Recent reviews by Loot Satchel

Perfect Remake

Resident Evil 3 should have been $20 worth of DLC for Resident Evil 2 instead of pretending to be a full priced $60 game. It’s a 4 or 5 hour linear experience with little replay value. It doesn’t take good advantage of its Racoon City setting and it completely squanders the potential for engaging and emergent cat and mouse gameplay with Nemesis.

The first hour or so of the game is pretty promising. After getting chased out of your apartment from the STARS obsessed Nemesis, you find yourself exploring a few square blocks of downtown Raccoon City. There are actually multiple stores that you can enter, and a couple of different paths around the environment. You have to move back and forward across this section of the city while you solve puzzles that unlock previously locked stores or alleyways. Your goal is to get a Subway train working again in order to evacuate some civilians. At some scripted point in the story Nemesis shows back up, and he chases you around pre-determined areas while you are trying to get things done. It’s actually all pretty cool, but unfortunately once you get the subway train up and running again (which takes about an hour), the game throws out this semi-open world level design and moves on to tight corridor’s and even more tightly scripted Nemesis encounters. It’s a real shame, because if the rest of the game was actually like the first hour, I could maybe forgive its short length.

You don’t really get to experience the city setting anymore once you get off of the train. The city is there as a backdrop, but it doesn’t factor into the gameplay at all. When you do go back outside, it’s very obvious that you are just walking down what are essentially outdoor hallways. There is always conveniently placed debris blocking off all the side streets and alleyways and generally no branching paths that you can take. A quick glance at the map confirms there is only one path forward. The remainder of the game takes place mostly indoors anyway, including a short trip back to the Racoon City Police Department, the Racoon City Hospital and of course a secret Umbrella Lab. During these sequences you are mostly just walking down hallways blasting everything that moves. This game has a way more action focus then Resident Evil 2, and throws tons of resources at you. I finished the with tons of ammo and healing left over plus the materials to craft a lot more. You are never resource starved, and the game feels easy as a result.

There is also very little in the way of classic Resident Evil style puzzle solving. It’s almost all traditional keycard hunts that would feel more at home in a Doom game then the odd and elaborate puzzles we have come to expect in Resident Evil games. You won’t be putting Medallions in statutes to reveal hidden passages or slotting chess themed fuses into the correct boxes to unlock doors. Instead, expect to search dead bodies for company ID cards that you slot into card readers in front of doors. Resident Evil feels more like an action game series again instead of survival horror. Bummer.

I think the biggest disappointment of Resident Evil 3 has to be the Nemesis. What I wanted to see was an intelligent enemy that chases you throughout the game. Basically, an expanded take on Tyrant (Mr. X) from the Resident Evil 2 remake. Instead what we got is highly scripted chase sequences where Nemesis shows up and chases you down pre-determined paths until he gets temporarily dispatched in a cutscene at the end of the hallway. Once that happens, he is completely gone until he shows up in the next cutscene / scripted sequence. You can’t kill Nemesis during these sequences either, although you can temporarily knock him down if you do enough damage. There are four Nemesis encounters in the game where knocking him down will cause him to drop a supply case, but its only worth doing during the first two. Knocking Nemesis down at the Power Station and outside the Donut Shop will drop you upgrades for your handgun. The other two encounters will only give you some ammo. Tyrant from Resident Evil 2 was a better take on this concept in my opinion, and I would have just rather had that over what we ended up getting.

The game looks and runs really nice at least. Even on my aging computer I was able to run the game basically maxed out at 1440p and sustain a framerate above 70FPS at all times, often over 100FPS. The RE Engine is really solid technology. There is a ton of detail in the scenery, and I have to mention how exceptional the character models and their facial animation are. The only real complaints I had about the presentation is that the reflections still look really bad, and that zombie animations in the distance run at like 30 frames per second which is really distracting and annoying when you are trying to hit someone far away. I would love to see an option on PC to adjust that, as it doesn’t seem necessary to save on performance.

I think what it comes down to is that this game needed a lot more time in development. Supposedly the game was in the works for years before it was announced, but it just doesn’t come across in the final product. The whole thing feels rushed and unambitious. It’s just entirely too short, and it doesn’t make good on the fantastic opportunities they had to do something special with the series. We get a glimpse of that potential in the game’s opening act, before being pulled back into rudimentary level design and an over emphasis on combat and scripted sequences. The asking price is way too high, wait for a sale before you buy.

There are a lot of Virtual Reality shooting games out right now. Most of those games can be best described as tech demos. It would be a little unfair to label Arizona Sunshine the same way, but I also wouldn’t go so far as to call it a “full game” either. The game features a campaign, which can be played solo or co-op, as well as a multiplayer waved based survival mode. The campaign itself is somewhat short. Most people will probably be able to finish it in around four to five hours, but it is the shooting mechanics and the variety of scenarios presented that make this game worthwhile.

The story campaign starts without much fanfare. You wake up in a cave where you have been camping out, there are zombies outside, and its time to go kill them. The player’s character talks to himself and the zombies, sometimes telling jokes and other times making observations. The main “plot” of the game involves you hearing a radio transmission that sounds like its from other survivors, so off you go to find them. Arizona Sunshine is extremely light on narrative, and what is there is not exactly an enthralling. However, to focus on the storytelling is really missing the point of the game.

Virtual Reality games like this live or die on their gameplay and immersion, two things that Arizona Sunshine nails. Movement in this game uses the teleporting mechanic, which has become fairly standard in VR games at this point. You can use the thumbsticks on either hand to point at a spot in front of you to teleport to, and you can set the direction you will be facing when you come out of the teleport. Tapping a direction on the stick will rotate the camera in place. For example, flicking the thumbstick down will cause you to do an instant 180 degree turn. The game does some collision detection to prevent you from teleporting thru solid objects, so you still have to “walk” around and navigate as you would a typical game. There seems to be an invisible stamina meter at play here as well, which prevents you from abusing the teleport mechanic to get away from the zombies. You can only teleport so many times over so much distance before you have to let the meter recharge. Selecting stairs or ladders teleports you to the end of them, avoiding any awkward first person traversals. Overall, moving around the environments works extremely well.

When you first load up the game, it has you place your hands at your side and squeeze the triggers on the controller to calibrate where your waist is. This is because a lot of the combat in the game revolves around weapon holsters attached your belt. You can carry four weapons at one time: one in each of your hands as well as one on each of your hips. Ammo is also stored on your belt, and the only way to find out how much ammo you have is to look down and visually inspect it. Picking up spare ammo in the game physically requires you to reach out, pick up the magazine, and bring it to your waist to deposit it. Reloading weapons require you to hit a button on the controller to drop the magazine out, and then move the gun to your waist to have it reload. Reloading this way does not actually make much sense if you think about it (how is the new magazine inserted into the gun with one hand?), but its a fun reloading mechanic that feels cool to do. Its also something you will likely forget how to do in moments of panic. There were a number of times when I was surrounded by zombies and in my panic I completely screwed up the reload and died. Some people wont like this, but I feel like it adds an interesting psychological element to the game where you need to keep your cool in stressful situations.

A big part of the game is searching for additional guns, ammo, and health. I always found myself with just enough ammo to get by, and never enough to really feel comfortable that I could stop looking for more. When on the highway, you can search most vehicles by opening doors and looking around inside. This sounds like a mundane task, but in VR it is quite immersive to physically reach out with your hands, grab a door handle, swing it open, and then put your head inside the car and look around for resources. Likewise, searching buildings often involves opening cabinets and desk drawers. It adds a much needed physical connection to the world to help sell the immersion. Its unfortunate that a lot of stuff in the game world is not interactive though. Many environment props are static and won’t react if touched, shot, or blown up.

I played this game on a three sensor setup on the Oculus Rift, and found the tracking to be next to perfect. The shooting mechanics in the game are somewhat realistic in that you need to properly use the iron sights on all of the guns. If you do not know how to shoot in real life, you might want to go watch some YouTube videos before picking up this game. Unlike traditional video games where you right click a mouse and the iron sights come up perfectly, you actually have to adjust the position of your hand and rotation of your wrist to align the dots on the sights, make sure there is equal distance between the posts, etc. There are quite a few different weapons in the game including pistols, SMGs, shotguns, grenades and the occasional rifle. The major differences between the pistols seems to be ammo capacity or attachments. There are no weapon stats listed, so I was never really sure if some pistols did more damage then others. There also doesn’t seem to be realistic ballistic modeling, so there was no bullet drop or anything like that. As a result, I tended to just stick with the handguns that had the better iron sights and ammo capacity. This is one of the major areas of the game that I feel could use a lot of improvement. The weapons need to be more distinct from each other. A .45 ACP should hit harder then a 9mm, and the velocities and trajectories of each should be different. The game also does not really have recoil on the weapons, but that’s not really something you can do in VR because the position of the gun in the game needs to track with the position of your hand.

Shooting at the zombies is really fun. There is a good range of walking animations on display. They seem to randomly shuffle from side to side or stumble at times, so their movement is not entirely predictable. Some walk slowly, while others run quickly at you. With the exception of the armored zombies, they all will go down with a single well placed round to the head. The resulting sound and ragdoll animations are pretty satisfying, especially when you manage to land a perfect shot from a pistol at range. Shooting zombies at range can be difficult because you usually do not have access to any sort of optics. Also, because of the resolution limitations of VR headsets today, it can be hard to make out zombies at a distance. Imagine trying to line up the front sight post of a handgun with two pixels because the zombie is far away in the distance. Its not easy to do. Of course that is a limitation in the hardware, and not the fault of the game. Most of the combat in the game takes place short range, so its not really much of an issue, and if you are playing this game in a few years when resolutions on headsets get better, it probably wont be an issue at all.

The variety of the scenarios you get to fight in is good as well. From highways with abandoned cars everywhere to trailer parks and temporary military camps. There is even a sequence where you have to fight in an abandoned mine. The mine is very dark, so you have to hold a flashlight in one hand and a gun in the other. Its a very interesting VR experience to be stuck in the dark with zombies, scanning the flashlight with one hand and trying to take shots with the other. The pacing of the game is even overall, none of these sequences outstay their welcome. Just about the time I was starting to get tired of the mine I found an elevator to get out. There are also a number of points in the game where you get locke

System Shock 2 is an interesting game to review in 2013. When it first came out in 1999, it was met with a lot of praise from the gaming press, winning over a dozen awards, including several “Game of the Year” titles, and since then it has appeared on several “Greatest Games of All Time” lists. However despite the praise, not many people actually bought and played it.

It feels like System Shock 2 has been granted a second chance though. The success Irrational Games has had with BioShock and BioShock: Infinite has interested people enough to want to check out System Shock 2, which was the first game Irrational created. This is great news, because while you might not expect it, I feel that System Shock 2 is the best of all the “Shock” games. It makes you realize that for all of the steps forward we have taken in terms of technology, in a lot of ways modern gameplay has taken a few steps backwards.

System Shock 2 takes place aboard the world’s first Faster Than Light starship the Von Braun as well as the UNN heavy destroyer the Rickenbacker which was tethered to the Von Braun so it could make the FTL jumps as well. You, the player, wake up from Cryo Sleep 5 months after the ship has left earth. It appears that while you were sleeping some force has managed to hijack the ship. You spend much of the game trying to figure out what exactly happened while you were sleeping, getting ship systems back up and running, and coming up with a plan to stay alive. The primary story of the game is told through many audio logs scattered around the ship that were left by the dead crewmembers, as well as visual clues in the levels that shed some light on what has been going on. This was one of the first games to do this, which has only recently started to become popular.

Both the Von Braun and Rickenbacker are both pretty large ships, and the game does not have any real “levels” in the traditional sense. The ships are broken up into decks (medical, engineering, hydroponics, operations, etc), and each of those decks are broken up into sectors that are separated by bulkheads which often require keycards to access. You are always free to move back and forward between decks and sectors you have gained access to. The game treats the ships as one large persistent game world. For example, if you come across some heavy armor that you do not have the required strength to equip, you can always come back to it later once you have the required stats. Or if you drop an item in a hallway that you do not have space in your inventory for, you can come back and get it hours later if you feel the need to. In fact, this sort of back tracking is sometimes necessary, as certain areas of the ship are only accessible after you do something in a different area. While the game in linear as far as some areas are locked until you find the keycard or access codes, it often lets you tackle multiple objectives in whatever order you see fit.

Speaking of stats like strength, the game has an interesting RPG like system that determines what you can and cannot do. As you complete objectives, you are granted access to “Cybernetic Modules” that you use to upgrade your cybernetic implants. You spend these points at upgrade stations around the ship. There are four main categories of upgrades: stats, psi, weapons, and tech. Stats include things like strength, endurance, and agility. The weapons category contains sub-categories such as standard weapons, heavy weapons, and energy weapons. The tech category is where you find the skills associated with hacking, repairing, and modifying. The Psi category has five separate tiers of power, which need not be learned in order. Each tier includes seven individual powers. These powers compare pretty favorably to the plasmids from Bioshock, and include abilities like Photonic Redirection (turning yourself invisible), Enhanced Motion Sensitivity (shows enemies nearby), and Projected Pyrokinesis (shoots a ball of fire).

The game has more gameplay systems then just the skills. Let’s use the weapons as an example. Each weapon as multiple fire modes that have strengths and weaknesses, such as an overload shot for a laser pistol that does more damage but is energy inefficient. On top of this, each weapon can be modified, provided you have the appropriate skill level. Examples of modification include increasing the clip size, increasing the rate of fire and decreasing kickback. Each time you fire a weapon, its condition starts to degrade, and you must use maintenance tools to keep the weapon in working order. If you neglect a weapon long enough, it can actually break. At that point you need to repair the weapon before you can use it again. On top of this, many of the guns have different types of ammo such as armor piercing rounds and anti-personnel rounds. How does one know what type of ammo to use against each enemy? That is where researching comes in.

When you kill enemies, they often leave behind organs that you can collect from their bodies. If you have a high enough research level, you can research these organs to learn more about the enemies you are facing. It will tell you what types of weapons they have resistances to, which types of weapons they are extra vulnerable to, and it will also give you a buff to all damage done to them. Researching isn’t limited to enemy organs either. You will often find exotic weapons and items that you cannot use until you have researched what they are. Researching items requires different chemicals as well. Which chemicals are required depends on the item. Each deck of the ship has a chemical storeroom that contains a selection of most (but not all) of the chemicals that you need for research. If you are researching an item that requires a chemical that is not in the storeroom on your current deck, you will need to locate the proper chemical somewhere else.

Since System Shock 2 is a survival horror game at its core, you spend a lot of time managing and rationing your supplies. You don’t always want to fight every enemy you come across, otherwise you might find yourself out of ammo. Running from or sneaking by enemies are always valid tactics. You can sometimes take more creative approaches as well, such as hacking a turret and baiting enemies into its firing range. There are also vending machines located throughout the ship, which you can spend money (Nanites) that you collect on items such as ammo and health. Not every vending machine sells everything, and you can hack the vending machines to offer you better prices. Nanites are also the currency used to hack, modify, and repair items, so it is up to you to determine the best way to use your supply of them.

All of these layered gameplay systems are what make System Shock 2 stand out as surprisingly modern when compared to current games. Even Bioshock, a critically acclaimed modern game, feels a bit shallow when you compare it to System Shock 2. I would even go as far as to say Bioshock is a watered down version of System Shock 2. This complexity also opens the game up to be played multiple times, and each time you can build your character in drastically different ways. Want to play the game as a stealth character, only killing when absolutely necessary? That’s possible. What to build a melee weapons only character? That’s also possible.

The only thing about System Shock 2 that feels dated are the visuals, and even that can be mitigated to some degree with mods. The story is great, the audio design is both haunting and impactful when it needs to be, and the gameplay was so far ahead of its time that even modern games feel shallow in comparison. If you can get over how the game looks, I would absolutely recommend giving this first person survival horror RPG a try. It might just be your game of the year… from 1999.

You wake up in a castle with a note you have written yourself. You cannot remember who or where you are, but your former self is not surprised. The note tells you that you have purposefully forgotten recent events, and that you now have one goal: find and kill a man named Alexander. You don’t know who Alexander is or why you wanted to kill him, but your note warns that you are being chased by a dark shadow that alters reality and that time will be short.

The dark shadow is a persistent threat that is never directly seen but its presence can always be felt. Earthquakes are tearing the castle apart, and odd noises can be heard coming from outside. However, these are the least of your worries as strange creatures walk the halls of the castle. The castle is impressive – a massive maze of twisting rooms and corridors. The earthquakes are causing parts of the roof to collapse, blocking off passages and creating new ones as you play.

Light is in limited supply, as candles provide your only means of illuminating the darkness. Tinderboxes are scattered all over the castle, but you never seem to have enough. You also have a lantern that runs on oil, but even that is in limited supply. Staying in the darkness slowly drains your sanity, which is something that could easily be lost in a place like this. You need to treat light like a limited resource, otherwise you could lose your mind.

You have to stay focused and keep your wits about you. Keeping the darkness at bay is only part of the challenge, as every odd event you witness chews on your soul. Looking too long at the foul creatures could cause you to panic and reveal your position, forfeiting your only advantage: stealth. You will find no weapons to use against the creatures in the castle. Your only choice when faced with one of them is to run or hide. You can close doors and barricade yourself in rooms, but that will only slow them down. Running fast and far away or hiding in closets or other dark corners will be your best bet for survival.

As you lose your sanity your vision becomes blurred. You might start seeing and hearing things that are not actually there. Depending on how far gone you are there might even be a delay between mouse inputs and you performing the action. Keeping your mind on the tasks at hand is the only way to preserve what little sanity you have left, as solving a puzzle completely restores your sanity.

Solving these puzzles is how you will spend a majority of your time. The castle is in very bad shape with areas that you need to get to currently inaccessible. Many of the puzzles work like classic point and click adventure games. You have to find the items that you need, combine them to create something useful, and then use the item on the environment. This might include mixing chemicals to produce an explosive to clear your path, or to fix a broken steam generator by properly setting levers and replacing gears and other broken parts. The puzzles are well designed and often make good use of the physics engine. They will require you to think things through, but are never so complicated that you will be stuck on any one for too long.

The physics engine makes interacting with the world feel pretty real. Using the mouse you actually grab on to items and move them around. Opening doors requires more than just a click, as you have to push or pull your mouse to swing the door open. Similarly, turning valves requires you to move the mouse in the correct circular motion. It creates a unique physical connection between you and the game that really helps to immerse you in its world. It also helps increase the tension a lot, especially when running from enemies where you actually have to stop and swing a door open in order to get away.

The presentation of the game is pretty solid, especially for an indie game. The graphics engine won’t necessarily impress if you have been playing a lot of big budget games, but by no means does the game look bad. The actual art in the game is pretty good. Objects have a good amount of detail, and feel authentic for the time period. The lighting engine works well, creating believable shadows and the use of ambient occlusion adds depth to the scenes. However, the most impressive part of the presentation has to be the audio design. The audio designers clearly understand that what you cannot see is often scarier then what you can, and they provide you with some truly terrifying sounds to get your imagination working against you. The graphics and audio combine to create a game that is really rich in atmosphere.

True horror games are rare these days, but Amnesia The Dark Descent really pulls it off. This might just be the creepiest game ever made.

I am never riding the Metro again.

After playing this extremely creepy and atmospheric game, I don’t think I can ever step foot into a Metro station again without getting post-traumatic stress symptoms thanks to this excellent survival horror first-person shooter. Set in the aftermath of a nuclear war, the remaining Russian population has retreated underground to the Moscow Metro system where the majority of the game takes place. The individual Metro stations have been turned into refugee camps of sorts, with families trying to survive on whatever they can. Many of the camps are run by different factions, some of which are friendly, while others are not. Travel between these crowded stations is possible but dangerous due to the mutants, bandits, and anomalies that have taken up residence in the sprawling Metro tunnels. The setting is extremely dirty, depressing and claustrophobic, but rendered in amazing detail. Every inch of the Metro system seems plausible, and years of neglect have never looked so awesome. With resources so scarce, life seems to be hanging on by a thread. The world is clearly dying, with everything, including the tunnels which preserve this last bit of humanity, rapidly deteriorating. Still, there is still a lot of life left in the people in these Metro stations, and they are not willing to disappear without a fight.

You play the game as Artyom, the son of the leader of one of the Metro stations. The Mutants have become more aggressive recently, attacking the station in greater numbers. The only hope of survival for those in the station are for you to get a message to one of the other, stronger Metro stations, asking them for help. However getting there, though the dangerous subway system, past the mutants, anomalies, bandits, and more will be no easy task. Luckily you are not alone in this, and you will have a number of companions to help you with your journey.

The game takes a lot of gameplay cues from existing survival horror games. This means limited supplies, dark corridors, oppressive atmosphere, and scary enemies. Friendly Metro stations, which can be thought of as hubs between missions, provide opportunities to catch your breath and trade for supplies. The currency in the tunnels takes the form of pre-war ammunition. Considering how hostile the world is, it’s not very surprising that bullets are more valuable then money. Pre-war ammo is becoming more and more scarce, so Metro residents have begun creating their own “dirty” rounds. These homemade rounds are not as powerful as the pre-war munitions, however they are plentiful. Balancing between firing dirty rounds and pre-war ammo, which doubles as your currency, creates an interesting gameplay choice. Do you want to take down the enemies quicker using less ammo, or save the ammo to buy more powerful weapons but stick to using the less effective rounds?

The gunplay in the game is pretty solid for the most part. There is an interesting selection of weapons that range from pre-war guns like AK-47s to weaponry made down in the Metro. These Metro weapons are often pneumatic in nature, requiring you to manually pump air into them (think squirt guns) before they can fire their ball bearing rounds. They take longer to prep, but they are silent and rather powerful. The guns behave in a realistic manner, and there are a number of choices for upgrades that range from scopes to silencers. The mutants behave as one would expect, charging after you without much intelligence. The human opponents show a reasonable amount of intelligence, and provide a challenge.

If brute force isn’t your thing, stealth is a viable option in the game. The Metro tunnels are naturally dark, and light sources can be eliminated to provide even more cover. There are a number of silent weapons, such as the pneumatic weapons discussed earlier, as well as throwing knives the like. The enemies react to noises as you would expect, investigating sounds and alerting other guards upon discovering you. Stealth is never outright required, but at times it certainly pays off to take the quiet approach.

If there is one defining aspect of this game it is that it absolutely nails the sense of atmosphere and immersion. It goes beyond the exquisitely detailed environments and superb graphics though. In a manner similar to that of Far Cry 2, a lot of the game’s HUD has been replaced by in-game items and other in-game visual feedback. For example, throughout the game you have to make use of gas masks. These masks occasionally require filter changes, but there is no timer on the HUD that tells you when to swap them. Instead, you can look at the watch on the character’s wrist. Other in-game feedback that indicates it’s time to swap filters is when your character’s breathing becomes heavy and the mask begins to fog up. Likewise, mission objectives are written on a journal that you can pull up and read without being pulled out of the experience. Other neat little touches includes a hand powered electrical generator that you use to charge up battery powered items such as night vision goggles and flashlights. Instead of having a meter that displays battery power, your flashlight becomes visibly weaker over time. Taking out your electrical generator and giving it a few pumps brings your flashlight back to life. Individually these little touches are not a big deal, but when taken together they help to really bring this world to life and immerse you in it.

If there is one real disappointment about the game it has to be its ending. This is a spoiler free review, so I won’t go into too much depth about what happens. However I think it’s safe to say that the very end of the game consists of a sequence of trial and error events. During this sequence I felt like a mouse in a maze that has to memorize the correct set of turns to get out. It was somewhat disappointing given the buildup, but I still found the overall ending of the game sufficient.

Overall, Metro 2033 is an excellent ride. Be sure to buy a ticket.