Dream of Waking Ne Cede Malis

#33 – S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (PC)

Eighteen hours later, I have once again survived The Zone. I can't come up with the words to describe the experience without sounding scatterbrained so I'll say that it improved on the experience in Shadow of Chernobyl in nearly every way.

I spent over eighteen hours playing this throughout the last five days, and now it's over.

#31 – Star Wars: Republic Commando (PC)

This is my third time through the entire game. I've owned it since release but just recently bought it on Steam for the convenience of being able to install and play it on a whim.

Here's my bottom line opinion on Republic Commando; it's the second-best Star Wars first-person shooter. Just below Dark Forces. It has the unfortunate distinction of being the best game to come out of the prequel trilogy, and doesn't escape the taint of the prequel's legacy. I may even like the ideas behind Republic Commando more than I like the game itself.

Let me drop some bombs on what's wrong with Republic Commando. The weapons sound and feel very weak. Your primary weapon is the DC-17 blaster, which is a modular weapon that is an all-purpose rifle, a sniper rifle, and a grenade launcher. Of those, I ended up using the rifle the most for it's accuracy and abundant ammo. It doesn't do a ton of damage, it sounds like a toy gun, and shoots way too fast. In fact, none of the weapons sound very powerful, even the powerful ones!  I would have appreciated if they stuck to standard Star Wars weaponry and sounds, like they did with the enemies, who often sound more menacing than they are.

Speaking of enemies, they all kind of behave the same and there aren't enough of them. There are only three or four of each type. Battle droids, super battle droids, destroyer droids, spider droids. Fat Trandoshans, Trandoshan mercenaries, big Trandoshans, scavengers. Geonoshan warriors, elite Geonoshans, Geonoshan babies, yes, babies. General Grievous's guards. That's all of them! It makes the game feel more repetitive than it is. The Star Wars universe is teeming with life. There isn't much an excuse for this lack of variety.

So what does Republic Commando do right? The intro to the game is great. It details where you and your squad came from, all from the first person perspective. In fact, this game takes a page from Half-Life in that the entire game is played from the first-person perspective. There are a couple of scenes where you are not in control of your character, but they're limited.

The squad AI is not smart but it's competent. They'll kill enemies, heal themselves, heal you when you drop, take cover, etc. There are certain set pieces that you can order a squadmate to take position at for a specific purpose (like sniping or anti-armor) and they're meant to be used. Your squad dies less when they're in one of these ordered positions. The squad also has fantastic vocal banter. Each member is a personality, and I got attached to them as the game went along.

Though the levels are a little cookie cutter, there are plenty of objectives to them and no lack for fights. I was fighting in corridors, in small courtyards and hangers, on multi-level starship bridges, and in trees. They're not as varied as Dark Forces, but each environment is well made.

And now I can get to what stops this from being a great game. They can fix the sound effects and toss in a couple more enemies, but it's harder to change the setting. Republic Commando takes place at the onset of the Clone Wars. It starts on Geonosha even. And though it takes place over a two (three?) year span, it could have gone farther. This was a pre-Episode 3 game and it shows. It feels like a teaser leading up to Episode 3 and, ultimately, suffers for that. It doesn't deserve to be timely movie release fodder. It deserves to be treated like a game that can stand on its own two legs. Something that can be taken out of the context of the prequel release. It doesn't deserve to be lumped in with Episode 1 Racer, Star Wars Starfighter, Bounty Hunter, Obi-Wan, or any other godawful prequel game.

It doesn't carry the same tone as those games. The developers did their damnedest to give this game a fair chance. They go out of their way to make  you know that you are playing an elite soldier. You're no jedi, and you're not fodder either. You see your share of ally deaths and the Clone War takes its toll. But you're fighting bugs on Geonosha. And battle droids, even if they're way more menacing than they ever were in the prequel movies. They may bleed oil, wear a metallic gray paint job (rather than the orange seen in the movies), and the super battle droids may be some tough motherfuckers, but they're still battle droids, which are inherently lame. There's a pitiful tie in with General Grieveous in the form of his bodyguards, which flip and hop around like Chinese acrobats, with electric sticks. They're not threatening in the slightest, more annoying than anything, and serve only to give General Grieveous an excuse to make an unwarranted appearance.

What I'm getting down to is that in Republic Commando you are playing, in essence, a proto super stormtrooper. I wish the devs would've been allowed to run with that rather than get tied to the time frame that stuck them between the two prequel movies. I hope we can get another Republic Commando game, but I'm not expecting it. This franchise has legs, that get cut out from beneath it by the movies it was made to support.

#30 – Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne (PC)

Max Payne 2 is amazing. It is a huge improvement over the first Max Payne in nearly every way. One of my favorite, and most important, changes is that Max Payne himself no longer looks like he's smelling a rank fart. He looks like a human. The other characters also look like humans, rather than video game models wearing human faces. The bullet time is infinitely more useful as it replenishes faster and it gets a boost when you kill someone. The dodge-shooting also works better as it will let you keep firing from the ground, and doesn't immediately jump up and break the action until you stop firing.

The story is a lot more cohesive, and more interesting. It's not just a dude killing everyone in his way to get to the person who killed his wife and daughter. There are different motives and they change, and the characters change. The game is short as hell, but so was the first Max Payne, and with less frustration.

Max Payne 2 is a better game than the original and, for all intents and purposes, you shouldn't feel compelled to play through the first Max Payne before you play this one. It is a truly great game.

#29 – Max Payne (PC)

I was never really interested in this game, even though I know it had a huge following when it came out. I got it, and Max Payne 2, during Steam holiday sale. I've owned Max Payne 2 for a while but never got far in it and when I tried to install it recently either the disc was bad or it wasn't entirely compatible with Vista/7.

For being nearly 10 years old, it doesn't look that bad and the action still holds up. It's a revenge story told in noir style with slo-mo gunfights. That's pretty much Max Payne in one sentence. The slo-mo isn't as useful as it is in F.E.A.R. because you move just as slow but it gives you a better degree of control in your aim. You can actually see individual bullets or pellets in each gunshot. Still, I found it was often the case where just running around and circle-strafing were more reliable than going into slo-mo as the enemy AI didn't lead much when they shot and had a harder time hitting a moving target than I did hitting them standing there.

It's about 10 hours long but it'd be much shorter for a pro. A lot of that time was spent reloading and re-doing some tough gunfights. I never found ammo to be a problem but I used every single health item there was. There's no cheesy boss fights but there are certain character who can very obviously withstand a lot more bullets ripping through them than their common henchmen.

I'm loading up Max Payne 2 but who knows if I'll get to it before I move.

#28 – Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War 2 (PC)

I was actually quite close to finishing this about three months ago but the way the game works is that your units have persistent levels and the game will randomly generate optional missions to accomplish for more experience points and loot. I saw an enormous list of missions and felt a little overwhelm and getting tired of the gameplay so I stopped playing. Matt got this last week and we played a 1v1 game and he totally stomped me so I suggested trying out coop mode, and after that I felt the desire to polish this off in the fastest manner possible. There were only two unique missions left anyway.

I loved the first Dawn of War so I was a little skeptical when I read that Dawn of War 2 was not only vastly different but also a better game. But it is! Rather than harvesting resources and building bases, which have no place in the tabletop game, Dawn of War 2 focuses on small unit tactics by giving you control of a small handful of hardy units and putting the emphasis on using cover and flanking and equipment loadout rather than throwing as many bodies as possible at the next encounter. The multiplayer is a little more traditional with the main objective being the capture and holding of victory locations, with unit building and resource harvesting.

The game looks and feels great. Weapons have appropriately powerful sounds and effects. When your assault marines jump into a fight, they send enemies and terrain flying outward from them. Grenades and artillery blast the landscape and buildings to pieces.

This all comes together to make Dawn of War 2 and more dynamic, and, ultimately, a more enjoyable game than its predecessor.

#26 – Quake (PC)

I can't remember the last time I played all the way through Quake, so this totally counts. Hey! Quake is 13 years old and it's still balls out insane! The level design kind of suffers towards the end (episode 4 outright sucks) but it's still totally fun to play through, if a little short! I may take a break to keep slogging through Max Payne or I may hop into the first Quake expansion. I haven't decided yet.