Skill Issue

The_Kopite · December 19, 2022

8 hours ago, DrBloodmoney said:

We're all one happy, itchy, tasty family

Haha!

Platinum_Vice · December 28, 2022

When the PS5 released there was a wave of positive reviews for Astro's Playroom. This was a complete surprise considering that the PS4 equivalent, The Playroom, is apparently nothing special to write home about.

During the PS5 release window I was expecting a Biomutant port on PS5 in addition to Cyberpunk 2077, Elden Ring, God of War: Ragnarok, Horizon: Forbidden West, Iron Harvest, Jett: The Far Shore, Kena: Bridge of Spirits, Maquette, Solar Ash and Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection.

Far Cry 6, Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, Praey for the Gods and Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart were also dropping early in the release window, and while I wasn’t anywhere near as hyped for these as the aforementioned titles, I have been eyeing them with an open mind.

As someone who keeps an extensive wishlist/backlog list in alphabetical order, the fortuitous combination of a sequence of

A, B, C, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, P, R, U

stood out when the console was 6 months old. At the time I couldn’t help but see the early skeletal foundations for a platinum alphabet.

Considering that Astro's Playroom is essentially a tech demo, I was always going to play it first.

With such long-running hype for Biomutant, Cyberpunk 2077 and God of War: Ragnarok, they’re very high on my priority list and I want to dive into them as soon as possible.

… I’m sure you can see where this is going.

Sometimes restrictions like a loose order of “games to play next" can help someone fend off an ADHD-like desire to play the next thing as soon as possible instead of focusing on one or two games and therefore enjoying them to the fullest extent. With a backlog/wishlist of 200 games, getting distracted by a shiny new thing is a real threat to my ability to just play one game at a time, and I already know that focus improves my enjoyment rather than restricting it.

So with all of those thoughts bouncing around inside my head there was really only one logical conclusion to these wonderful first-world problems:

An A-Z of PS5 platinums

A self-imposed method to enjoying games in the early days of the PS5 life-cycle.

2023: The Year of the Alphabet.

The Rules:

1. Only one game per letter for this ~~event~~... ~~challenge~~... thingy. Nailed it.

2. No “The" or “A" games. Sorry The Forgotten City, The Pedestrian and The Plane Effect - you’re getting bumped until after this is done.

3. Pre-existing self-imposed milestone rules apply. Every 10th and 25th platinum (and every other milestone) must be platinum/blue/dark silver. My first three milestones chanced that way when I first joined PSNP and started trophy hunting, so I kept it going. Every 10th and 25th game therefore has a platinum trophy with an image that suits the aesthetic. It’s a silly and very egotistical thing to do that benefits no one except myself but I like it so it shall continue! Astro's Playroom will kick things off as platinum 130 with a blue platinum image, so 140 (the letter K) and 150 (the letter U) are therefore also in the hotseat.

4. All 26 games must have a platinum trophy. The non-plats will still be there when I'm done, Bloodmoney, don't flip out!

5. No shovelware.

6. I have to actually want to play it. This rule is very important and should not be forgotten.

7. Loosely: play the games in order. Definitely: pop those plats in order.

The Plan:

It is a work in progress. In some cases there may be different choices for some letters as the year unfolds.

Some letters have backup games in case I don’t enjoy the first preference (or trophies bug out / the game is too expensive / etc etc).

A – Astro's Playroom

Trailer

Hype: 7/10

Expectations: a short platformer with a lot of haptic feedback to show off the new controller's functionality. Apparently it’s an interactive tour through a museum of PlayStation's historic library that everyone seems to love. A perfect place to start.

B – Biomutant

Trailer

Hype: 8/10

I watched this come along in development since the early days of initial public previews. The release reviews are less than ideal but I’m still excited to play around with this title.

As an emergency backup, Backbone has been eyeing me off for ages and appears to be character-driven. I’m really looking forward to this one if Biomutant fails me.

C – Cyberpunk 2077

Trailer

Hype: 8.5/10

Apparently most bugs are fixed...

I’ve been hanging out to play this for nearly a decade and I’ve kept my expectations tempered. I’m not expecting The Witcher 3-levels of polish [Polish? ?] or enjoyment but there should still be plenty to like.

Call of the Sea, Chicken Police, Control and a stack of Crash Bandicoot 4 are all waiting in the wings as backups.

D – Disco Elysium

Trailer

Hype: 9/10

This was going to be Deathloop... it was always going to be Deathloop... But I’m a bit Dishonored-out having played the first three games to excess in 2022 (three playthroughs of D1, two of D2 and two of D3 – and then my first playthrough of Prey). Deathloop also sounds a bit polarising which concerns me. When I look at the multiple open world games set on either side of the letter ‘D’, I don’t really want to risk a drawn-out mediocre open world experience here.

I’ll come back to Deathloop of course... after the Year of the Alphabet.

On the flip side – Disco Elysium looks like it cannot possibly be overlooked! I have high expectations and suspect it might be a contender for my 2023 Game of the Year.

E – Elden Ring

Trailer

Hype: 8/10

I loved Bloodborne. The vibe and atmosphere were the best parts (for me) and the gameplay was enjoyable but I only completed a single playthrough. Without as much spare time and with two kids (instead of zero kids during Bloodborne) I had ‘noped out’ of any more FromSoftware experiences, but I think it’s time to try to recreate the magic. I’m expecting a slow start (and I usually prefer an overt narrative or character journey) but I’m willing to put in the effort here with an open mind. If I’m lucky, Copanele and DrBloodmoney (or many other fine folks) will have my back for build ideas if I get stuck.

F – Far Cry 6

Trailer

Hype: 6/10

Reluctantly, one final Far Cry game will steal me away from genuinely better games. It’s for old times' sake. Predictable, easy, lacking imagination and innovation... but apparently this is the last one of its kind before Ubisoft move to a “Games as a Service” model for the series. I’ve also played the rest of the series so I’m willing to invest in a final lap of honour before it takes a (put money on it, folks!) drastic nosedive. Also, Far Cry 6 should function as a palate cleanser in between the long and difficult Elden Ring and the very-much-anticipated...

Foreclosed is currently my only backup option. Looks like a great artstyle but lots of mediocre reviews.

G – God of War: Ragnarök

Trailer

Hype: 8.5/10

‘Nuff said.

H – Horizon: Forbidden West

Trailer

Hype: 6/10

I really hoped that the issues that I had with the first game would get addressed for this sequel... based on what I’ve seen things don’t look too bright for improvements on my hang-ups with Zero Dawn. I’ll keep an open mind and, worst case, focus on the aspects of the game that I know I’ll enjoy: shooting mechanical laserbeam-and-rocket-launcher-wielding dinosaurs!

Hitman 3 misses out by a hair! I’m expecting it to be a lot better than Horizon and much longer to complete, therefore it can wait while Horizon probably shouldn’t!

Hades misses out – I’d like to play Bastion, Pyre and Transistor first.

Hogwarts Legacy looks scary-good. I’m really hyped... But I expect a lot of bugs upon release and significant money gouging. Reluctantly, this one is getting pushed back. A hard decision.

I – Iron Harvest

Trailer

Hype: 7.5/10

An RTS based on the board game ‘Scythe’ (which I love). This will probably be a significant time sink.

J – Jurassic World Evolution 2

Trailer

Hype: 7.5/10

I loved the PS2 game Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis. With any luck this game will tap into that nostalgia. At the very least the change of pace from the many AAA open world games within the first chunk of the list will be welcome.

DrBloodmoney’s review of Jett: The Far Shore sobered me up from an early infatuation. [You're getting quite the mention in this post, big boy.]

K – Klonoa: Fantasy of Reverie Series

Trailer

Hype: 3/10

So this is potentially the first big roadblock for me. “K" is going to be platinum #140. I don't want to break my streak of having blue/platinum/silver trophy images for every 10th game. Again: silly... but I like it. My choices are very limited. By that I mean: I have no choice; Kena’s platinum is cream-coloured, so deeper into the backlog she goes!

I’ve played the first 15 minutes of the first Klonoa on PS1 and wasn’t overly impressed. Here’s hoping that an open mind is the only thing preventing me from enjoying it! Otherwise, I’m praying for a suitable replacement. I do need "a game that I don't think I'll enjoy" for 2023's Bingo Community Event... which is a bonkers ask, but this meets the criteria. We'll see how we go.

L – LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga

Trailer

Hype: 6/10

Mrs Vice and I need a couch co-op game for the year. This should be meaty enough for us to work on in our two-hour spurts of co-op gaming together for the first half of the year. Even if it sucks, at least I’ll enjoy the company with Mrs Vice. We might get started on it early.

It's a shame that LEGO Builder's Journey doesn’t have a platinum because I’m really looking forward to that one. LEGO Bricktales will also get an eventual cycle through this PS5, but not this year. I actually think those two games look really good.

M – Maquette

Trailer

Hype: 7.5/10

I must have about 25 puzzle games in my backlog. Maquette and Manifold Garden are two of them... To be honest I’m not sure which one I’d rather play first...

Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales looks identical to the first game. Should I even bother playing it at all??.

N – Need for Speed: Unbound

Trailer

Hype: 8/10

I do enjoy myself a little arcade racer. I’ll be sure to nudge Destructor towards (or away from) the game afterwards.

The art style reminds me of SSX On Tour. Personality goes a long way in games, NFSU looks like it has plenty.

O – OlliOlli World

Trailer

Hype: 7/10

This is such a unique concept for a game. It will also be my first OlliOlli game. My imagination used to visualise something similar to this game when looking out of car windows on long journeys.

If it doesn’t work out, Mrs Vice and I are pros at Overcooked and we feasted on the two PS4 releases; the All You Can Eat port is there as a backup. Operation Tango loses out by a hair and I’d like to play the PS1 Oddworld games before starting Soulstorm.

P – Praey for the Gods

Trailer

Hype: 6/10

This one was advertised as a snow-based indie title heavily inspired by Shadow of the Colossus. I’ll try that!

Q – Quest for Infamy

Trailer

Hype: 6/10

I’ve been getting into point-and-click adventure games lately and I played Monkey Island for the first time in September. I’m trying to get into the genre in a relatively chronological order to see how it developed over decades of innovations. Quest for Infamy is perfect here as even though I don’t think that it was made decades ago, it does look like it was and it looks like the gameplay retains that 90s style.

R – Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

Trailer

Hype: 7/10

This one falls into the same category as Far Cry 6 and LEGO: The Skywalker Saga, in that I feel like I’ve probably exhausted everything that I can extract from these franchises already. I also kind of want to play them to keep up the streak of playing all the mainline games as well. That’s not really a good enough reason to play games these days, but Rift Apart has been reviewed very highly and has a very short playtime (maybe the shortest in this whole A-Z undertaking), so... open mind!! And onto the pile!

S – Solar Ash

Trailer

Hype: 7.5/10

I’m definitely keen for this one. You guys know how much I loved Hyper Light Drifter, so let’s see what Heart Machine have cooked up for their next effort. Fortunately Arcesius has written a slick platinum guide which is expected to come in handy.

T – Treasures of the Aegean

Trailer

Hype: 7/10

Copanele came to the rescue without knowing it by giving me a solid recommendation for Treasures of the Aegean. The artstyle of the image on PSNP and the excessive region stacking gave me the early impression that this would have been an EZPZ jungle-running pay-to-plat, but Copa’s recommendation indicates otherwise. The trailer leads me to believe that it’s a metroidvania with light puzzle elements... maybe? I’m diving in anyway! Niche. Low plat achiever count. Let’s just give it a go.

U – Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection

Trailer

Hype: 9/10

This should be plat #150. Uncharted 4 and Lost Legacy were my favourites for the series and I’m keen to play them again anyway. A no-brainer!! Unpacking misses out (but not for a lack of hype in its own right).

V - Vesper

Trailer

Hype: 7.5/10

I didn’t have a game for V until December 2022. This looks like a 2D puzzle game like Oddworld with the aesthetics of Badland. Cool! It has an alarmingly small player count and I don't know whether there's any guides if I get stuck. I might need to enlist some help. I wonder... does anybody know anyone on this site that likes puzzle games? Anyone at all?

Genuinely, playing a super niche game and figuring out the little secrets sounds like a great co-operative experience. If that interests anyone, shout up!

W - Wreckreation

Trailer

Hype: 9.5/10

This looks like Trackmania meets Hot Wheels Unleashed. Say no more, fam. Say. No. More.

This is the first game on this list that hasn't been release yet. It's set for a late 2023 release. Might have to reluctantly swap this out... ?

X - XIII

Trailer

Hype: 8/10

The prior release of this game tanked. Apparently it’s so much better now that the publisher has released it again like it’s a whole new thing. Single-player FPS games on consoles are pretty few and far in between at the moment. I can’t wait to give this a go, to be honest.

Y & Z - ???

And this is where the plan is coming undone. I’m not taken by anything with these letters at the moment. I guess that I’ll have to play this by ear. I suppose my son would appreciate Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles... but Z is truly slim pickings.

_____________________

So that’s it. That’s the plan. Feel free to make any recommendations!

Some quick stats for this plan is consistent with average distribution of every 20-30 games for me, so that's actually quite reassuring!

AAA: 8

Indie: 9

Co-Op: 1

Action-based: 18

Not action-based: 5

Open world: 6

FPS: 2

Puzzle & Point and Click: 3

Racing: 2

RPG: 3

Platformer: 5

RTS: 1

Management: 1

Other than that, I’m just excited to dive in head first and I like that this is such a unique little self-made challenge. Wish me luck!

As always: thanks for reading.

Edited December 28, 2022 by Platinum_Vice

DrBloodmoney · December 28, 2022

This sounds like a fun thing!

not sure I can help much with Y & Z ( I have heard decent things about Ziggaraut) but other than that…

I will say though… I think I see a full 16-colour rainbow in among these ?

DrunkenEngineer · December 28, 2022

What a cool idea! If any thoughts for Y & Z come to me, I'll be sure to share.

YaManSmevz · December 28, 2022

I LOVE THIS. Also...

6 hours ago, Platinum_Vice said:

3. Pre-existing self-imposed milestone rules apply. Every 10th and 25th platinum (and every other milestone) must be platinum/blue/dark silver. My first three milestones chanced that way when I first joined PSNP and started trophy hunting, so I kept it going. Every 10th and 25th game therefore has a platinum trophy with an image that suits the aesthetic. It’s a silly and very egotistical thing to do that benefits no one except myself but I like it so it shall continue! Astro's Playroom will kick things off as platinum 130 with a blue platinum image, so 140 (the letter K) and 150 (the letter U) are therefore also in the hotseat.

Relatable?

6 hours ago, Platinum_Vice said:

H – Horizon: Forbidden West

Trailer

Hype: 6/10

I really hoped that the issues that I had with the first game would get addressed for this sequel... based on what I’ve seen things don’t look too bright for improvements on my hang-ups with Zero Dawn. I’ll keep an open mind and, worst case, focus on the aspects of the game that I know I’ll enjoy: shooting mechanical laserbeam-and-rocket-launcher-wielding dinosaurs!

Hitman 3 misses out by a hair! I’m expecting it to be a lot better than Horizon and much longer to complete, therefore it can wait while Horizon probably shouldn’t!

Hades misses out – I’d like to play Bastion, Pyre and Transistor first.

Hogwarts Legacy looks scary-good. I’m really hyped... But I expect a lot of bugs upon release and significant money gouging. Reluctantly, this one is getting pushed back. A hard decision.

Me when you're reaching for Horizon over Hitman 3:

HelixNebula_x · January 12, 2023

On 28/12/2022 at 1:16 PM, Platinum_Vice said:

2023: The Year of the Alphabet.

Love this idea, very much looking forward to seeing how you get on with it!

Some brilliant games lined up so far on here as well:

Astro's Playroom - honestly still one of my favourite PS5 experiences. I enjoyed the haptics in this for the gimmick, but they've long since been turned off for me. Still the game is of an extremely high quality, and really is a love letter to the whole Playstation Legacy. Keep your eyes peeled for the Cameramen, nothing trophy related but plenty of little Easter eggs.
Biomutant - I was a bit let down with this, as I felt it could have been a lot more than it was, but I hope you enjoy it.
Elden Ring - not a lot to be said about this, that hasn't already been said. I never actually finished this, but it was my first actual foray into the 'Souls' games and it was fantastic for the time I played it. Ate up my life for a good month or so, and I'm sure I'll get back to it at some point. Don't know if it's still good or not, but I went for an INT build with spells and the Katana.
Ragnarok - brilliant game. I know you loved the first, so this will be a great experience for you. I don't know if it reaches the heights of the first reboot, but it looks great and plays well as well. More Mimir is always a plus in my book!
Maquette - interesting gimmick in the size changing and not too strenuous as far as puzzle games go. Speedruns can be a bit of a pain, but once you know what you're doing you'll easily wrap these up.

A few I'm still wanting to play on here myself as well, Cyberpunk, Disco Elysium and Rift Apart are the ones that spring to mind, so definitely looking forward to seeing what you think. Cyberpunk is already in the backlog but waiting on a good sale for the other ones. I just can't warrant £70 for Ratchet and Clank, and even half off on the January sale is still a bit steep!

Good luck with the challenge, I hope you smash it!

Platinum_Vice · January 12, 2023

1 hour ago, HelixNebula_x said:

Love this idea, very much looking forward to seeing how you get on with it!

Some brilliant games lined up so far on here as well

Thanks Helix!

1 hour ago, HelixNebula_x said:

Astro's Playroom - honestly still one of my favourite PS5 experiences. I enjoyed the haptics in this for the gimmick, but they've long since been turned off for me. Still the game is of an extremely high quality, and really is a love letter to the whole Playstation Legacy. Keep your eyes peeled for the Cameramen, nothing trophy related but plenty of little Easter eggs.

This game was great for many reasons (especially the cameramen! That was my favourite thing!) but there were definitely some hiccups... I loved the haptics for about two hours... and now I'm quite worried about it. I think I'll turn them off soon. The triggers specifically sounded great in theory but I really don't like them adapting.

Did you notice any lag with the controller? There was about a 0.5s delay that made platforming (especially the speedrunning trophy) a lot harder than it needed to be.

I'll try the controller out for a little longer but I'm a bit worried by it at the moment.

1 hour ago, HelixNebula_x said:

Biomutant - I was a bit let down with this, as I felt it could have been a lot more than it was, but I hope you enjoy it

Yeah I'm about an hour in... not loving it.

1 hour ago, HelixNebula_x said:

Elden Ring - not a lot to be said about this, that hasn't already been said. I never actually finished this, but it was my first actual foray into the 'Souls' games and it was fantastic for the time I played it. Ate up my life for a good month or so, and I'm sure I'll get back to it at some point. Don't know if it's still good or not, but I went for an INT build with spells and the Katana.

Hopefully you get back into it. I'm trying to temper my expectations at the moment. Thanks for the tip (re your build!)

1 hour ago, HelixNebula_x said:

Ragnarok - brilliant game. I know you loved the first, so this will be a great experience for you. I don't know if it reaches the heights of the first reboot, but it looks great and plays well as well. More Mimir is always a plus in my book!

Oooh juicy, juicy. Can't wait!

1 hour ago, HelixNebula_x said:

Maquette - interesting gimmick in the size changing and not too strenuous as far as puzzle games go. Speedruns can be a bit of a pain, but once you know what you're doing you'll easily wrap these up.

A few I'm still wanting to play on here myself as well, Cyberpunk, Disco Elysium and Rift Apart are the ones that spring to mind, so definitely looking forward to seeing what you think. Cyberpunk is already in the backlog but waiting on a good sale for the other ones.

✊✊

1 hour ago, HelixNebula_x said:

I just can't warrant £70 for Ratchet and Clank, and even half off on the January sale is still a bit steep!

Mmhmmm. I shopped around a bit and got a new/physical copy in a Christmas sale: $60AUS (~35 quid). It might come down in the next 6 months but I'm not so sure; for the family market there's no real competitor... and Insomniac Games always review suspiciously high... might have to bite the bullet, mate.

1 hour ago, HelixNebula_x said:

Good luck with the challenge, I hope you smash it!

Thank you ?

Edited January 12, 2023 by Platinum_Vice

Platinum_Vice · January 30, 2023

15

Arkane Studios: Part 1

The Dishonored Trilogy

Should we gather for whisky and cigars tonight?

Never doubt it.

In the first Dishonored game, you play as Corvo Attano, royal protector to the empress Jessamine Kaldwin. Kaldwin rules the Empire of the Isles from the capital – the city of Dunwall – which is broadly analogous to a steampunk 1830s London.

Kaldwin is assassinated at the outset of the first game and Corvo is framed for it. You manage to break out of jail in the first level and are welcomed by a rebel force attempting to undermine the regime of Kaldwin’s usurper Hiram Burrows.

A plot featuring twists, turns, schemes, assassinations and political intrigue ensues and Corvo, dishonoured in name, must decide whether to retaliate with extreme prejudice or to live among the shadows (or a mixture of both) in a city that suffers under the combined pressures of political instability, class division, an overly-forceful police presence, dangerous technological advances (including the reliance on the volatile whale oil to power walls of electricity and the proliferation of speakers throughout the city that perpetuate the regime’s propaganda), and, most notably of all, a rat-borne plague.

Good luck forgetting the first time you see rats devour people that are alive. I took a screenshot in case the memory starts to fade.

Additionally, chaos is accelerated with the oversight of a malevolent demigod known as “The Outsider.” He appears before the main character of every game and bestows dark powers upon them. The powers accentuate your stealth, traversal and combat skills and they are the backbone of Dishonored’s gameplay.

My appreciation for the lore of this series is hopefully shining through. It’s a key pillar in what makes the series memorable.

Steampunk? No. Dieselpunk? Nope.

It turns out that these subgenres of science fiction are partially defined by the substance that causes the society's technological advance.

…

Oh! Whalespunk.

Nailed it.

Dishonored: Definitive Edition:

Returning Home, Dishonored & High Overseer Campbell

The opening act of the first game is easily its weakest. It’s the dreariest patch, and the slowest, and it has the least interesting targets... BUT the first ten minutes features a cool microcosm for the series. Sokolov, a mad inventor, is painting the man who will become your first target. Sokolov’s paintings are Dishonored 1’s [Yes, we're going with 'Dishonored 1'/'D1,' 'D2' and 'D2.5' - it's quicker and easier] collectibles. There is also a health potion on a table beside the man that Sokolov is painting; Sokolov is about to add the health potion into his illustration. You, the player, can take the potion at that time.

You find the finished painting after progressing through two levels while hunting collectibles. If you had taken the health potion during the opening sequence then it won’t be in the painting, and vice versa.

This is a perfect metaphor for how the game adapts in subtle ways to the endless amount of microchoices that you make in this series. It might actually be the first decision available to the player. Player choice, something I don’t value as highly as, say, interesting lore, is clearly prioritised by Arkane Studios in their gameplay. If it sounds like my priorities are backwards then this game is probably right for you.

I was disappointed that the interesting lore of this world was shunted away into books that litter every room. There was a part of me that really wanted to extract as much as I could from these but they’re such a pace-killer. I opened my last book in this series within an hour of playtime.

House of Pleasure & The Royal Physician

Dishonored is firing on all cylinders by House of Pleasure. Players are directed to a brothel where you are tasked to eliminate twin bureaucrats.

Whale oil... oil painting... intentional? Also, is it just me or does the artstyle makes everyone look disfigured and inbred.

I mean, come on, really?! This artstyle is probably quite insulting for London-ites. I know for a fact that, in reality, only half of them look inbred.

An alternative to killing them is to ensure that they are put to work in a foreign mine belonging to their family. The emergent gameplay is on display here with so many different ways to find, access and eliminate your targets.

The primary reason for your visit is to rescue Emily Kaldwin, your daughter and heir to the throne, who is being detained in that brothel. The experiences of a 7(ish) year old girl residing in a brothel for 6+ months could be a catalyst for very interesting character development and motivations, but to my knowledge this is never explored.

The following mission (The Royal Physician) is one if my favourites in the game and I think that’s probably a spicy take; it’s almost completely linear and it’s one of the simplest levels by almost every measure. The narrow focus for my use of powers gave them a chance to shine and the vertical level designs that Dishonored is known for don’t get much taller than this bridge.

Lady Boyle’s Last Party

This is the best mission in the game.

You are tasked with infiltrating a masquerade ball hosted by three sisters in their lavish mansion. The class divide in this world is on stark display here. It is the only instance to depict opulence in Dishonored; the mansion has welcomed the upper crust of the city and tables overflow with banquets of food.

The bourgeois guests exude an indifference to the suffering of the masses who are located almost directly outside of the mansion’s perimeter (you actually had quite the task of killing a handful of hobos / avoiding alerting them on your way up to the gate).

Everyone is wearing a complex mask in a playful attempt to hide their identity and this is the perfect setting for you – a mask-wearing assassin – to blend in without the need to crouch in the shadows for the entirety of the level. Some guests will remark upon your daring for wearing such an accurate duplicate of the mask worn by the feared and dishonoured assassin Corvo Attano.

You only need to eliminate one of the three sister hosts. They are dressed in identical costumes (except for the colours of those costumes – white, black and red) and their identities are randomised for every playthrough. Each time you play this mission you must talk to guests to discover clues of which sister is which... or you could sneak upstairs and raid their bedrooms for clues instead.

The non-lethal means of eliminating Lady Boyle is dastardly. A lustful man is waiting in the bowels of the mansion with blankets, chloroform and a small boat for a silent escape. He requests you to bring Lady Boyle to him with the promise that he’ll take her away and guarantees that she’ll never return. ?

Return to the Tower

I have a bit of a fetish for when games, either with or without fanfare, allow you to stumble into the tutorial areas when you’re nearing the end of a game. Returning to those locations when you’ve reached (or are approaching) your final form is some Joseph Campbell shit. It allows you to take stock and reflect on how your journey has changed you.

Dishonored opened with Corvo’s return to Dunwall in a cutscene where you're on a small boat as it enters a canal lock (which is like an elevator for boats). You are fed exposition from other characters during that sequence.

The first mission

Return to Dunwall Tower

In the sixth mission of the game you return to that canal lock. You are dropped off at the base and must climb it using your stealth abilities. I really enjoyed this. The canal lock was always designed for you to be able to infiltrate it later in the game but the player has the illusion that they are mastering their powers of traversal all by themselves.

Very soon after that you’re tasked with getting from the top of the canal lock into Dunwall Tower (which houses the throne and your target - the Lord Regent, usurper, who sits upon it). Assuming that you’re attempting this with stealth at the outset of this level, you manoeuvre through an area under the watch of many patrolling guards. That area was where Emily taught you the game's stealth mechanics during the tutorial. Now you’re an expert at it as you push through that same location with ease.

Dunwall Tower is a tall, imposing building of grey stone. It is decorated with large red banners which are clearly emulating a regime familiar to anyone with the most rudimentary knowledge of events of our own 20th century.

The propaganda machine of Dishonored’s fictional dystopia has been a noticeable feature of the atmosphere of Dunwall throughout the game; speakers and alarms are audible on every street. A feature that I loved is the non-lethal method of deposing the Lord Regent in this level. You find the propaganda master in a room in Dunwall Tower and, if you find the Lord Regent’s audio diary by cracking his personal safe, you can bring that diary to the propaganda master’s room to broadcast it throughout the city. As it turns out, the Lord Regent had recorded an admission that he’d loosed the plague on Dunwall’s slums to affect his rise to power.

I love that the propaganda master is the only character without a name. Maybe that is a comment on the role of a media mouthpiece in distributing what they’re told (rather than what they personally want to tell).

He is so critical to the stability of the Lord Regent’s hold of power that he is holed up in the inner sanctum of the Lord Regent's stronghold where he is even more secure than almost all others in the Lord Regent's rank and file - he works only 50 metres from the Lord Regent's bedroom. If you choose the non-lethal option, the Lord Regent is undone by the same technology that assisted his rise and strengthening of power.

The Flooded District, The Loyalists, The Light at the End

The betrayal that sparks the third act is a little predictable but I think my suspicions of what was likely to happen added to the tension. I think this was planned by Arkane Studios.

A great touch at the outset of the final level is how Sam treats you. He’s been your personal Uber for the game and I liked how he either shames you or gives you a pep-up when you say goodbye - or worse!

"Very reliable and punctual, but judgy, and he gave my position away when I wanted to attempt stealth in a final mission. ???✴️✴️."

The more I look back on this game, the more I recall enjoying the story portions. The characters, tone and lore were my favourite aspects... but that's not going to stop me taking the absolute piss out of it!

The Dunwall Trials

Well you’ll know that my opinion on this series is void once you read this:

I loved the Dunwall Trials.

The trials took the stealth, combat and traversal mechanics and separated them into challenges that put them under their own individual microscope. The player has to prove that they are masters of each of those disciplines within their own vacuums.  

I thoroughly enjoyed proving my parkour skills when racing a train and when assassinating baddies in the cascading void-waterfall. 

Kill rooms provided puzzles that were solved with a wide variety of kill techniques. 

Discovering the mystery target at a masquerade party by pickpocketing clues from other potential targets was a major highlight. 

When I finally perfected Back Alley Brawl I kept fighting to see how high of a combo I could get – and crashed the game! 

Sure... they were unreasonable... really unreasonable...

... and some people would rather get pissed on...

(yes, the guard is really pissing on my bed)

... than have to try to headshot this motherf?cker again...

... but I liked the trials.

The Knife of Dunwall / The Brigmore Witches

Spicy opinion: these DLC campaigns are overrated.

I liked the opening levels of each of them. A Captain of Industry features a dockside factory at sunset:

And A Stay of Execution for Lizzy requires you to infiltrate the prison that Corvo had escaped from at the beginning of Dishonored so that you can bust someone else out.

... but the plot and characters were much less interesting than the main campaign in my opinion.

Playing as Jessamine Kaldwin’s assassin was an interesting premise but I couldn’t relate to him. The antagonist is Delilah Copperspoon who I think is the least interesting main character in the series AND the one with the poorest dialogue and voice acting.

Dishonored 2:

A Long Day in Dunwall

Imagine my disappointment, then, upon learning that the premise for the sequel is that Delilah Copperspoon is usurping Emily Kaldwin’s throne.

Set about a dozen years after the first game, Dishonored 2 features a chance for players to embody an adult Empress Emily unless they wish to return to the familiar shoes of her father, Corvo Attano, Protector to the Crown.

Dishonored 2 opens almost immediately on Delilah’s surprise visit to Emily’s throne room. Without any build up, Delilah announces a claim to the throne and uses a supernatural power to freeze Emily (or Corvo, if you decided to play as Emily) in place then and there.

This really put me offside to the game from the get-go.

Delilah is given zero introduction to players who haven’t played the DLC from the first game.

The scene is lacking in dramatic build up or tension.

Emily is supposedly beloved by the people of her Empire according to the epilogue of Dishonored 1 and an indication of loyalty from one of her guards at the commencement of Dishonored 2. And yet, her protective detail are either immediately killed or they turn against her upon Delilah’s announcement that she is the lawful heir to the throne.

Delilah brought four robotic guards with her (called “clockwork soldiers” within the game) which are designed to look immediately threatening and sophisticated. How Corvo allowed four versions of General Grievous to enter the throne room beggars belief.

Another usurper for my collection!

Delilah and ~~Joel from The Last of Us~~ Corvo

And! Delilah uses her powers to freeze Emily (or Corvo) in place instead of just... killing them. This gives the survivor an overarching narrative goal of freeing their loved one, and I think that it was a strange contrivance on which to base the game’s premise.

Your character then decides against remaining in Dunwall to rally support from the apparently-adoring populace. They instead decide to leave the region by boat to visit Karnaca, a Mediterranean setting where Corvo was born, to find a means to fight Delilah, even though leaving would appear to legitimise Delilah's claim to the throne and increase her standing with the people of the Empire.

Karnaca

Edge of the World & The Good Doctor

Much like D1, the first act of the sequel is also the slowest, least visually appealing and lacking in dramatic tension.

Your first target in Karnaca is the Crown Killer – an assassin who has been eliminating Emily’s political opponents (probably a means for Delilah to undermine Emily’s standing by framing Corvo).

You actually find the Crown Killer almost immediately in proportion to the length of the game. This surprised me as I expected it be a major plot arc. The Crown Killer is doing a Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde shtick but conveniently invented and created the cure just before you arrived – all you have to do to collect the ‘one last thing’ in the adjacent room filled with baddies.

The Clockwork Mansion

The fourth mission is where Dishonored 2 finds its footing. Experiencing this level (and the level A Crack in the Slab) are worth the game’s price of admission.

Level design that provides a foundation for emergent gameplay is this series’ primary feature.

This level is well known throughout the gaming industry. The devs who designed it and brought it to life will use it as core example of their résumés for the rest of their careers.

The mansion itself is actually halfway into the level. It is the residence of a grand inventor, who, like all geniuses, feature complex eccentricities and nuance to their personality. This inventor, Kirin Jindosh, is the inventor of the Clockwork Soldiers (who bolster the ranks of guards within the mansion), and he is your next target.

The mansion is best described as a really pretty version of that low-budget Saw-clone: Cube. Or... the inside of a Transformer or a Rubik’s Cube... but... a mansion. ?

The rooms move and change if you pull corresponding levers that are sprinkled across the map.

Some of them are on rotating platforms like a hidden door behind a bookcase from a Scooby-Doo cartoon; pull a lever to rotate a bed away and step into a bath.

Some rooms are elevators without doors. Pull a lever and another room will rise up from the floor or descend from the roof.

Some rooms just have walls that retract away like a theatre curtain to reveal that the room is much deeper.

This is all fantastic, but the real treat is being able to squeeze into the gaps between rooms mid-transition to enter the bowels of the mansion. That’s half of the real x-factor of this level: the secret corridors, maintenance ways and areas accessed by maids and cooks are perfectly viable arteries for you to explore just like the warm, bright and lavish parts of the mansion that a guest would usually see. The maintenance corridors and ‘guts’ of the mansion are cold, grey and dimly lit like the security hallways of a hotel or casino or the crew quarters of a cruise ship.

The other half of what makes this level special is how the moving parts of the level are designed to look like they would actually work mechanically. Looking in the corners of a room reveals that the retracting walls appear to be on rails with working pulleys and gears, AND they’re designed as if they would exist in real life: with subtlety. If this existed in real life, the mechanical details would be hidden in corners or behind curtains, and that’s how the Clockwork Mansion is designed too. It is completely opposed to a normal video game illusion where a hidden room would load and de-load if you pressed a corresponding lever. It is GREAT.

The mansion itself has flow and a logical layout. The foyer unfolds and opens up to quadruple in size in a complex way that stuns the player and would impress guests arriving for the first time.

The core of the house opens up for arriving guests but it’s also the moment where players are given the most freedom to explore without linear pathing.

Clockwork soldiers patrol the house from intruders and as a demonstration to visiting clients and purchasers.

A puzzle room is tucked away in the depths of the residence to imprison a character that you’re rescuing as a side mission.

The design philosophy of the Immersive Sim is very well represented on a micro scale in the Clockwork Mansion. Kudos to the developers for bringing such a fantastic idea to life.

A Crack in the Slab

This level takes place in a rundown and decrepit mansion that prevents you from using your powers. Instead, you’re given a device that allows you to go back in time to a period years in the past when the mansion was lived in, maintained and host to a deployment of guards. You flit in and out of each of these two times at your own will with the aid of that device.

Fins protrude upwards from the timepiece which depict what is happening in the other timeline. This is the inspired touch that makes the level special.

You are required to move four-dimensionally to reach you target. By that, I mean that a room may be locked, so you would go into the past to enter that room because the door is unlocked in that moment in time. In the subsequent room you might then be faced with a dead end, but returning to the future where the mansion is in disrepair may reveal a hole in a wall that you could use to progress.

Guards patrol this mansion. Maybe you visit the past as a means of stealth to prevent them seeing you when they turn around.

I liked a puzzle in this level where a basement room had been flooded. You have to find a crank that will drain the room in one time and use it in the other.

It’s a really cool level and if you were to tell me that you think it’s better than the Clockwork Mansion than you’d at least have an ear over here that’ll hear you, but I preferred the work of the mad genius Kirin Jindosh earlier in the game.

The Grand Palace

I enjoyed this one a lot, too.

Your target is Duke Luca Abele. He is thoroughly disliked by his charges because the Duke treats them poorly.

He lives in a gorgeous seaside villa (come on, can Arkane Games just design me a dream home already?!) and is hosting a party (which also seems to be a common thread with this series).

Infiltrating the Mediterranean residence is only the start of your troubles.

The Duke has a body double as a way to guard himself from would-be assassins. The Duke's staff treat him and the double equally well, but only the Duke’s most trusted guards know who is real: the real Duke wears a special medallion and the double is a smoker.

Your character wants the best for the people who live in Corvo’s home town. The non-lethal way to complete this level is to convince the double that he should take over the role as the Duke and govern the people fairly. You then have to pickpocket the medallion from the real Duke and give it to the double. The double will have the real Duke arrested.

This is the penultimate level. I don't think that the last level is particularly special. This moment with the Duke highlights the absence of an emotional soul in Dishonored 2. Emily is an Empress but she is sneaking about the shadows in the underbelly of her empire. This game should be overflowing in character development with such a massive shift in what this character is experiencing: she believed she was beloved by her people but look at her now as she hides under a fishmonger’s table to avoid royal guards and pickpockets singular coins from the poor. Nothing real comes from these experiences. Threatening a body double in a two-line piece of dialogue that you’ll return if he isn’t up to scratch is all we get.

Where is the change in who Emily is and how she will govern her people upon her return to power?

Ultimately: Dishonored 2 had two really great things going for it:

1) It is GORGEOUS.

2) The tactical depth in the stealth and combat paved the way for emergent gameplay. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise: the combat in this game is, at least on an intellectual level, very well put together. Stringing together strange combinations is only limited by your creativity. For example: you may not be able to throw a springrazor at an enemy, but you can sure attach it to a dead body, or dismembered limbs, or other objects, and throw those instead. ?

Left, right, up, back, forwards... where do you want to go? What do you want to do?

Dishonored: Death of the Outsider:

I am convinced that this game was originally set to be DLC for Dishonored 2. Not only is it shorter by a significant margin, but it's a spin-off that uses characters from Dishonored 1’s DLC - Billie Lurk and Daud.

The Dreadful Wale - a small base of operations for the protagonists of D2 and D2.5.

'Dreadful Wale' - an anagram for 'Farewell Daud.'

Turning DLC into a standalone game and retailing it for 60-75% of the value of a major instalment for an IP is not a foreign concept. Just ask Uncharted: Lost Legacy, Ratchet and Clank: A Quest for Booty and Halo 3: ODST.

I don’t think that Dishonored 2.5 has much to offer the series. With the exception of one level (The Bank Job), I was stagnant with to franchise fatigue and didn’t enjoy my time.

The Bank Job

The signature Arkane Studios’ immersive sim brilliance remains; the abilities available to you are given fresh reworks and they are still lockstep with the vertical, open and complex level designs to give you remarkable freedom to play your way... but I really only appreciate this on an intellectual level.

I didn’t connect with the narrative, the characters or their motivations.

You play as Billie Lurk – right hand to Daud, the Knife of Dunwall – and she just does nothing for me. I dismissed the plights of Billie and Daud with an upturned nose and indifference that would have sufficiently disguised me for entry into a party at Lady Boyle’s manor.

They seek to kill the Outsider: the supernatural personality that granted different powers to Corvo, Emily, Daud, Billie and Delilah just to see what would happen.

Don't you think The Outsider looks a bit like...

Dude, where's my bone charms?

The Outsider’s decision to bestow you with powers is the catalyst for each of these characters’ deciding (through you as the player) how to use those powers - be it for good, morally dubious or outright evil acts – and that is the essence of the metric that determines what type of ending you receive: chaos.

But killing him is just not an interesting story and the motivations aren’t relatable.

My favourite part of the game was stumbling across a self-portrait of Duke Luca Abele in a nod to that character's poor painting ability, his narcissism, and the meta of hunting Sokolov's paintings as collectibles:

Trophy talk:

I think that I played these games in a way that they weren’t supposed to be played. Following the trophy paths didn’t give me the chance to actually make my own decisions. I either leant into the full chaos run where everybody dies, or the stealth run where you can’t ever be seen and you have to eliminate your targets by non-lethal means.

This meant that I couldn’t make judgement on a target-by-target basis or even weigh up actions on a guard-by-guard basis.

I think that playing without trophies would have led to myself attempting to stay as stealthy as possible until inevitably being detected, and then dancing on that line of killing where necessary to facilitate a way to get back into stealth. I think that’s how the average gamer would approach these games and I think it would have been more fun.

Playing this way would be aligned with the central crux of the stories: if you're an underdog that receives dark powers, how exactly do you use them? How far do you go before you’re just as bad as those who hold power over you?

The rebels in Dishonored 1 gained power one decision at a time. They stepped further down the road from honourable courage to corrupted evil at a rapid rate.

Your journeys as the playable characters are just like them in that way... and that’s the exact conundrum that the Outsider is using to test you.

When dishonoured by forces outside of your control, do you embrace the title or flee from it?

_________________

Reviewing this series made me feel like I was looking at four different sandwiches believing that there’s one really good sandwich in here - if only I could rearrange them and mix and match.

I wish I could gut the best levels out of them all and throw them into the purpose built engine of D2. I’d keep D2's choice of maintaining voice acted commentary throughout the missions (absent in D1) but use D1's characters.

D1’s story was the only one I was invested in because of the characters and their motivations. It had tension and gravitas.

D1 relied on the best parts of the lore in the world building: a plague and political intrigue in a propagandised dystopia.

D2 had some really interesting nuggets of ideas: Emily’s descent into the underbelly of her empire, Duke Abele’s replacement by a lookalike, a return to Corvo’s home... but none of these ideas were expanded upon or weaponised for any effect.

D2 had the most gorgeous graphical style.

The Dunwall Trials gave me opportunities to really test my skills with Corvo’s powers.

... The unfortunate thing is that I’d throw the rest of those metaphorical sandwiches into the bin.

Half of the people who read this checklist enjoy this series... but I can’t push my scores for these games through the glass ceilings that I kept bumping up against.

#117 (PS4) Dishonored: Definitive Edition, 8/10

#122 (PS4) Dishonored 2, 8/10

#127 (PS4) Dishonored: Death of the Outsider, 6.5/10

Edited January 31, 2023 by Platinum_Vice

DrBloodmoney · January 31, 2023

18 hours ago, Platinum_Vice said:

15

Arkane Studios: Part 1

The Dishonored Trilogy

18 hours ago, Platinum_Vice said:

Steampunk? No. Dieselpunk? Nope.

It turns out that these subgenres of science fiction are partially defined by the substance that causes the society's technological advance.

…

…

Oh! Whalespunk.

Nailed it.

18 hours ago, Platinum_Vice said:

Dishonored: Definitive Edition:

You find the finished painting after progressing through two levels while hunting collectibles. If you had taken the health potion during the opening sequence then it won’t be in the painting, and vice versa.

This is a perfect metaphor for how the game adapts in subtle ways to the endless amount of microchoices that you make in this series. It might actually be the first decision available to the player. Player choice, something I don’t value as highly as, say, interesting lore, is clearly prioritised by Arkane Studios in their gameplay. If it sounds like my priorities are backwards then this game is probably right for you.

Man - I love stuff like this - I don't even remember if I noticed this one - but that's a compliment to the series - because there's enough of those kind of moments, that you start almost not noticing them, because the world is adapting seamlessly around you!

18 hours ago, Platinum_Vice said:

The propaganda machine of Dishonored’s fictional dystopia has been a noticeable feature of the atmosphere of Dunwall throughout the game; speakers and alarms are audible on every street. A feature that I loved is the non-lethal method of deposing the Lord Regent in this level. You find the propaganda master in a room in Dunwall Tower and, if you find the Lord Regent’s audio diary by cracking his personal safe, you can bring that diary to the propaganda master’s room to broadcast it throughout the city. As it turns out, the Lord Regent had recorded an admission that he’d loosed the plague on Dunwall’s slums to affect his rise to power.

...like the ones around this dude!

That's actually the dude - the propaganda master - who, if you kill, then carry on, there's a clearly less practiced female voice that takes over - who is an uncredited Carrie Fisher!

18 hours ago, Platinum_Vice said:

I have a bit of a fetish for when games, either with or without fanfare, allow you to stumble into the tutorial areas when you’re nearing the end of a game. Returning to those locations when you’ve reached (or are approaching) your final form is some Joseph Campbell shit. It allows you to take stock and reflect on how your journey has changed you.

Dishonored opened with Corvo’s return to Dunwall in a cutscene where you're on a small boat as it enters a canal lock (which is like an elevator for boats). You are fed exposition from other characters during that sequence.

I think I share this fetish - and it's awesome!

It's actually surprising more games don't do it well - after all, it's cutting down on the locations required to be built if you're re-using a future one for the tutorial... but it has a great effect when done right. I guess it's kind of the "grown-up" version of the old Uncharted thing - where you will be walking into some ruin, and it's all quiet, and going, hmmm.... there's a lot of cover here for a section with no enemies...

.... then 20 minutes later, you're gun-toting and shooting your way back out when the bad guys descend!

18 hours ago, Platinum_Vice said:

A great touch at the outset of the final level is how Sam treats you. He’s been your personal Uber for the game and I liked how he either shames you or gives you a pep-up when you say goodbye - or worse!

"Very reliable and punctual, but judgy, and he gave my position away when I wanted to attempt stealth in a final mission. ."

He does get awfully judgemental to a high chaos Corvo!

Hey, guy?

Just drive the boat, and don't get us dead, 'kay?

I don't need your condescension!

18 hours ago, Platinum_Vice said:

The Knife of Dunwall / The Brigmore Witches

Spicy opinion: these DLC campaigns are overrated.

I liked the opening levels of each of them. A Captain of Industry features a dockside factory at sunset:

And A Stay of Execution for Lizzy requires you to infiltrate the prison that Corvo had escaped from at the beginning of Dishonored so that you can bust someone else out.

... but the plot and characters were much less interesting than the main campaign in my opinion.

So, I don't necessarily agree it's overrated - but I agree it's not on the level of the main campaign. I still look at those DLCs are one of the great ones - but that's judging in comparison to other DLC offerings, not necessarily compared to the base games.

I'd still put it up there with things like Shadowbroker, Undead Nightmare and Minerva's Den...

...but really, the biggest thing with these is how they work within the overall trilogy - being the basis for some of D2, and a LOT of Death of the Outsider.

18 hours ago, Platinum_Vice said:

Dishonored 2:

The Clockwork Mansion

A Crack in the Slab

The Grand Palace

Man, it's mental that all those levels are in such close proximity in that game - I'd genuinely contend that all three - Clockwork and Crack in the Slab in particular - would be contenders to place in "coolest levels in all games"!

18 hours ago, Platinum_Vice said:

2) The tactical depth in the stealth and combat paved the way for emergent gameplay. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise: the combat in this game is, at least on an intellectual level, very well put together. Stringing together strange combinations is only limited by your creativity. For example: you may not be able to throw a springrazor at an enemy, but you can sure attach it to a dead body, or dismembered limbs, or other objects, and throw those instead.

Word ☝️

This is what I love about these games the most. Actually, it tends to be what I love in most games the most...

...and I do know what you allude to with the trophies later as a result.

The thing with games like Dishonoured and Prey, for me, is that a lot of the time, there's so many cool ways to combine mechanics etc. that really, doing the full platinum run is best looked at as an extended training for some of the things that can be done...

...but in a lot of cases, the playthrough that comes outside of trophies - either blind, just-for-fun, or post-platinum, are the most interesting, because you've learned all the trophy-related stuff, and you start combining your own ways of doing things... and aren't beholden to play any particular way to get a clean hands, or a pacifist trophy etc.

18 hours ago, Platinum_Vice said:

Dishonored: Death of the Outsider:

You play as Billie Lurk – right hand to Daud, the Knife of Dunwall – and she just does nothing for me. I dismissed the plights of Billie and Daud with an upturned nose and indifference that would have sufficiently disguised me for entry into a party at Lady Boyle’s manor.

They seek to kill the Outsider: the supernatural personality that granted different powers to Corvo, Emily, Daud, Billie and Delilah just to see what would happen.

This is...

...sort of true.

I mean, really, it's "vengeance" - and relatively undirected vengeance, since they don't really know what part the Outsider played in everything... but it does feel lesser, by comparison to the earier games, where there was always clear, obvious and rock solid motives, from "generally good" characters.

18 hours ago, Platinum_Vice said:

Reviewing this series made me feel like I was looking at four different sandwiches believing that there’s one really good sandwich in here - if only I could rearrange them and mix and match.

I wish I could gut the best levels out of them all and throw them into the purpose built engine of D2. I’d keep D2's choice of maintaining voice acted commentary throughout the missions (absent in D1) but use D1's characters.

D1’s story was the only one I was invested in because of the characters and their motivations. It had tension and gravitas.

D1 relied on the best parts of the lore in the world building: a plague and political intrigue in a propagandised dystopia.

D2 had some really interesting nuggets of ideas: Emily’s descent into the underbelly of her empire, Duke Abele’s replacement by a lookalike, a return to Corvo’s home... but none of these ideas were expanded upon or weaponised for any effect.

D2 had the most gorgeous graphical style.

The Dunwall Trials gave me opportunities to really test my skills with Corvo’s powers.

... The unfortunate thing is that I’d throw the rest of those metaphorical sandwiches into the bin.

Half of the people who read this checklist enjoy this series... but I can’t push my scores for these games through the glass ceilings that I kept bumping up against.

#117 (PS4) Dishonored: Definitive Edition, 8/10

#122 (PS4) Dishonored 2, 8/10

#127 (PS4) Dishonored: Death of the Outsider, 6.5/10

I mean...

I obviously like all threegame more than you, and I do think D2 is superior to D1.... but actually, I can't really take issue with the spread.

I wonder if my D2 love came more from paying primarily as Emily? I know you went Corvo first, whereas I did pretty much every playthrough as Emily, with just one as Corvo, I think - and when I've replayed, it's usually as Emily - mostly just because of the different flavour of powers.

Anyways - sterling write-up!

A trip down memory lane, and laughs, and insight, and great writing... what's not to love?!

Nice work, m'dude!

Platinum_Vice · February 1, 2023

On 31/01/2023 at 4:45 PM, DrBloodmoney said:

Man - I love stuff like this - I don't even remember if I noticed this one - but that's a compliment to the series - because there's enough of those kind of moments, that you start almost not noticing them, because the world is adapting seamlessly around you!

I'm sure you picked up on it and then let it fade away because of all the other cool stuff about the series. ?

On 31/01/2023 at 4:45 PM, DrBloodmoney said:

That's actually the dude - the propaganda master - who, if you kill, then carry on, there's a clearly less practiced female voice that takes over - who is an uncredited Carrie Fisher!

OH YEAH! You told me about this (or I read it in your review) aaaaaaaaggges ago but forgot. That's a cool fact!

On 31/01/2023 at 4:45 PM, DrBloodmoney said:

It's actually surprising more games don't do it well - after all, it's cutting down on the locations required to be built if you're re-using a future one for the tutorial... but it has a great effect when done right. I guess it's kind of the "grown-up" version of the old Uncharted thing - where you will be walking into some ruin, and it's all quiet, and going, hmmm.... there's a lot of cover here for a section with no enemies...

.... then 20 minutes later, you're gun-toting and shooting your way back out when the bad guys descend!

Mmhmm. ?

I had a thought the other day: when I've got about 20 or 30 games in the scoring range of 8-10/10, I should tally up how many of those games take me back to the tutorial at some stage. Hypothesis: It will be more than 75% of them.

I think there will be a correlation between

A) developers that do this as a storytelling technique to force self-reflection on your journey, and

B) games that have a great story and/or arc for the main character (which we know is a large factor in how I score games).

I think that I can be objective enough to completely forget that I made this hypothesis until I stumble across re-reading this comment in the future and tally up the games then.

The technique surely does cut down on a portion of a development time, yes, but I attribute that sort of time-saving to methods such as implementing multiplayer maps into single player (ie doing it on a larger scale than just the tutorial).

And I can't help but wonder - after seeing this video from a channel that I expect you would enjoy - how many tutorials are actually made in the beginning of a game rather than towards the end when the devs have a clearer idea about what game they're making (and how to introduce you to it).

On 31/01/2023 at 4:45 PM, DrBloodmoney said:

He does get awfully judgemental to a high chaos Corvo!

Hey, guy?

Just drive the boat, and don't get us dead, 'kay?

I don't need your condescension!

RIGHT?! Felt like such a slap in the face.

When he did that I was like

and then I turned around to see the enemies, and by the time I turned around again to give Sam the stinkiest eye he'd ever see, he was already paddling away into the darkness. Couldn't do anything about it - never felt more like I didn't want the protagonist to be silent.

On 31/01/2023 at 4:45 PM, DrBloodmoney said:

So, I don't necessarily agree it's overrated - but I agree it's not on the level of the main campaign. I still look at those DLCs are one of the great ones - but that's judging in comparison to other DLC offerings, not necessarily compared to the base games.

Yeah you said it better than I did. Don't know that I'd put it up with Undead Nightmare, but you make a fair point. I'd put it there with Minerva's Den, though, sure. I was going to a DLC ranking post one day... again: notes to future Vice: break the mould!

On 31/01/2023 at 4:45 PM, DrBloodmoney said:

Man, it's mental that all those levels are in such close proximity in that game - I'd genuinely contend that all three - Clockwork and Crack in the Slab in particular - would be contenders to place in "coolest levels in all games"!

Uh-huh. I remember you made a post once: your favourite... 25 (?) levels in gaming? I remember that it was chock-full of Hitman 3 and had... two (?) Dishonored levels? I'll have to dig that post up to look, but I remember Clockwork Mansion scored highly. Was the other A Crack in the Slab?

On 31/01/2023 at 4:45 PM, DrBloodmoney said:

The thing with games like Dishonoured and Prey, for me, is that a lot of the time, there's so many cool ways to combine mechanics etc. that really, doing the full platinum run is best looked at as an extended training for some of the things that can be done...

...but in a lot of cases, the playthrough that comes outside of trophies - either blind, just-for-fun, or post-platinum, are the most interesting, because you've learned all the trophy-related stuff, and you start combining your own ways of doing things... and aren't beholden to play any particular way to get a clean hands, or a pacifist trophy etc.

Yeah, interesting takeaway. Prey will score highly here, by the way. Much higher than the Dishonored games. I really loved it. Thanks for the recommendation.

On 31/01/2023 at 4:45 PM, DrBloodmoney said:

This is...

...sort of true.

I mean, really, it's "vengeance" - and relatively undirected vengeance, since they don't really know what part the Outsider played in everything... but it does feel lesser, by comparison to the earier games, where there was always clear, obvious and rock solid motives, from "generally good" characters.

I read what you wrote and then re-read what I wrote. I mispoke! I don't mean that the characters targeted the Outsider just to see what would happen, but I was paraphrasing what the Outsider said was his motivation to bestow the powers on all of the characters: he was doing it just to see what would happen. He is a catalyst for chaos in the Isles which is - surely without coincidence - how we are measured at the end of the games and therefore what ending cutscenes you receive. How much chaos you inflict upon the world when under pressure is a key theme in these games (at least that was a major takeaway for me).

On 31/01/2023 at 4:45 PM, DrBloodmoney said:

I wonder if my D2 love came more from paying primarily as Emily? I know you went Corvo first, whereas I did pretty much every playthrough as Emily, with just one as Corvo, I think - and when I've replayed, it's usually as Emily - mostly just because of the different flavour of powers.

Yeah okay. I did the ghost/clean hands run as Emily first because I wanted to experience it from her point of view (as I hoped for more character-related stuff) and then I wanted to go hard and body the masses with Corvo's (familiar) powers. In hindsight this was a mistake for me. I should have done it the other way around.

On 31/01/2023 at 4:45 PM, DrBloodmoney said:

Anyways - sterling write-up!

A trip down memory lane, and laughs, and insight, and great writing... what's not to love?!

Nice work, m'dude!

Thanks dood ??

Nitro · February 1, 2023

Oh no... The Last of Us Part II a 9? Shhheeeeeeeesh...

Platinum_Vice · February 1, 2023

21 minutes ago, Nitro said:

Oh no... The Last of Us Part II a 9? Shhheeeeeeeesh...

Please feel free to read the review and talk about it. If you disagree with something, I am happy to open a discussion. I think my opinion on it is fairly nuanced... as I'd hope anyone else's would be.

Platinum_Vice · March 20, 2023

16A

Series: Call of Duty

A core gaming goal in 2022 was to dissolve my PS3 backlog. I really wanted to play the Medal of Honor: Frontline PS3 port because I had enjoyed it on the PS2 and wanted to be challenged by the infamous platinum-breaker: hard difficulty. I decided that I should play COD3 and World at War due to a great interest in WWII and a soft spot for the Modern Warfare trilogy.

“In that case,” I thought, “I may as well do Black Ops and Black Ops II to review more of the franchise for a more well-rounded perspective. They are well-regarded, what could possibly go wrong?”

________________________

BRIEFING

CLASSIFICATION: SECRET

Background:

The Call of Duty franchise is difficult to address in any logical order. Competing developers and multiple reboots exacerbate this problem.

Mission parameters:

This mission will consist of three phases:

Part 1: World War II: Treyarch’s Call of Duty 3 (COD3) and World at War (WAW) with comparisons to the PS3 port of a game from a competing studio: Medal of Honor: Frontline (MOHF). [minor spoilers]
Part 2: Modern Warfare x4. Infinity Ward’s trilogy (MW1, MW2, MW3) and the 2019 reboot (MW2019). [major spoilers]
Part 3: Treyarch’s Black Ops (BO1) & Black Ops II (BO2). [major spoilers]

Breaks are advised in between mission phases.

Be advised: this is a Campaign-focused operation only. Intelligence on extra-curricular activities known locally as “Multiplayer”, “Zombies” and “Spec Ops” will be extremely limited or non-existent. They will not factor in the final kill-count upon debriefing.

Good hunting.

PART 1: WORLD WAR II

Call of Duty 3

COD3 was released in 2006 at an interesting juncture: on one hand it was a launch title for the PS3, and on the other hand it was during the dying-end of the FPS trend of World War II shooters. The industry was struggling with an oversaturation of games set in that conflict which didn’t feature any of the many interesting real-life people, locations, incidents, battles and genuine ideological differences. COD3 contributes to that industry fatigue for that exact reason.

You are not playing as someone interesting.

You are not playing with anyone interesting.

You are not playing in any interesting locations or situations.

The gameplay is not inherently interesting.

Your character and his squad almost immediately jump onto the back of a truck from a forward command post to the front of an ongoing battle. The Sergeant says, “men: we were supposed to be enjoying coffee and donuts this afternoon, but the Germans drank all the coffee and ate all the donuts. Now we have to kick their asses.”

And that’s the premise for the first mission. Essentially: just shoot the bad guys.

My dry sense of humour appreciates that sort of dialogue when many others won’t, but that fails to bring me over the biggest hurdle that I have with this game: you are never motivated by anything except that core premise: just shoot the bad guys. I was ‘going through the motions’ throughout this campaign which is uneventful at best.

This is not a gameplay choice to allow the player to relate to a WWII soldier. It is a symptom of uninspired game design.

There were no tentpole setpieces or even small-scale standout moments. Vehicle sections were welcome at first to break the monotony but they were also poorly implemented.

This image looks exciting... oh wait, this is the teaser trailer.

Every level is washed out in the entertainment industry WWII-standard grey-green colour and the lack of inspiration with level design meant that every level felt identical. The lack of variety in gameplay was a constant obstacle to overcome because of a dominant gameplay strategy: get more ammo for my Thompson SMG and pick up a Nazi MP40. Those weapons were the most satisfying to shoot due to their ease of use and damage output. I really should be enjoying all of the weapons and feeling tactical in how I apply different arms for different situations but the enemy MP40 is the best weapon for every situation.

They did Nazi that coming.

I had no relationship with my squadmates who suffered from poor dialogue and weak attempts at banter. Animations were stilted.

The game performed very poorly as it struggled to maintain 30fps on even my PS3 slim. Quick research online told me that COD3 hits 60fps on X360s and that 30fps was all I should hope for on PS3. This tells me that the devs had no idea how to work the CELL infrastructure. On the subject of early PS3 releases, COD3 features mandatory motion control gameplay scenarios – about once per level – where, for example, you trip over and have to push a Nazi off of you while he tries to stab into your chest. These moments backfired; they were immersion breakers (and that’s not to mention that they barely even worked).

Ah shit - if only I brought a gun to France instead of a PS3 controller.

Two levels stood out as being both interesting and engaging: ‘The Crossroads’ due to the chaos of crossfire as the player advances through destroyed buildings in a shelled town, and ‘HOSTAGE!’, where you’re trying to find and rescue a friend in between country houses and getting in and out of a vehicle that has a large machine gun attachment.

Other than that, there’s no magic in the moment to moment gameplay let alone any interesting game-long hooks. COD3 is a soulless shooting gallery. Pick someone in grey and pull the trigger.

(PS3) Call of Duty 3: 4.5/10

Call of Duty: World at War

WAW is a clear step up from COD3.

For a start, Treyarch were using a version of the engine that Infinity Ward developed for MW1. The consistency of gameplay mechanics are instantly recognisable when playing any Call of Duty from MW1 onwards and WAW benefits from that franchise ‘feel.’ It’s smooth, stable, reliable and the controls hold up.

The vast majority of WWII games are set in Europe. Few ventured into the Pacific Theatre and this was one of the many factors in the aforementioned gamer fatigue for that conflict. WAW split its campaign into two halves (Russia vs Germany and America vs Japan) so that your targets meet diversity quotas.

Bouncing between two parallel storylines was a boon for pacing and setting variety. The American (Private Miller) didn’t have quite as interesting a plot as Soviet Comrade Dmitri Petrenko. Dmitri was accompanied in every mission by Viktor Reznov, a passionate veteran who accepts that sacrifices are an essential prerequisite to winning a war, and Chernov, a soldier who Reznov repeatedly compares to Dmitri (at Chernov’s expense). Reznov’s many attempts to ‘inspire’ Chernov by telling him how Dmitri is a superior soldier are amusing. The relationship between Dmitri and Reznov is so memorable that Treyarch milked Reznov into their next game (BO1) even though it takes place 20 years later in a different war.

Reznov ‘inspires’ Chernov after spotting him writing in a journal.

The player’s first experience as Dmitri Petrenko is in Stalingrad – a setting rich in atmosphere.

The level ‘Black Cats’ was my favourite. It’s on-rails and that’s strange, right? That an on-rails level could be a game’s highlight? I suppose when they’re tweaked to perfection they’re a microcosm of linear games in general: a well-tailored experience that performs exactly as scripted so that players receive an intended experience.

‘Black Cats’ puts you in the body of Petty Officer Locke, a gunner on a nautical plane shooting at Japanese vessels from the air during multiple strafing runs. You get diverted to a secondary location to try to rescue drowning Allies. The level consists of your character running all over your plane to the various machine guns hanging on its flanks and rear as you target different types of Japanese planes and vessels. In the first half of the level you are the dominant threat - the predator cat - but in the second half you’re a mouse desperately trying to survive. The level is also accompanied by a memorable drum-heavy OST.

World at War also benefits from a fantastic attention to detail:

Sergeant Sullivan dies early in the campaign. Of your squad, Sullivan was the most adept in battle. The next soldier in the chain of command is Corporal Roebuck. His rank changes from Corporal to Sergeant as soon as Sullivan receives his mortal wound. Not only was Sullivan just as expendable as anyone else but he was also replaced instantly and without fanfare.
In ‘Burn Em Out’, subjecting some enemy forces to your flamethrower will cause them to shout in Indonesian, not Japanese. In reality, Imperial Japan had recently liberated Indonesia from the Dutch, and some of the Japanese forces in the Pacific were bolstered by conscripted Indonesians.
The last level against the Germans introduces a new enemy skin: members of Hitler’s SS. Some of them are sporting bandages from prior injuries. You have penetrated deep into enemy territory, indeed.
Likewise, the last level against the Japanese introduces a new enemy skin: some soldiers have glasses. I infer from this that the Japanese infantry were so depleted after such heavy fighting that they had loosened their recruitment restrictions (again: this detail is pulled from documented history).

The only genuine negative criticism that I have for World at War unfortunately cuts right to the core: insufficient weight is given to the character’s actions. Real motivation for each level would be nice beyond simply ‘we are in a war. We must take that [landmark]. Enemy bad.’ Some character development and reflection on who they are, why there are here, and how the war is affecting them is critically lacking. WWII was filled with bravery, reluctance, horror and ideological differences. Average men like you and I were conscripted into extreme circumstances and that is where the term ‘call of duty’/’call to duty’ comes from. When looking at WAW through that lens, the game feels suddenly meek and dirty: playing toy soldiers instead of being respectful of the suffering of real history.

Here it is: the crux of the American half of the campaign.

My internal conflict continued after the end of the campaign. Immediately after the final mission the player is placed into a game of Nazi Zombies. The tonal shift gave me whiplash. Fortunately, the mode is extremely fun and polished for the first effort for the franchise, but going from a semi-serious campaign directly into this mode definitely strained my opinion of Treyarch when it was still being moulded.

There’s a lot to like here but not a lot to love.

(PS3) Call of Duty: World at War: 7.5/10

Medal of Honor: Frontline

Wow. Released in 2002 for the PS2, Xbox and Gamecube, MOHF saw commercial success before the Call of Duty series completed its first game in 2003. A HD port of MOHF for the PS3 was released in 2011 and I posit that it still holds up. The controls are right on the edge of being too outdated but the campaign itself is a breath of fresh air.

Unlike either of those aforementioned WWII games, this title depicts a more realistic experience. It does this by:

Placing the player into a variety of appropriate settings (Dutch countrysides, beaches at Normandy, a Nazi mansion, secret research bunkers, a U-boat, and more).
Providing the player with a variety of weapons that each have their own particular strengths and weaknesses so you’re encouraged by the gameplay to use them all appropriately.
Dialogue that is era-appropriate and situational.
Consistent audio mixing: firearms and weapons dominate the soundscape. Dialogue is layered underneath it and the soundtrack is layered underneath that. It sounds realistic.
The soundtrack itself is outstanding. It is appropriate for the time period and it features multiple haunting melodies which provoke melancholic reflection.
There are no cutscenes. A small amount of text and real black and white footage commences mission briefings and then your commanding officer gives you further, personalised instructions. With the absence of cutscenes, animators instead focussed on small moments (I call them ‘vignettes’) in each mission with details that were remarkable for the time. Notice that decision: developer resources were invested into things that serviced the atmosphere and gameplay.
The 20 (!!) levels are divided into six separate missions with tangible goals. “Find the secret informant who has intelligence on the location of a Nazi plane prototype” is grossly more impactful than “take that hill because the enemy has it.”

As a result of these factors, I feel like I embody the playable character and that I’m being called upon to serve for a greater good.

Gameplay and mission variety are valued by MOHF. The first level is the opening sequence from Saving Private Ryan. Now, I don’t want to oversell the fidelity of how a 2002 game recreates the most recognisable war sequence in film but it is still a loving homage. It perfectly sets the tone for what I posit is a stellar campaign.

The third level takes part entirely in a small Nazi U-boat. You have successfully been smuggled aboard the submarine and when you emerge it is to engage in close quarters combat while sabotaging the U-boat from within. This is a stark contrast to the wide open levels at the beginning of the game.

The fourth level provides opportunities for sniper-battles. Who doesn’t love counter-sniping?

The sixth level is one of my favourites (and certainly one of the most memorable). Players fight through a beautiful Dutch countryside in search of lost Allies during the infamous real life shitshow known as Operation Market Garden. The level features wide spaces for trading fire and it’s dotted with windmills and scared civilian farmers.

Level eight is famous: ‘Operation Repunzel’ (Awesome OST, by the way). You’re disguised as a Nazi to infiltrate a large manor hosting a pre-rally meeting for Nazi officials and Gestapo. You come complete with forged “Nazi Papers” – about as big as a passport – which you carry instead of weapons for the beginning of that level. Pressing the trigger makes your character push out the papers for inspection at checkpoints. I got a bit too much enjoyment out of this: the papers unfold like when you see an FBI agent on TV pushing out his badge or a warrant but not giving the other person any time to actually read it. After the third Nazi guard you’re pretty much in the clear, but it’s so silly and it’s tied to a trigger press so I just ended up spamming it like a robot every time I passed someone to the point that I would look ridiculous (and ridiculously suspicious). Ahhh... Makes me giggle.

Anyway, the jig is up fairly early on in the manor so it becomes an action-based mission in a very interesting location. Players explore libraries, bathrooms and the kitchens (complete with angry chefs who throw butchers knives at you!) while searching for a prisoner somewhere in the manor. I really can’t stress enough how much I enjoyed the variety of level settings in MOHF; every mission was something new.

Animated by hand... I mean, passion recognise passion. I love this.

Shoutout to MOHF for the original Leap of Faith into a pile of hay before Assassin’s Creed was a scratch in Ubisoft’s ballbag.

Levels nine, ten and eleven are a three-parter for an overarching mission. Level nine is set on a bridge in the middle of the night and your sniper rifle has never felt more alive. Level ten – ‘Yard by Yard’ – is also aptly named as you edge through dozens of houses and their yards in your best imitation of a straight line to the town of Arnhem at the end of the level. A highlight here for me is coming across an old codger and his family shotgun. He does his best (in vain) to distract the Nazi bastards occupying his neighbourhood. Level eleven – ‘Arnhem Knights’ – has a unique gameplay moment in between two semi-destroyed three story buildings (Nazis in each building and on each level, naturally) but the highlight is the haunting voice of a boy singing in the background.

'Nijmegen Bridge' (every level has its own colour palette - love it).

'Yard by Yard' - bless old mate in the bottom right image. He and his shaky knees did their best.

Two other great levels in the game are ‘Riding Out The Storm’ (trading fire as you advance along a moving train many years before Uncharted 2 made it cool), and ‘Enemy Mine,’ which is an on-rails level (literally) where you’re in a mine cart shooting through a hornet’s nest.

Each level has unique little vignettes of painstaking animations that absolutely P-O-P. Maybe it’s a car driving across your path while it tries to escape a plane on a bombing run, and then the car blows up, and then one of the wheels rolls back towards you, in front of you, and passing you... maybe it’s the moment where you pay a pianist in a bar to play a war anthem for the Nazis patrons and they all join in on the song together which gives you a chance to sneak upstairs undetected... maybe it’s the moment where you snipe a machine gunner and he collapses into his buddy who has to push the heavy corpse off of his back before taking up the position on the machine gun himself...

Animation in 2002 predates the use of mo-cap in gaming so 95% of enemy deaths are picked from only a handful of repeating animations based on where the enemy is shot (individual limbs vs chest vs head etc) and they do get repetitive. It should be conceded that this is still industry standard today, but it is more noticeable in MOHF, and that is why those special vignettes with individual animations are super cool and it would be criminal not to praise them. I literally tittered into my beard at least once per level thinking ‘heh! Look at that guy!’

MOHF shows another symptom of its time: you can carry every weapon at once. How one man can hold and shoot a Browning Automatic Rifle with two hands (and full ammo) during long treks is beyond my comprehension before he also adds in a shotgun, Thompson SMG, pistol, grenades, rocket launcher and more. I love this old campy necessity of FPS games, though. You do get to use all the weapons too, because the variety of enemy placement, enemy weaponry, enemy programming (be they static, moving, rushing or shooting) and level designs encourage players to use the weapon most appropriate to their circumstances at any given time.

There are also genuine negatives to a game this old: the gunplay has not aged well. I found it to be acceptable at best but only because I grew up with controls this clunky. It predates aim assist, aim acceleration or ‘snap-aiming.’ It means that you’ll be running-and-gunning more than taking dedicated cover, and, occasionally, will be using blocky textures like boulders, trees and walls to peek around on the sly instead of relying on your own actual skill. Players that haven’t experienced such issues with controls can find this crucial part of the experience to be miserable.

The AI is also quite dated during combat. Enemies sometimes stand in the open and take up standing shooting positions. Again: I found it endearing, but objectively some parts of the game aged like a fine wine, and some parts aged like a fine milk.

This game was developed before and during the launch of Halo: Combat Evolved, so that game's monumental and universal influence on smooth gunplay, enemy AI programming and the popularisation of the formal FPS controller layout were either yet to be seen or were unveiled too late in MOHF’s production.

The final negative that must be documented is how difficult the game is on hard mode. I really underestimated it when looking at the rarity: "only about 40% of those who beat the game did it a second time on the hard difficulty, that’s actually remarkably high. How hard can it be?" I said.

How wrong I was.

I managed it in the end but there was a good three or four levels where I thought "ok, this must be the top of the difficulty spike" and was stunned to find that it just got harder. It was less about ‘cheap shit’ and more because the maximum degree of skill that can even be applied is bottlenecked by the clunky controls, plus the lack of regenerating health (including between levels!) and a lack of a checkpoint system. You have to beat each level without dying AND with enough health to enter the subsequent stage with a confidence that you won’t die to an increasing difficulty spike.

The trophy hunt did hurt the total experience.

I have to (and easily can) end this review on a high because while I’ve briefly poked at it three times, I haven’t properly addressed the masterpiece that is the epic soundtrack. It was MICHAEL GIACCHINO who put it together two years before making a particularly strong name for himself for his work on Lost, which propelled him onto the Hollywood stage where he continued to hit home runs for multiple movies that we’ve all seen and loved. MOHF's score is absolutely incredible. It is haunting and emotional. The weight that Giacchino adds to the atmosphere is gargantuan. The horns... oh my God the horns. The choirs... Masterful. One of the best soundtracks in gaming. Period. Here’s the theme. Put this on right now. This is some Band of Brothers shit.

The remarkably dated nature of the controls holds MOHF back from the lofty heights of even a 9.5/10. Putting aside that (obviously) extremely important part of the gaming experience if you can, I thoroughly recommend MOHF to any fan of WWII shooters, gamers who enjoys atmospheric experiences with world-class soundtracks, and anyone else that is jonesing for a nostalgic throwback to one of the best games of 2002 where variety in gameplay was king and where animators were working their arses off to justify why their jobs shouldn’t be replaced by mocap tech. If you want to look back at art from a bygone era that portrays an even-more bygone era, try Frontline, and let me know how you go. If a game with this level variety, attention to detail and soundtrack was released today, it would be a favourite for the industry's Game of the Year Awards.

#116 (PS3) Medal of Honor: Frontline: 8.5/10.

Part 1: Conclusion

MOHF does not have COD3 or WAW beaten in the mechanics of their gunplay and movement, but it does have them beaten on every other aspect of these titles as games and as art.

It is reasonable to compare Medal of Honor: Frontline to Call of Duty 3 and Call of Duty: World at War in this review because it dominates them in their representation of the ‘call of duty.’

In MOHF I am a singular man scraping by with my ingenuity and bravery, the help of the Allied Forces, and I am a hero from another time. My objectives are tangible and for a greater good.

In the Call of Duty WWII games I am, at best, an action-movie protagonist shooting bad guys to take dominant land positions, and at worst I’m a nobody shooting bad guys ‘just because.’

Other than its ability to show up a franchise that fails to live up to the meaning of its name, MOHF’s campaign is also more memorable, features quadruple the degree of variety, and is accompanied by the most beautifully melancholic horn arrangements in a soundtrack befitting the momentous nature of WWII, narration with gravitas and set pieces/vignettes that are astoundingly unique with notable attention to detail.

COD3’s WWII campaign is generic and not at all memorable. It contributed to the decline of player interest in WWII games whereas MOHF may be the best WWII game released to widespread reception. WAW sits somewhere in between, but much closer to my description of COD3 than MOHF, despite being the game among these three choices that is the smoothest to control.

Not every WWII game needs to be as epic as Band of Brothers nor as personal as Saving Private Ryan, but Treyarch's efforts were lacklustre.

Edited March 21, 2023 by Platinum_Vice

Platinum_Vice · March 20, 2023

16B

PART 2: MODERN WARFARE

‘Modern’ warfare in the 2000s took place in a period of American Interventionalism. Modern Warfare released in 2007, only four years after the start of the Iraq War. The invasion of a foreign country is a complex and controversial occurrence in the first place, let alone playing it as a video game from the American/British perspective. The player is persistently reminded that the Yanks and Brits are the good guys, that maybe they must commit some grey acts in a world that will never be black and white, but they’re still the good guys. Regardless of your own opinion of that position, at least it is consistent throughout the series. That is what Infinity Ward means when they release a game under the title of “Modern Warfare.”

MW1 has slightly more to say than that, as does MW2019, but MW2 & MW3 hold steady without any deeper reflection.

I can’t find any reliable sources of information for Activision/Infinity Ward being paid by the US Government for this series (except IW’s admission that they sought advice from soldiers for details such as “how to breach and clear” or how different firearms behave) so I can’t say for sure that Modern Warfare is genuine propaganda, but the pro-war stance of these games that are set in a controversial conflict does make me question whether they could be. In the end, I believe that Infinity Ward just believe that ‘war can be cool’ regardless of our opinions on the matter. Sales for the series show that it is definitively clear that Infinity Ward knew that ‘war is interesting to young males.’

Apocalypse Now, is that you?

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare [2007]

50,000 people used to play this game. Now it’s a ghost town.

The most crucial aspect about what makes Modern Warfare (and MW2) so popular, so engaging and so essential is not because of any special adherence to realism. It is that the situations that the game puts you in are urgent and you feel like you matter. You are a precision cog in a well-oiled machine that repeatedly crashes through, over or under the obstacles that are thrown at you due to your precise application of aggression and grit. This is the foundation that the crisp gunplay and fantastically committed voice acting build upon to form a golden triangle of irreplaceable features that make MW1 (and MW2) so gripping.

"Your fruit killing skills are remarkable."

The overwhelming sense of urgency is the first thing that I noticed in comparison to the franchise’s WWII games. The voice actors – particularly the British ones – are 100% committed to their roles. The actors behind Price, MacMillan, and, most of all, Gaz, sound instantly convincing. When the shit hits the fan (i.e. every level) the dialogue always matches the scenarios and your team will be shouting at you, but it’s not in anger or just shouting for the sake of shouting, it’s... urgent... it’s because they are relying on you... the suspension of disbelief is accelerated by the voice actors’ commitment. I am convinced that the actors performed their lines while watching the game being played. This is really a strange thing for me to champion for the game but it was crucial in my belief that I needed to accomplish my task. Being impressed by men yelling is a strange thing to get excited about but they captured lightning in a bottle.

The player is not a one man army in MW1. The player is one man who is part of an effective team. You know your place from the get-go: you are the new guy. Everyone else has worked together before. They know the score. They know the hierarchy. You have to prove why you belong there.

These allies are constantly talking to you but not as idle chatter. It’s not noise, it’s not obnoxious. They’re telling you that they have checked their corners, that rooms are clear, that enemies are approaching and their direction of travel. When in stealth, your team will call out targets and when targets are grouped together, they call out which target you are required to take down and which ones are theirs, and you take them out together. As you become ensconced within your squad by the second half of the game, you choose your target, and later still, you choose whether your squad dispatches patrolling enemies or lets them pass by.

On the topic of stealth, the escalation of each mission and the structure of each level is again one of the highlights of MW1. They often start with Plan A in stealth. Eventually things go sideways which causes Plan B to develop organically and then when enemy reinforcements approach, Plan C ratchets the tension up to the extreme. Unexpected escalations are never due to your mistakes or mistakes from your team; there’s always some unknown element to the enemy’s defences or a gap in gathered intelligence. Especially in the SAS missions, nothing will give you reason to doubt that you’re part of a precise, well-oiled machine of death. Suspending your disbelief of that fact is a critical reason for why this roller-coaster is so fun to ride.

The other half of the campaign is told from the perspective of an American Marine in the Middle East. I was a world-class surgical scalpel as Soap in the SAS, but a world-class multitool as Paul Jackson in the USMC. Jackson’s greatest highlight for me was during an urgent retreat due to developing intelligence of a likely nuclear detonation. You’re being escorted out by helicopter but a nearby helicopter is downed and being set upon by local militia. Your pilot drops your squad off to rescue the downed pilot. Overlord (Remote Command) advises that this detour puts your squad outside of a safe zone if a warhead is deployed. A 90 second timer starts on the HUD which has an audible tick every second. The radio chatter is filled with panic and tension. This was like playing through Black Hawk Down, it was fantastic. I was eating it up.

MW1’s pacing is extremely well orchestrated. Mission briefings bridge story beats while hiding loading screens and the game finds ways to develop the story organically with diversified mechanics. Here are just a few overt examples:

The tutorial is a practice exercise/mock assault of a ship’s bridge that starts with a rappelling action down a rope before killing targets through window holes and entering a door and descending stairs. The very next level begins with exactly that scenario: rappelling down a rope from your helicopter to shoot the captain on his ship’s bridge through windows before entering a door and descending stairs just like you had prepared earlier. This is both a clever way to bridge the tutorial to the first level as well as developing a mythos to the apparent degree that the SAS prepare for a mission.

When rescuing Nikolai (a captured informant) he tells your SAS team that “the Americans are making a mistake”... aaaand cut straight to playing as an American as said mistake unfolds.
You progress from the tutorial mission to this game’s version of a small scale mission (the assault on the sinking boat). The next level puts you on the periphery of a battle as you provide overwatch as a sniper. The next level puts you right in the thick of battle and that is where you start to develop an overconfidence in your ability to steamroll the enemy. This grows until you fly too close to the sun.

Another great example is where you rescue a tank in one level, and in the subsequent level it rescues you.

That’s literally four quick examples of organic flow and they’re all fundamentally different from a mechanical/game design perspective. The multiple successful elements of MW1 blend together at the benefit of a cohesive vision.

Quickly while I dance around my incessant desire to commentate yet another campaign, I’ll give three quick paragraphs to other standout moments. The first is the opening credits sequence. Any game that has a credit scroll at the outset is daring you to critique it. I commend the confidence.

‘Death From Above’ places you behind the armaments of an AC-130 gunship as you look down on the SAS squad from high altitude in infra-red. You rain hellfire upon the enemy loyalists in this level. I recall my first time playing the game many years ago thinking that this level could be a comment on the impersonal nature of such grossly-superior force in contemporary warfare. There is such a blatant disconnect between predator and prey. 'Death From Above’ is only this effective at giving this player that impression because the rest of the game sold the power imbalance with such conviction.

And then there’s ‘All Ghillied Up.’ One word: iconic. In tone and atmosphere? Impeccable. I especially loved the very beginning where you think you’re alone and then MacMillan stands up in his ghillie suit and you realise that you must be that invisible too. Hitting the deck as a Russian squad passes over you was crazy!

MacMillan: "Ya cannae see me, ya daft melt." ... Probably.

The gunplay in all four MW games are phenomenal. The sound design of the suppressed bullets being fired and the fleshy impact when they find a new home is impeccable. Do you remember how powerful you felt the first time that you were sneaking through those early missions with a heavily modified long arm with a red dot sight and a suppressor? Modern Warfare stole the night-vision-green aesthetic from the tightly-gripped clutches of Tom Clancy – no mean feat. Call of Duty tried in vain to replicate MW1’s feeling of lethality for another decade.

Tacticool.

The reality of this campaign is not necessarily believable, of course, and nor is there much genuine room for tactics in a long term sense nor in a dimension of width/breadth on a battlefield, but I’m already rapidly running out of this game’s negatives by the end of this sentence. I have glossed over the pro-war stance and I suppose this could be countered (be it briefly or with conviction) that this stance is undermined by story beats involving being killed by powers beyond your control; you’ve lived by the sword of overwhelmingly superior firepower and then you die by the same sword. The (realistically) cynical nature of the American grunts is a symptom of truly knowing that their lives are extremely undervalued by a gargantuan industrial machine. The ‘death quotes’ (which I think are fantastic, by the way) such as Murphy’s Laws of Combat also bolster an argument for that counterpoint of MW1’s stance on American Interventionalism, but that counterpoint ultimately doesn’t hold much water.

A final negative is that the four antagonists are lacking in personality. Infinity Ward were going for a Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse thing but it fell flat; playing the game from the perspectives of individual soldiers didn’t give the player any particular insight into the four antagonists as characters.

Incredible game. A well-executed (pun intended) blend of various standout systems that maintain an impactful atmosphere and arresting gameplay that makes the player feel valued for their actions.

(PS3) & #62 (PS4) Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: 9/10

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

I found it. This is the mountain of cocaine that Infinity Ward were huffing when they developed MW2.

Negatives first:

The feeling of being a stealthy super-ninja is out. MW2 is actually a departure in genre, no one seems to notice because it’s still an action-based FPS on the same engine as prior games and it has returning characters. But this series has now gone full G.I. Joe, James Bond, superhero-level crazy.

Moments after being introduced to Soap in the snowy mountains of Kazakhstan, we see him take a running leap off an icy cliff into non-transparent clouds with the intention of using picks and climbing shoes to grip onto what he presumes to be an icy cliff on the other side… fuccccck offff.

Later in the level you and Soap appropriate Russian snowmobiles to escape a military base on high alert. One-handed, you shoot full-auto G18s at innumerable bad guys who are giving chase while you’re driving 100km/h+ downhill on the snowmobile and then jump across a 200m chasm… fuccccck offffffff.

A similar sequence bookends the game too. This is a really effective way to turn your buddy’s brains into milkshake, by the way.

The very first level starts with a pro-war speech from General Shepherd, who, during our first playthrough, we are supposed to consider as the leader of the good guys. This is followed by the tutorial gameplay in an active battle and I copped “Rangers lead the way”, “hoo-ah”, “solid copy”, “we’re Oscar Mike”/”battalion’s Oscar Mike” and “danger close” all within only two minutes before witnessing a civilian building being bombed and my battalion driving under a highway sign that pointed left for Downtown and straight ahead (our direction) for Victory Street.

This has nothing to do with modern warfare, let alone the call to duty.

MW2 abandons any pretense of provoking deeper thinking about the nature of war as it becomes enraptured in its own fiction. This is a catalytic moment in the franchise for setting off on a new path of blockbuster/popcorn-based entertainment. It worked wonders, of course; MW2, BO1 and MW3 had upward sales trajectories and the three of them were outstandingly dominant in the video game industry from 2009-2011. I appreciate that players sought the multiplayer experiences as well, but this financial success was also driven by the change of tone in the single player campaigns as well.

Was ‘No Russian'– the level where you shoot up a Russian airport full of civilians – a political statement in a post-9/11 world? (9/11 is of course that incident that sparked the Iraq War, and the Iraq War inspired MW1). Of course ‘No Russian’ wasn’t a political statement. Did you know that MW2 actually features two false flag attacks? ‘No Russian’ is one of them. This is not at all used for any commentary on whether 9/11 was a conspired false flag incident and as I look back at this game, it actually could have been a fantastic opportunity to make that particular comment... but I digress.

The shameful lengths that boosters will go to in the pursuit of increasing their K/D ratios. ?

No, MW2 steers away from conflict in the Middle East, and hurtles headlong in a new direction where steady enemies of the United States (Russians) find themselves in your red dot sights, and MW2 promptly writes its own fiction in service of that change. Infinity Ward steered this series away from the potential of real political impact. This game makes it abundantly clear that Infinity Ward just wanted to make a cool game with cool guys, cool guns and explosions and shit. And, other than the level in the Brazilian favela (fuck me, that level is a shitshow), I can’t help but refer back to the angry ape that lives in my meathead brain to comment on that goal:

HOLY SHITBALLS I LOVE THIS GAME!

You know what cures the violent rolling of your eyes at the action movie-ification of this series? Opening yourself to it. Don’t be a hater; get on the rollercoaster. MW2 cranks it all the way up to 11.

Dialogue is on fire in this game. I don’t know who wrote this game that was otherwise completely absent from Call of Duty, but MW2 is in a different league to many others in the industry, let alone from others in the franchise. Characters actually sound like different people. This is so remarkably rare in gaming which is still largely lagging behind other entertainment industries in the space of writing prowess, so when games get this right, it stands out. Briefings in MW2’s loading screens are my go-to example of this. When Price and Shepherd talk of war they speak of it with a romantic glorification. They speak of it in poetry… like a manifesto from a serial killer.

The legendary Hans Zimmer laid the foundations of the theme for MW2 and a protégé (Lorne Balfe) completed the rest of the standout soundtrack in which Zimmer’s influence is audible. One of Balfe’s best efforts is the thoroughly melancholic Wolverines. It accompanies the level of the same name in which the Russian invasion of America’s Eastern seaboard becomes a significant highlight of the game. The urban setting is refreshing. The landmarks of the fictional American carpark are etched into my memory: Burgertown, Nate’s Diner, Taco To Go, Nova Gas… This was a fantastic level that promoted your use of an array of weapon types including sniper rifles with thermal scopes to overcome smoke grenades, sentry guns and predator missiles. The gameplay loop was a great cat-and-mouse game of escalation as the Americans and Russians called in various tactical options to gain the high ground and overcome the tactical rock-paper-scissors of modern tech.

A brief exchange between Sergeant Foley (Keith David) and Overlord (Glenn Morshower) in the opening of Wolverines was another memorable highlight. They threaten to outshine the returning voice actors for Price (Billy Murray) and Ghost (formally Gaz; Craig Fairbrass) as well as Soap’s voice actor (Kevin McKidd). Actually, I think Keith David does outshine them.

To me, Keith David has a very memorable voice as Sgt Foley but also Halo’s Arbiter, David Anderson in Mass Effect, and as America's President in Rick & Morty.

MW2 doesn’t just shine in large-scale mission settings, though. The assault on the Gulag was crisp and the scope of the level becomes more focused once you penetrate the exterior defences and move corridor to corridor. Not content with being a ‘simple corridor shooter,’ MW2 alters gameplay with new enemies (carrying riot shields, grenades and shotguns), unique map design (such as being shot from all sides in the control room in the centre of the prison) and an excuse to bust out the night vision goggles and laser sights when the power is cut. The identity of prisoner 627 was a fantastic twist and I loved the callback to Price’s pistol from the end of MW1.

Level design choices and visual spectacle are always on display. I recall the apocalyptic battle for the White House which starts at night and continues into dawn over the course of multiple levels. What an incredible visual to be a helicopter gunner circling dug-in Russians at the World War II memorial. All the signs are there that your helicopter is about to crash and burn however Sergeant Foley convinces the pilot to raise the chopper up to an active Russian missile battery; you’re going to die anyway, you may as well lean into the sacrifice to help your fellow men.

How that helicopter managed to lift your squad up to the roof towards that missile battery while carrying the full weight of Sgt Foley’s massive balls is a miracle beyond our knowledge of the laws of physics.

Later, a sequence pulled from Michael Bay’s wet dreams sees your character on his feet at street-level as helicopters rain from the sky following an EMP detonation.

There’s a cool moment here where your rifle’s laser sight doesn’t work because of that EMP.

You reach the White House on foot. In the closing moments of what has felt like the loss of Washington DC, communications are re-established indicating that American jets are inbound with superior firepower to level the town’s lost buildings; the only way to prevent being carpet-bombed is to get to the rooftop and deploy green smoke immediately to signal that the building remains under American control. What follows is a crescendo of desperate music, acting and gameplay to reach the rooftop before a countdown timer reaches zero. It is extraordinarily gripping and a fantastic end to the rollercoaster of the second act in MW2. The soundtrack is unceremoniously called “White House Green Flares” but it masterfully dances back and forth on the edges of a heroic victory and the weight of rapidly-impending tragedy and the player therefore can’t find a footing in either of these two potential realities.

This multi-mission arc runs parallel with the actions of Task Force 141 (Price, Soap, Ghost and Roach ) who make their way towards a Russian submarine that houses a nuclear missile. This mission (‘Contingency’) is a callback to the mission structure of MW1: Plan A requires stealth, Plan B is noisy. Specifically it is a callback to ‘All Ghillied Up’ at first; Price even comments on this mission being simpler than the assassination in Pripyat. Seriously though: HOW MUCH cocaine were Infinity Ward huffing? ‘No Russian’ gets all the press, but MW2's false flag attack with the launch of a nuclear warhead above Washington DC takes the cake.

I’m not even going to go into why these third-act-climax missions are iconic – you remember them! You remember the assault on Makarov’s safehouse, defending the DSM data module, and Shepherd’s chopper coming down to take it from you with a warm ‘thank you.’

You remember the chaotic skirmish in the airplane boneyard with way too many juggernauts in ‘The Enemy of My Enemy’ while Price whispers sweet nothings into Makarov’s earpiece.

You remember the duel between Roach and Shepherd in Endgame...

"1v1 me on Rust, scrub."

Shepherd stepped on a Roach, killed a Ghost and dropped the Soap, so he paid the Price.

I am the first critic to say how silly and unrealistic story beats can be in games. Any reader of this checklist will attest to that. I champion character development and stories grounded in reality.

But this says nothing for an extremely vital core part of what it is to be a game: fun. A game’s value can be directly attributed to how far forward you lean in your seat, how engaged you are, how desperate you feel when the chips are down and you’re just trying to achieve an objective.

I was held captive during MW2. It is absolutely gripping.

Almost every mission is genuinely iconic.

MW2 is not just batshit-insane; it is the most batshit-insane campaign in gaming.

My meathead gorilla brain looooved it. For all of the very-legitimate issues that I have with how this game misrepresents war, I cannot deny how far it blew my hair back, and I shouldn’t deny that this adolescent popcorn is a true guilty pleasure for me.

This game was so fun, tense, engaging and dopamine-inducing that all criticisms feel inconsequential. There is no doubt in my mind that Modern Warfare II deserves this rating.

Now, someone... anyone... please come and help me unstick my balls from the wall.

#34 (PS3) & #99 (PS4) Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2: 9.5/10

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

Even Usain Bolt can’t remain at a sprint forever.

This is not a bad game. To call it a ‘disappointment’ would be an oversimplification, but it doesn’t have the things that made its two predecessors special in their DNA.

MW3 is not as urgent and dramatic.

The soundtrack isn’t as memorable.

Every second level hasn’t remained in the zeitgeist and collective memory banks of the industry.

I feel like a third wheel to two awesome characters that don’t accomplish as much in this outing.

… The studio ran out of cocaine.

I’m being glib, of course, but there is an explanation: there was trouble in paradise between Activision and Infinity Ward. IW didn’t feel like they were being paid high enough for their efforts. Legal action was taken with allegations of sabotage as multiple key IW staff left the project which, as we know, had strict release deadlines: Activision was rapid-firing CODs all over the place. A game was pumped out every year and MW3’s sales spoke to that.

Notice that the record is for the opening weekend. I infer that this is due to consumer trust in the series from prior releases.

According to Statista.com, the best-selling Call of Duty was Black Ops 1 with 30.72 million copies sold, closely followed by Modern Warfare 3 with 30.71 million copies sold.

But I digress. The point is that MW3 was a joint effort between the remaining Infinity Ward staff that didn’t flee the company and staff from Sledgehammer Games that were brought in to bolster employee numbers... and it shows. Almost all of the magic is gone.

What MW3 does have going for it is a consistent aesthetic and gunplay mechanics, a definitive end to the trilogy, and three standout missions:

‘Turbulence’: as Russian Secret Service, prevent the capture of the Russian President (and his daughter) during a mid-air assault on their equivalent of Air Force One. Great fun but it had already been done in MW1's ‘Mile High Club.’

‘Iron Lady': undoubtedly the best mission in the game. During a firefight in Paris, you swap between the shoes and sights of your playable character on the ground and the gunner seat of an AC-130 in the sky. It culminates with the (completely unnecessary) levelling of the Eiffel Tower. Again: we did this in MW1's ‘Death From Above.’

‘Dust to Dust’: the final level with a conclusive end to the series and where players finally get to put on a juggernaut suit for themselves.

Having ‘roided up versions of classic missions in the series is an acceptable way to close the circle on where you’ve come from, but the rest of the game needs to match that quality, otherwise you’re only rehashing the classics and everyone is going to notice.

MW3 has no fresh ideas and the writing took a sharp nosedive. The crux of the game is the escalation in the Russian-American War to the point that Europe is pushed to enter World War III. In MW3, Russia simultaneously detonates dirty bombs in central cities of the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and the Czech Republic and, on the same day, invades all of those countries with infantry.

I’ve talked about unrealistic events in games before but this one probably takes the cake. Not only would detonating dirty bombs in these civilian cities prior to an active military invasion be the most colossal mistake in the history of worldwide warfare, it would be the most heinous crime in the history of terrorism, and it would be impossible to execute with any degree of surprise. The logistics of moving that many troops and fighting that many battles on that many fronts is so ludicrous that I can’t even turn it into a funny joke to laugh at it.

Worst of all: it makes no sense to the goals of the fictitious Russian forces within the game’s narrative. They don’t stand to gain anything by doing this.

It’s just dumb. As my review score for MW2 can attest, I can enjoy dumb fun with the best of ‘em. Not here. MW3 just hurts my brain. You receive remote communication from a General at a centralised Command during battle. He is called Overlord. In the mission preceding ‘Iron Lady,’ Overlord is explicit in advising the player’s character that it is of the utmost importance to capture and retrieve Makarov’s associate (Makarov is the driving force of the conflict/primary antagonist) who created Russia’s dirty bombs because he is the last lead on Makarov’s location. ‘Iron Lady’ starts with the US President calling Overlord and their conversation (which is easy to follow) includes a point where the President says “in English, General, please” despite the General’s clarity, and ends with the President telling the General what he (and we) already know: Makarov’s associate is critically important. The entire purpose of this poorly-written conversation is then revealed: it’s there purely so that it can end with the following Hollywood rhetoric: “General, I want this man alive. I don’t care what it takes, bring those men home in one piece.” … Yikes.

In the subsequent mission, you, Soap and Price are tasked with infiltrating a location for an apparent meeting involving Makarov and his closest associates. You kill multiple guards and then wait days for Makarov to arrive. I guess the player is supposed to be as stupid as the Russian guards? The Russians know you’re coming because you just killed a bunch of people who didn’t come back from guard duty.

A control room that requires three men to manage it simultaneously? Nah... nobody's going to notice.

When you fail to import all the great stuff you had going on in your prior game, all of the lunacy left behind can’t rely on the camouflage. There’s no ghillie suit for stupid shit! Despite having multiple surface-level similarities (they’re both ludicrous, for example ?), deeper inspection of MW2 and MW3 reveals how effective MW2 is and how MW3 is so lacking.

Wrong way Sam! This is because I gave your ride a 3.5 star rating in the Dishonored review batch, isn’t it?

Quickly, the Survival mode featuring wave attacks was a really fun split-screen timesink for my brother and I in 2011 and 2012. We got the highest scores that we could on the levels that we enjoyed and maxed out our ranks at Level 50 organically before I ever had a thought for trophies. When I started trophy hunting I scoped out what I had remaining; I was surprised to see that gamers were struggling with the Survival grind, but I only had one level that needed a touch-up.

And on the subject of trophies: the DLC missions are still full price on the PS3 store (yes, still full price 12 years later). They are more fun than the campaign. They’re harder than the Veteran difficulty on the campaign if you’re playing solo because they’re made for two players in co-op, but they are bitesized and I really enjoyed them.

I’ve underhyped the game for what it is: mindless and schlocky but fairly fun action in an established series. Absolutely not worth getting without playing MW1 & 2, but nowhere near bad enough for avoiding playing the trilogy. This is just a step down from two very special shooters.

#35 (PS3) Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3: 7.5/10

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare [2019]

This game gives an extremely poor first impression. And when I say first impression, I mean it. I’m talking about the nightmare that is getting this game to start. In any story, the first 10 minutes should introduce the viewer to the main character, who/what/where/when they are and overview the premise. I spent 10 minutes in MW2019’s menus:

filling out the size of the screen,
reading through two separate 3-page terms and conditions,
signing up (compulsory) to Activision.net or whatever the fuck it was (as if I trust their security with privacy – one of the most hated companies in the world that would genuinely take advantage of me AND ALSO who could be targeted by disenfranchised hackers),
watching a 60 second teaser which made no sense at all (a dead character from Black Ops 2 dropping a coffin into a volcano...? What is this, Tekken?)
and then I finally get to the main menu and it tells me that the campaign isn’t even downloaded to my console. Only the multiplayer is downloaded. Oh, the game is doing me a favour, is it? It doesn’t want to take up all the harddrive space on my console with unnecessary modes that don’t encourage me to continue spending money on the game, is that right? The campaign, spec ops and other multiplayer add-ons only installed after I requested them to start downloading.
I made the necessary download requests only to find that the console needed my credit card info again... what the fuck, Activision?

Jesus Christ. With the knowledge that I had to get off of my comfy arse to go and get my credit card and then wait for the campaign to download so that I could play it during another gaming session, I promptly began to play something else that afternoon instead.

Ultimately, I’m glad that I stuck with it and came back because I enjoyed the campaign for the most part.

An early mission puts you in the shoes of a Police Sergeant in a busy Piccadilly Circus. As I see it, this level is currently holding the distinction of representing the most accurate terror attack in gaming. It’s kind of like the London Bombings but ratcheted up for an audience generally desensitised to violence. The fidelity of MW2019 is off the charts for a PS4 game. It is definitely the sharpest and smoothest PS4 game that I’ve experienced as of writing this review, and that’s just the resolution and frame rate. Industry-leading ally/enemy/weapon animations and S O U N D mixing come together to realise gaming’s most accurate simulation of people being killed.

Truly, MW2019 is on the cutting edge of gamifying firearms and their role in the rapid disassembly of the human body.

The renewed use of the term “modern warfare” in the reboot of this series runs parallel to the re-ignition of Infinity Ward’s goal of imitating the now-modern scope of warfare. In some ways, Infinity Ward directly captures some aspects of contemporary warfare, but in others, they are way off the mark.

The game’s conflict involves a proxy war in a fictional country called Urzikstan where local militia are push-pulled by Russian and American influence. It is fitting that the American influence is brought about by the CIA. Really, a more apt title for the game should be “Modern Black Ops.” As stated by Alex, one of the playable characters, “isn’t everything we do ‘illegal’?”

Warfare has become subject to increased scrutiny since at least the Vietnam War. In a contemporary globalised world where even civilians of third-world Middle Eastern countries have access to smartphones, the accessibility of evidence of militarised violence that can be recorded by pocket cameras with the capability to upload footage to the world instantaneously has brought about two simultaneous results: on one hand, forensic investigation from non-combatant arms of the western military (the guys who come in after the dust has settled) provokes increased accountability for frontline soldiers. Frontline personnel are now more explicitly trained in the precision use of their firearms against ‘lawful targets’ (this is known as the Rules of Engagement) when those targets are surrounded by women and children. Modern western military try to exude the image of their own propaganda: only use as much force as is reasonably necessary. The second parallel result of this development in contemporary warfare is the increased need for secrecy by arms of the government and military that aim to accomplish what they consider to be 'greater goods' at the cost of actions outside of those globally-accepted Rules of Engagement.

Our heroes seek to find and capture The Wolf – notorious Twitch streamer.

Infinity Ward were exposed to these conflicting mentalities during the development of MW2019. Different characters express their perspectives of this phenomenon throughout the campaign. This would be an appropriate way for a movie to deconstruct the complexities at hand except MW2019’s characters spiral outside of their roles over time and it’s beyond what I would diagnose as ‘character development.’ Also: this is not a movie; the player’s role must be accounted for as actual gameplay and it features conflicting requirements. If Infinity Ward ever had a pre-determined arc for the player’s experience during the early or middle stages of MW2019’s development then it was corrupted at some stage and failed to recover.

On the positive flipside, mission variety and pacing are cherished by Infinity Ward. You know that you’re buying into the gameplay when, 60 seconds into the first mission, you automatically find yourself moving slowly in lock-step stealth with squadmates as you feel out your place in a stack-up for a door breach, and then only use one or two rounds to put down the first baddie as opposed to dumping half a magazine into them with a fully automatic rifle. MW2019 accomplishes an incredible sense of immersion right from the start.

‘Clean House,’ the fifth mission, is a standout highlight. It lasts for about ten minutes. It follows a systematic house clearance of a three-story terrorist headquarters in London. I can tell you that this level is appropriate for use as a teaching method for soldiers and police learning how to accomplish dangerous exercises like these. It has just enough of an element of realism that it can be perfectly applicable as a teaching tool about common errors and mistakes in executing raids; what not to do and how the occupants may behave.

The thing about a house clearance is that you’re entering someone else’s castle. They have the upper hand. They know what every room looks like. They know where to hide and when and where to ambush you. They can be armed with unknown weapons. There are an unknown amount of people inside -- likely including women and children. Occupants become instantly terrified and act in unpredictable ways when masked men with guns invade their home. The raiding party will be subject to extreme scrutiny by superiors and the public by how they acted with split-second decisions.

Livecam footage of a popular Twitch streamer being ‘swatted.’

Try replicating this exercise at home with Nerf guns. There is never a perfect angle. There are always two or more directions that must be cleared simultaneously. The hidden defender can hear the raiding party but not the other way around.

‘Clean House,’ ‘The Wolf’s Den’ and ‘Going Dark’ all feature this gameplay hook. Chronologically, you are confronted with:

A man who has a gun.
An unarmed man that turns around and grabs a gun.
An unarmed woman that ducks down and picks up a gun.
An unarmed woman that turns around and picks up a baby.

The player will not make each one of these subsequent split-second decisions correctly.

Watch a squadmate fail to clear a floor systematically and he gets shot from a panicked occupant on the other side of a neglected door.
Clear a seemingly empty room before a man bursts through another door and shoots you immediately.
Choose between looking behind a couch or around a wall. A man with a gun is hiding in one of those locations. Good luck flipping that coin.
Everyone you shoot is standing up. You then get shot from a man hiding under a bed.

MW2019 trains your brain to behave in certain ways and then purposefully exploits it.

You are faced with a decision: you are walking down a corridor. There is an open door to your immediate left and a larger room just beyond that. You clear the room to your left – a bathroom without anyone in it, before entering the larger room which contains a man with a gun.
Later you are faced with a very similar scenario with a corridor that looks similar, with a similar door to the left and a similar looking opening to a room ahead. You hear a thump from the far room. Your brain will forego the bathroom to the left and go straight to the noise in the room ahead. Surprise: there was someone in the bathroom.

These three missions are really well-conceived and executed. On any difficulty, even trained soldiers and police will not go through these three scenarios for the first time without making an incorrect decision or receiving at least one bullet.

It’s not hyperrealistic; this ain't Microsoft Flight Simulator, but as I said: it’s real enough to use as a teaching tool for common mistakes and unpredictable behaviour of occupants, and a little taste for civilians as to the dangers that soldiers and police face during lawful raids.

If you shoot an unarmed civilian while clearing a house in reflex then a character will make a comment on your mistake but it is treated as an unfortunate reality that takes place; the character will let you know you did something wrong and to sharpen up. However, if you hesitate long enough and shoot someone unarmed in cold blood, you revert back to a checkpoint or are even potentially kicked back to the main menu.

Captain Price, a man with unwavering morals, accompanies you for most of the campaign including the raids. At every quiet moment following combat he reinforces the player that they are the good guys who have to get their hands a little dirty so that ‘the world’ remains clean.

Ultimately, this is going to be the biggest moral takeaway for this campaign experience for most players. Putting aside that by ‘the world’ he means ‘the Western world,’ I don’t object to this sentiment in theory (and I consider myself a realist in believing that it is a fundamental perspective that must be held by those who act for our interests), but MW2019 does a piss-poor job of providing legitimate examples of why that perspective should be perpetualised.

The examples of evil requiring American intervention in MW2019 include:

A fictitious Middle Eastern country (Urzikstan) committing a significant terrorist act in London.

Russian infantry, led by General Roman Barkov, using a chemical weapon to invade a Middle Eastern village (the hometown of characters Farah and Hadir – Farah is of course playable as a child in this scenario as she witnesses her father being murdered in her home).

The proposed use of chemical warfare by Hadir in 2019.

Torture of Farah at the hands of General Barkov (complete with a playable sequence where the player has to control Farah’s head movements in first-person while she is being waterboarded).

Well... I’ve got some problems with this:

Regarding Urkistani terrorists: Urzikstan’s bombing of Piccadilly Circus would be a legitimate reason for Britain/America to enter that country rather than ‘morally grey’ CIA Operations taking on all of the heavy lifting.

Regarding acts by the Russians: the game describes a ‘Russian warcrime’ of the murder of multiple civilians on the Highway of Death. This is based on a real-world event that was committed by Americans. It is thoroughly perverse to alter history like this.

Regarding Hadir’s use of a chemical agent: Hadir’s perspective is that he wants to utilise the chemical agent to liberate the people of Urzikstan from the occupation of Russian and American militaries who are treating its people as collateral damage in their proxy war. Hadir was exposed to this chemical as a child as his hometown was obliterated by this technique and he sees it as a legitimate tool to liberate his people. His cause is somewhat sympathetic. Meanwhile, the first five minutes of the first mission involves your squadmates calling in an airstrike on a military base that you’re about to assault. The airstrike carpet bombs the facility with white phospherous and you witness people being burnt to death. How is this different to what Hadir wants to do?

Regarding Farah’s torture: the playable character is invited to take part in a torture scenario in the third act.

Price’s fundamental perspective is just within the real world, but not within the confines of the world presented within MW2019.

Now, point 4 is one that I offer tentatively and only after prolonged reflection. At first, I thought that it was introduced into the game to hold up a mirror to the player of their own actions. It takes place right towards the end of the game after you’ve experienced two terrorist attacks in person (Piccadilly Circus and Farah’s hometown), killed hundreds of military-aged males who have been trying to kill you, witnessed the Butcher (your interrogation target) kill children, and been waterboarded in first person perspective prior to escaping a prison camp.

Oh is this a surprise bachelor party?!

Your squad – Price, Gaz, Farah and Nikolai – have been regaling their desire for greater individual power to commit morally grey acts for the benefit of a greater good, which is exactly the same perspective of each of the four antagonists – the Wolf, the Butcher, Hadir and General Barkov.

Regardless, Price and Nikolai bring the Butcher’s wife and child into his interrogation. Price reminds me that my character “wanted the gloves off. Well, they’re off.” He gives me a revolver.

I knew immediately that this was a test: how will the player behave after a desensitisation to violence during the past 6 hours?

The Butcher refused to co-operate so I pointed the gun at him. He gave me a verbal reaction but not the answers that I sought.

I pointed the gun at the Butcher’s wife: a similar verbal reaction but still no co-operation.

I pointed the gun at the wall and pulled the trigger.

*Click* ... an empty gun.

My character: “what the hell?”

Price: “you pulled the hammer, not me.”

The Butcher is laughing. Price puts some bullets on the table and I choose to load the revolver. I shoot the Butcher in a kneecap...

...and I’m kicked back to a checkpoint. Uh-uh-uh, Vice, that’s not how the good guys operate.

*Sigh.*

In many ways, this is the narrative climax of MW2019, and as much as I had an “oh fuck off. What do you want from me? This game is fucking with me” reaction initially, it did provoke deeper reflection.

Three months later I’m writing this review and sharing this experience. It’s taken me longer to reflect on my actions throughout the game and in this interrogation sequence than it took me to reflect on and come to conclusions to another game that instantly comes up in my mind as a parallel: The Last of Us: Part II. I learnt more about myself and the escalation of what I believe to be reasonable force in a fucking Call of Duty annual release than I did in a game heralded for provoking reflection of a similar topic. In The Last of Us: Part II, I found the ‘morally grey’ situations to be remarkably more black and white. There is one critical difference, though: I still think that MW2019 reached this point by accident. The characters, motivations and actions from ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ in MW2019 are nebulous due to lack of introspection by Infinity Ward, whereas The Last of Us: Part II actively set out to achieve this result from players. I have zero doubt that I am in a hyper-minority for putting the campaign of MW2019 under this degree of analysis. MW2019 accidentally muddied its own waters due to a lack of clear vision and definitive perspective. It hasn’t put in the effort to earn this much analysis but it has put in some effort, which is more than I can say for any other COD game that I’ve played.

Other than the missions involving raids, there is one other scenario that forces the player to check their shots. In the sixth mission ‘Hunting Party,’ you escape an active firefight through a hospital. Multiple casualties are scattered throughout multiple wards and corridors. Many of these casualties are specifically placed to raise your suspicions as you advance: they are military-aged males in military garb. Some have AK-47s next to their stretchers. You are required to JUSTIFY your targets. Some (but not all) are pretending to be dead and will sit up suddenly and start shooting at you. Others are legitimately injured. As I said: this is a real complication of modern warfare in the Middle East, and moments like this and like those presented in the raid missions are microcosms for the difficulty of making morally grey decisions to benefit your people, which is the struggle of every protagonist and antagonist in MW2019 and of warfare in general.

This just leaves me with some (quick) stray thoughts on the game. Almost all of them are positive:

The characters in this game are actually one of my favourite aspects. I like Price (and am supposed to), although I think that leader-type characters should really only have a couple of “alpha moments” before it becomes a bit much. Price gets about five in this game and they become very over the top by the end. A late moment where he stands over his superior officer for the third time in the game to formally recruit Farah into the squad was too much. They even did the “good guys coming together” shot where they all lined up like a superhero team.

I liked Farah! I like that she’s capable and independent. This is a very difficult tightrope for women in video games to be able to walk but she joins the ranks of Yen/Ciri/Triss and Chloe/Elena as badass chicas that I vibe with.

Does anyone else think that Price looks like an otter in a hat?

What is going on with Alex in that final mission? What is that decision making during the conclusion? It was forced and unbelievable, not to mention unnecessary... the allies have access to superior weapons/airstrikes and Hadir can just... make more gas somewhere else... so, what was the point?

And what’s with the end-of-credits scene? Why is Call of Duty trying to be The Avengers?

Larger scale firefights were tense on Veteran difficulty. Defending a rooftop from waves of infantry and nearby snipers was a highlight. I’ve talked about smaller scale missions but the bigger ones were just as enjoyable.

Additionally, using Hadir’s custom sniper rifle in a level that depended on your sniping skills was great, and then the mission where we played as a young Farah was great... Look: this game is enjoyable!

You’ve seen a kid play as a man in Call of Duty, now men can play as kids in Call of Duty.

And there’s an Escape Room puzzle! It felt out of place yet it was somehow very welcome. Great pacing modulator.

The trophy hunt enhanced the experience: finish the campaign on the highest difficulty (which has actually been tested and balanced) and complete some other unique tasks that test the game’s systems or your individual ability; things like:

Completing half of a level with just a sidearm.
Completing an exciting footchase while juggling 8 different weapons for kills as you’re on the run.
Carrying a cinderblock from the beginning of a level to the end.

This is my cinderblock. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

There’s one DLC trophy: complete four Spec Ops missions. The Spec Ops mode is definitely less-polished and less-tested than the campaign. It’s made for a mandatory 4-player squad to communicate and the fun is generated by the requirements to win with clutch pull-throughs (because it’s too hard), but not from the gameplay itself. The menu/pre-game lobby for the Spec Ops is also dreadful. Nothing is obvious and everything is a mess. The squad perpetually walks towards the screen looking around at nothing in particular. If you look at them as a screenshot it kind of seems like the characters are looking around at the dog’s breakfast of a user interface. They’re looking for how to make the fun start.

The avatars look like twats constantly looking around... "What's that over there? What's that say? Where is the fun?" What a mess.

It’s kind of fitting that I started and finished MW2019’s review with the worst aspect of the game: Activision’s influence.

# 127 (PS4), Call of Duty: Modern Warfare [2019]: 8.5/10

Edited March 21, 2023 by Platinum_Vice

Platinum_Vice · March 20, 2023

16C

PART 3: BLACK OPS

Strap yourself in for this one.

Call of Duty: Black Ops

Treyarch’s follow-up effort to World at War released between Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare 1 and 2. Black Ops is told in flashbacks by an unreliable narrator called Alex Mason who is being interrogated in an electric chair throughout the story. Most of his flashbacks take place during the Vietnam War.

American cultural phenomena of the Vietnam War-era are asking to be explored throughout the BO1 experience such as CIA involvement in the military's psychological experiments on American soldiers, the psychological and physiological effects plaguing those soldiers in their umpteenth tour of duty in Vietnam, the assassination of JFK, the space race and the furthered development of chemical, technological and guerrilla warfare in the 20th century.

None of those very interesting things are explored on more than the most superficial level which is not necessarily unexpected, but nevertheless disappointing.

The campaign doesn’t have anywhere near the same impact as MW because it stop-starts in different times and locations, because it doesn’t have a coherent plot line, and because the characters aren’t relatable or interesting.

Do I want to play besides Big Dick Energy gigachads Price, Soap and Gaz, where my actions are relied upon by my squad? Or do I want to play besides tryhard shitforbrains Woods and Hudson as a chewed up and spat out headcase that can’t tie his own shoes without having an overly-exaggerated PTSD flashback?

Hudson & Woods.

The PTSD flashbacks / awakened hypnotic programming schtick is pulled straight out of a rejected screenplay.

Despite having surface-level similarities in gameplay, technical fidelity and visual style, the two development studios (Treyarch and Infinity Ward) working under the same Call of Duty banner were separated by an abyss on a spectrum of talent, dialogue, voice acting, character design and an ability to create fun, engaging and dramatic gameplay. These series are night and day and removing the weight of other gameplay modes (multiplayer, zombies and spec ops – which conversely feature comparable degrees of developer know-how to maintain player engagement) bears this out.

Have you seen Tropic Thunder? Ben Stiller’s passion-project is a comedy where the main characters are actors on a movie set? Pre-production periods for Hollywood war movies will often mandate that the actors take part in a fake ‘bootcamp’ for a couple of weeks so that the actors get a sliver of a taste for what it means to be a soldier while also being taught how to hold their fake guns properly. Tropic Thunder was born out of Stiller (a level-headed artist despite being popular for playing minor comedic bit-roles) finding it genuinely absurd when entitled actors returned from their shoots and compared their two week bootcamp experience to how real soldiers feel upon returns from tours of duty.

In Tropic Thunder, the fictional characters are actors shooting a fictional movie set in the Vietnam War. The basic comedic premise is that the actors are ridiculously unaware that they have no idea what it means to be in a genuine war but, when they get separated from the movie’s production set and become lost in the Vietnamese jungle, they think they’re experiencing a trauma akin to real American soldiers of that conflict.

This is Ben Stiller in Tropic Thunder:

This is the character Frank Woods from Black Ops:

Unlike Tropic Thunder, Black Ops is not a comedic spoof. It asks the player to take the story seriously. Treyarch are ridiculously unaware of how deeply cringe this character is. The dialogue, voice acting (complete with a gravely tone that is unbearably exaggerated), design and character arc for Woods is pulled from Treyarch’s most superficial understanding of traumatised rogue American soldiers losing their mind in the Vietnamese jungle.

Not only is this character outstandingly cringe-inducing from the outset, but the greater sin is that Treyarch wants us to see him as a lovable rogue; someone ‘understandably twisted by the horrors of this conflict.’ Both Frank Woods and Treyarch are insane.

“Everybody knows you never go full G.I.

Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, Rambo... they feature G.I.s being changed by the horrendous nature of the Vietnam War, but at their core, these stories are about what it means to lose your humanity. There’s never any G.I. war heroes. Remember Treyarch’s Frank Woods? Black Ops I?

They went full G.I.

Never go full G.I.”

Did Treyarch rely on just that movie (released in 2008) to inspire their creation of Frank Woods (BO1 was released in 2010), while completely misunderstanding the character and that movie? That was a strange coincidence that I couldn’t shake throughout my playthrough.

Ed Helms voices CIA Agent Jason Hudson, Ice Cube voices Joseph Bowman, and Sam Worthington voices the playable character Alex Mason.

Ice Cube voices Joseph Bowman.

Equal to Treyarch’s conceptualisation of Frank Woods, these three characters are the most superficial representations of the stereotypes ‘CIA stiff,’ ‘black soldier,’ and ‘unreliable narrator’ respectively. In the case of Ice Cube’s Joseph Bowman, his character is a standout example of blaxploitation in then-contemporary pop culture... again: cringe-inducing. I am rarely offended by anything, but sometimes you have to stand up for your values, and I think the portrayal of Bowman was offside. I am aware that this is going to be a rich statement because I'm guaranteed to offend at least one person with today's review, but I have to bring it up in good conscience.

Say "cheeeeese!"

Credit to the casting of Ed Helms, though: despite the character being hard to watch, his type-cast performance perfectly executed Treyarch's vision.

Gary Oldman returns as Viktor Reznov in the third mission. Reznov was the most engaging character in World at War and he returns twenty years later in a Russian prison assisting the playable character escape it. I did have a theory when playing the game that Reznov’s plan (“Ascend from darkness. Skewer the winged beast! Wield a fist of iron etc”) was going to be a metaphor for Mason’s journey throughout the campaign. I become more and more hopeful that I’d be skewering a winged beast – a metaphor, of course – and that Mason’s PTSD and torture were the darkness that he would be ascending from as Reznov’s true nature unfolded during the story... but alas... it was not meant to be.

Reznov’s role in the story is probably the most interesting thing about the game, though. It was in an underground tunnel network that the game’s twist clicked with me:

Reznov: "No one fights alone. I will work my way around.”

Mason: “Alright. Move quietly.”

Me: ‘wait? How did Reznov down here? Oh! He’s a Tyler Durden! I wonder if Mason is talking to himself aloud?’

The other character: “Mason! What the fuck’s wrong with you? Get your shit together!”

‘Oh yeah - Mason’s cooked.’

Here I was thinking that MW2 was crazy, BO1 is something else entirely.

Hmm, these clusterfucks involve the deaths of hundreds of people. Aren’t 'black ops' supposed to be secret? How are we going to cover this up?

There are some cool ideas in Black Ops that have value: you’re strapped into the torture chair in the main menu but you can get up and walk around the room. This interactivity in a main menu is remarkably rare.

I found the mission in Khe Sanh (‘S.O.G.’) to be the most engaging in addition to the subsequent mission (‘The Defector’) but the design of these levels left me feeling disorientated and unsure where to go to continue ‘forwards’ at times.

Left: 'S.O.G.' Right: 'The Defector.'

The idea of a AAA game releasing a mode where JFK (that’s John Fuckin Kennedy, to you), Nixon, McNamara and Castro attempting to survive waves of zombies in the pentagon together is so batshit stupid that it comes full circle to being a pretty good idea.

But these ideas are overladen by a dreadful narrative premise that forced me to endure a failing interrogation where no one – not the interrogator, interrogatee or the player – knew the answers to the questions nor the stakes of what was at risk. This is an epic fail from a storytelling perspective. I kept getting pulled out of the story (the playable flashback missions) for a half-baked mystery, and I couldn’t get hooked in with the enticements of unexplained questions when everybody was just YELLING at me.

“WHAT DO THE NUMBERS MEAN, MASON?!”

“I DON’T KNOW I JUST BOUGHT THIS GAME BECAUSE I THOUGHT IT MIGHT BE FUN. MAYBE UNSTRAP ME FROM THIS CHAIR AND WE CAN FIGURE IT TOGETHER.”

“BuT tHe NuMbErS mAsOn!”

This is triggering PTSD flashbacks to my high school maths classes.

Crucially, being yelled at in BO1 when you have no control over the situation or understanding of context (and when the delivery of the dialogue is intentionally distorted for a disassociative effect) is fundamentally different to Modern Warfare’s urgent delivery of critical mission objectives which you can affect. In BO1, this is just awful.

Having an unreliable narrator for a playable character that is being tortured, suffering from PTSD and experiencing visions of someone who isn’t there made me constantly question whether what I was playing was real which left me unable to form a connection to the playable character, other characters and the task at hand.

We take part in a playable sequence where we meet JFK in the Pentagon. Our character experiences visions that indicate a desire to assassinate the President. Televisions line the wall behind JFK and they are playing footage of Kennedy’s actual assassination and of Lee Harvey Oswald. So... what is actually happening in this game then? What is real? Mason’s flashbacks take place in 1968. JFK was killed in 1963. This is nonsensical.

Not only did I find the game offensive, but unlike all prior COD games (which had two storylines being told in parallel), Black Ops’ flashbacks to completely different locations for every level is disjointed. The campaign is a whirlwind of visual and audio noise.

If your character’s identity is in flux then you need to give the player a consistent setting (or vice versa) so that there is some sort of stable footing to cling to. It is low-hanging fruit to say that the campaign is like the torture that the main character is subject to, but it's not too far from the truth.

Black Ops I is a incomprehensible mess. I hated it.

(PS3) Call of Duty: Black Ops: 3.5/10

Call of Duty: Black Ops II

BO2 is set in 2025. This was the first time that COD went into the future. In 2023, it’s interesting to see story beats and concept such as:

social media being used for PsyOps,
drone use on an active battlefield,
and America's involvement in a proxy war with Russia.

None if these predictions were particularly groundbreaking, however, 2025 is around the corner and all three of these concepts are part of the reality of life in 2023!

The non-linear story is told in a melodramatic fashion between a new playable character called Section (the adult son of Alex Mason from BO1) and an aging Frank Woods.

Black Ops 1 was narrated by a man in a chair. Black Ops II was narrated by another man in another chair.

The narrative itself is thoroughly uninspired. Voice acting is disconnected from the action of what is going on (lines aren’t delivered as if the characters are in combat/have just finished the combat) and the dialogue itself is also estranged from the story. Cutscenes are exposition-dumps.

Despite this, there is some variability in how you prepare for a mission. Choosing your loadout at the outset of every level is overall a welcome change, however I did find myself a little overwhelmed by the amount of choice available as a first-time player of the campaign. I was in need of a suggested loadout. The prior campaigns gave me different weapons at the beginning of every second mission so I was forced to adapt to the minor tweaks every time and I always liked that variety. This led to a strange playstyle in BO2 where I was constantly trying a new weapon in every mission, and then I’d swap it out with anything else new on the battlefield at every opportunity in pursuit of an experience that I ultimately never found. I was unable to navigate that balancing act between variety and consistency by myself.

What I did find, however, was that every weapon sounded like plastic (BO2 has terrible sound design) and lacked any sense of impact. They also had generic/overly-similar animations for reloads and Treyarch’s attempts to make them look futuristic left them with an appearance akin to toys.

Settings are forgettable except for ‘Arabian Desert level’ and ‘future tech island with a nightclub level.'

Additionally, a new gameplay mode is included amongst the campaign levels: strike missions. They’re an RTS-inspired mode where the player dashes across the map to combat enemy footsoldiers, drones and other machines and anti-personnel tactics. These missions should be celebrated for an attempt at mixing up the gameplay, and they are tense and bring about a sense of desperation, but they are a departure from any modicum of realism as the waves of enemies happen to attack whatever objective (game-ified in their names of “A,” “B” and “C”) you aren’t defending. Enemy AI is particularly underdeveloped (and they’re silent) regardless of whether you’re playing strike missions or the core campaign.

Success in strike missions affects multiple endings. It is a shame that the gameplay and plot weren’t engaging enough to tempt me to play again.

Most of the issues that I had with the gameplay and dialogue in Black Ops I continue into the sequel.

Additionally, the separate departments at Treyarch appear to have developed the disparate elements of Black Ops II’s campaign in complete isolation from each other, and yet the work products from each department are mediocre at best within their own vacuums let alone as a game with any meaning or engagement.

(PS3) Call of Duty: Black Ops II: 2.5/10

Conclusion:

The best campaign of the series was – somehow – Modern Warfare II, which is doubly-remarkable because it is the first game in the franchise that unmistakably steered the franchise away from even pretending to accurately portray warfare. The 2019 reboot of Modern Warfare is the only one in that series to have any degree of accuracy for contemporary warfare, but even then, I hope that I’ve navigated those nuanced waters within that game’s review.

Of all the games that I reviewed for this post, the only one that featured you/your character experiencing the ‘Call To Duty’ is a Medal of Honor game. The Call of Duty franchise is an action-movie corruption of what it means to find that bravery.

These games are for couch-potatoes only; the extreme good fortune and superpower strength bestowed upon the player is in direct conflict with the actual name of this series and the tone that should be projected from that banner.

_____________________________

As always, thanks for reading, and please feel welcome to talk about this gargantuan collection of thoughts. I found it really interesting to see the significant spread of scores for this series once I actually sat down and thought about them during the review process. Sometimes a score will come to mind almost instantly when I’m preparing reviews, and some require deeper reflection. I didn’t have a definitive score in mind for any of the Call of Duty games before I started to put this review batch together. I set out to focus on brevity for this one and yet, somehow, at over 15,000 words, I failed in epic proportions because I had so much that I wanted to write about. This is my largest review to date. In fairness, I’ve only reviewed NINE games in a single batch once before.

There’s not enough 9.5s or 10s in the scores that I’ve given out since I started this checklist despite a belief that I have definitely played many of them. I’d like my reviews to have a score ceiling that accurately reflects what I think are 10/10 games, so I’ll be breaking my self-imposed rule of trying to write in a chronological order so that I can talk about some of my favourite games. The next three or four reviews will be for some very popular franchises and they'll be scoring very highly.

Peace! ?

Edited March 21, 2023 by Platinum_Vice

YaManSmevz · March 22, 2023

On 3/20/2023 at 6:50 AM, Platinum_Vice said:

16A

Series: Call of Duty

Quote

Your character and his squad almost immediately jump onto the back of a truck from a forward command post to the front of an ongoing battle. The Sergeant says, “men: we were supposed to be enjoying coffee and donuts this afternoon, but the Germans drank all the coffee and ate all the donuts. Now we have to kick their asses.”

"We thought their antics were all in good fun.. BUT THEN THEY TOOK IT TOO FAR!!"

I never took much interest in CoD before the MW games, and from reading this I can see I'm not missing out on much! However...

Quote

World at War also benefits from a fantastic attention to detail:

Sergeant Sullivan dies early in the campaign. Of your squad, Sullivan was the most adept in battle. The next soldier in the chain of command is Corporal Roebuck. His rank changes from Corporal to Sergeant as soon as Sullivan receives his mortal wound. Not only was Sullivan just as expendable as anyone else but he was also replaced instantly and without fanfare.

In ‘Burn Em Out’, subjecting some enemy forces to your flamethrower will cause them to shout in Indonesian, not Japanese. In reality, Imperial Japan had recently liberated Indonesia from the Dutch, and some of the Japanese forces in the Pacific were bolstered by conscripted Indonesians.

The last level against the Germans introduces a new enemy skin: members of Hitler’s SS. Some of them are sporting bandages from prior injuries. You have penetrated deep into enemy territory, indeed.

Likewise, the last level against the Japanese introduces a new enemy skin: some soldiers have glasses. I infer from this that the Japanese infantry were so depleted after such heavy fighting that they had loosened their recruitment restrictions (again: this detail is pulled from documented history).

This kind of stuff is so underrated, and really helps me to see what the appeal was with World at War.

Quote

Medal of Honor: Frontline

Damn you, Vice!!

Back in the Maybe pile with you, Frontline....

Given how I've still got CoD WWII ahead of me, I'd really like to have something this thoughtful and creatively rich under my belt first. The substance-packed indie flick before the loud and mindless Michael Bay production, if you will.

Quote

The final negative that must be documented is how difficult the game is on hard mode. I really underestimated it when looking at the rarity: "only about 40% of those who beat the game did it a second time on the hard difficulty, that’s actually remarkably high. How hard can it be?" I said.

How wrong I was.

I managed it in the end but there was a good three or four levels where I thought "ok, this must be the top of the difficulty spike" and was stunned to find that it just got harder. It was less about ‘cheap shit’ and more because the maximum degree of skill that can even be applied is bottlenecked by the clunky controls, plus the lack of regenerating health (including between levels!) and a lack of a checkpoint system. You have to beat each level without dying AND with enough health to enter the subsequent stage with a confidence that you won’t die to an increasing difficulty spike.

While this does seem like a pretty rough slog, in a weird way it would offer the challenge I thought I'd be getting with the Medal of Honor reboot. It wouldn't be in the most ideal way, but you gotta love a completion you can be proud of!

Though really, the most intimidating part is that I'd have to write about it, and this piece here is already the top dawg?

On 3/20/2023 at 8:13 AM, Platinum_Vice said:

16B

PART 2: MODERN WARFARE

Quote

I can’t find any reliable sources of information for Activision/Infinity Ward being paid by the US Government for this series (except IW’s admission that they sought advice from soldiers for details such as “how to breach and clear” or how different firearms behave) so I can’t say for sure that Modern Warfare is genuine propaganda, but the pro-war stance of these games that are set in a controversial conflict does make me question whether they could be. In the end, I believe that Infinity Ward just believe that ‘war can be cool’ regardless of our opinions on the matter. Sales for the series show that it is definitively clear that Infinity Ward knew that ‘war is interesting to young males.’

I mean... even if it wasn't government commissioned, these games are still on some serious war dick, ain't nobody can contest that. For all of MW1's surprising depth, that shit never failed to be a turn off.

Quote

The most crucial aspect about what makes Modern Warfare (and MW2) so popular, so engaging and so essential is not because of any special adherence to realism. It is that the situations that the game puts you in are urgent and you feel like you matter. You are a precision cog in a well-oiled machine that repeatedly crashes through, over or under the obstacles that are thrown at you due to your precise application of aggression and grit. This is the foundation that the crisp gunplay and fantastically committed voice acting build upon to form a golden triangle of irreplaceable features that make MW1 (and MW2) so gripping.

REAL TALK. I was so surprised at how hooked I was when playing MW1 (and 2019, for that matter). That sense of urgency is everything! There's always something happening, there's always weight to your actions and there's always a sense of pressure that you're keeping up with your partners and carrying your own weight. Well put, sir!

Quote

And then there’s ‘All Ghillied Up.’ One word: iconic. In tone and atmosphere? Impeccable. I especially loved the very beginning where you think you’re alone and then MacMillan stands up in his ghillie suit and you realise that you must be that invisible too. Hitting the deck as a Russian squad passes over you was crazy!

The stealth going spectacularly to shit angle is done so well here, a very deserving shout?

Quote

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

When the PS4 version of the single player campaign was released, I definitely thought about it, but now it looks like I have to. Put out a couple lines for me, Infinity Ward!

Quote

You know what cures the violent rolling of your eyes at the action movie-ification of this series? Opening yourself to it. Don’t be a hater; get on the rollercoaster. MW2 cranks it all the way up to 11.

Yes. Dumb fun done well is a unique joy!

Quote

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare [2019]

This game gives an extremely poor first impression. And when I say first impression, I mean it. I’m talking about the nightmare that is getting this game to start. In any story, the first 10 minutes should introduce the viewer to the main character, who/what/where/when they are and overview the premise. I spent 10 minutes in MW2019’s menus:

filling out the size of the screen,

reading through two separate 3-page terms and conditions,

signing up (compulsory) to Activision.net or whatever the fuck it was (as if I trust their security with privacy – one of the most hated companies in the world that would genuinely take advantage of me AND ALSO who could be targeted by disenfranchised hackers),

watching a 60 second teaser which made no sense at all (a dead character from Black Ops 2 dropping a coffin into a volcano...? What is this, Tekken?)

and then I finally get to the main menu and it tells me that the campaign isn’t even downloaded to my console. Only the multiplayer is downloaded. Oh, the game is doing me a favour, is it? It doesn’t want to take up all the harddrive space on my console with unnecessary modes that don’t encourage me to continue spending money on the game, is that right? The campaign, spec ops and other multiplayer add-ons only installed after I requested them to start downloading.

I made the necessary download requests only to find that the console needed my credit card info again... what the fuck, Activision?

I mentioned to Doc that I wished I'd mentioned how atrocious this experience was when I wrote about it... such a needless ordeal. Having said that, I was a big fan of the game itself as well!

Quote

‘Clean House,’ the fifth mission, is a standout highlight. It lasts for about ten minutes. It follows a systematic house clearance of a three-story terrorist headquarters in London. I can tell you that this level is appropriate for use as a teaching method for soldiers and police learning how to accomplish dangerous exercises like these. It has just enough of an element of realism that it can be perfectly applicable as a teaching tool about common errors and mistakes in executing raids; what not to do and how the occupants may behave.

The thing about a house clearance is that you’re entering someone else’s castle. They have the upper hand. They know what every room looks like. They know where to hide and when and where to ambush you. They can be armed with unknown weapons. There are an unknown amount of people inside -- likely including women and children. Occupants become instantly terrified and act in unpredictable ways when masked men with guns invade their home. The raiding party will be subject to extreme scrutiny by superiors and the public by how they acted with split-second decisions.

??????

Quote

Regarding Urkistani terrorists: Urzikstan’s bombing of Piccadilly Circus would be a legitimate reason for Britain/America to enter that country rather than ‘morally grey’ CIA Operations taking on all of the heavy lifting.

Regarding acts by the Russians: the game describes a ‘Russian warcrime’ of the murder of multiple civilians on the Highway of Death. This is based on a real-world event that was committed by Americans. It is thoroughly perverse to alter history like this.

Regarding Hadir’s use of a chemical agent: Hadir’s perspective is that he wants to utilise the chemical agent to liberate the people of Urzikstan from the occupation of Russian and American militaries who are treating its people as collateral damage in their proxy war. Hadir was exposed to this chemical as a child as his hometown was obliterated by this technique and he sees it as a legitimate tool to liberate his people. His cause is somewhat sympathetic. Meanwhile, the first five minutes of the first mission involves your squadmates calling in an airstrike on a military base that you’re about to assault. The airstrike carpet bombs the facility with white phospherous and you witness people being burnt to death. How is this different to what Hadir wants to do?

Regarding Farah’s torture: the playable character is invited to take part in a torture scenario in the third act.

Agreed on all counts, with the Highway of Death flip being particularly bothersome. This could have easily been used as it happened and provided some great storytelling, maybe a thought provoking conflict that our clean cut heroes could have difficulty coming to terms with. Instead they happily take the standard American route of villanizing Russians and Arabs (or anyone in the Middle East, really). Not a good look!

Quote

What is going on with Alex in that final mission? What is that decision making during the conclusion? It was forced and unbelievable, not to mention unnecessary... the allies have access to superior weapons/airstrikes and Hadir can just... make more gas somewhere else... so, what was the point?

Dude I felt the same way, it's just so sudden and frankly unearned. Alex was clearly meant for white savior status but jee-ZUZ. Really could've done without that.

Quote

The trophy hunt enhanced the experience: finish the campaign on the highest difficulty (which has actually been tested and balanced) and complete some other unique tasks that test the game’s systems or your individual ability; things like:

Completing half of a level with just a sidearm.

Completing an exciting footchase while juggling 8 different weapons for kills as you’re on the run.

Carrying a cinderblock from the beginning of a level to the end.

BRUH. Could not agree more, this was one of my favorite parts of the experience. As it should be! May I humbly add the one where you make it through the pandemonium of Piccadilly Circus without shooting civilians? That was a huge immersion boost for me!

On 3/20/2023 at 8:55 AM, Platinum_Vice said:

16C

PART 3: BLACK OPS

This is the exact inverse of me cursing your name for putting MW2 back in the wishlist and making room for Frontline in my backlog... thank you for reinforcing my lack of interest in the Black Ops games!

Quote

This is Ben Stiller in Tropic Thunder:

This is the character Frank Woods from Black Ops:

I think I'm gonna choose to believe that this was a deliberate dig at players who take these games waaayyyy too seriously. It's extremely unlikely, but it makes me happy.

Quote

The idea of a AAA game releasing a mode where JFK (that’s John Fuckin Kennedy, to you), Nixon, McNamara and Castro attempting to survive waves of zombies in the pentagon together is so batshit stupid that it comes full circle to being a pretty good idea.

But these ideas are overladen by a dreadful narrative premise that forced me to endure a failing interrogation where no one – not the interrogator, interrogatee or the player – knew the answers to the questions nor the stakes of what was at risk.

If Adult Swim made a war game, I could see it going something like that, and I'll be real, I'd buy that for a dollar. Also, the talk of nobody in an interrogation knowing answers or what's at risk made me think of this dude:

Yeaahhh, this is as good a place as any to stop hoggin up real estate on your checklist. An outstanding job as always, homie?

Edited March 22, 2023 by YaManSmevz
Forgot to delete one of the quoted boxes, whoopssss

Platinum_Vice · March 24, 2023

On 22/03/2023 at 2:20 PM, YaManSmevz said:

"We thought their antics were all in good fun.. BUT THEN THEY TOOK IT TOO FAR!!"

? Those pesky Nazis. Hate it when they take it too far.

On 22/03/2023 at 2:20 PM, YaManSmevz said:

This kind of stuff is so underrated, and really helps me to see what the appeal was with World at War.

Yeah, 100%, it's great attention to detail but most players won't notice these things because they're buried under all of the Call of Duty.

On 22/03/2023 at 2:20 PM, YaManSmevz said:

Damn you, Vice!!

Back in the Maybe pile with you, Frontline....

Given how I've still got CoD WWII ahead of me, I'd really like to have something this thoughtful and creatively rich under my belt first. The substance-packed indie flick before the loud and mindless Michael Bay production, if you will.

I thought you'd be keen to hear the thoughts on this one. Consider playing it through just for fun? Or putting the plat on the backburner for another year so that you can retain that positive experience instead of immediately overwriting it with Hard Difficulty. BTW: back in 2002, this was the Michael Bay production of its day. I think my PS2 copy has platinum box art (it was that popular). It was just overshadowed by the excessively dank releases that year (GTA Vice City, Splinter Cell, Warcraft 3, Metroid Prime, Hitman 2, Morrowind, NFS Hot Pursuit 2, Age of Mythology, Ratchet and Clank, Battlefield 1942, Tony Hawk 4, Timesplitters 2, LOTR 2, Wind Waker).

On 22/03/2023 at 2:20 PM, YaManSmevz said:

Though really, the most intimidating part is that I'd have to write about it, and this piece here is already the top dawg

I'd be super keen for your POV even if it was scathing. Modern perspectives of this game are few and far in between.

On 22/03/2023 at 2:20 PM, YaManSmevz said:

I mean... even if it wasn't government commissioned, these games are still on some serious war dick, ain't nobody can contest that.

? ?

On 22/03/2023 at 2:20 PM, YaManSmevz said:

BRUH. Could not agree more, this was one of my favorite parts of the experience. As it should be! May I humbly add the one where you make it through the pandemonium of Piccadilly Circus without shooting civilians? That was a huge immersion boost for me!

Great level!!

On 22/03/2023 at 2:20 PM, YaManSmevz said:

This is the exact inverse of me cursing your name for putting MW2 back in the wishlist and making room for Frontline in my backlog... thank you for reinforcing my lack of interest in the Black Ops games!

I just don't see anything in those two games that are worth experiencing anymore in 2023 as an adult, especially if you know about the twist that I wrote about. You've got higher priorities than Blops in your wishlist!

On 22/03/2023 at 2:20 PM, YaManSmevz said:

If Adult Swim made a war game, I could see it going something like that, and I'll be real, I'd buy that for a dollar.

Sure - comedy? Yeah, chaos works like a charm. In this game? There's no dramatic tension at all because neither character nor the player knows what's going to happen. That scene in No Country for Old Men has tension because the audience knows the stakes even though neither the shop owner or Anton Chigurh know what the outcome of the coin toss will be. But I know you know all this. ?

Thanks for the love dude!!

Platinum_Vice · April 16, 2023

17

Series: Portal

Portal:

For budding game developers, the origins of Portal have become immortalised in myth. Eight students staring down the barrel of their graduation from Washington’s DigiPen Institute of Technology created a game called Narbacular Drop which featured a unique mechanic involving portals. During a DigiPen showcase the students were given a business card by a Valve representative, and a few short weeks later they were giving a presentation of their game in person at the Valve studio for Gabe Newell and a handful of other employees. Gabe stopped the students fifteen minutes into their presentation and offered them all jobs on the spot.

Portal is short. You can expect between 1-3 hours of content. You can also expect to have a riot of a time. Portal’s success is due to six primary features that hoist this iconic game up into the gaming stratosphere:

1. The puzzles have a refined, perfectly-balanced difficulty curve. Concepts build gradually and the player is masterfully challenged at a rate where they are able to progress without needing a guide. It’s also remarkably accessible to non-gamers.

GLaDOS: “Momentum – a function of mass and velocity – is conserved between portals. In layman’s terms: ‘speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out.’”

2. GLaDOS, the artificial intelligence that needles the player throughout the game, is extremely amusing. Her insults are the cornerstone to Portal’s signature humorous tone and, strangely, being insulted and receiving her text-to-speech-style commentary is the underlying reward that dangles in front of the player like a juicy carrot edging us onwards. GLaDOS has earned her place on the Mount Rushmore of gaming’s greatest villains and she is the primary mouthpiece for the series’ most popular feature: great jokes.

GLaDOS - a striking design that evokes imagery of a fishing hook and a serpent dangling from a tree

3. Portal’s clinical appearance is fundamental to its aesthetical iconography. Surveillance cameras and (empty) glass-panelled viewing rooms adorn the walls of what could pass as an insane asylum.

The cold blue tinge of the testing facility evokes ‘the artificial,’ which becomes perfectly juxtaposed by a warm orange about halfway through the game upon discovering a hovel used by The Rattmann to document his scribbled machinations. As the player progresses they discover the end of the testing process at a fire pit. The fire, Rattmann’s hidden areas, the final sequence, the player’s orange jumpsuit... all of these orange things evoke ‘life and humanity.’ The blue and orange colour choices that dominate Portal’s visual landscape are diametrically opposed on the colour wheel just as you and GLaDOS are at constant loggerheads.

After thirteen blue levels, the discovery of this out-of-place orange area is compelling.

4. The final sequence is gripping. I’ll say no more to avoid spoiling this game for any soul not yet blessed by this series, but it’s one of the all-time greatest linear sequences and I thoroughly recommend the experience. It’s quite empowering to be a player making discoveries after GLaDOS had so masterfully armed the player with puzzle solving skills throughout the game. The discovery of the firepit (and beyond) was a fundamental and groundbreaking gaming experience for me.

Remember this? "This Weighted Companion Cube will accompany you through the test chamber. Please take care of it."

5. Portal benefits from its limited length. The constraints of the small development team (8 devs!) were critical to the game’s success. In a time where bloat was creeping into the industry and quantity was becoming more and more sought after at the expense of quality, Portal defied the odds with a short and sharp structure that could be digested in one or two sessions before coming to a definitive conclusion. Of the many factors that players seek in their gaming choices (such as Technical Performance, weighted Gameplay versus Plot Substance and Character Development, Audio or Visual Design, Cost and Length - just a few off-hand examples) I personally shunt Length all the way towards the bottom of my own priority list. “This game is too short” is about the best criticism that I could possibly give. The player’s journey in Portal is short and sharp and it therefore never strays from being an enjoyable experience.

“The Enrichment Centre reminds you that the Weighted Companion Cube cannot speak.

In the event that the Weighted Companion Cube does speak, the Enrichment Centre urges you to disregard its advice.”

6. Valve invested significant time and spending throughout the entire development period for player testing and feedback. The devs watched the testers and how they reacted to the game in real time (this wasn't common practice in 2007), where and why they were struggling, how frustrated or amused they became, and Valve listened to the feedback at face value in addition to decoding what they thought that the players meant by their criticism. Valve put egos aside to make the subsequent (necessary) adjustments.

"This Weighted Companion Cube cannot accompany you for the rest of the test and, unfortunately, must be euthanized. Please escort your Companion Cube to the Aperture Science Emergency Intelligence Incinerator."

This is all to say nothing of Portal’s release alongside legendary Valve titles Half Life 2 and Team Fortress 2. Prior to playing Portal, one would have been forgiven for considering it to be “stocking filler” in The Orange Box.

"Although the euthanizing process is remarkably painful, eight out of ten Aperture Science engineers believe that the Companion Cube is most likely incapable of feeling much pain."

Valve had legitimate constraints when developing this game. They didn’t view those boundaries as restrictions; they were liberated with the gift of FOCUS. The had a shot to break through those constraints when it came to the final sequence of the game and they stuck the landing.

What started as a project in the vein of a tech demo evolved into media that shaped the industry for the better. When other tech-demos-come-full-releases drop, be it as simple as Superhot or even with significant backing such as Mirror’s Edge, they release in the shadow of this little game developed by 8 talented and humble team members.

"You euthanized your faithful Companion Cube more quickly than any test subject on record. Congratulations."

Portal was a breakout, breakthrough, runaway success. Please play this game. It’s tiny. It’s dirt cheap on Steam.

"Got any more of that cake?"

(PS3) Portal, 9.5/10

_______________________________________________

Portal 2:

Portal 2 is even better than Portal. It is a go-to example of a sequel taking everything that made the prior entry stand out and ratcheting those factors up to 11.

The improved difficulty curve makes me into a liar. “Portal had a perfect difficulty curve” is what I just said up there. ☝️ [I sound like Wheatley: "re-- remember that? Remember that bit from earlier? We just said that. That was us."] Portal 2 truncated that masterful difficulty curve so that returning players wouldn’t be retreading old ground while new players learnt how the portals and puzzles work for themselves. 90 minutes of learning in Portal was condensed into the first 20 minutes of Portal 2, and yet, despite similar content taking place in a significantly shorter time frame, players still experience a perfect difficulty curve in the sequel. How can it be? Magic.

GLaDOS returns with her trademark humour and she even gains an empathetic streak for the playable character. Her motivations briefly synchronise with ours, and we gain an understanding about her history. Additionally, the humour is greatly expounded upon with the addition of two new characters with their own comedic style:

Wheatley, voiced by Stephen Merchant (and featuring some ad-lib on his part), is a perfect addition.

“Most test subjects experience some cognitive deterioration after a few months in suspension. Now, you’ve been under for QUITE a lot longer, and it’s not out of the question that you might have veeeeery minor case of serious brain damage.

Do you understand what I’m saying? Just tell me. Just say ‘yes.’”

[‘Press X to speak’ appears on screen... X is the jump button.]

“Okay, what you’re doing there is jumping...”

You might remember GLaDOS’ personality cores from the end of the first game? Wheatley is one of those – he was designed to make GLaDOS dumber.

Did you know that more personality cores were in the works during pre-production? Valve were trying to design a system that made them portable for the player to carry about.

One of the cores was a Morgan Freeman sphere in the vein of the character Red from The Shawshank Redemption. The backstory of this core was that it was incredibly wise about the small room in which he was constrained, but as soon as the player was to take the core deeper into the game, the core would be clueless about what was taking place. Eventually the core would catch on and he would provide sage advice about things that somehow related back to his origins in that small room where he had been found.

If this sounds like a joke from yours truly, fear not, this was genuinely in development as stated by Valve themselves.

Cave Johnson is voiced by J. K. Simmons. Again: this is perfect casting and surely an inspiration for Valve to re-focus new jokes emerging during production that could tap into Simmons’ typecast strengths. Players explore a testing facility within property owned by the Aperture Science company which was led by Cave Johnson before his death.

“This next test involves something the lab boys call ‘Repulsion Gel.’ You’re not part of the control group, by the way, you get the gel. The last poor son-of-a-gun got blue paint. Broke every bone in his legs.”

“Oh, in case you got covered in that Repulsion Gel, here’s some advice the lab boys gave me: ‘do NOT get covered in the Repulsion Gel.' We haven’t entirely nailed down what element it is yet, but it is a LIVELY one, and it does NOT like the human skeleton.”

The interactions between GLaDOS, Wheatley and the player are the basis for a narrative throughline which provides immeasurable improvement as a sequel. And unlike Portal, which consisted of test room after test room throughout the core experience, Portal 2 features significant ‘out of test chamber’ segments and experiences that greatly improve pacing and provide variety to the gameplay. Portal 2's campaign is twice as long as its predecessor. The non-puzzle moments are organic and the gameplay is constantly fun.

GLaDOS: “This next test involves turrets. You remember them, right? They’re the pale spherical things that are full of bullets... oh wait, that’s you in five seconds. Good luck.”

Portal was somewhat more grounded with a slightly creepy tone whereas Portal 2 leans right into that comedic flair that was so beloved in the original.

Portal 2 also features multiple quality of life improvements. Slow-moving energy balls were replaced by lasers (“thermal discouragement beams”) so that players would receive instant feedback as to whether they’re narrowing in on a solution. Unlike the haphazard and chaotic use of lasers in The Talos Principle that made me feel like I was breaking the game with some jankily-forced workaround, laser beams in Portal 2 seem to rely on an underpinning geometric pattern. I felt intelligent in Portal 2 whereas Iasers in The Talos Principle made me feel like I was cheesing my way through the game instead of coming to a legitimate solution.

"I am so smart. I am so smart. S-M-R-T!"

Portal 2 also adds new puzzle mechanics such as jump buttons (“aerial faith plates”), the three gels, light bridges and the blue and orange excursion funnels.

GLaDOS: “Wait, this next test requires some explanation. Let me give you the fast version: askjfdgsiafbhafjegtergwewhuqygdar."

Portal 2 also featured a full co-op campaign. It was awesome. Mrs Vice and I played this during the first month of our relationship all the way back before I owned a couch... back when the PS4 was still in development... back when Ned Stark was still alive. Valve: thanks for the assist.

Notice the designs of the co-op playable characters? Player 1 (blue) is a modified personality core. Player 2 (orange) is a modified turret.

Unlike other co-op games (such as Overcooked, for example), this one doesn’t start arguments. Players don’t have to rely on each other to the degree of something like Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes, or Operation Tango or We Were Here (for example, I still solved most of Portal 2’s puzzles a little bit faster than Mrs Vice because we were sharing the same TV), but “Player 2 Syndrome” is generally avoided because puzzles require thinking with four portals and both players are therefore integral to the solving process. I found that even though I was solving puzzles at a faster rate, Mrs Vice was moving around the chambers on jump pads, light bridges and moving companion cubes just as much as I was to act out that solve and physically get through each test. We can’t usually agree on a co-op game but we LOVE this one. We’ve played it from start to finish three times.

Yes: the co-op campaign features commentary from GLaDOS. Her banter breeds competition between players and the real mastery of Valve’s writing is that, on the surface, GLaDOS is trying to sow dissent between the players with her passive aggression and flip-flopping loyalty, but somehow it strengthens the relationship between the players in the face of that adversity.

“The best way to build confidence is to first recognise your insecurities. Orange: can you write down all the ways you feel unworthy, ashamed, or inferior? … On second thought, we don’t have the time. Just look at how much better you are than blue. Blue: you are VERY good at being an example.”

This is the funniest game that I’ve ever played.

Portal 2 is a great example of a sequel elevating something that already seemed perfect. Looking back at Portal after playing its successor reveals chinks in its armour that had previously been invisible.

Apples and orange, sure, but as far as puzzle games go, Portal 2 is only surpassed by The Witness by the smallest fraction of a measurement.

Masterpiece.

(PS3) Portal 2, 10/10

___________________________________

Bridge Constructor Portal:

(or as my young son calls it: Forklift Game)

To be clear: this is not a Valve game. This is barely a Portal game. This is a Bridge Constructor sim/simlite with the Portal aesthetic.

There’s less of a narrative than there is somewhat of a context for the gameplay: you are a new initiate at Aperture Science and you’re tasked with constructing bridges that allow forklifts to be driven from point A to point B. Tests become more complex over time such as activating switches to drop companion cubes onto buttons, driving into turrets, and the use of orange and blue gel to alter movement.

Editing (left) and Testing (right). Players have to be careful to avoid collisions between forklifts moving in multiple directions.

Most importantly: portals (and gel splotches) are fixed in place. You can't change where the portals go nor how many pairs of portals exist within the levels. Complex levels may have more than half a dozen pairs.

Connections to the Portal franchise is due to the aforementioned use of basic elements of that series and the overall visual aesthetic, but also (and most importantly), the return of GLaDOS who provides commentary at the outset and completion of levels.

Even though the portals are fixed, the way that you solve puzzles is inherently different to the Portal games. In Portal and Portal 2, there’s a finite answer (occasionally: answers) to every puzzle which could be brute forced by placing portals on the limited panels in every testing chamber. Forklift Game generally allows you to build bridges to your own design which gives players slightly more freedom to complete puzzles.

The finished products never convey the multiple adjustments that were needed to be made to get a build juuuuuuust right.

Applying those Portal elements is mostly a flavour that changes the pre-existing Bridge Constructor games for the better. I don’t think that I’d play another Bridge Constructor game now. They appear to me to be inferior products and most of what I enjoyed about this game is imported from Portal. In saying that, other than a functioning GLaDOS insult simulator, everything that I like about the Portal franchise doesn’t migrate into this game. The sole exception to this statement is that I found the main menu music theme of Forklift Game to be particularly groovy and upbeat whereas the OST in Portal and Portal 2 are two different brands of a more atmospheric sound.

Level 39 (out of a total of 60) requires a bridge to be suspended from fixed points in the roof. Every strut used to strengthen the build adds weight to the bridge. It is (literally) a balancing act.

Gameplay in this experience (building bridges) was something that I found to be fun over time rather than immediately and inherently. Even then, I was usually content to complete two to four puzzles at once (that’s about 30-60 mins of play time per session) before being ready to put Forklift Game down for the day. The full game was a slow burn over a fortnight.

This one was a lot harder than it looks!

The mechanics of the game (and how easily you’ll take to it or how hard you find it) relies heavily on the physics engine. It is definitely consistent (the engine itself isn't flawed) but the bridges require a familiarity with engineering concepts from the outset. Even the tutorial requires the player’s understanding of the application of physics. Some quick handy hints for suggested building techniques are accessible with the push of a button however the player will need to learn those fundamentals early, and successful completion of almost every level requires you to “feel out” and estimate how much weight and impact inertia that bridge pieces, joints and weak points can handle.

Don't let the simplicity of this finished build fool you!

Overall, I recommend the game primarily to players who fall in the middle of a Venn diagram of “Portal fans” and “anyone that thinks they might enjoy physics-based bridge puzzlers.” That narrow niche of players has probably experienced this title long before I knew it existed (and they probably enjoyed it a bit more than I did, too).

#114 (PS4) Bridge Constructor Portal, 7/10

Edited April 17, 2023 by Platinum_Vice

DrBloodmoney · April 17, 2023

Man, I saved this one for when I had the time to properly read, and you didn't disappoint! ?

An awesome issue of Vice, from which I gained two very important pieces of information:

You are right about every part of your Portal and Portal 2 assessments.
I should play Bridge Constructor Portal!

The cake is a lie,

Yours sincerely,

DrB.

Edited April 18, 2023 by DrBloodmoney

Platinum_Vice · May 4, 2023

18

Disco Elysium

I’m going to spoil the first ten minutes of Disco Elysium. It’s the only way to set up the premise for the review and for my experience with it - and it might whet the appetite for potential future players.

[SHIVERS: The opening poem tells the player what they can expect in Disco Elysium: at its core, this is an exploration of internal demons.]

The game starts in blackness and lets you marinate in it for a small time. The first voices that you hear are the deepest parts of your being. When your character wakes up, you discover that you’re practically naked and are suffering from a hangover of apocalyptic proportions. You cannot remember to most basic aspects of your reality: your name, what you look like, where you are, what year it is... When you find some clothes and stumble out of your room, you meet a woman who reminds you that you’re a police officer. She is not the least bit surprised that you’ve been drinking lately. You soon realise that you’re in a small motel, have destroyed your room, and pissed off everyone in town for three days straight because you’ve been full of piss and bad manners.

[COMPOSURE: They don't like us here.]

I will not reveal the playable character’s name in this review (you might discover it for yourself upon playing Disco Elysium), but this is the most pathetic character that I’ve been given in my many years of gaming. This man is wretched. In his inebriated stupors, he’s run up a tab of $130 at this motel [ENCYCLOPEDIA: $130 is a lot in this town], and he’s been waving his gun around the hotel lobby and shouting that he wants to kill himself. He’s addicted to amphetamines. His face is frozen in a creepy drunken-hobo-smile.

[VOLITION: You owe him what you say you owe him.]

You soon meet Kim Kitsuragi, a police officer from a neighbouring jurisdiction, and upon informing him of your sudden-onset amnesia, he tells you that your jurisdictions meet at the town where you’re currently located – Revachol – and police therefore rarely venture here. The locals didn’t like police long before you were both tasked to go there.

You are both in town to investigate the murder of a hanging man in the rear yard of your motel. You discover that you’ve lost your badge, your uniform and your gun. You’ve not even looked at the decomposing corpse in the motel’s yard during the last three days.

And that’s the premise.

[VISUAL CALCULUS: Disco Elysium's expressionist art style is beautiful and rarely seen elsewhere across the gaming landscape.]

[ENCYCLOPEDIA: Dishonored is a notable example.]

Dialogue-heavy Disco Elysium is primarily a CRPG that uses point and click adventure/puzzle mechanics as gameplay.

The role-playing core of Disco Elysium stands out during the entire journey.

Your character is built with limited points from 24 total stats in 4 categories:

INTELLECT (literal intelligence); 6 sub-categories include VISUAL CALCULUS (useful for counting, separating and detailing the amount of bootprints in a messy puddle, for example), DRAMA (flair and the ability to lie and detect lies in others), and LOGIC.
PSYCHE (emotional intelligence); 6 sub-categories include VOLITION, AUTHORITY, SUGGESTION, and ESPRIT DE CORPS (the ability to relate to other police officers and police procedure).
PHYSIQUE (strength of your physical body); 6 sub-categories include PAIN THRESHOLD, ELECTROCHEMISTRY (covering any potential degree of attraction between characters, and calling to you to fill your body with more alcohol and speed), and SHIVERS (which taps into a supernatural current that flows throughout the town of Revachol – turning a pattern of failing small businesses into a poetry that speaks only to you).
MOTORICS (your senses); 6 sub-categories include PERCEPTION, HAND/EYE COORDINATION and SAVOIR FAIRE (a strange blend of ‘physical coolness’ that allows you to catch things thrown at you, stealthyness to lift something from a character’s back pocket, and being able to groove to your own internal disco).

… and boy oh boy, is this system cool as fuck. Anyone familiar with old-school role-playing can see how three or four separate things would be considered to be one skill in a pen and paper game. But unlike those well-rounded experiences, there’s no combat in Disco Elysium - gameplay primarily takes place during conversations between your character and the people of Revachol. During conversations you’ll always be presented with a skill check for one of those 24 stats and your success or failure in passing those skill checks will alter the course of the investigation. Clothing (a reward for exploration) is a quick and easy way to boost those stats, and various tools, side quests and drugs will provide benefits, too.

There are positives and negatives for investing in each particular skill. The positives are that you will pass harder skill checks, but the more you invest in each skill, the more that it will come to define your character.

[ENDURANCE: My first playthrough lasted for one minute. I put the minimal investment into PHYSIQUE traits and died when flicking a light switch at the very beginning of the game.]

Throughout this dialogue-heavy game, your character will have a running internal monologue based on your stats. If you’ve invested heavily into DRAMA then you’ll hear voices telling you when someone is lying. An AUTHORITY stat might tell you that another character is intimidated by you. High PERCEPTION could result in noticing that another character is trying to hide something behind their back. I had a moment where multiple traits were reacting to something (one trait describing the body language of a character, one picking up on the subtext of what was being said, one describing the historic event that had been brought up) and then the PERCEPTION trait shouted up to say: “oi! Shut up! I’m trying to listen!” which I found remarkably charming. A friend of mine told me that one of the traits in his game told him that it was telling him the truth while others traits were lying – an experience that I hoped to stumble across but never did – and he reported that it turned out to be true and very helpful for him to know during his playthrough.

Players will have unique experiences:

Spoiler

You can't experience all of these in a singular playthrough. What have you seen and done?

360 no-scoping Measurehead.
Adding graffiti to the town’s aesthetic.
Enlisting Cuno as a junior detective in lieu of Kim, punching him, and giving him speed.
Shooting Cunoesse.
Being killed by the Hardie Boys when trying to arrest them or shooting yourself in front of them.
Investigating The Pale.
Experiencing the unique talking spirit of your horrific necktie.
Discovering the identity of who is cooking the town’s supply of speed.
Changing your facial expression and having a shave only to have Kim comment that he preferred how you looked before.
Using a molotov cocktail during the tribunal.
Climbing the war memorial.
Engaging in an eyebrow battle with Kim before discovering a secret from his past.
Discovering Kim's old nickname.
Equipping yourself with full FALN clothing instead of armour.
Hooking Garte up with his co-worker.
Falling into extreme wealth (1.5 million Reál).
Slurping spilt rum off of a diner bench.
Convincing an old soldier to give you his war medal.
Investigating a second death.
Discovering the details of a potential nuclear apocalypse in Revachol.

The drawback is that a heavy investment in some skills becomes blinding for the playable character. LOGIC might be useful in some situations but less so in times requiring EMPATHY. DRAMA is helpful on occasion but detrimental in circumstances demanding some subtlety.

However, this comes back around full circle in Disco Elysium’s genius: failing a skill check is something that only the omniscient player knows (your screen goes red instead of green), but the playable character assumes that his dialogue choice was perfectly appropriate. For example, if I rolled a DRAMA check to lie to someone and failed that skill check, I’d know that the lie wouldn’t land, but the playable character’s DRAMA trait would tell him that it worked... until the character that he’s talking to says that they don’t believe him.

Success opens up new dialogue options, finishes quests and results in progress.

Failure opens up new dialogue options, starts alternative quests and results in an experience unique to each player.

Few games can do this [INTERFACING: or create a sufficient illusion of doing this] successfully. Save scumming has not been completely eradicated [HALF-LIGHT: because your character will die] but it is severely reduced because the player is rewarded for trying and rarely are they truly penalised for failure. This process drastically increases immersion. Failure is a core theme throughout this experience. Not only is it relevant to the player and the playable character, but also Revachol and its inhabitants.

[PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: I can make that jump.]

[PAIN THRESHOLD: No, you can't.]

[DRAMA: Yeah, but chicks will think it's cool.]

[ESPRIT DE CORPS: Kim wouldn't approve.]

The choices in dialogue are impressively varied. VERY impressively varied. There’s a funny or sarcastic option in every conversation - I’ll never forget Kim's reaction to a trophy requirement to sleep in a bin, nor the time when my character ‘honoured himself’ in Kim's presence.

[INLAND EMPIRE: HARDCORE!]

Coming from an opening 20 minutes that establishes the playable character as seemingly unredeemable in his repugnance, you can lean into a corrupt, amphetamine-taking, booze-drinking, violent sociopathic persona that answers sarcastically, name calls at every opportunity and steals for profit. You can make the Renegade Captain Shepard from Mass Effect look like a hero of the people. In one playthrough I referred to an elderly wheelchair-bound lady as “Wheels,” called my bespectacled partner a “binoclard” and assisted a local in telling him that he belonged to an inferior race. I then suckerpunched a 10 year old boy (shout out to The Cuno) before supplying him with a kilogram of speed [ELECTROCHEMISTRY: you could have kept that for yourself!], and requested “fiscal investments in how your local police will perceive your small business” from a street merchant. [CONCEPTUALISATION: Oh, never heard of a win/win scenario, toots?] [AUTHORITY: I was reminding him who runs this town.]

You're starting to pick up on the sheer craziness of where this game can take you, right? The playable character is someone who would say hello to whiskey and find that it immediately engages in a conversation.

There’s a deeper layer to this system that is analogous to games with 'Research' mechanics. You can 'internalise thoughts' in Disco Elysium, meaning that your character has some different concepts that he lets marinate in the old noodle for varying lengths of time. One of the early ones becomes available when attempting to conduct a field autopsy on the murder victim. Your character vomits twice and tells Kim that he’s not a very good cop and should just go home. Kim tells you that you “need to get your shit together,” which makes the internal thought ‘Volumetric Shit Compressor’ available. Internalising that thought takes 30 minutes but gives a massive bonus to the ENDURANCE skill which helps on a re-examination of the deceased.

Another example is an internal thought called “Actual Arts Degree.” You pay a –1 for PERCEPTION because you "can’t even look at this shit” but gain a large bonus to your CONCEPTUALISATION trait. My primary thought of choice was focusing on becoming sober. It was a significant benefit to the character and his stats.

In the same way that you might have to shelve your morals to 'ask for' [RHETORIC: demand] money to afford a room to stay overnight or use drugs for a temporary stat boost, you might find yourself supporting fascism in order to gain the necessary stat boosts to progress.

Clothes work in the same fashion. The Orange Bum Hat gives a +1 REACTION SPEED bonus for “feeling twitchy” but a -1 RHETORIC nerf for “bum brain.” A pair of jeans gave me +1 ELECTROCHEMISTRY for having “God-ass” but -1 REACTION SPEED because I was “Hind-sighted.”

… Hind-sighted. Are you kidding me? Incredible pun.

I live in an arid part of the world without snow. I found the wintry city of Revachol (complete with a variety of European accents) to feel outstandingly foreign yet believably real. In theory, discovery of the town’s lore, it’s wartorn history and the rise and fall of multiple political ideological systems there sounds like stuff that I’d love to learn about; I crave it in other games. Here, I found it to be slightly burdensome. I wasn’t too interested in learning about the multiple fictitious races throughout the world beyond Revachol but it was brought up fairly regularly. Supernatural happenings mostly fell flat for this close-minded gamer. Further, I consider myself fluent with the political spectrum and the history of political ideologies in the real world for the last 100 years – that stuff is interesting to me – but it overcrowded other more interesting topics in Disco Elysium. The game will refuse you to form moderate opinions for any stance. It was humorous that every time someone from any political ideology (be it pro-capitalism, pro-libertarianism, pro-communism or pro-fascism) spoke about them, there were dialogue options that undermined them with a cutting comments about how flawed they each were at the core and how they are negatively perceived.

These ingredients in the gumbo of Disco Elysium combine to provide a unique setting in the city of Revachol. On the abandoned border between two police jurisdictions and subject to the push-pulling of various political ideologies AND supernatural forces, Revachol is the centre of the universe. [SHIVERS: Where better to explore the meaning of life?] It wasn’t until the end of the game that I saw these aspects as critical to the experience of the playable character; as a player in the thick of the game, these aspects sometimes felt like pseudo-intellectualism that slowed the game’s pace.

[REACTION SPEED: But make no mistake: Disco Elysium is slow paced.] This might be an obstacle that is too large for many potential players.

Also, another word of warning: the trophy hunt is off-putting. You need to do at least two playthroughs and I never found a perfect one stop guide.

[SAVOIR FAIRE: The soundtrack? Oh my. Those trumpets in the town square? The “HARDCORE TO THE MEGA!” anodic dance music?]

A key strength of Disco Elysium is the murder mystery/detective investigation. My enjoyment increased as I made continual progress with the case and in bonding with my investigation partner, Kim Kitsuragi. Kim is in the running for favourite character of the year. A consummate professional, he stood by my antics with grace and always provided a voice of reason in the chaos of my character’s mind and the often-hostile Revachol. I really liked Kim.

Disco Elysium had clearly invested in its own ESPRIT DE CORPS skill because the knowledge of police work was very detailed. In particular, performing an autopsy was surprisingly comprehensive. Descriptions of body decomposition [PERCEPTION: including green marbling and blood pooling] was very accurate. The extended puzzle of the player’s first day was:

Spoiler

...to locate the deceased, get him down from the tree, find a way to stomach the stench, commence an autopsy, and then find a place to store the body.

...and Disco Elysium made this process engrossing. The game pulls no punches with its journey into the darkness.

The game has a deeply intimate understanding of nihilism that I found desperately relatable from much darker times in my life. This screenshot is from a dream that the playable character has in the game where his subconscious is reliving the scene of the hanging and has replaced the playable character as the deceased:

[LOGIC: Hanging is a common method of suicide. The initial investigation is predicated on an assumption that someone hanging has still expired at the fault of another. The game presents us with someone who we may suspect could have killed himself, and yet at the outset we are expected to believe that this is the fault of someone else.]

[EMPATHY: The internal struggle against obstacles both internal and external is the beating heart of Disco Elysium.]

[PERSUASION: And well-written it definitely is.]

The true genius is that Disco Elysium provides the player with an interesting character experiment and a dialogue- and skill-based sandbox to explore the world with remarkable nuance. Each player can have a unique experience while solving the primarily linear murder mystery. More than any other experience in memory, Disco Elysium is a genuine role-playing game. Born from the developers’ clear love of pen and paper-based games, this is an experience that I recommend to anyone who has even the most remote interest in this title... just experience this thing for yourself if you dare – even if you might not like it or even at the risk of not liking it at all... This is art.

This game is about the murder – an interesting and winding investigative journey. It’s about the world in which the murder took place – a wartorn, rundown, destitute city filled with interesting characters with diverse histories, motivations and political ideologies. It’s about the playable character and his own history and trauma. It’s about morality and policing and how the player believes they should act in troubled times. All of these factors – the investigation, the NPCs, the town, the player and their character – affect each other in true symbiosis.

In my original playthrough – the one that is canon in my mind, not the one where I got a kid hooked on speed – my compassion for Kim developed into a buddy-cop shorthand and believable trust. I clawed back from the treacherous deeds that my character undertook in the days, week, and even years prior to taking control of him.

My efforts to bring him to sobriety and honour evolved during a believable character arc of deep redemption.

Which leads to my interpretation of the ending:

Spoiler

The murderer is a sniper that’s been living on an island just off the coast of Revachol. He is a broken and bitter old man that is twisted with hate and envy. Extremist political ideology and a deep and unhealthy obsession for a woman out of his reach are what drove him to kill the hanged man. He is a dark mirror to the playable character – he is exactly like you... doesn’t that description sound suspiciously familiar?

There is deep meaning here. In a metaphorical sense, you are the hanged man (surely we all made that connection?) AND the similarity to the sniper indicates that we are also he who killed the hanged man.

[HAND/EYE COORDINATION: I see the Whirling. I can make that shot from here.]

The main menu provides a distinctive perspective. It is one shared by those at the outset of the game – objective outsiders approaching the setting for the first time – and those at the end of the game – those who remain outsiders, namely, your character, the sniper and the cryptid.

After arresting the murderer you meet something that most people in Revachol don’t believe is real. The giant stick insect talks to you and you both discuss what it means to exist. They discuss consciousness and reality. Kim takes a picture as your character reaches out and touches it:

The stick insect is metaphor for your character’s sobriety: a creature that most believe to be non-existent.

Throughout the game you have been exploring the possibility of a sober existence beyond depression. This experience in Revachol has allowed you to see that it does exist. You can reach for it. Even Kim can see that potential for you. And even though your other colleagues won’t share that faith, you have experienced something special.

Disco Elysium is very roughly translated from Latin: ‘learning in purgatory.' Suddenly that random title feels entirely applicable.

We make no compromise with the furies.

To me, Disco Elysium is a beautiful and unique exploration of The Self, of the nature of depression, and an example of finding hope and internal power in the struggle for sobriety.

This was... an experience. I mean that in the positive sense of the word. I’ve pulled three colleagues into this game and encourage gamers here to explore it too if it sounds interesting. It is unique. It is inspiring. It is unforgettable. It is ECCENTRIC. It is... DISCO ELYSIUM.

#133 (PS5) Disco Elysium, 9.5/10

Redblaziken8 · May 4, 2023

So I went from not too interested in this game prior to really interested after reading your review! Seems like a unique game with a lot of character, and is what you'd expect a true role playing game to be like. So you've convinced me to actually pick this one up at some point to add to the ever growing backlog.

Nice write up by the way, I really like how you set out your reviews and obviously you make a lot of effort with it, it pays off. ?

DrBloodmoney · May 4, 2023

2 hours ago, Platinum_Vice said:

This was... an experience. I mean that in the positive sense of the word. I’ve pulled three colleagues into this game and encourage gamers here to explore it too if it sounds interesting. It is unique. It is inspiring. It is unforgettable. It is ECCENTRIC. It is... DISCO ELYSIUM.

#133 (PS5) Disco Elysium, 9.5/10

Well.... fuck.

I mean, I kinda already had a good hunch this game was amazing... but since I managed to fully fail to play it yet, even despite buying it on release day... I was kinda hoping you'd be like "yo, this sucks!" so I could justify my own failure, and not have another must-play on the old backlog!

Curse you Vice...

...that does, indeed, sound amazing.

How dare you sir.

Platinum_Vice · June 24, 2023

Hey all.

While writing up my next review I came to a realisation that I don't have much experience with 3D combat systems that don't involve guns or bows. Can anyone make some suggestions? I like the GoW systems, FromSoftware games and the many offshoots of WB Games' Arkham combat style (Batman, Shadow of Mordor, Mad Max etc).

Also: any recommendations for deck building games? I've got Inscryption and Slay the Spire in the backlog and then Deep Sky Derelicts, Nowhere Prophet and Griftlands on my radar, any others to watch out for? Any good ones on mobile devices?

Thank you! ??

DrBloodmoney · June 24, 2023

14 minutes ago, Platinum_Vice said:

Also: any recommendations for deck building games? I've got Inscryption and Slay the Spire in the backlog and then Deep Sky Derelicts, Nowhere Prophet and Griftlands on my radar, any others to watch out for? Any good ones on mobile devices?

Thank you!

One I can’t exactly recommend, as I’ve not started it yet, but heard great things about and have ready to begin very shortly is Fights in Tight Spaces…

…could give that a look, and if it appeals we could go nuts together trying to figure it out ?

Platinum_Vice · June 25, 2023

On 24/06/2023 at 4:19 PM, DrBloodmoney said:

Fights in Tight Spaces…

…could give that a look, and if it appeals we could go nuts together trying to figure it out ?

That game looks dope! I'm down.

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