Dual-wield sniper rifles in Wolfenstein: The New Order

You assume the role of William B.J. Blazkowicz, whose favorite pastime is killing Nazis. The game opens in 1946 and initially feels routine, like a retread of Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Then a laboratory explosion puts a chunk of shrapnel in B.J.’s skull and the character spends the next fourteen years in a coma. When Nazis are ordered to shut the hospital down, B.J. wakes up just in time to slay the bastards. In this alternate timeline, the Nazis have won the war after dropping an atomic bomb on New York.

Severely culture-shocked, B.J. interrogates a Nazi commander with a chainsaw to find out where members of the underground resistance are imprisoned. Naturally, he breaks them out and finds himself battling the Nazi bastards all over the world… and the moon. Yes, that’s right. The friggin’ moon.

B.J. is a surprisingly sympathetic killing machine. His love interest—the woman who took care of him while he was in a coma all those years—is believably realized in both appearance and voice. Having recently played the less-than-stellar Rage, I’m surprised by how realistic these characters are rendered by the id Tech 5 engine. Take, for instance, the paraplegic Caroline Becker. When she and B.J. are reunited in 1960, they take turns listing their injuries and injustices in an attempt to one-up the other. The pissing contest is concluded with a hug, at which point Caroline warmly says, “Good to see you, William.”

Which isn’t to say the game is flawless. You’ve no doubt heard a lot of reports the game isn’t as linear as the demo which journalists first saw a year or two ago, but those reports are misleading. You’re constantly told what to do in great detail by another character (e.g., “B.J.! Get up to that ventilation shaft and try to ambush the bastards!” etc.). On top of that there’s almost always a little beacon pointing you to an easy-to-miss objective. I understand many gamers don’t have the patience for getting stuck, but the hand holding is a little strong.

As for the multiplayer? There isn’t any. Perhaps that’s just as well as I can’t say I had a whole lot of fun in DOOM 3’s multiplayer and what they tacked onto Rage wasn’t even worth the bandwidth. The developers focused on what really counts: a kick-ass game with very little fat.

What makes the game really special is the way it feels, something that doesn’t translate well to gameplay videos. You’ve gotta try it yourself to truly appreciate it.

You control your farts well: South Park: The Stick of Truth

A game of pure imagination is in full swing in the quiet little mountain town of South Park, Colorado. All the neighborhood boys are wearing the best costumes they could cobble together with household items. They’ve split into two warring factions: the drow elves and the humans, the latter of which is led by The Wizard King, Eric Cartman. It is the humans who initially recruit you, the new kid in town, to protect the titular Stick of Truth. “For whoever controls the stick, controls the universe.”

Back in the 90s, there were a few Beavis & Butt-Head games. The Sega Genesis version wasn’t bad, but when burping and farting are your primary attacks, the novelty wore off quick. I had concerns Stick of Truth would end up in the same category—once again, burps and farts are part of your arsenal. I’m not above toilet humor (to this day, Beavis & Butt-Head are still deeply ingrained in my heart), but few games can do it with charm.

South Park is nothing if not charming. Take, for example, Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo. He lives in the sewers. His wife is an angry alcoholic. One of his kids was born with a nut in his head. Yet Mr. Hankey simply has the right attitude about life, you know? I know a lot of people who are a lot less pleasant to be around than Mr. Hankey. You could say they’re bigger pieces of shit than an actual piece of shit. The pearl clutching critics of the 90s who accused South Park of being vapid simply weren’t paying attention.

Yeah, I just I wrote an entire paragraph about turds. That’s South Park, for ya: gross, but charming. Cartman is my generation’s Archie Bunker, the most politically incorrect, irredeemable idiot since Al Bundy. Meanwhile, The Simpsons have lost steam and Family Guy was never my cup of tea in the first place. Despite occasional misfires, South Park as a whole remains fresh, no doubt because the turn-around for each episode is so short they can be as topical as a weekly newscast.

The Stick of Truth isn’t topical, but neither was the movie, Bigger, Longer & Uncut. Considering how long it takes to produce large movies and video games, it’s understandable. Luckily, South Park remains funny without its trademark, hot-off-the-presses references. It may even be funnier than the movie, which I’ve seen numerous times. More to the point: if you like South Park, you’ll like the game.

Despite being in their mid-forties, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the co-creators of South Park, appear to be more in touch with their childhoods than most twenty year olds. Whereas so many describe the duo as “irreverent,” it’s obvious there’s a special place in their hearts for the days when kids could play outside for all hours of the day, making up the rules as they go along. It’s played for laughs, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t work.

As for authenticity, cutscenes are virtually indistinguishable from the show. The gameplay blends in seamlessly. We’ve come a long way since the 2000s, when the obligatory games that licensed the IP operated more or less independently of the showrunners. I can’t imagine a better case scenario for a South Park game. At a little longer than ten hours long, The Stick of Truth leaves me wanting more. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for many sequels.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go work on my sneaky squeeker.

My favorite games of 2013

Bioshock Infinite

The single-player experience of the year. The writing is superb, the characters are deeply written, and the ending is out of this world. Easily the best FPS since Portal 2.

Grand Theft Auto V (Consoles)

Like I’ve said before: I like GTA more than most people and this one did not disappoint.

Rise of the Triad

Duke Nukem Forever, take note: this is what you should have been. Rise of the Triad is a remarkably slick throwback to the heyday of PC shooters.

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon

You play a Micheal Beihn character in the future… as imagined with B-movie one-liners and gags. The game becomes a lot more precious when you realize Ubisoft took an uncharacteristic risk with one of their flagship franchises.

Animal Crossing: New Leaf (3DS)

An absolute delight no matter what age you are.

Diablo III (Console Edition)

The PC version of Diablo III made my list last year, but I had more fun with the console edition as it added the ability to couch-play with friends. Plus, there have been a handful of patches since it launched on PC so the game ranks a little higher this year. (It’s still not as good as Diablo 2.)

Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition

No, this version of the D&D classic doesn’t have a lot mods (yet), but it’s a nice throwback to the days PC gaming stood apart from the gaming experiences to be had elsewhere.

Sim City

I know, I know: fuck EA, right? I came late to the party so a lot of the launch bullshit was fixed. Plus, I didn’t have to spend $50 for a broken piece of junk (I picked it up at a discount). I was surprised by how much fun I had, at least until I reached the pathetic city size limit. I probably won’t play it again, as SC4 is still the better game, but I felt zero buyer’s remorse.

XCOM: Enemy Within

Honestly, I couldn’t tell you exactly what Enemy Within adds to Enemy Unknown (my memory is so bad, I keep getting the needlessly similar titles mixed up), but it was fun to play through it again.

Papers, Please

The minimal graphics and droning soundtrack may sound like detriments, but this is one unique indie game. Your morality plays a big part.

Civilization 5: Brave New World

Again, I couldn’t tell you everything this expansion adds to the base game, but hell, I’ve got a chance to put Civilization on my list so I’m going to take it.

Gone Home

When I was a kid, all I wanted was a game that let you do whatever you want in a big mansion with secrets (Maniac Mansion, I’m sure, was the inspiration for this dream). Gone Home does it in a down-to-earth way.

Shadowrun Returns

The linear gameplay and lack of freedom was disappointing, but it’s a great vibe. You will probably only like it if you’re a Shadowrun fan; I barely qualify as I don’t think cyberpunk needs fantasy mixed into it and I’ve never played the tabletop game.

Forza Motorsport 5 (Xbox One)

If you need a reason to get the Xbox One, this is it.

Peggle 2 (Xbox One)

I used to love puzzle games, but ever since the handheld market was flooded by them, I kind of lost interest. Peggle 2 changed that for me. It initially seems to be a game of luck until you start attempting the many challenges. The graphics, sound, and music are charming as hell.

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream: The Game (1996)

I miss The Sci-Fi Channel in the early nineties. It was weird and kooky, a far cry from the tamed content that occupies its programing today. The scrappy little station introduced me to Harlan Ellison when I was like ten or eleven years old. In those early days, Ellison had been hired as the channel’s version of Andy Rooney; his brief but audacious opinion pieces provided filler, often necessary as the oddball programming rarely conformed to 30-minute slots. The incredibly egotistical Ellison never had anything to say that wasn’t a hot take, and although he was often abrasively wrong, he was almost always right.

I actually remember the first time I saw a magazine advertisement for the video game adaptation of Ellison’s I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. I had a similar reaction when I first heard the term “cyberpunk:” I didn’t know what it was at the time, but I instantly knew that I liked it. I am now thirty years old and I Have No Mouth is still on my short list of favorite stories of all time. It’s very much required reading before playing the game (and, luckily, it’s not hard to find on the internet in its entirety).

Ellison himself voices AM, the supercomputer which ultimately exterminates humankind, saving only a handful of humans it immortalizes for the purpose of torturing forever. In one interview for the game, Ellison insists AM is not evil, but an amplification of human nature itself. After all, humans are AM’s creator. It was our own shortcomings and self-hatred that ultimately took root and spun out of control in its circuitry.

The game deviates from the source material with Ellison’s input. Ellison initially told the lead designer he wanted a game you cannot possibly win, a game that taught you “that if you cannot win the game, at least you can lose better.” The designer pushed back, tampering Ellison’s famous disdain for his fans. I have not seen any of the good endings, but how good can they be when, at the end of the day, the player-character still lives in a world in which a computer has, for all intents and purposes, made humans extinct?

It won’t be long until the player is confronted with a “motivator switch,” just to find its sinister purpose: the torturing of six caged animals. The player-character reacts appropriately with shock, but it’s something you must do in order to progress. It’s grim choices like these that makes the game as uncomfortable as it is fun (Ellison said he wanted a game that “taught ethics”). Like a lot of games of this type, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream requires some hit-and-miss puzzle-solving, but when you stumble onto a solution, you’ll often slap your forehead and say, “Of course!” It may seem silly removing the sheets from two bunks, but here’s a hint: they make a good rope.

The artwork and the music are fantastic. The voice work isn’t the best I’ve heard (Ellison really hams it up), but for some incredibly odd reason, it works.

Grant Theft Auto V

Michael and Trevor are running from a heist gone bad. The cops arrive as the men’s getaway vehicle, a helicopter, isn’t where it was supposed to be. Michael takes a bullet and Trevor escapes across a foggy snow bank. Nine years later, Michael and his family have entered the witness protection program, living it up in sunny Los Santos. Michael has everything a superficial Beverly Hills type could want, but he was much happier when he was pulling big scores. This is the first playable character.

The second playable character, Franklin, is a young street gangster who aspires to leave the hood. He doesn’t like the life he’s “supposed” to live, surrounded by low-level thugs who often brag about doing time for unambitious crimes. During an insurance scam, Franklin meets Michael. Michael sees himself in Franklin and Franklin sees someone who can elevate him to the big leagues. Thus is the beginning of a promising partnership in crime.

When Michael later catches his wife banging her tennis coach, he and Franklin hop into a pickup truck, drive to the man’s cliff-side house, and use a winch to pull one the support structures out from underneath it (just like Lethal Weapon 2). The problem is: tennis coaches don’t live in multi-million dollar houses in the hills. It turns out the house actually belongs to an associate of the Mexican cartel. Now Micheal and Franklin have no choice but to pay off debts by pulling off bigger and bigger heists.

You’ve seen Trevor, the third playable character, in the marketing materials. For several hours of gameplay, however, Trevor is absent. It’s a wise choice on Rockstar’s part. You keep hearing about him in the meantime, amping up the hype until he finally comes blasting into the story with all the kinetic energy of a wrecking ball. As he weasels his way back into Michael’s life, he brings with him the additional heat of The Lost motorcycle gang (remember them?) and the baggage of a meth operation.

The best crime stories work in layers (see: Layer Cake, a film which took the concept literally), folding in one incongruous situation after another. In their attempts to fix one situation, GTA V’s main characters often just create more situations. It’s a heavily layered plot involving methheads, street gangs, various levels of law enforcement, and a private military.

Gone is the feeling you have to do a ton of busywork in order to unlock all areas of the game. You still have to take jobs to advance, but very few feel like filler chores. With the addition of frequent checkpoints, you no longer feel the annoyance of having to start a mission over from the very start, which reduces the urge to rage-quit. Though the ragdoll physics have been downgraded and driving doesn’t feel as realistic, this is the best GTA game yet. All three characters are just as likable as the previous game’s Niko Bellic—and boy, did I really like Niko.

Like many, I was disappointed by Rockstar’s decision to release Grand Theft Auto V on consoles only. That means I’ll have to buy it again on PC if it comes out. And for those of us who played Sleeping Dogs on PC, GTA V is a minor step down in terms of graphics. Even so, I was impressed by the art direction. It’s not quite as pretty as Uncharted titles, but as it simultaneously streams data from your hard drive and the disc itself, you can rest assured that modern technical limits are being pushed. The draw distance is a notch above acceptable and long loading times are a virtually a thing of the past.

Easily the game of the year.

My Favorite PC games of 2012

The end of April is the perfect time to recap last year’s best PC games, right? Hey, I’m nothing if not excessively late.

FTL: Faster Than Light
This is my favorite game of the year. It’s a merciless roguelike that has you piloting your own ship, constantly pursued by an almost unbeatable enemy and susceptible to death at every turn. Oh, and the music kicks ass.

X-Com: Enemy Unknown
Quite possibly my second favorite game of the year. Multiplayer is missing something I can’t quite put my finger on. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s game-breakingly buggy, there are some odd glitches here and there. All that aside, this one definitely activated Obsession Mode.

Legend of Grimrock
Old school dungeon crawling fun. Probably in my top three.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
I love Counter-Strike, 1.6 as well as Source. CS:GO feels the way a modern version of Counter-Strike should feel and it gets better with every update.

Max Payne 3
As far as capturing the feel of an awesome crime movie, you literally can’t top Max Payne 3. It’s the closest we’ll get to Breaking Bad: The Video Game. Multiplayer is unreasonably fun, too, at least for a week or two.

Mark of the Ninja
Probably my favorite platformer since Super Meat Boy.

Diablo 3
No, it’s not nearly as good as Diablo 2, but launch-issues aside, it’s a must-have.

Hitman Absolution
It’s not nearly as good as Hitman: Blood Money, but it’s a hell of a lot slicker. Much better than I expected, but you should know I expected absolute disappointment.

Sleeping Dogs
This is one of the best looking games on PC right now. I didn’t enjoy it as much as Grand Theft Auto IV, but then again, I like GTA even more than most people (I’m a simple man).

Borderlands 2
I didn’t dig the original Borderlands nearly as much as this one. Looting is a lot more satisfying than it is in Diablo 3 and multiplayer is a blast.

Far Cry 3
This is the best open world game in ages. It’s absolutely beautiful, too. I can’t wait until I get to play as Michael Biehn in Far Cry: Blood Dragon.

Planetside 2
I love Halo for its massive landscapes and science fiction imagery. This captures the same feeling and it’s free.

The Wii U is P.U.

Throughout the day Sunday, I kept hearing reviews of the Wii U and decided to go on the hunt. Two hours and several stores later, I found one at a dark and eerily dead Sears. They informed me had I gotten there any earlier, I wouldn’t have gotten it. Apparently they screwed up an order and the shipment didn’t arrive until shortly before I got there. So, lucky me, I bought the deluxe model for $479 including tax.

What puzzled me was the lack of an Ethernet port. The exclusion was fine for Wii, as it wasn’t really geared for online games, but wasn’t the Wii U supposed to appeal more to “hardcore” gamers? If so, they’re already doing a bad job of it. I’ve got a router that’s literally two feet away from my TV—it’s a shame I simply can’t plug in. So far, most of my games only offer local multiplayer; the “online features” are social networking options that nobody will ever use.

My next complaint is about something that’s understandable in the modern age of gaming, but it still sucks: the day-one patch that takes an hour to download. If you bought one of these for your kids on Christmas, you probably won’t get to play it until noon. You don’t have to update if you only plan on playing disc games, but you do if you want to do literally anything else. On top of that, every game I’ve tried so far requires an individual update, which can take ten to thirty minutes a piece.

I’m also underwhelmed by the graphics. No, graphics aren’t everything, but I’m sick of people pretending graphics are nothing, too. This lower standard in graphical quality is to be expected from Nintendo, but I didn’t expect the graphics to be this bad. Hair looks PS2 era—sometimes worse—and when you play Assassin’s Creed 3, you’re going to be disappointed by the limited draw distances and the way shadows take on a distracting strobe effect. It’s hard to believe this is a next-gen system just by looking at it, though I expect the games will improve as developers get more experience with the system.

As usual, Nintendo shouldn’t be your first choice for FPS games and action titles. If that’s all you’re into, wait for Microsoft and Sony to release their next consoles (better yet: just beef up your home computer). But if you’re looking for something different, the Wii U might be for you. Although the system feels more like a toy than a gaming unit, it’s a fun throwback for those of us who grew up playing games with friends on the same TV.

The gamepad looks big, stupid, and uncomfortable, but the second you pick it up, you’ll wonder how they crammed so many electronics into such a lightweight device. It fits in your hands nicely and the touchscreen works like a charm, despite the lack of multi-touch controls. It’s just as cool and innovative as the Wiimote was in 2006. It’s especially surprising it didn’t make the package cost more than six hundred bucks.

Even so, I returned the system to Sears. I’ll buy it again in a few years, but right now, it isn’t worth the price for anyone but the most loyal of Nintendo fans. Even a few of them will have buyer’s remorse until the library is significantly bigger.

Smooth launch day for Black Ops 2

I thought I was done with Call of Duty. As launch day reviews came tumbling in this morning, I found myself excited about the newest installment. In particular, it was footage of the zombie mode additions that got my attention. So I purchased it and downloaded it while I was at work.

It’s good. It’s different. Everything I dislike about COD games has been addressed… well, almost everything. There are a few too many button prompts and quick-time events in the campaign, but there’s plenty of honest action, too. Amazingly enough, it runs better on my system on the day of launch than MW2 and 3 do after months of patches. I’ve yet to encounter any memorable bugs in the three hours I’ve played it. (Knock on wood, right?)

The sound is crisp, but Treyarch’s default mix sounds a little janky on my speakers; your mileage may vary so experiment with settings. Joining games has been a breeze and although I lagged a couple of times, it’s been pretty smooth for the most part. I like the customization. I like the futuristic weapons and tactical gear. Against all odds, I like Call of Duty again, if only briefly.

FTL is an instant classic in space sims (FTL review)

I’m not an early bird, but this morning I woke up as giddy as a kid on Christmas morning. I checked FTLgame.com to see if the game had gone on sale early—it had. Maybe it was a glitch, but the price tag was somehow only $9. I tipped them an extra dollar and received my Steam key within seconds. Two minutes later, the game finished downloading. And five minutes after that, I’d finished the tutorial.

So is FTL an easy game? The gameplay is as deep, but picking it up is a helluva lot easier than, say, Microsoft’s Freelancer. This is a game that would be perfect for mobile operating systems like Android and iOS. A comment made by one of the site admins suggests it will eventually make it there.

There are three crewmen available from the start. I name one after myself (he’ll be the captain, of course) and keep the randomly generated names for the other two souls onboard: Sem and Maria, who mostly stick to the engine room and the shield generator respectively. We set sail into the wide unknown, pushing the outer edge of the proverbial final frontier.

After a couple of dogfights, which couldn’t be avoided, a distress call is transmitted from a pirate ship wedged between a couple of space rocks. It’d be easy to blast the wounded ship to oblivion and collect whatever cargo survives, but I remember Captain Picard’s policy of keeping the peace and decide to help. Ironically, the trapped ship is destroyed during by attempt to save it. I shrug and make the jump to the next destination, knowing I did my best.

Soon there’s a decision to be made. While the rebel fleet is hot on my ship’s trail, we can travel through a hostile sector or try to make our way through a nebula, which will shut down certain portions of the system’s electronics. I decide to risk the nebula and, hopefully, avoid a number of space battles in the process.

Traveling through a nebula is eerie despite the simple graphics and cheerful chip tunes. The ship’s sensors shut down and suddenly we’re piloting blind. We encounter a few hostiles along the way, but most of the time we can use the nebula as cover and slip by… most of the time.

Crippled by the nebula, pirates rendezvous with and board my ship. Because the sensors are down, I have no idea what’s going on except for in the rooms that contain crew members. So, blindly, I open all the outer doors and try to flush the hijackers out. Did it work? I assume it did until the door to Maria’s shield room turns red: pirates are breaching it. I command her to escape into an adjacent room and open all the doors between the outside of the ship and the shield room. The hijackers run out of oxygen just in time. Another narrow escape—is there really any other kind?

Scrap is currency in FTL. The longer you survive, the more you earn. I avoid encounters, whenever possible, and help wounded enemies rather than capitalize on their misfortune. I don’t make much scrap as I could. I come across some good deals in the cosmos, but I can rarely afford to partake. Thus is the life of an honest ship captain.

Eventually we get a distress call from a planet on which an infectious disease is spreading. The government there can use our help, but it would be wise for us to keep moving. I send a party down to the planet, anyway. Seriously, though: WWCPD? (What would Captain Picard do?) We successfully help them stop the infection from spreading further, but one of my crew is showing symptoms of the illness himself. I’ll be damned if it isn’t my player character: Captain Grant.

Sem and Maria leave him behind and share piloting duties. Things go pretty smoothly despite my absence. Maria is later killed when asteroids rain down on the ship during an escort mission. Sem narrowly escapes, but helps a wounded ally to safety. For the first time the ship is wealthy in scrap. At the next stop, Sem hires two alien crewmen to take up his fallen comrades’ duties. All is well until they encounter a seriously overpowered rebel drone in the most hostile of environments. There’s no hope for Sem and his alien crewmen, but they put up a hell of a fight.

There are no saves to spam. No second chances. “Game Over” means your game is truly over. FTL is roguelike in that respect. I wish there was another mode in which there was some sort of end goal to obtain so that you could claim you had beaten it. As is, your only goal is to see how far you can get, how much you can explore. In the end, I’ve destroyed ten ships, collected more than four hundred units of scrap, and responded to forty-eight distress calls.

Nonetheless, FTL is one of the best games of the year. In fact, if you’re a fan of frequently returning to the freedom of creativity allowed in Freelancer, you’re likely to get a lot of mileage out of this one. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have another crew to doom.

Maniac Mansion Deluxe

Maniac Mansion was a game that fascinated me as a child. It seemed cool, but despite all its hamster-microwaving glory, there was a problem: controlling it on an NES controller was a pain in the ass. The game was obviously developed with a mouse in mind, but what good is that knowledge after you already rented the damn thing at the video store?

Fast forward more than twenty years later (yes, it really has been that long) and a German fan created a remake that works like a dream, even on 64-bit operating systems. There’s a fine line to walk when remaking a classic: do you update the graphics for a younger audience at the risk of alienating those old enough to have played the original? Or do you give in to nostalgia and release your game looking dated? Thankfully, the remaker opted for a combination of the two with exceptionally improved music.

As usual, I start the game forgetting the first person who enters the kitchen is going to get locked in the dungeon. That person, in my case, is Dave. So I’m roaming the house with the two chicks when I come across the talking tentacle. The tentacle doesn’t attack, it just stands there like an impassable slob. In order to progress, you have to give him food.

Obviously the Tentacle Chow should be the perfect food, but the tentacle complains that he’s still hungry after you feed him that. So then through a process of trial and error you’ve got to fetch the wax fruit from the room with the unfinished painting. Yes, tentacles think wax fruit is delicious. Then the lazy bastard still refuses to budge unless you get him something to drink. Pepsi? Nope. Soda makes him burp.

Like most adventure games of the era, it’s a maddening exercise in convoluted logic, but hey, even when you cheat it with a guide, it’s more fun than the newest Duke Nukem game.

2025 update: the originally posted link stopped working. The original game is officially available on Steam.