360
Created by Bethesda and me being a large fan of The Next Generation series I decided to give a crack at this one. Being able to play through the entire "40" years of Star Trek isn't for someone who decided there were better things to watch on TV. And even if you did watch any Star Trek shows this game probably isn't for you. After playing through a few skirmishes against some Klingons I felt that ship battle games are best left to those with sails and cannons. The controls are simple to pick up but overall it seems like a 3D version of Sid Meyer's Pirates with little enjoyment. The only real gratifying thing would be to replay through some old battles from the series to remember them but if you want to do that why don't you go and rent some DVDs.
But I believe in science..... ^^^^^^^^
Now one thing you have to be careful with is creating a game that is so terrible in comparison to its movie counterpart that you just piss people off that are fans of the movie. I've always had a constant apprehension to even want to try games based off a movie since almost all are sad attempts at trying to get more money from people, but I decided to give this one a chance since Goldeneye is one of the best N64 games out there and Bourne is in the spy business too.
The movie series is very successful and at least gives you a feel for some spy work without the chauvinistic suit wearing, smug smiling, one liner, heavy drinking, and womanizing parts that 007 likes to prance around with.
Brought to you by Sierra, Activision, and Ludlum entertainment, you play as good ol' Jason through the movies with a lot more added action as you unravel added missions from the books to figure out more of the story. The action is pretty steady and the same suspense felt watching the movies is felt while playing the game. The gun combat is a bit weak compared to some games and the hand to hand is too until you do the "takedowns". These are done after landing a handful of blows to an enemy and takes into consideration where you are in a room, what the enemy is holding, and what random objects are sitting around. One of the beauties of the Bourne series is in his adaptation to his surroundings. This game takes that idea and builds on showing off the fighting style which is much likeKrav Maga, the fighting style taught to Israeli forces, even though his is probably more than just that style (I see some escrima type fighting too). All takedowns seem choreographed and are fun to watch. There's also a lot of action moments where slow motion occurs and a button must be pressed to evade danger or land some quality bone cracking blows.
I'm assuming that there's not much point to playing this game through more than once so I'm going to say it's very quality for a rental and play through.
Fracture -
Well Lucasarts needed to get in on the Gears of War and Halo type games so here's there rendition. It's another run of the mill pile of rubbish that has a couple neat ideas but they don't out weigh the fact that the game seems thrown together for cash without the reward of fun. The story seems like Gears of War except instead of an underground alien race it's just another made up faction we're at war with in this 3rd person shooter. Weapons are all ripoffs from previous game with a new idea called the extractor or something similar to an anal probing device or dentist's favorite tool. What it does is allows you to change the loose ground around you to either raise or lower it letting you make fox holes or hills to help reach spots or add cover where there isn't any. The rest of the play isn't anything exciting therefore this lands in the forget pile.
PC
Hired Guns: The Jagged Edge - (sorry but the information is scanty) This game is another turn based grid strategy installment. This time coming from the company GFI (Game Factory Interactive) Russia (who the hell are they?) and originals came from Talonsoft who made the Battleground series and Sirtech the canadian company who made the Wizardary games.
Jagged Alliance was a great series involving mercenaries going to foreign lands to rape and pillage for cash and fun (cash sets them apart from mongols) and freeing poor civilians from the clutches of evil dictators because the rest of the world gave up on them. It was mainly focused on urban and jungle warfare techniques from a bird's eye view using natural and man made cover utilizing the accuracy and stealth of your mercs. That is where the beauty lies because it is quite unique in comparison to all other games even other strategy games. It is an older series which very few will find pleasure in for such things like the plethora of weapons and the reality of having problems of finding the right caliber and clip size for the weapons available from an internet vendor and dead enemies.
Not getting the Bethesda level upgrade like Fallout, this game feels and looks a lot like the originals. The demo that's available is a good amount of play involving 4 missions but also shows the amount of work still needed before it is complete. GFI Russia seems to have a slight issue with English translation and even I would love the job of proofreading for them to make it less annoying trying to figure out what they are saying or is that an added difficulty when going into foreign lands?
JA took place on a made up ex-nuclear testing island called Metavira probably somewhere in the Pacific. JA2 took place in a made up country that was much like the eastern side of Europe surrounded by mountains away from the rest of the world (Albania?) and Hired Guns takes place somewhere on the western side of Africa (looks like Nigeria). JA mainly was focused on only the evil military and the civilians that lived wherever you were and this version has what seems like 4 new factions to have to balance yourself against or with including a local African tribe, rebel marauders, the UN, and the evil dictator's army.
The only thing I really found disheartening is that original mercs from the series are now no longer available or at least from what I could see. There were always about 7 mercs that have been through the series and now all look like they are gone and maybe just aren't into going into Africa. Each merc used to have a distinct voice, very unique personality, strengths and weaknesses and now those have been started over and will have to be relearned hopefully with the same great voice acting as the originals. The individuality of each merc was so good that replaying the game and picking different mercs to use made it very fun. There were even a couple amazing characters like brothers Ivan and Igor Dolovich that spoke and grumbled mostly Russian through the entire game. I do hope that some of the voice acting improves as some was quite annoying with the demo to the point that all voices ended up muted.
In the end this will not be a show stopper for anyone unless the originals were a part of your playlist in the late 90s. I really don't see this being a game people will want to try for the first time either for where most games are at technology wise. For those that had the pleasure of playing all the originals it is nice to see that this series is being reborn again since there aren't many games like it.
I did see though that JA2: Gold edition is available on Steam.
No comments:
Post a Comment