Platform: PC

I thought the original Call of Juarez was a better-than-average shooter that was bolstered by it being set in the Old West. I’m really surprised by the lack of western themed games given that for seventy-five odd years that was the go to “universe” for pulp stories and films.

Gunslinger isn’t a sequel. It does use some of the same mechanics and has one level that supposedly takes place in Juarez. Other than that, there is no connection to Billy and the Reverend from the first game. In fact, most of the story here takes place in the form of a frame story and narration in which the Gunslinger is telling tall tales of his adventures years after the fact. Although well acted, the plot is just a means of getting the player from one area to the next without any real character development. However, the story telling becomes a game play device as the narrator forgets facts and has to backtrack causing the game to reverse itself or slow down to clarify a detail.

Really this game is all about the shooting. There’s no stealth, no NPC dialogues. Just solid, fun and satisfying gun play. Even the dueling mini-game at the end of each level is a fun challenge as you try to manage your focus and hand position while waiting to draw. Adding to the fun is the the hint of Borderlands cell-shading style which complements the over-the-top Western Sukiyaki Django art direction and character design.

This was a free game on Steam on the day of the sequel’s release. I grabbed it without knowing anything about the game. Apparently, the distinguishing feature of Sniper Elite V2 is its over the top x-ray view gore simulation. Make a head shot and watch as the bullet shatters bones and eyeballs. This adds absolutely nothing to the game other than a novelty cool factor and it starts to get in the way when you are trying to make successive shots quickly. Fortunately, the act of just moving through the rather straightforward, story-free levels and sniping foes from a distance was satisfying enough to keep me going once the thrill of slow motion bone fragmentation wore off.

The fourth Blackwell game continues to make improvements over its predecessors in terms of technical polish. There is also a bit more depth to the puzzles and game play. This is still no where near the brutal difficulty of an old school point-and-click game, but it’s nice to have more options in terms of combining inventory items, switching characters and querying your in-game search engine to advance the game. As usual, the story and characters are the highlight here, and the broader character arcs are starting to come to a head. There is one more game left in the series and I am anxious dig in to it soon.

This and the previous Blackwell Unbound apparently were intended to be a single game with flashbacks and intertwined plot lines. Many of the same characters appear again and it’s nice to see a larger story arc developing. The quality of the game play and puzzles has improved with each game as has the voice acting and sound. In some respects the art has improved, but each game seems to be the work of a different artist(s) and there are details that I miss.

Another day, another Blackwell game completed. These are solid point-and-click adventure games. The puzzles aren’t too hard and the stories are good. This one is a little less slick graphically than the first, but the soundtrack and mood are much more appropriate to the ghostly noir theme. On to the next…

The first four Blackwell games went on sale on Steam this week for around 50¢ each. These games have been on my radar ever since I saw this Mattchat interview with Wadjet Eye company founder Dave Gilbert. Basically, he was a hobbyist using the Adventure Game Studio to create Lucasarts style point-and-click adventures. He decided to make a go at transforming his hobby into a business and some dozen or so games later the company has survived.

The Blackwell Legacy is the first in a series of five games that have the player acting as a spiritual medium who, with the help of her deceased sidekick Joey, seeks to guide tormented ghosts into the afterlife. It’s kinda like a noir version of The Frighteners. The theme lends itself very well to episodic storytelling. Every game features a new mystery and there are larger main character story arcs to be explored across the whole series.

The game itself is not too puzzle driven. I was stumped a couple of times, but it was mostly because I didn’t fully grasp the note taking inventory mechanic. For the most part you are simply clicking through dialogue and revisiting characters as more information becomes available. I enjoyed the leisurely pace and was quite impressed with the characters and plot. It’s a short game which can be finished in one or two sittings, but it felt just about right in length to me.

Of course, this being a first outing by a new game developer, there are a few rough edges. The voice overs are a nice addition, but the acting is spotty and the sound design (by the developer’s own admission) is lacking. You gotta rock the mic with the pantyhose!

The art, however, is stunning. I love the painterly style rendered with a limited color palette. It’s not trying to be cute like most pixel-art games do these days, it’s trying to be the best possible hand-drawn art within the lo-res constraints of the authoring environment.

I’m glad I bought this package and will probably be paying full-price for future Wadjet Eye games when they come out. Can’t wait to get on to the next Blackwell adventure.

Have you ever wanted to be the star of your very own nihilistic, anti-war fever dream? Well, look no further than Spec Ops: The Line. This game is, for the most part, a standard cover-based third-person shooter. The mechanics are solid, but nothing out of the ordinary. Where this game separates itself from others is in its dark story that owes a lot to Apocalypse Now and its progenitor, Heart of Darkness. Instead of taking a boat up the river, you are making your way through a sand storm engulfed Dubai on a quest to find Colonel Konrad (Conrad, get it?) and his rogue 33th brigade. As you move from one brutal slaughter to the next you are eventually forced to take morally reprehensible actions that trigger your decent into chaos.

Unlike most military shooters, the characters have actual arcs and the story, although somewhat convoluted, is well-paced and intriguing. I especially like the gun battles that have trippy 60’s acid rock jamming in the background ala the Do Long bridge scene from Apocalypse Now. Get The Roach, man!

Hotline Miami is an ultraviolent, fast-paced arcade-style game that owes a lot to Smash T.V. and Berzerk. Although it uses both analog sticks, I wouldn’t quite call it a twin stick shooter since you are using the shoulder buttons to fire and swing weapons. These controls are not easy to get used to, but eventually I got a handle on them. Yet even near the end I was still dying because I would accidentally throw my weapon rather than target an enemy.

The game is pretty spastic and unforgiving. You are rewarded for speed and recklessness but a lot of times you will get killed without warning by a thug who is out of your range of view. Success comes from memorization of the levels and repetition. You need to plan your attack route using a mix of stealthy melee kills and well-placed (but loud) gun shots.

By the end of a stage the screen is filled with bloody puddles of pixelated henchmen. The violence can seem be a bit unnerving and excessive at first, but the lo-res graphics, Scarface themes and dreamy tone keep it from becoming too icky like Postal was.

I really wanted to like Brütal Legend. but once again Doublefine has created a game that is a triumph of style over substance. The story concept is there: Jack Black as a concert roadie who saves heavy metal music from obsolescence through the power of rock. There are so many great ways that this tale could have been told. How about a parable about commercial, corporate entities are watering down great music? Or how with so many entertainment choices, kids just don’t care about being in bands any more? Nope. Instead we are taken to what amounts to your standard D & D fantasy world with a sheen of Eighties metal album cover art direction laid on top. If not for the fact that your magic wand is actually a guitar, the game-play doesn’t build on the music themes that are set up in the premise.

I would be able to look past the story direction and just play in a fantasy world where I could join Lemmy, Ozzy and Rob Halford in battle, but the game mechanics range from dull to infuriatingly not fun. In the case of the former we have standard button mashing hack and slash segments, and as for the latter there are the much bemoaned real-time strategy battles. Those RTS portions are terrible. The controls are awkward and there’s no minimap to help you command troops. You can’t tell enemies from friends so, when you join in the fighting, you are just randomly swinging at everything. Such a mess.

On top of all this, it’s an open world, mission-based game too! That usually mean lots of little side quests to fill out the map and encourage exploration. Over and over your side quests are an ambush battle, a gun turret battle, a mortar strike battle and a race. Of the game types, only the racing is fun (especially the segments where you are shooting enemies while driving). Otherwise it all felt like an excuse to look at pretty art and listen to crappy metal music that holds no nostalgic value to me. I hope Broken Age does well, because Doublefine needs to concentrate more on pure story driven games and less on standard console action game tropes with an artsy paint job.

This sequel is an improvement over the original Borderlands. The basic shoot everything and look for loot game-play remains, but the level designs and weapons are far more interesting. There is a much greater emphasis on verticality, cover and movement. The first game seems flat and empty compared to this.

Multiplayer co-op is still the way to go because the story, although a bit more focused, is still a bit of an after thought. At least you are given a villain to pursue even though you really don’t care why he is doing what he is doing.