Well, I tried. Three times I have started playing System Shock 2 and each time I just get frustrated or bored and just give up. This game just has not aged all that well, especially when compared with its Bioshock successors. It’s from a time when first person shooter games were trying to branch out and evolve away from just non-stop shooting. I’m sure at the time that players loved the added story and inventory complexity, but it just feels bogged down and sluggish to my ADD sensibilities. Uninstalled!

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.