run out of air, you breathe harder and the mask starts to fog up. While you probably will never run into a situation where you run out of air, it’s a neat feature none the less.

When I original saw the game and read up no it, I thought it was an open world type of game like Fallout 3, so when I played it and found out it was linear, I was a bit disappointed. Some of these sweet ass stations and upper cities needed to be explored but you never got the chance. It’s a real shame considering the amount of detail they seemed to put into them. But it doesn’t hamper the experience.

Lasting Appeal – 8

The game plays out to about twelve hours of gameplay. While it’s not a great length, the story had run its course and wrapped up pretty nicely, but still left it open to a sequel. You’ll definitely will want to replay it to try out the other method and see how vastly the game changes. If you really want a challenge, you can buy the DLC which takes away ammo, maps, and health to see if you are a true soldier of the Metro. It should be a game that fits in nicely with your collection.

Final Comments

Metro 2033 is a very solid game and at the right price is worth it (about $30). You’ll find yourself enjoying the game for the most part, and this looks like a universe that could be explored beyond the limitations so you’ll want to know how it all began, and that’s right here, right now.

Category Scorecard
Graphics: 9
Sound: 10
Gameplay: 9
Lasting Appeal: 8

Final Score: 8.5

 

[Twigg4075]

I don't know why but I can not get into that game. Some parts are pretty cool but most of it is blah. It seems like work trying to slog through it.

 

[Buzzman]

I don't know why but I can not get into that game. Some parts are pretty cool but most of it is blah. It seems like work trying to slog through it.

I honestly feel that way with every game, but once I get playing for an hour or two, I start to really get into it.

 

[Twigg4075]

I honestly feel that way with every game, but once I get playing for an hour or two, I start to really get into it.

I've been playing it for probably five hours? It also doesn't help that I've only unlocked four pathetic achievements in those five hours.

I literally play one chapter at a time. Whereas I've been playing Lara Croft all damn day.

 

[Buzzman]

Yea I played 1 chapter at a time and then once I got to 5, I knocked out the rest of the game which is 7 chapters.

 

[Twigg4075]

I think I'm on Chapter 4 or 5.

 

[dave]

Great thread Buzzman.

 

[Twigg4075]

Great thread Buzzman.

Indeed. I think he's a little forgiving with his scores but great reviews nonetheless.

 

[Buzzman]

Indeed. I think he's a little forgiving with his scores but great reviews nonetheless.

what can I say, I don't play bad games :marshmellow:

 

[Maynard]

Indeed. I think he's a little forgiving with his scores but great reviews nonetheless.

agreed. I like the content of the reviews, but the scoring seems way to high.

 

[theMINI]

agreed. I like the content of the reviews, but the scoring seems way to high.

I agree. Games rated 8-9 should be reserved for exceptional games only. 10 obviously would be a perfect score for a perfect game which usually (if we are lucky) comes out once or twice a year. The good games should fall between 6-7, average games 5-6 and bad games anywhere from 0-5...

 

[Twigg4075]

Buzzman, you weren't kidding. Chapter 5 of Metro 2033 is where it really picks up. The Library is friggin' awesome!

 

[Buzzman]

Yea, did you run and gun or stealth your way through the game so far? If you did, you'll actually get the ending I liked better.

 

[Buzzman]

I also am going to try a different scoring system and see if that works out for the better. I do agree that some of the scores a bit high, especially the early ones when I first started. I read some of the early reviews and realize how short and dumb they sounded compared to the latter reviews. If I were to re-review some of these games they would score lower ala MW2, Socom, Pure, Battlefield. I did think Dante Inferno's a 9 though, but that's because that was the first dive into that genre. I never played God of War or Devil May Cry series, so maybe if I played those first I wouldn't like it as much.

Also with the new scoring setting, I wont review a game that has heavy multiplayer appeal until at least a month of playing it. Bad Company 2 and Socom are games that lost their appeal quickly but I had already reviewed them so that lost appeal didn't factor into the score. Even MW2, while still a great game, wouldn't get that perfect 10 I gave it.

Lets see how it works out and tell me what you think when I post the first one.