• Tag Archives FPS
  • Deus Ex: M△NKIND DIVIDED & Mary Skelter: NIGHTMARES

    The sequel to Human Revolution, Mankind Divided got an extremely hostile reception upon its release. Mainly due to its monetization aspects and what at the time was considered an overly heavy-handed depiction of police vs. activists… neither of which appear to be particularly egregious in retrospect.

    Sure the existence of the Breach minigame and QR codes is immersion breaking, but it’s not like you have to play it or use them to progress. The in-game depiction of police in the face of a legitimate threat meanwhile is, if anything, too restrained when compared to the ongoing real-life police response to imagined threats. Greater issues than either of those are the general clunkiness of the character interactions/movement, and the incredibly annoying energy system. Everything needs energy and there’s apparently no way to recharge it (beyond the basic minimum ‘1-bar’ level) aside from limited consumable items.

    Unlike Dishonored 2, while you can use stealth to get past any obstacle here, you’re equally able to go in guns blazing and play it like a conventional cover-based FPS. That should be a good thing, but instead it ends up clashing a bit with the highly non-linear layout of the various maps; going from peaceful exploring to bullets flying everywhere causes enough whiplash to sort of force you into a stealth mindset in order to keep things consistent. It’s a weird combination and I didn’t end up getting very far before uninstalling out of disinterest.

    And now for something competently different:

    When I first saw Mary Skelter: Nightmares pop-up on GOG, for some reason I thought it was going to resemble the dungeon portions of Tokyo Xanadu. As it turns out, that was completely offbase. Instead it’s a dungeon-mapping game like Elminage & Labyrinth of Lost Souls with an FFT-like job/skill system and a few galge elements. There’s a lot going on here in terms of character/equipment customization, to the point that (at the start of Chapter 2) I’m really not sure learning the upgrade systems’ intricacies will be worth the effort… particularly since the character interactions are so frequently cringe-inducing.


  • Shadow Warrior 2 & The Bureau: XCOM Declassified

    While Shadow Warrior 2 may at first glance look like an FPS, in reality it’s an action RPG with quite a few character progression options. Unfortunately (and similar to Cosmic Star Heroine) it also has an overwhelmingly unconventional sense of humor made worse by some notably lackluster voice acting. The actual gameplay though is pretty good once you accept that you’re expected to get hit and take damage (there’s no dodge/block ability apart from a specific Katana move).

    The Bureau: XCOM Declassified on the other hand is a more conventional FPS, albeit a squad-based one with cover shooter gameplay similar to Mass Effect 2. Squad tactics are very important here if you’re playing on the higher difficulties; a style of play facilitated by a ‘bullet time’-like mechanic that lets you give orders in relative peace. There are some notable negatives however: Saving is restricted to checkpoint autosaves, the character interactions are pretty terrible, and the PhysX graphic options are broken by default (while they can be fixed easily enough, doing so results in extreme slowdown at certain points).