Another February has ended and this year I may not have been an A student, but I still got a passing grade for one of my favorite Joystiq pastimes. I played three great games this year and was rather surprised by one. Join me after the break to hear my thoughts on said titles.
Hard Reset
I played this game second but I want to talk about it first. Hard Reset deserves to be played by more people. While it certainly isn’t a perfect game, what’s good here is just too good to be ignored. The level design carefully and professionally compliments the weapons you use, as well as the enemies you will encounter. While I would have liked to see some more vertical level design throughout more of the game, the last level almost makes up for it. I think the worst thing about Hard Reset unfortunately is it’s story and characters. It’s a cautionary tale at heart, once again, about the consequences of becoming too dependent on government and technology. How original. It is a shame really since the way the story is told is fairly interesting, it uses very well drawn and surprisingly well voice acted comic book panels to set the stage before each mission. So even if the story is something we’ve seen before and its main characters are pretty one dimensional, the creature and robot designs are something to be praised. Unless a predictable, yet well told, story is a deal breaker for you, this is definitely a shooter you need to check out.
Her Story
Speaking of stories being told in a unique way, Her Story takes it to a whole different level. What a brilliant idea to build a game out of constructing a narrative. At first glance a 3 to 4 hour game where all you do is watch videos sounded fairly linear. Nothing could be further from the truth. Her Story is designed to be very open ended for the player, allowing us to both create our own narratives and discover a deeper one that the writers must be proud of. I do feel some of the core mechanics and actual functions of the game could have been far better explained, but never did it distract from the incredible acting performance by the game’s heroine. The longer I think about Her Story, the more I appreciate it. This is my favorite game I finished during #4iF.
Transformers: War For Cybertron
Which brings me to this mixed bag of nuts and bolts. Don’t get me wrong, I loved most of this game. And unlike Hard Reset is a shooter that has vertical design in all of its levels. I love how old school it’s mechanics are as far as third person shooters go. Weapon loadouts are barely a thing, you have to actually pick up enemy weapons, and find hidden items. It does the semi-regenerating health thing, which I’m fine with. You basically have health blocks that are greyed out if you take enough damage. But if you only take half the damage of a block, then that block regenerates. So you need health packs to restore lost blocks, but you can still regenerate by hiding for a bit. My main issue with the game is that only half of it works well. The first half of the campaign is the Decepticons story where you can play as a variety of your favorite baddies all with different abilities and of course transformations. Which are the most fun you will have with this game. Running around sniping folks in Starscream's bipedal form, only to jump off a giant cliff to avoid incoming rockets, and turn into a jet fighter as you fall then fire back on the rocket-wielding Autobot scum with your cannons. It's a damn delight. Unfortunately once the Decepticons run is over and you start playing as the Autobots, you begin to run into clipping on walls that aren’t there, extremely linear level design, textures that won’t load, hitboxes that don’t match up, and terrible frame drops. Either the game was rushed to be finished or the game’s designers are all actual Decepticons, since they clearly favored their portion of the game. If you see this on sale for five to ten bucks, maybe check it out. You will still get a great four to five hours of a very fun action platformer mixed with a third person shooter. Even if you never play the other five hours as the Autobots just to avoid its glitches and poor design choices, the excellent first half would still be worth every penny in my opinion.
That’s it for the games I was able to finish during #4iF. Turns out trying to beat 4 games during the month you move into a new house is kinda hard :) But I still had a blast playing the games I did manage to get too. The one I didn’t even end up starting was Undertale. Which means I know what game I’ll be starting sometime in March.
Hard Reset was one of the first games I fired up when I upgraded my video card earlier this year. It looks pretty impressive, but I have yet to finish it. I’ve started it a couple of time, but always seem to get distracted by something else. The mechanics are solid though, and definitely invoke that old school feeling.
Yeah that was a busy move alright. Not to mention the Comcast fail to get internet up for a week (not that it should surprise anyone)
Never played Transformers or Her Story but I did play Hard Reset. That’s a pretty great old school feeling shooter. Overwhelming odds, great level design, cool weapons and a pretty fair challenge, it was fun stuff.