Nintendo Switch Review: RICO London (2021)

I play RICO London on my Switch every so often, even relatively recently, and not because it's any good. It's not. I've just left it in my system every time I return from a work trip or vacation, and then I don't touch the thing again until I'm out the door for another long trip. This is a horrible cycle in which I play RICO London way too much on airplanes and buses, and I don't really know why I keep doing so. There's a bunch of fun digital purchases on there for me to mess around with instead of this game. I own a physical version of RICO London because I imported it. I don't really know why.

Maybe part of it is probably because I loved the original RICO and wanted this to be more of that. It's not. The first RICO (2018) was a fun, unsophisticated, procedurally generated mess of an FPS with cool co-op and some really goofy, solid slo-mo shooting. You could slide through doors and enemies and bust down doors with your boots! It was therefore a good game. RICO London takes that blueprint and screws it up virtually from top to bottom. There's an oddly compelling game here, but it's hidden underneath the backsliding gameplay, dated graphics, and consistently awful performance.

They tried to add a storyline to this one! Ha ha. There's even little comic book panels with voice-over narration to transition between some floors of the building you're sent to infiltrate, as it's supposed to be New Year's Eve and you're an inspector lady trying to bust some drug dealers on multiple floors of a high rise building in London. This means you get a bunch of different floors, including a garage, casino, and penthouse, and a group of Eurotrash baddies in beautiful track suits. The rooms on the floors are mostly random, but they're straightforward and linear (unlike the first game), and they always wind up in the same place against the same boss characters. You can pick up weapons now, but there's much, much less ammo, and your enemies are bullet sponges this time around, so you're constantly juggling a bunch of random guns as you dump ammo into them. The combo system is fairly well-implemented, pushing you to run through the levels in order to keep your combo up, score higher, and upgrade your character. That part mostly works, but the rest of the game often doesn't. Performance on the Switch isn't just bad, it's broken. The game just crashes for no reason, or crashes after the framerate often stutters real bad. I hope your enjoy rebooting games often.

Just play RICO again instead. Don't be like me. I beat this game. Take RICO London out of your Switch, or don't put it in there in the first place.

PS2 Review: Black (2006)

So loud, so pretty, and yet so soulless.

Black reminds me a lot of the original TimeSplitters, actually: both are technically sophisticated first-person shooters without much of a narrative to back them up. Sure, Black has something of a plot, even live-action cinematics of an almost unbearably cheesy kind (lots of cigarette smoke and tough guy voices), but it ultimately means nothing. It's more of a skeleton outline for a plot than a fleshed-out story. It has something to do with a black ops solider and his team's quest to take down an arms dealer/terrorist in Russia. What plot there is you get from a pre-mission cinematic in which the main character is being interrogated by an intelligence agency higher-up. But once the mission starts, you easy to lose track of what you were asked to do and why you were asked to do it. That's not to say that Black asks a whole lot from you intellectually; you simply march down some very linear levels, shoot stuff, and when an objective pops up onscreen, you do what it asks of you. "Episodic" is the nice way to describe Black, but "lazy" is the more honest way. Even for a first-person shooter, Black has precious little variety in terms of gameplay. You don't even get workable stealth, let alone vehicles to drive, and the occasional squaddies that join you for battle do nothing useful. Essentially, you run around and shoot things and you don't have to be particularly (or generally) strategic about it. It's also criminally short, and in no way does the final battle feel in any way climatic. And unlike TimeSplitters, there's no multiplayer to redeem an otherwise facile single-player experience.

I can say some nice things about Black. Everything looks phenomenal, especially the environments, many of which can be destroyed in several lovely ways. Similarly, it sounds superb, both in terms of its score and its sound effects. You also can't fault the game's attention to detail regarding firearms; there's a palpable sense of fetish for the guns, for recoil and reloading. In other words, Black will dazzle you; it's certainly immersive to a degree. The only problem is, there's just no heart to it at all. What you have with Black is a really nice tech demo for the PS2, and little else.

XBOX Review: Half Life 2 (2005)

If nothing else, Half Life 2 demonstrates the strength of what an exclusively single player shooter can be. It is pretty much universally acclaimed, as it should be. It is an engrossing first person sci-fi experience with a (still) advanced physics engine. It may begin a bit slowly; the long sections of dialogue are probably the worst part about this game. Luckily, they don't happen that often, but they can't be skipped. I don't find myself paying much attention to them anyway, as I couldn't make sense of it when I tried (that's what Wikipedia is for). I felt like I knew all I needed to know: there is an oppressive police state and I have a crowbar. The player is taken on quite a journey, first escaping the city through the canal system, then commandeering a hovercraft to provide transportation to a rebel base, to another secret lab where the indubitably fun gravity gun is obtained, to a zombie-infested ghost town, and so forth. Each level seems unique; no where does the game feel repetitive. I found this wide array of challenges to be ever amusing (except for perhaps a specific battle with two gun ships) and all done well (indeed, there are no annoying half-hearted attempts at adding stealth scenarios). Added to the mix are a variety of puzzles that rely on the realistic physics of the engine. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they nearly always find the right balance of not being overly obvious as well as not requiring a visit to the web to figure them out. Puzzles such as these aren't often seen in first-person shooters, but they work well here. In addition, each level seems to build on the last (both in terms of the story and the tension); you obtain distinctly new and different weapons, operate new vehicles with unique characteristics, and encounter new enemies that require special tactics to combat on your way to your final goal. This is definitely not like other FPS games where it is an exercise in entering an environment, shooting everyone, and moving to the next room. Rather, it is a steady progression towards the climax, which was really quite satisfying. If there is a major cost to having it be exclusively single player, it is the unfortunate fact that there is no co-op option. Games this good should be enjoyed together with someone else. As well, there is no multiplayer, not even offline. While some may see this as outdated, I see it as the best FPS experience I've had since the release of Timesplitters: Future Perfect. For the prices it can be had today, I won't hesitate to say that you can't afford to not give this game at least one play through.

PS3 Review: Haze (2008)

It's really too bad that Haze was Free Radical Design's final release; the game is alright, don't get me wrong, but it's certainly not on the level of the TimeSplitters series, or even the severely underestimated Second Sight. That said, if you're into any of their previous games, and/or you have a few dollars to spare, you might find Haze worth a try. The single-player campaign involves a futuristic, oppressive military force called Mantel which dopes up its soldiers with Nectar, a synthetic hallucinogen that enhances speed, stamina, strength and perception. You play as Shane Carpenter, a babyfaced Caucasian everyman, who joins Mantel to fight a group of rebels known as The Promised Hand, portrayed in the opaque imaginations of Latin American pseudo-ethnicity. Most notably, the dialogue, as well as its delivery, go far beyond any claim to sincerity and into the realm of immense cheese, but not the redeemable kind. Though the story is short, predictable, and heavy handed (and more than a little bit like the politically schizophrenic Avatar), and there's not much in the way of variety, playing both sides feels sufficiently unique, particularly the difference between playing as a Nectar-addicted Mantel drone and as a rebel suffering from symptoms of withdrawal. This is particularly pertinent in regards to the multiplayer experience, where the abilities of each faction have a positive and negative impact on the deathmatch: for Mantel, this means all the enhancements of Nectar (specifically, sniping becomes superpowered when on the drug) but an occasional withdrawal and a weakness for overdosing grenades; for rebels, this means the ability to fake death and plant grenade-traps which release Nectar and engender the aforementioned overdose. It's a complex dynamic which keeps the deathmatches interesting, and for the most part these skills are well-balanced. Though I didn't have an opportunity to try online play, Haze has thankfully included offline bots to keep this feature relevant. Up to 15 bots can help to fill out the maps, but multiplayer is hampered somewhat by the few maps and modes available, as well as a lack of true, total customization. In terms of graphics, there are times when Haze looks wonderful, but numerous glitches ruin the immersion and in some cases make the completion of objectives difficult. Nevertheless, if you're looking for a shooter with some interesting ideas but can forgive several failures in execution, Haze isn't a bad choice; just don't expect to find the same kind of polished love you can find in Free Radical's classic shooters.

The last level reminded me of Spy Hunter 2, so this game
gets to be Hot Piano Chick Approved.

For Your Viewing Pleasure, Chickenman's Top Ten Video Games (Part 7)

Games mentioned so far:
The Sims (PC)
Star Wars: Battlefront (PS2)
Hitman: Blood Money (PS2)
Everything or Nothing (PS2)
Rise to Honor (PS2)
Batman: Arkham Asylum (XBox360)

Behold, the sequel to the fastest first person shooter ever made. This was back in a time where the offline FPS player's preferences were respected. It seems today that most shooters consider their offline options as obligatory measures that they'd rather not deal with, whereas Free Radical makes it their bread and butter (especially since TimeSplitters 2 is strictly offline). There are many options available: a story mode (including co-op capabilities), a very customizable arcade with AI bots to play against as well as human players, an arcade league with ranked challenges, a challenge mode, and a map maker (please let me know of another FPS with a map maker, as I am not aware of it). This game has real replay value and is not limited to when the next sequel comes out and every online player upgrades. Another consideration is the fact that it has the old-school life meter, whereas in most modern shooters there is no such thing: one can be shot infinitely as long as he has enough time to heal. Admittedly, neither of these is very realistic but they seem to change the way the game is played and how difficult it is. I'm not saying the latter isn't difficult, but it is difficult in a different way. If I play Call of Duty on veteran difficulty, I find myself using  very limited guerrilla tactics, where I get off a couple shots, duck and heal, and repeat. This isn't very fun and can be frustrating. Completing missions on this difficulty is a task requiring mostly patience and luck, while playing TS2 on hard, which also requires patience, is fun and gives a sense of accomplishment. It is shooters like the Timesplitters series that challenge the notion that newer FPS games are an overall improvement over those of yesteryear.

Honorable Mentions:
Red Faction (PS2), Unreal Tournament (PS2), Nightfire (PS2)