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Retro-Review: Half-Life [PlayStation 2]

Developer: Gearbox Software
Publisher: Sierra Entertainment
Rated: M for Mature
Released: 11 November 2001
Completed: 3 September 2017

I have a secret to confess – a secret shame that has eaten away at me for years and I can no longer live with it. I have never finished the original Half-Life. I have started it many times, and always enjoyed replaying those early chapters, but my attention span would wane and I’d move onto something else. I recognized what a great game it was. I just never saw it through until the end.

No more.

Now my shame has been erased. Now, I am victorious! I have basked in the glory that is Half-Life and I can officially say: yeah, it’s pretty good, I guess.

That’s not a slight to Half-Life and all that it brought to gaming. Even today, the AI is aggressive and challenging, the levels exquisitely designed, and the story mesmerizing. But having completed Half-Life 2, arguably the best game of all-time, it’s harder to see the original game in the context of when it was released. It is by no means or any stretch of the imagination a bad game. It’s a (mostly) spectacular game, even if the PlayStation 2 port I played lacks the visual fidelity of the PC original. It’s just also an older game, and it has some rough edges that are especially noticeable in modern times.

I don’t think I need to elaborate on Half-Life’s plot. I’m pretty sure every gamer knows it by now, but for the two of you who may not, you play as silent protagonist Gordon Freeman, a researcher at the Black Mesa facility. Black Mesa’s experiments cause a rift between universes to form, and alien creatures start spilling over into our world, so naturally you grab a gun and start shooting them. The military is eventually called in, but instead of a rescue team, they send a cleaning crew to kill all the witnesses.  Gordon must rely on his wits (and his guns) to make it out alive.

Half-Life was revolutionary for its time. It had a much stronger focus on story than its contemporaries, and the AI was cutting edge. It's hard to believe looking at the blocky character models now, but the engine was actually pretty impressive in 1998. As a game, it mixed excellent shooting sections with some slightly frustrating first-person platforming. Movement could feel a little slippery at times, especially during the jumping sections, but as a whole it was - and remains - a fun game.

Thanks to its success on the PC, Half-Life was slated to be ported to Sega's Dreamcast console, complete with an exclusive expansion pack called Blue Shift. Sadly, though it was nearly complete, the Dreamcast port never saw an official release, and Blue Shift was eventually released on the PC.  The PlayStation 2 port is based somehwat on the Dreamcast version. It features the upgraded character models that were to be included there, as well as its own two-player cooperative (only) expansion called Decay.

I had played enough of the PC version to be able to make a comparison, and I wanted to see how the PS2 port stacked up. In short: not all that well. The PC version is clearly the best way to play Half-Life. The PS2 version looks somewhat muddy and drab, and the framerate is often atrocious, but if you have no other way of playing Half-Life, it's serviceable thanks to an intuitive control layout.

The controls were actually the most impressive aspect of the port, in all honesty. They're customizable, and there are thoughtful inclusions like aim assist and lock-on to compensate for the loss of precision on a gamepad compared to a mouse and keyboard. If you have the latter, however, you can actually use them thanks to the PS2's USB ports.

Just about every other aspect of the game suffers, unfortunately. It's not downright ugly on the PS2, but it's a far cry from the sharp textures afforded by the PC version, even if you're still playing the original release and not the upgraded Half-Life Source. The framerate is more consistent than the unreleased Dreamcast version's, but it still dips into the teens with regularity. The character models may have been upgraded with higher polygon counts, but they're still ugly to the point of being unintentionally funny. The only positive change is the new weapon models, which have more detail than the originals.

The audio in every version of Half-Life has always been a mixed bag. Character voices sound muddled, and most of them have been inexplicably pitched up so they sound ridiculous. Guns, enemies, and  environmental effects, on the other hand, have always had a satisfying clarity, but certain effects just sound too loud.  The clang of the iconic crowbar against anything metallic, or the ear-piercing shriek of the houndeyes are among the worst offenders. The same is true here, but the voices sound even more muffled, to the point where it's often difficult to make out what anyone is saying, especially if there are other sounds in the mix.

Some of the problems with PS2 Half-Life can be traced back to the PC original. The platforming sections were never that great, and they're made slightly more difficult when played on a controller. The levels themselves are large and expansive, which gives the game a distinctly realistic and cohesive feel that was very different from the disjointed episodic structure of many previous FPS games. However, the levels are broken up into smaller chunks with set areas that will trigger brief, but definitely noticeable, loading screens every time you transition between them. On a high-end PC, the loading times were only a handful of seconds - a small hiccup, really - but on the PS2, they're between 10-15 seconds. That's still a far cry from the 20-30 seconds found on the near-complete Dreamcast version floating around online, but it still breaks up the flow of the game and it's especially obnoxious when you're retreating from enemies and you happen to trigger a loading screen.

The save system is quite odd.  The game thankfully allows for quicksaving, but it comes with a caveat.  Quicksaves are not stored to your memory card.  If you turn your system off, you'll lose all your progress unless you have recently paused the game, gone to the menu, and manually saved to your card.  I learned this lesson the hard way, forcing myself to replay the first hour of the campaign over again.  You can save anywhere, just like in the PC version, but why the quicksave slot is not stored on the memory card is a foolish oversight.

The final levels of the campaign have always been very divisive. Frankly, I didn't find them all that bad. In fact, there were sections within the Black Mesa facility I found considerably more frustrating. I can do without all the jumping, but there are some pretty large scale battles that are very exciting.  It does feel somewhat out of place, but if the aliens can come to our world, why shouldn't we be able to visit theirs?

Should you play Half-Life? Absolutely, yes. That's an emphatic affirmative. Even with its age spots, it's still a great game. Should you play Half-Life on PlayStation 2? That's a tougher recommendation when the PC version is dirt cheap, readily available, and will work on just about anything from the late 90s to modern-day powerhouse machines. If you have no other way to play it, the PS2 version will do in a pinch, but it's not the best way to experience one of the best games of all-time. But hey, at least it got released.

Half-Life was completed on a real PlayStation 2 with no cheats.  The review score reflects the port more than the game itself.

Fail Review: The Red Star [PlayStation 2]

The Red Star
Sony PlayStation 2

Developer: Acclaim Studios Austin
Publisher: XS Games
Rated: T for Teen
Released: 2007

As one of the best-selling consoles with one of the largest libraries of all-time, it’s only natural that the PlayStation 2 would have more than its fair share of hidden gems.  Quietly released near the tail-end of the system’s lifespan, while a completed Xbox version remains unreleased, The Red Star is a top-down action game in the vein of games like Smash TV, Expendable, or Cannon Spike.  Based on a graphic novel of the same name, the title offers two distinct characters that can be upgraded, 18 varied stages, a satisfying melee combat system, and some terrific shoot-and-dodge gameplay.  With its relatively low price, thanks to its relative obscurity, there’s really no reason for PS2 owners to pass this one up.

After heaping such praise on it, you might be wondering why this is a Fail Review.  Simply put, the final stages were just too hard for my limited patience.  I made it all the way to stage 16 with both characters, the slow and devastatingly powerful Kyuzo and the nimble Makita, but the barrage of enemies and mid-level bosses just became too much to bear.  That said, I stand by my statement that The Red Star is an excellent and criminally overlooked game, and my failure to complete it stems more from my cranky demeanor and slowing reflexes than any fault of the game itself.

As a budget title, don’t expect the best presentation.  The game’s story is told via static dialogue boxes between missions.  I have no idea how faithful, if at all, it is to the original graphic novel, but it’s interesting enough with lots of fictional politics between warring factions.  The in-game graphics won’t blow you away, but they’re serviceable.  The main characters and enemies look nice enough, and the humongous bosses look fantastic, but the stages are mostly generic industrial-style catwalks.  The stages that deviate from this look are the best looking, particularly an early stage where you must avoid falling bombs by looking for an overhead ship’s reflection in puddles on the ground. 

The sound and music is also what you’d expect from a budget title.  Some of the tunes have a nice Russian flair, which is fitting given the game’s setting and story, and most meld elements of electronic and rock music.  It’s an exciting mixture that fits the action very well.  There are some minor voices, mostly grunts and groans, but really nothing in the form of voice acting.

One thing that is not budget-quality is the stellar gameplay.  The Red Star borrows heavily from top-down action games mentioned in the first paragraph, but goes a step further with its melee combat system.  Both characters have unique combos and ranged weapons, giving them both a completely different feel and requiring different strategies.  Makita’s rapid attacks may lack the range of Kyuzo’s spear, but she can juggle enemies with ease and backflip out of harm’s way.  Kyuzo plays more like a tank character and while he’s as slow as one, his reach keeps makes it hard for enemies to get close at all. 

Upon completion of a stage, your performance is ranked, which translates into upgrade points you can use to enhance your character’s abilities.  These upgrades are the same for both characters, but they do make a noticeable difference in the game’s difficulty if you perform well enough to earn them.  Therein lies the one major problem I had with The Red Star: there’s no way to earn more upgrade points.  You cannot replay levels to try and increase your rank, so unless you have perfect runs in each of them, you could end up missing a crucial upgrade to your life bar or weapon that makes all the difference in the game’s final stages.  You may find yourself restarting the entire game, as I did, just to try and perform better and earn more upgrades, and even then you may still fail. 

As disappointing as it was that I couldn’t finish the game, I can say I had a lot of fun playing it.  Most stages feature a great mixture of melee and ranged combat, but to keep things interesting, there are two horizontal shoot ‘em up stages where you pilot a jet and destroy everything in your path.  These stages, while short, add a lot of variety to the experience overall and were some of my favorites.  The variety doesn’t stop there.  There is also a stage with minor puzzle elements where you must weave your way through shipping containers, some of which will explode if shot or touched.  I thought this sequence was a blast as I scrambled back and forth, shooting my way through safe containers, trying to avoid being blown up or crushed by others.  Yet another section has you shooting or melee attacking force fields so you can progress up a conveyor belt.  Much of it may be variants of the standard game mechanics, but it’s the fresh way they’re used that keeps things fun and exciting.  You never quite know what comes next.

But the real highlight here are the boss battles.  Most stages have both a mid-boss and a final boss, but these play out similar to bullet hell shooters.  Dodging a hail of enemy fire while carefully looking for openings in their patterns to return some of your own is a thrilling experience.  Gigantic machines with multiple turrets, each with their own firing pattern, make each encounter unique and fun.  Timely use of your shield and your special powered-up shots are crucial here, requiring both split second decisions and reflexes to survive. 

Sadly, it was these very same boss battles that ultimately bested me and convinced me to quit my second attempt at beating it.  I’m sure with enough practice and patience I could do it, but my other major problem with the game is that there are no checkpoints.  Dying means you restart the whole level, and nothing is more aggravating than making it all the way to the boss, whittling its health down, then perishing in the final seconds of a protracted battle and having to go through the whole stage again. 

All things considered, The Red Star is a game that I enjoyed my time with, despite the difficulty spike near the end that caused me to give up.  Who knows, maybe I’ll revisit it someday and, as is so often the case, I’ll have no trouble in a future attempt.  Until then, I can’t recommend that you give it a shot and judge for yourself.

Retro-Review: The Bouncer [PlayStation 2]

The Bouncer
Sony PlayStation 2

Developer: Dream Factory
Publisher: Square Electronic Arts
Rated: T for Teen
Released: 2001
Completed: 23 December 2015

I remember the hype meter for Square's first PS2 game, The Bouncer, was pretty high.  Though not a launch title, it was released in the first wave of games for Sony's now classic machine and expectations were high because of its pedigree.  Despite the fact that it wasn't an RPG, fans and industry critics hoped the Square magic would work for the PS2 the same way it worked for the systems predecessor.

When The Bouncer finally came out those high expectations turned to disappointment.  There was no doubt The Bouncer looked amazing, showcasing the power of Sony's then brand new console in spectacular fashion, but the gameplay was lacking - mainly because there was so little of it.  There is scarcely an hour's worth of actual gameplay.  There's so little, in fact, that the game's cinematic cutscenes actually make up the bulk of time you'll spend playing, and even then you'll be lucky to crack two hours.  The Bouncer seemed like more of a tech demo than a fully fledged, full-priced game and once word got out, the disappointment was reflected with poor sales. 

The Bouncer is a 3D beat 'em up, not typically the type of game you'd expect from Squaresoft.  Sure, they'd dabbled in other genres such as the 3D fighter Ehrgeiz or the shoot 'em up Einhander, but beat 'em ups were all but dead by the time the PS2 came out.  Most critics panned similar games like Fighting Force and Zombie Revenge as being short on replayability, and relics of arcades past.  To make matters worse, The Bouncer isn't even a particularly good beat 'em up.

Taking control of one of three characters - Sion (who looks remarkably like Sora from Square's later Kingdom Hearts franchise), Volt, and Kou - you're out to rescue Sion's girlfriend, Dominque, from some evil corporation that's apparently doing genetic research or something.  Hell if I know - look, the story isn't very good either.  In fact, apart from the technical aspects of the game, there's little about The Bouncer that's very good.

The fighting engine is primitive and stiff, for example.  You'll only encounter 3-4 enemies at a time, and each time your character knocks on out, you'll earn Bouncer Points which can be used to upgrade your character's stats or moves.  It's a great idea in theory, but in such a short game you barely have the opportunity.  Perhaps developer Dream Factory figured players would replay the game over and over to rank their characters up, but seeing as how only very minor story elements change depending on which character you pick for each fight, there's little reason to bother.

Upon completing the game, you'll unlock additional characters - mostly enemy bosses - but again, there's just little reason to keep playing through the same story over and over, even at an hour long.  The game just isn't very fun.  Some of the unlockable moves are cool, but you can get through most fights by standing back while enemies focus on your AI teammates then cheaply hitting them from behind with standard attacks.  There's no real combo system to speak of - a staple of beat 'em ups that even games like Final Fight and Streets of Rage implemented years before - and there's little room for improvisation, especially since you have to wait for the current animation to finish before you can make your next attack.  There's just no flow to the combat at all.

Not helping matters any is the horrendous camera.  Not only can you not control it, but it actively seems to be working against you at times, obscuring your vision or getting hung up in tight quarters.  If that weren't enough, even your AI teammates get in your way and you'll spend about a third of each battle watching your attacks sail through thin air as you try desperately to get close enough to hit something. 

The only real positive of the experience is the fantastic graphics.  Even for a launch window game, The Bouncer still looks excellent almost fifteen years later.  There's a slight blurriness to the graphics, but it also smooths out the jagged edges, making this one of the PS2's cleanest looking games.  The main character models and bosses look pretty decent, but the henchmen enemies are considerably lower quality, while the backgrounds are generally nice, if a bit generic and forgettable. 

The sound fares just as well.  The voice acting is surprisingly capable for such an early PS2 game.  We're not talking award-winning stuff here, but it's definitely serviceable.  The cinematics are also presented in Dolby Digital 5.1, for those who had that setup back in the day (which should be just about everyone now), but the gameplay is relegated to 2 channel stereo.  It's still an overall impressive audio/visual package surrounding an utterly mediocre game.

Is there even much of a game here?  Most battles last less than a minute before another 5-10 minute cutscene of nonsense ensues.  At several points in the game, you're given control of your character just to walk through a nearby door and trigger another cinematic - I am not kidding.  It has already taken me longer to write this review than to finish the game on my first playthrough.  It's like an admittedly attractive CG movie masquerading as a game.  At least the load times are short.

The sting of The Bouncer is still felt after all these years.  This could have been such a great game had there been more of it.  The unlockable characters are a nice touch, as are the RPG-like stat upgrades and special moves, and it could have breathed new life into a dying genre.  Instead, it's wasted potential that cost PS2 owners $50 at launch. 

The Bouncer was completed on a real PlayStation 2 with no cheats.

Retro-Review: Black [PlayStation 2]

Black
Sony PlayStation 2

Developer: Criterion Games
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Rated: M for Mature
Released: 2006
Completed: 30 May 2015

Black is a tough game to critique.  It's about as generic as they come, with a story that is so forgettable I actually forgot it while playing the game.  Yet, in spite of this, I found myself enjoying it far more than I expected.

Criterion Games were best known for their Burnout games - a series of high octane racing games with a heavy emphasis on arcade action, an incredible sense of speed, and spectacular crashes.  With Black, they claimed they wanted to do for shooters what they had done for racing.  It was a lofty goal, and it wasn't quite met.  What we ended up with was a game that pushed the PS2 technology pretty hard, but ultimately failed to reinvent the genre.

Spread across eight missions, you play as Jack Kellar, a member of a special Black Ops squad.  That is literally all I can tell you of the story.  I know you're hunting down some bad guy for reasons I don't quite remember.  The story is told through live action (yes, with real people, not CG) cutscenes in between missions where the camera is zoomed in super-close and some suit is strong-arming the soldier for information. 

The meat of the game pushes you along extremely linear paths, shooting and blowing stuff up all nice and pretty like.  For its time, Black featured an unprecedented level of destructible environments.  Smoke obscures your vision as bullets shatter concrete, structures explode, glass shatters and rains down on enemies.  It's all very impressive, even if the textures look ugly by today's standards, with visible seams and low detail. 

I suppose it's a trade off for the level of detail put into the game's weapons.  The back of the box coins the term "gun porn," and one look at your armaments explains why.  Each real-world weapon is crafted with stunning detail, and little details such as the way bullets bounce on the chain as you walk, how the buckle on the Uzi flaps, and the way guns eject spent casings all look fantastic.  Reloading even features an awesome depth of field effect where everything but the gun in your hand becomes blurred.  Black is all about its guns, and they are indeed a lot of fun to shoot.

You can only carry two weapons at a time, meaning you'll often have to make a tough decision about what to drop and what to keep.  Do you let go of your trust shotgun for that sniper rifle with less ammo, but far more stopping power over distance?  There's often a strategic advantage to swapping weapons, which is telegraphed by the very fact that there's a rifle or a RPG launcher sitting there.  As I said, Black is so linear that if they supply you with one of these weapons, you'd best believe there's a good reason for it.

Along the way you'll encounter a slew of generic enemies, covered head to toe in camouflage.  One of the game's many failings is its AI.  While it occasionally shows signs of intelligence by flanking you, most of the time they'll stand there and run back and forth while you shoot them.  Toss a grenade into a group of enemies and watch as they stand there, patiently waiting to be blown to smithereens.  There are no boss enemies, even in the game's final shootout, so to compensate the game just throws a bunch of them at you to mow down.  About the most trouble you'll have with them is when the game's targeting decides you weren't dead center and a headshot makes them shrug instead of taking them down.

Black isn't particularly challenging.  The final shootout may give you some trouble (it certainly did for me), but pretty much everything up until then will be a cakewalk on the normal difficulty setting.  Ammunition is plentiful, as are health packs.  Enemies even drop instant-use health kits on Normal, though this luxury is taken away at higher difficulties.  It's also convenient just how many exploding red barrels are sitting out in the open.  Perhaps enemy militias should keep those stowed away so some American operative doesn't come blowing the place to hell, but what do I know?  At least the levels look good though, and it features one of the better examples of a bridge level I've seen in the first-person shooter genre, which are usually the low point of any FPS game. 

Control feels a little limiting, however.  There is no jump button, and crouching is essentially useless most of the time, especially since the game blocks off strategically advantageous places with invisible walls.  See that little nook under the stairs that looks like you can fit in there and pick enemies off?  Well too bad, you can't because the game says so. 

The audio, much like the visuals, was quite impressive for its time.  The game takes advantage of Dolby Pro Logic, which few PS2 games did during gameplay, and each gun is pitched slightly different during firefights so as to create a sort of harmonic sound.  The music, performed by a Hollywood symphony orchestra, sounds appropriately cinematic - like something out of a big action movie. 

With so much going against it, Black's saving grace is just how much fun it is to play.  It may herd you along a specific path, but every battle was extremely engaging.  The graphical effects make trading fire intense, since you often can't see exactly where you're aiming, or if enemies are closing in on you.  It gives the illusion that the game is more difficult than it really is and keeps you moving from cover point to cover point.  One thing the game sorely needed was a lean and shoot mechanic, since cover plays such an important part in your survival.

All things considered, Black was a pretty standard but enjoyable romp through foreign territories.  It's short, it's pretty easy, the AI isn't that hot, it's linear...but it's somehow lots of fun.  It didn't reinvent the wheel, like Criterion had hoped it would, but it's worth a spin.

Black was completed on a real PlayStation 2 with no cheats.

Retro-Review: Zone of the Enders [PlayStation 2]

Zone of the Enders
Sony PlayStation 2

Developer: Konami Computer Entertainment Japan
Publisher: Konami Computer Entertainment America
Released: 2001
Rated: M
Completed: 22 February 2015

For some, Zone of the Enders is best remembered as the game that came with the Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty demo.  Certainly it was the major reason I purchased it upon launch in 2001, before I knew what a trainwreck MGS2 would turn out to be.  For many of us, it turned out to be a wonderful surprise that the game that accompanied the demo was surprisingly good.

Produced by Metal Gear's Hideo Kojima and featuring mech designs by Yoki Shinkawa, ZOE is a science-fiction action game.  Part beat 'em up, part shooter, it is repetitive, short, and the story makes very little sense, but it's a solid first effort in creating an original IP.  Attaching the most-wanted demo in the world at the time to it drew more attention than the game would have ever gotten on its own, and it even spawned a fully-fledged sequel, an HD remake compilation, and a spin-off on the Gameboy Advance.

ZOE tells the story of Leo, an young ender (which is a term that is never really explained) who accidentally takes control of an advanced robot called an orbital frame.  Leo's colony is under attack by BAHRAM, presumably another colony, and it suddenly falls on his shoulders to deliver the highly advanced frame to a civilian transport company and, of course, save his people in the process.

Unfortunately, the poor localization makes the story a jumbled, confusing mess and Leo himself is possibly the most whiny main character in video game history.  I suppose it's supposed to be about the morality of war, but it's so poorly translated that I can't be sure.  Leo constantly whines, nags, and accuses everyone else in the game of being a cold-hearted monster for killing each other.  The heavy-handed philosophy comes across as way too preachy and oversimplifies a complex issue, and it's often told through long cutscenes or mostly static dialogue sequences, akin to Kojima's more well known Metal Gear franchise.

The story is terrible, but the gameplay is definitely not.  It's mostly a series of battles which play a bit like a beat 'em up, with ranged tactics thrown in.  Your frame, Jehuty, can fire all sorts of different weapons, many of which are optional sub-weapons, or get in close for melee attacks.  It's very flashy and fast-paced, albeit repetitive.  The bulk of the game is spent killing a small variety of enemies to collect passcodes needed to unlock a new area or an upgrade that allows you to proceed, but somehow it never really got boring to me.  In fact, as I powered up, I found myself enjoying the combat more and more, taking on larger groups of enemies with ease.

There are also several boss fights that require significantly more tactics than the stock enemy frames.  Though the game's final boss is a joke, most of them will test your skills, and there are also optional S.O.S. missions which rank your performance based on how much damage you do to your surroundings, and how many civilians are killed in the process.  Perhaps it's because my playthrough only lasted 4 hours and 36 minutes, but the boredom of repetition never really set in for me.  If anything, I found myself groaning during the overly long cinematics and Leo acting like a crybaby incessantly.

ZOE still looks pretty good in its original PS2 incarnation, but I opted to play the PS3 HD rerelease, which definitely highlights Shinkawa's fantastic mech designs.  Jehuty and the enemy frames look beautiful, but much of the background is a blurry texture to give the illusion of scale and depth, which doesn't fare quite as well.  The cinematics are also still fairly low quality CG with a distinctly anime-inspired look.  That means exaggerated eyes, pointy chins, and tiny mouths, and the lip-syncing was obviously done to match the original Japanese language voice track, so numerous times throughout the game it will look like a poorly dubbed kung-fu flick.

The music is all very electronic, which fits the game perfectly.  The voice acting, however, is mostly as bad as the translation. 

All these years later, I'm glad I took a chance on ZOE.  The first game is almost like a television pilot - you can see all the potential, but it's still a little rough around the edges.  The eventual sequel would improve upon nearly everything, but the original game is still a fun little experiment.

Zone of the Enders was completed on a PlayStation 3 via the Zone of the Enders HD Collection with no cheats.

Retro-Review: Darkwatch [Sony PlayStation 2]

Darkwatch
Sony PlayStation 2

Developer: High Moon Studios
Publisher: Capcom Entertainment
Released: 2005
Rated: M
Completed: 01 February 2015

I'm a big supporter of the "Games Are Art" debate.  I think, at their best, video games are entertaining, engaging, and even emotional in a way few other mediums are because of their interactivity, and the connection that builds with the player. 

Like with films, however, there are some games that are just mindless action, meant to be experienced for the sheer dumb joy of shooting monsters in the face.  Darkwatch is just such a game.

Remember Doom, the seminal first-person shooter where you played a marine who went into space and discovered a portal to hell, then subsequently shot a bunch of demons?  It didn't need an amazing story, or captivating dialogue.  It gave you a bunch of cool weapons to turn hordes of evil monsters into goo.  There was no realistic AI.  The monsters rushed straight at you, hellbent on either eating you unless you shot them in the face.  Doom is considered not only a classic in its genre, but in all of gaming history.  Darkwatch is no Doom, but it thrives on that same mentality.

You play Jericho Cross, a gunslinging train robber who ends up getting bitten by a vampire, thus causing you to turn into a half-breed.  As a result, you set out on a quest for revenge against the evil Lazarus, and in the process become a member of the titular Darkwatch - an organization of outlaws and cowboys who keep the monsters at bay.  The plot exists solely for the purpose of pitting you against a bunch of monsters, all of whom run straight toward you as if to say, "Please, let me make it easier for you to shoot me in the face."  And there's nothing wrong with that.

Darkwatch hearkens back to the old days of twitch shooters.  I love a good story-driven FPS, like F.E.A.R. or BioShock, but there are times when all I want to do is shoot things without being bogged down by lengthy expository cutscenes.  I don't need to know why I'm shooting things.  They're monsters, and that's reason enough.

In that regard, Darkwatch slips up a bit.  There is a story, and numerous cutscenes breakup the action, but they are blessedly short.  It's usually just to let you know that more monsters are on the way for you to blow to pieces, but early on it feels like every couple of steps you're interrupted by a short cinematic.

Once the game gets rolling, however, old school gamers will likely enjoy the senseless monster slaughter.  There aren't a ton of weapons, but each one is useful.  The standard pistol allows you to fan the hammer for rapid fire shots, the carbine is a deadly mid-to-long range rifle, and the shotgun is perfect for close encounters and larger enemies.  It's all pretty standard fare, except perhaps the crossbow that shoots explosive bolts, but you can only carry two at a time, so choose wisely. 

The game borrows heavily from other shooters of the era, notably Halo with its recharging shields and a singular driving segment in a Warth...er... Coyote vehicle that controls identically to Halo's famously floaty ATV.  There's even a rudimentary morality system in which you can gain additional vampiric powers by cleansing tainted innocents of their curses, or harvesting their life force for your own.  Ultimately, the choice only determines which end boss you face, but the good and evil powers are remarkably different, and quite useful.

Enemies come in several forms as well, from grunts like skeletons, to annoying flying enemies such as banshees, to grotesque blobs that spew corrosive vomit at you.  The monster designs are decent enough, particularly the latter. 

Darkwatch may have looked good ten years ago, but today it shows every day of its age.  Pre-rendered cutscenes are grainy and loaded with video artifacts, character designs are exaggerated and silly, and in-game textures are often extremely muddy and bland.  Still, the game's Western steampunk theme creates a unique setting, even if the levels are relatively barren.  Don't expect a lot of exploring, as each level is extremely linear, and they feel more like monster arenas.

There is some variety, in the form of horseback riding missions.  They're brief, and it still boils down to shooting things from horseback, but they're pretty darn cool.  My favorite missions, however, were the ones that took place in daylight.  As a vampire-man, Jericho's abilities are hindered by sunlight.  His shield depletes rapidly, he can no longer double-jump, or use any of his other powers unless he finds some shade.  These levels felt markedly more strategic than the others, as I would often find myself camping in a shady spot, sniping enemies, then making a break for the next dark area.

Though it's very short, Darkwatch feels a lot like the reflex-intensive shooters of yesteryear such as Quake and Doom.  There's not much to do, except shoot things, and sometimes that's a refreshing change of pace from pretentious storytelling.  Nobody would go to a theater expecting The Expendables to be a thought-provoking, philosophical film, and no one should expect the same of all video games.  Darkwatch excels at being a fun, old-school throwback shooter, more in the vein of Serious Sam or Hard Reset than BioShock or Metroid Prime.  Like I said, sometimes you just want to shoot some monsters.

Darkwatch was completed on a real PlayStation 2 with no cheats.

Retro-Review: Silent Hill: Origins [Sony PlayStation 2]

Silent Hill: Origins
Sony PlayStation 2

Developer: Climax
Publisher: Konami Digital Entertainment
Released: 2008
Rated: M
Completed: 21 June 2014

Silent Hill has fallen on hard times since Team Silent disbanded.  Origins may look and sound a lot like the first four games in the series, but it sure as hell isn’t as captivating.  Originally designed for the PlayStation Portable, Silent Hill Origins made the jump to the PS2 as a budget title so a wider audience could enjoy its stunning mediocrity!

A problem with most prequels is that they present a part of a story you already know without adding anything new or interesting to the overall mythos of a franchise.  This is precisely the problem with Origins.  It tells you absolutely nothing new that couldn’t be gleamed from the backstory in the original games, and its lead character is so forgettable that the only other mention of him I can recall is in the abominable Silent Hill: Revelation film.  

Origins is nothing more or less than the sum of its parts.  It’s as unnecessary as any prequel I’ve ever seen, even the dreaded Star Wars Episodes I-III.  It’s just an excuse to cash in on a popular, and once-brilliant franchise, and is only noteworthy these days for representing the start of its slow, steady decline.  It’s proof that games are far more than graphics, music, and sound effects, because for all the ways it feels like a Silent Hill game, those are the same reasons it fails so miserably.  It’s a boring, uninteresting slog plagued with backtracking, dull characters, and some of the worst voice acting yet heard in a series notorious for bad voice acting.

It all begins with the story.  As most prequels do, it simply recycles lore from the previous games and destroys the mystery of the things left unsaid.  Darth Vader was a much more intimidating villain before you found out he was simply so heartbroken and lovesick that he became evil.  So it is with Silent Hill.  Isn’t part of the fear derived from the fact that we only know fragments of the story, and the rest is left to our imaginations?  We know about Dahlia, Dr. Kaufman, the cult, and Alessa being a sacrificial lamb to birth a pagan god.  Do we really need to see it happen?  I mean, why even bother?

I suppose it’s a good thing the game is only about six hours long, but at least half of that length is spent transitioning between the regular world and the alternate world – the famously rust covered, blood soaked Other Silent Hill – via mirrors and traversing the same locations in both of them to solve convoluted puzzles.  The main character, Travis O’Grady, has the ability to transition at will, unlike other games in the series, and it seems nifty at first until you realize it just needlessly drags the constant hunt for items out.  Shifting between the regular world to the other world to grab an item, which then requires you to shift back to use, and then shift back again to progress from there, is nothing short of mind-numbing.

Combat fares no better than the puzzle solving.  The game touted being able to use most anything as a weapon.  That may be true, but it’s also ridiculous as Travis can pick up everything from portable televisions and hospital drip stands, in addition to more standard fare such as 2x4s and guns, and carry them around in his magic pockets.  How does he carry four drip stands?  Are his pants made out of the same material as a Bag of Holding?  [Note: Only the most hardcore nerds will understand that reference.]  It’s a conceit that has been part of video games for decades, but it seems particularly ridiculous here. 

Even Silent Hill’s trademark monsters lack the disturbing traits that made them nightmare fuel in previous entries.  The nurses are there, but most of the other enemies lack the psychological connection to the story.  Whereas previous games featured monsters that were metaphorical representations of something deeper, the ones in Origins seem like they were designed specifically to be “freaky” and thus lack the power to terrify on a deeper, more unsettling level.  Pyramid Head – who thankfully was not shoehorned into this game other than a painting on a wall – is frightening because you understand what he represents, not just because he’s weird-looking.  Instead, we get…the fat thing…and a monster that kills other monsters for no discernable reason.  Thanks for the help, monster!  I was running out of drip stands to fight with.

Can you tell I hated Silent Hill: Origins?  Everything about the game screams cash-in.  It looks decent enough for a PSP-to-PS2 port, and the soundtrack by Akira Yamaoaka is decent enough (though it too falls short of his previous work), but the gameplay is dull, the locales even more so, the monsters are lame, and the puzzles are more like chores.  More like Silent Hill: BORE-igins, am I right?

Silent Hill: Origins was completed on a real PlayStation 2 with no cheats, then placed upon my shelf where it will remain until the end of time, never to be touched again because, good god, it’s awful.