Filed under: Call of Duty
*projector slideshow clicks to life* welcome soldier to Call of Duty (2003). oh, i forgot something; ahem. welcome soldier, to Call of Duty® (2003).. y’ere we go.. it seems you’ve enlisted to read about this here game. i am Major Sergeant Yips. allow me to show you around.. before becoming the phenom it was in the early and mid 2010s, and eventually jumping shark with its 2012-2016* spout of futuristic entries, stands the original Call of Duty trilogy. three games long forgotten to time. kind of. compared to the deep fatigue that’s set in over the last few years, the first few games were once greenhorns themselves. simple military shooters spanning the course of the two world wars. showing you just exactly what it means to go above and beyond the ‘call of duty’. you could say they had an earthing quality. games like these used to be a dime-a-dozen. marking a rare moment in time where Call of Duty wasn’t the video game zeitgeist. a time where a new FPS game selling more than it was its own unit of measurement (i’m talking about Battlefield 6’s release statistics). when the genre was oversaturated, and everything was another Medal of Honor clone. i mean Medal of Honor.. Men of War.. Call of Duty. notice how they all say ‘of’? buuuut it wasn’t for a lack of creativity. it was just ‘the thing’. it was novel for the time. the elements that would go on to revolutionize the series would only go on to appear in later games. between Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Black ops 2. because of that the games have received a newfound interest over the years, with many curious to revisit its unassuming roots. considering.. *projector crackles* how many games are we on? as i write this it seems we’re on.. the seventh.. Black Ops entry and Modern Warfare entry (if you consider the reboot to count towards the total). it’s no secret that they’ve been in a downward spiral with each game considered worse than the last. in fact my interest has also reached ultra low levels.. i wouldn’t have even bothered playing and writing about this if it didn’t stand out as the only CoD release not a part of my PS3 library.. i own a physical copy for all of them except for this one and the Black Ops III port, but that doesn’t count. that was worse than a downgrade.. it was like a demake.. meaning this is technically a write-up on Call of Duty: Classic, a digital only port of the original game by Aspyr Media, Inc.
set in the penultimate moments of World War II you take reign of three minor soldiers encompassing the ‘Big Three’ allies of the war – Pvt. Martin of Baker company (the United States), Sergeant Evans (U.K.), and Cpl. Alexei Ivanovich Voronin (Soviet Russia) – in their attempts to liberate sporadic POI’s in Europe from German control. as part of the Operation Overlord campaign. going from one POV to the other before culminating in an epilogue seeing one final mission for each. as someone who is not a WWII buff, this small detail was enough to keep me vested, interested in seeing the tonal differences of each side. historical inaccuracies and westernization aside it still shows just how severe the war was. from the easy-going (gameplay), picturesque fields of the American sections – it comes off as your usual cliched action stunt war movie – to the bleak shattered Earth that’s depicted in the Soviet sector. they all have something different to provide that keeps it fresh. for example; the British campaign sees you rigging the Edersee Dam to explode before a high stakes car-chase to an airfield, where you defend yourself against German stukas. then quickly transitioning into a covert mission wherein you sabotage a German vessel a part of the Deutsche Marine. it can get repetitive (especially with the lack of enemy variety) and it shows its age. but you’ll always have an eyebrow arched in anticipation for what’s next. it’s clear why it shook the gaming sphere. not bad for a first entry.
now i’ve played a lot of CoD campaigns. and a looooot of CoD: WWII (2017). my first PS4 came as a part of the Limited Edition Call of Duty: WWII PlayStation 4 Bundle so it became soul-bound to my time with that console, and one that always seemed to be installed. many elite gaming sessions.. many grinds.. over the years i put a lot of hours into its multiplayer and even the campaign. in hindsight i realize that might be bad.. but also, i’ve started to notice that grinding out CoD campaigns in 1-2 late night sessions is not the way to go. especially with these two (Call of Duty 2 by extension). lemme explain.. *projector reel slide changes* these are the only entries to forego regenerative health. Call of Duty 1 & 2 being the only ones to expressly not use the mechanic as it wasn’t the norm at the time. WWII following suit and doing the same. instead you have to pick up health packs from around the map, or ones dropped by soldiers. a bunch of people like to complain about your health ‘magically restoring’ from out of nowhere, and praise older games for not being that unrealistic. this leads me to believe that these (very real) people have never played a game like this. or really any older FPS for that matter. okay it’s not really that bad, but it can make for some really irking moments.
none of which is more annoying than when the AI whips out its aimbot, predicting your every move. this isn’t the main issue since two can play at that game.. (the aim assist is quite generous) but it’s the fact you can’t counter it. no matter what you’ll do they will anticipate your move and land a few shots. they don’t have to land all of them for it to be a problem, because of that pesky health system. as the game progressed so did the firefights, throwing dozens of Germans at you at a time. slowly ticking away at your health with packs becoming few and far between. all of that is standard, business as usual. but things can change within a fifth of a second, like a rogue enemy gunning you down with an entire mag. surprise encounters or pseudo-QTE nulling all your progress. the lack of sprinting compounds with this sluggish, repetitive feeling. instead of a quick recovery, you have to play through the same 15 minutes again. i tried my damnedest at times with a sliver of health so low, i couldn’t even see it on the meter. to no avail.. even using the in-game lean mechanic to my advantage. oh yeah, did i forget to mention there’s leaning? pressing left and right on the d-pad freely toggles it. it’s nothing at all like Ghosts or even MW’s leaning. it’s a surprising inclusion for a game like this. but i think i know why they added it.
Call of Duty at its inception was first and foremost meant to place you in the shoes of what many consider to be mankind’s lowliest moments. a simulation of the grueling experiences, stripped of its machismo frills. your characters were faceless. nothing more than a pair of viewer model arms. they had names but they were seldom mentioned. they wanted you, the player, to be immersed. to be gung-ho. they wanted you to face-off against the Axis powers using similar tactics. to army crawl from cover to cover. scavenging weapons dropped by your fallen comrades. peaking over (leaning) behind cover and taking calculated potshots. one false move and you probably won’t make it to the end of the mission. your untimely death cutting the advances short. not quick enough? your teammates are dead.. and now you’re without help. no more cannon-fodder to aid you at your side. they may have spruced it up a little, i mean it’s still a video game. it wouldn’t be as much fun without some action packed set-pieces. even if it can get a little too chaotic for its own good. there are moments where you can hear your friendlies spamming hurt SFX since there’s either not enough cover, or too many enemies, etc. realistically the game is ride up an infeasible mountain of circumstances – you just have to reasonably detach yourself from a true one-to-one WWII experience.
what do you picture when i say the words ‘war-torn fields’, ‘ruined farmhouses’, or ‘M1 Garand’, ‘Carentan’, ‘fancy chateau’, and ‘Steve Blum’ (swear this guy voices a SARGE in every game). your first thoughts are probably most conducive to how this sector of the game looks. unassuming, run of the mill. these missions are bite-sized in scale, artificially lengthened by the lack of sprinting with the first mission technically being the tutorial. an in-game themed obstacles course. the second one is a quiet assault on the town of Sainte-Mère-Église, Normandy. as the overture glides to peak an all out firefight begins. a successful call for reinforcements sees paratroopers falling from the sky. games utilizing NPC on NPC warfare was a feature that used be fresh out the oven. not many games utilized this. and i’m not talking about something like companions. i mean full-fledged convoys at your side. think of The Silent Cartographer in Halo: CE. that moment where the drop-ships deploy you onto the Forerunner beachhead, and you’re surrounded by a bunch of marines. dropping silly quips just before you meet your first Covenant match-up. you’ll be too busy waging war to notice that your crew has been slowly dropping off. sporadically, i might mention. they might make it farther on other restarts depending on your ability to carry. on my play-throughs i was alone by the time i entered the Forerunner structure (you know that little room with the door that shuts just before you can enter it. with the golden Elite easter egg. where you can glitch through with a mongoose). a forlorn sense of sacrifice that weighs heavy on your thoughts.. “could i have done better?”, “would they have lasted?” as much as i like personifying glorified lines of code, voiced by David Cross (in Halo 2), they cease to exist as you continue on to the next mission. becoming nothing more than vague recollections as they’re replaced with dozens more soldiers. of course this extends to Call of Duty. but in a way these were the very ‘real’ experiences of very real people. men dying in the line of fire, in the hopes of countering Hitler’s plans for invasion. often dying in unassuming plots of land far from home. so seeing them rain down from above as their parachutes litter the ground around you. seeing them do the dirty work alongside you. on one hand it bolsters your confidence in battle. i found myself readjusting my posture, sitting straight up. reinvigorated by the power of camaraderie. but the other hand is nothing if not dejection. thinking about it, it’s kind of dirty to find myself proud of my participation. even if it’s Nazis that we’re killing.. the soldiers (which are named in these games, an amazing detail) rarely see through to the end. a feeling that continues to grow as the war-movie aesthetics of the American part of the campaign fade and the outcome ebbs between being bleak, and downright criminal. especially in the Soviet bit. “War is delightful to those who have not experienced it” – Erasmus.
the tail-end of the nine mission experience as Pvt. Martin sees you rescuing two British POW’s both locked in a Chateau in the Alps. a ‘Major Ingram’ and one ‘Captain Price’. but the pre-pre-reboot Price. the Price whom they later refreshed for the 2009 run of the Modern Warfare series. in his original incarnation he dons a beret while having a similar disposition, though noticibly more elder in tone. his face is definitely a sight for sore eyes as this is the part of the campaign where it began to drag. Price is stern, but allied in our cause. Major Ingram is nowhere to be found and as Price explains has been relocated to a different encampment. the final mission starts to pick up the pace again. you’re given 10 minutes to get in and get Ingram out. a tight race against the clock, where the games real difficulty sets in.
to be frank; i’m not a fan of the armament at your disposal in most parts of the campaign. the ones found here are those carried by the American and German forces. starting loadouts include the M1 Garand (of course), the Thompson, the Kar98k, and the Bren. i can admit that i wasn’t playing the game ‘correctly’, so to speak. you can’t exactly spray and pray with the Bren or the Garand. i skew in favor of SMGs. always have. but to my surprise, the most fun weapons class to use throughout had to be the snipers. the aim assist allows for instant lock-on.. and quickscoping ( う-´)▄︻デ══━一 it was consistent in taking out hordes of enemies in style. shots feel punchy. you can find scoped or iron-sight variants. and you can’t beat the sound of racking the gun. but a major issue i have with the game is the sheer abundance of German-made weapons, mainly that of the MP-40 and Kar98k. in times where you don’t have expendable allies to drop ammo refills you’re forced to pick up weapons dropped by the Nazis, as by the missions end you’ve killed hundreds making their drops the most common. they don’t even drop the good weapons like the STG. even the fun American weapons are hard to come by. think i found the FG42 twice and the Bar once, respectively. the game boils down into a repetitive formula of running out of ammo for the gun you like and scavenging dead bodies for a ammo or a new weapon but nine times out of ten it’ll be the MP-40 or a scoped/non-scoped sniper rifle.
not to double-down on being a Negative Nellie but i found the British campaign to be the most trying. being more tedious than challenging. i think older games used to excuse ramping up raw, still incubating mechanics as ‘being difficult’. having old-heads touting it as an experience only for elite gamers, when in reality it’s just busted. made to be impossibly more cheese.. sometimes they throw too many enemies at you and there’s not a lot you can do about it. other than take it. pivoting into high stakes infiltrations, the British side of things puts you under the wing of Captain Price. on paper it has the best missions. taking and defending ‘Pegasus Bridge’ in a days long battle against the Germans who come back at us harder than ever before nearly forcing us to retreat and reducing our numbers just to a handful of soldiers. fending off a horde of tanks with a flak gun. the next one sees you destroying the aforementioned dam. and the last is a covert infiltration onto the Tirpitz Battleship alongside Price. it has it all.. espionage.. sabotage.. dead of night.. silenced weapons.. though weirdly Price becomes another causality. his death came as a surprise to me as just a moment ago we were exfiltrating after rigging the place to explode, dying at some point during the escape from the armory while i was distracted by the shootout. but don’t worry! he re-appears in Call of Duty 2 (2005).. and like ~ 18 other games by my estimation. this certainly won’t be the last we see of him.
[queue this as you read] last up is the Soviet chain of events. this had to be my favorite part of the game. narratively we’re in the homestretch. swelling into some of the biggest battles yet (casualty-wise..) the depictions of pure disregard for the thrall reinforcements, made to do the bidding of the state is unparalleled throughout the rest of the game. due in part by its attempts of portraying the deciding moments of the war in the Battle of Stalingrad, and the raising of the flag over the Reichstag. it’s pure gruel.. grit.. the initial set-pieces err on the side of simple cities of rubble, less bombastic than the British chapter before it. still, it remained as the most action packed seeing intense battles between the Russians and the Germans with soldier drop-off unlike anything i described earlier. crossing the Volga River sees a lot of the Soviet Flotilla going down. aside from some armored boats a lot of the fleet is made up of these oddly vulnerable canopied riverboats. Soviet commissars bark orders at the militia advising them not to break rank. “There will be no mercy for defeatists, cowards or traitors! Anyone caught deserting his post will be shot! Remember great Comrade Stalin’s order – not one step backwards!” it’s beaten into your head by the end of the campaign.. not one step backwards. as boats fall in your peripheral. dozens of soldiers dying at a time. all for their leader. for the pride of their country. the boat’s annihilated just as it reaches the coast of Stalingrad, seeing Alexei (the player ‘protag’) be the only one to make onto the docks. it’s hard to even notice as through the shellshock, you can still hear the exact same orders being shouted by another commissar. the pressure.. the worried faces of other Soviet soldiers as we fight uphill.. it’s all so overwhelming, and if it weren’t for my PlayStation nosediving in frames.. this could’ve been the most remarkable moment of the game.. you’re without direct orders, as unlike earlier missions there is no squad commander. laissez faire as they say.. soldiers everywhere running between each other like headless chickens. you’ll eventually bump into one ‘Sergeant Borodin‘. the two of you strategize a plan to flank from cover to cover, distracting the machine gunners at the top of the hill and giving Sgt. Borodin a chance to take ’em out. a memorable moment to many. he quips; “Well, my friend, you are either very lucky, or you have a small head! We’ll be safer in that building down there! Don’t worry about that Commissar, I’ll take care of him!” as we reconvene with a Soviet radio operator, who groans in fear of literally being blown out of the water – with the Soviets facing severe loses. i’ll admit i saw this clip prematurely forever ago. Borodin berating the other soldier as he radios in reinforcements. the two of them speaking in this eyebrow-raising Russian/English accent. it’s a funny moment that’s accented by triumph as we continue on to take the Red Square.
German forces start ramping up in the final quarter of the game. tanks become more prominent and so do mounted MG gunners. i’m notoriously bad at snow maps because of just how well the soldiers camouflage into parts of the map. prepare for lots of deaths.. lots ‘n lots.. that is, if you’re trying to rush through it (like i did). this time slow and steady wins the race. cover is abundant and luckily our advances are through literal holes in the wall. making for an effective push. through the sewers of Stalingrad, and other factories. most notably is the nineteenth mission, ‘Pavlov’s House’. it be surprising to hear, but i’m not a WWII scholar (even if it was the only subject i cared to learn about in school xD). the story of Pavlov’s House is an interesting read. in game it’s a rather immense standoff against the Germans who have taken up residence in the house, an actual apartment complex, who we’re forced to evict. the Reds hold up in the house before waves upon waves of Germans storm the place. tanks and all. you’re forced to hold the spot for over 10 minutes, which doesn’t sound like a lot.. but boy was it tough hill to be dying on. set in the center of Stalingrad it’s already in a state of disrepair, being eyed by both sides of the war. gaping holes give the enemies an easy opening to take potshots at you. with the Soviets now in the same spot as the last inhabitants of the building. using the mounted LMGs and (what i’ve now learned are designated anti-tank rifles) PTRS-41s that were already installed before our arrival. the story of the real life counterpart is similar, though the push lasted for over 2 months! in that shit-hole? the house is named after the senior sergeant of the platoon that took over the house, Yakov Pavlov. though some of what i’ve read defers to Lieutenant Ivan Afanasyev as the one who truly held the spot. and to be fair, many readings purport that this story is mostly fiction. holding up Pavlov as a war-hero, as this slightly altered version of events was more conducive to the Soviet’s stubborn ferociousness. the fact that the building still stood even though it was regarded as a fortress of sorts, while the building directly adjacent to it – “Zabolotny’s House” – seems to have faltered to artillery is interesting to say the least. i can’t say for sure how it truly played out as this is just the tip of the iceberg, and a lack of historical documents makes it all the more difficult to follow. but from what i’ve read this isn’t a fiercely debated topic. Pavlov’s house did stand as an important footnote in the war. whether or not if either of these accounts are accurate, it was still a story of heroism. one perfect for a game like Call of Duty. interestingly enough the map would go on to silently be remade in Modern Warfare II (2022) and brought forward into the sequel, with the building now being a ‘dormitory’.
the Soviet missions, just like the American and British ones, also suffer from a deficiency of imperial firearms, forcing you to surrender your PPSh for an MP-40 once again. i would’ve been at my wits end if it weren’t for the PPSh’s generous drum mag. if you’re conscious enough of it, it can last until a point of reset (where the ammo replenishes at the start of a chapter). i mention this because the selection of Soviet guns far and away elicited the most joy. the PPSh, the Luger, and the Mosin-Nagant. but before long the usual doom and gloom of Mother Russia’s skybox almost seems to waver. like a cerulean tinge symbolic of our hopes steadying persistence was overlain. the layers opacity dialed to 15%. it was feint.. there’s a chance it might not even be true. i could’ve just been projecting my sense of satisfaction onto the skies.. technically the war is not over. we’re still deep into the homestretch. the final two missions see you taking on the Germans in tank-to-tank warfare giving you a break from the irksome rigamarole of spraying down mooks. a surprising alternative to the gunplay that i wouldn’t have expected this early in the franchises footnote, but still fits right at home. albeit difficult.
a quick prologue ties the three stories into a neat ribbon. giving the enemies one hell of a final fight (respectively) ‘Festung Recogne’ sees you accompanying another squadron of American soldiers during the Battle of the Bulge. face to face with the gang once again. Captain Foley, your commanding officer in the missions years before (voiced by Steve Blum) is still a part of your company. this time the assault is on German soil, as their forces have been severely weakened. a surprise sideline assault on bunkers tucked away deep into the forests of the small hamlet. these bunkers – or fortresses, where the ‘Festung’ comes from – are said to hold confidential documents pertaining to ‘V-2 Rockets’. a weapon of destruction helmed by Hitler himself. V-2’s were built to be in direct response to their faltering defensive efforts, as one final middle finger to the world (well.. the real final finger would’ve been when he.. y’know..) said to be strong, they weren’t accurate enough to be useful for their intended use. instead of fear they instilled an interest in the Allies to assume the rockets for themselves. reworking them, gutting them. seeing how they tick. short and sweet. the mission was also prescience to the end of the game. not much else to say. chaaaarge..! onto the next mission. the British side of things is a lot more interesting. fighting your way through an even thicker brush to the site of an alleged V-2 storing grounds. taking out a convoy of trucks in a tactical bombing before going on to rig the V-2’s in a not so tactical bombing. straight rushing the place and planting C4’s in a close quarters attack. i think rigging the bombs to explode subsequent to each other wasn’t so smart. in reality. but it made for a badass set-piece.
with the rockets taken care of the stage is set for the final mission. that’s right.. storming the Reichstag. away from the small hamlets of our last few skirmishes and straight into the heart of Germany. the makeshift brick alleyways constructed from airstrikes. some heavy flak and anti-artillery stations block our route in an encounter that was awkwardly difficult. MG gunners have a punish to every encroaching step, making it impossible get a shot on them without losing half a health bar yourself. the flak guns (which you could have sworn you destroyed all of..) sit scattered from one other forcing you to make for mad dashes in plain view across the war-zone. and a tank that you have to blow up (which by its stationary position i assumed was set dressing, or destroyed) instead you can just walk up to it and plant the C4 without it shooting at you. that’s neither here nor there. considering it’s the last and final mission, it would make sense for them to be so ‘amped’ in difficulty. who knows? doesn’t matter.. i just felt like ranting.. – with a way through cleared through for a brigade of Russian T-34-85’s, we are left with a straight shot to the building. seeing the tanks ease out outward from a bunch of clearings, closing in on the ‘bad guys’ like an on-rail ride wrought with fixed jumpscares. like a moment out of a war movie. oh wait.. backs up against the wall with nowhere left to go. visible chunks of the gebäude crumble right before your eyes (and killing you if you’re not careful enough!) chaos pooling into the courtyard and hellfire from every which way. ironically enough the political podium room was devoid of any serious damage. only some furniture and debris clog the way along certain entrances. instead it’s like a game of cat and mouse using the rows of pews to hole up in. one great big firefight before reaching the roof (victory declared in a new PB time) a squad of soldiers soon arrived, victory banner in tow. as i was soaking in the rays of total destruction this fella below came over to greet me. he seemed mighty proud of our work.
going back in time to see the belly of the beast was like seeing the birth of an entire generation. seeing the roots of something like this made it feel like i was a character in that one movie where they go back in time and change the course of history. i’m blanking on the name.. future.. going to the future.. something about the future.. it’s on the tip of my tongue.. oh! The Butterfly Effect. the ending of the game caps off on a sentimental letter written and spoken by Alexei Voronin (if you recall) to his mother about the final moments of the war. even though it felt like something credited to a Russian but was actually said by an American in some sort of self aggrandizing revisionism, it still had me weepy. at the end of the day we’re all brothers. this disgusting feat of brutish behavior doesn’t change that fact. it only makes it more bitter. you’re worse off ever had participating in the first place. its realistic display of this puts it leagues above the other WWII shooters i’ve played. and there’s an abundance of them. take my recent write-up of World War Zero. maybe it’s tacky to write about this game nowadays but just like the characters you embody, i’m hoping this write-up can serve as cannon fodder for my website. as well as a neat case study. with its own stories and tidbits of lore. it’s a mixture of both fun and irksome, the classic DNA makings of a CoD game. being the first in a franchise means it doesn’t reach the same levels of bombasticsm as subsequent releases. leaving behind a grounded, realistic, and somewhat forgotten legacy. but it’s carried by a deep fervor. and fun gunplay. thanks for reading. *film reel burning*.
Filed under: World War Zero: Iron Storm
this game doesn’t waste any time getting into the action. so, neither will i. World War Zero (née Iron Storm, – which despite their separate listings on Steam, are in fact the same game) is another take on what World War I could’ve looked like through an alternate timeline. this time it’s; “what if WWI hadn’t ended?” set an utterly ambiguous era of war against Russian Mongolians (+10 for sillies. second only to the Wasteland’s Chinese Remnants soldiers). actually, it is very in tune with Fallout 3’s, Operation Anchorage DLC (wherein they appear). it has the same type of energy. come to think about it.. it falls in line with a lotta different shooters. the fantasy to be thrust into war as it nears a penultimate fate.. a part of the frontlines tasked with making history.. a role of which would never be seized of its attribution.. is common for many. it also makes for great storytelling. once again giving you a frontline seating, this time to a whole different show. all the political turmoil, the beef between all the head-honchos and the countless factions working at their behest. that is today’s case. you’re a soldier planted in the midst of siege against Russo-Mongolians and their many different bases of operation. a tense arms race befalling many as corrupt political figureheads fight for control of a weapons market. by the time of the events in the game, weaponry had already been revolutionized. a night and day difference between WWI’s meek showing nearly 50 years earlier. the world is a clashing (endearing) array of steampunk weaponry against a backdrop of quaint villages, crumbling churches, and.. is that the Reichstag? with a giant Buddhist monk..?
i like when games keep the timeline ambiguous by way of differing themes. it becomes both familiar and entirely foreign. this lax flow of storytelling freedom gives the developers more room for creativity. so much more to play with. giving it a unique feeling. even though it’s just another World war.. again. all of the weapons are reminiscent to armaments from the time. but with a crappy, rusty slapped together look to them. but the locales are still stuck in the past. kitted out Russo-Mongolians in hi-tech gear seek refuge below a centuries old church. makeshift trenches that lead into underground fortresses. another thing keeping the games timeline ambiguous is the gameplay itself. you’re thrust straight into combat. there’s text scrolling above but the combination of garbled radio chatter and on-screen visual clutter makes it impossible to focus on. leading to a lot of missed transcripts. oh yeah, for some reason the subtitles are on the top of the screen. not on the bottom. i’m fairly certain we came to a consensus on this. subs must always go on the bottom.. sigh.. even in the main menu it’s hard to gauge your surroundings. the camera pans quickly through dim corridors as gunfire blares. even the sound indicator when scrolling mimics the sounds of an ongoing firefight. it’s a turbulent start. hellfire pours down as we (the one and only! the iconic..), James Anderson, start receiving comms ushering us to escape. my theory was that our character is awoken from a haze induced caused by a nearby explosion on their turf. be it temporary or not. men are dying all around us. the voice acted as an blaring in my mind to get the hell out of there.. push on! you cannot give up just yet!
it’s a lot like Killzones first mission. spawning straight into battle. into the bleak fields lined with barbed wire and wartorn trenches ripped straight from WWI’s late stages. and without a moment’s notice you’ll find yourself mowing down a near unending force of gas mask mooks. and just like Killzone, that’s the whooole loop. wham bam, thank you ma’am. i will say though, there was a fun variety of gadgets and novelties. a surprising variety actually. something i didn’t expect. here’s a quick example; during firefights enemy soldiers will sound an alarm, a fact true in most games. the alarm will trigger a turret, or two. only second to the final boss the turrets are a bitch to deal with and is a guaranteed death. “guaranteed” until you figure out you can turn the alarms back off deactivating them by pressing the same button as the soldiers. et voilà. now the turrets won’t bug you. it’s not much but first impressions tell you that it’s bottom of the barrell.. or at the very very least, really really old. but for its length (a meager 4-5 hours) it’s a fun excursion. that is if you don’t mind shooting enemies to a mind-numbing degree.. trust me this isn’t a slight. i guess i enjoy doing that, or i wouldn’t have this blog. yeehoo.. the games level design is built to be spacious enough to allow for backtracking. there are alternate routes (often hiding in plain view) that take you to spots you thought were impossible to reach. or make you go; “hrm.. i could swear i’ve been here before..” turning around to see that you were in fact here before. usually a cache of supplies is sat here waiting for you. a sub-mission, or even a new gun. sadly all these spare ventures are a waste of time. the loot, the weapons, even the sub-missions. you’re completely kitted out by the end of the first mission. you’d think you just stumbled into a homeless shelter with all the free handouts. it continues even into the late game. you’ll still find some new guns that make it worthwhile. and the sub-missions give you something new to juggle. but that’s all.. it’s made even worse by the fact all guns work basically the same out on the field.
i’ll forego the weapons ranking this time around. you’ll only be judging them on the basis of whatever has a faster TTK. because their stats don’t mean crap. in fact, your harder hitting guns i.e. shotguns, snipers, are outranked by anything full-auto. the smallest of sprays can wipe out a whole group of Russo-Mongolians nary a reload. while their small magazine of 4-5 shots per reload is not nearly worth racking between every shot. though the sniper can still be useful in long range engagements. similarly with explosives. which there are a lot of. aside from taking out tanks and choppers, they’re too sluggish to employ in most normal firefights. you’ll start feeling so guilty for not using them that you’ll cave in and use them in a panic. just to instantly regret it. this here is the problem. it’s not prudent to use anything that isn’t an AR or SMG. the real star of the show though, is the game’s LMG. the Vivda KSK heavy machine gun. soo, a HMG. it’s a lot like Vice City’s M60. one shot and a high res scope. it’s ultra satisfying to snipe enemies with. what’s not to love? that goes for all of the guns to be fair.. i’m being dramatic when i make them sound s0o0o0o0o0o0o awful. they were always fun to fidget with. i think the lack of recoil gave the game a Counter-Strike feeling. like pre-aiming corners ‘n stuff. it was a newfound novelty, and made it kind of challenging. thankfully my enemies were only a peg above ‘braindead’ mode. lastly; our loadout consists of different throwables. tacticals, grenades, you name it. it’s business as usual until you get to the hallucinogenic gas grenade. one of the two types of gas grenades, this one is unlike the standard model. instead of dispersing gas that slowly ticks away at your health, this one gives the player some.. adverse effects. inverting the camera controls and screwing with your FOV. ghastly voices fill the air around you. on some Amnesia: The Dark Descent crap.. after that initial wave of curiosity, to say it got on my nerves real quick would be an understatement. i never opted to use these. they gave you an endless supply. at best you’ll block your way forward. or at worst.. you walk into the gas, suffering its effects. the way it messes with your controls is so annoying. i could swear it bugged out a few times. lasting so much longer than it should’ve. silverlining is the AI never used it (or very rarely).
earlier we left off on our immediate assault against the Russo-Mongol’s growing empire. it’s a strict funnel through every last one of their frontlines. these are the last of their encampments before you near the Reichstag. their HQ. mostly unchanged from its real life counterpart. well except for the giant Buddha statue sat in the middle of the place. this is where the bad guys convene (as seen in the penultimate cutscene). in fact, that cutscene is the first time we see the place. same with the enemies. pretty much everything relevant to the story. unless one of my cutscenes just got up and walked away – granted they were easy to skip.. – i can’t really explain the pacing of the story. you take control as soon as they game starts so the voice in the intro gives you a rudimentary understanding of what’s going on. “final stand..”, “get outta there!”, “Mongolians..!”, “secret weapons market..”, etc. at one point you’re on a speeding bullet train towards a final base à la Killzone 2. or the other way around.. considering this game came first. hrm.. (crap.. i’ve been meaning to finish that write-up. sorry for the wait.. to all of my biggest fan(s).. err.. soon™) and before you know it you’ve arrived at the last level. all of my screenshots run in order. it probably took twice the length due to a lack of a sprint mechanic making backtracking more gruesome. the whole time the game will give you sub-missions. sometimes destroying a base, weapons cache, or taking out “mini-bosses”. soldiers with a unique name/backstory. one even had a villain monologue, in a cutscene! sadly none of them would amount to much. often dying before the objective alert finished scrolling across my screen. all except the last boss..
the final moments are chaos as everything comes to a head. on the roof of the Reichstag right after a duel between the head Baron of the Russo-Mongolians and that of a ‘new’ faction called the Consortium. one also clearly opposed to former. one of the two are able to escape just barely out of reach. replacing him is a giant mechanized boss. looking around its now obvious the roof will be our arena. finally.. i’ve been hankering for a real fight (◣_◢ ) 凸 *fast forward a few resets* i can confidently say this is the one and only encounter you can consider to be a bossfight. his hulking appearance isn’t just about looks. he’s quite the tank. the duel was tough but well earned. ending on an surge of adrenaline. just before a bittersweet ending wherein one of the antagonists (?) has escaped and the aforementioned weapons market’s been flooded by some new taboo weaponry. that boss was probably a showcase of the new armament and why it’s most likely not a good thing. those dual-wield LMGS are some serious melt-machines.
if you’re looking for a cheap thrills FPS unencumbered by a long interwoven story, this is your game. even if it’s way short there’s fun to be had in mowing down a buncha enemies. while flat, the guns are fun to play with. i was happy with the galley of firearms and found them to be serviceable. a rotation between different missions nulling their futility as the game progresses. some you can take an easy approach with. or some, the ‘go ham’ approach. guns ablazing. not unique by any means but it’s graphics, novelty, and charm is up to the eye of the beholder. so if ya like this sorta thing.. *wink* admittedly though it’s shortness may have been a major saving grace. there wasn’t time for it teeter on that ledge of being annoying (something you’ll rarely hear me say). games like these often have an extreme audacity about them. when you consider just how simple their loop is.. spray, pray, repeat. it’s like.. c’mon. you know you’re on borrowed time, right? this one kept it brief. and for that, it stays on my good side. seriously though it’s a fun game. the acclaim isn’t roaring from the hilltops but the adoration can be felt in every forum post. this is a game i’ll have a hankering to play again come next year. lax time that kills a couple of hours.
Filed under: Deus Ex: Human Revolution – The Missing Link
Deus Ex: Human Revolution – The Missing Link is the name of the sole DLC expansion for – you guessed it – Deus Ex: Human Revolution (2011). originally ‘detached’ from the main game it would later be snuggly merged into the base game as a seamless chapter. while i love Human Revolution, i’m far detached from my original more inane, fleeting thoughts. i’ve stomached a boatload of write-ups and video essays dissecting every flaw.. every utterance. pointing out just how crummy it is. but me? i still think it’s cool as hell (u。u)y-゜゜゜ and instead of regurgitating all my malformed thoughts about how contrived and forgetful the game is, i thought i’d cover a part that reminded untouched to me. that being The Missing Link (it’d also be a less daunting task cause for some reason i treat every write-up like it’s a novel when in reality they’re better off as bite-sized summations). it works better this way since the DLC strips us of everything at the start. ‘factory zero’. no weapons, no armor, no augmentations. it gives us a fresh slate. this might still be a hard sell. jumping into the game halfway. no elaborate dive into the franchise as a whole. the events up until now, or even who Adam Jensen is. if you bare it like a ‘demo’ write-up – like a free sample on a platter.. a small bite. something quick to sink your teeth into – then you might get a kick out of it. another neat sell ’bout The Missing Link is just how naturally Deus Ex it is. not Deus Ex: Human Revolution; but Deus Ex. i mean the original. ironically because it borrows everything from the original to the point where it’s more of a ‘faithful’ remake. this isn’t a surprise considering many of the devs were fans of the original. it’s tasteful and i’ve read they consider them ‘callbacks’. character parallels like Alex and Pritchard, Jock and Faridah, Maggie Chow and Zhao Yun Ru. our first and subsequent trips to East Asia. or even our pitstop to Paris. oh.. wait, no.. forgot it’s Montreal instead in DX:HR. whoops.. i mean, you ever notice how both JC and Adam wear sunglasses? and are both snarky and deadpan? they’re both augmented. i mean i can’t be the only one who’s noticed this, right? just me? huh.. The Missing Link takes these parallels a step further into the winks and nudges territory. just like the DLC i’ll make sure to leave everything about the game at large at the door, and to a minimum. you could skip this read up without ever knowing it existed. or.. you read it.. the choice is yours. *spoilers for the original Deus Ex and obviously the entirement of the DLC. click here to skip talk of the original..*
after the crapfest that was Hell’s Kitchen and LaGuardia Airport, neither JC or his brother Paul are in good standings with UNATCO and are considered defectors. Paul more-so than JC. his disillusionment with UNATCO is what pushes JC into the same tricky spot as his brother. taking on the T.A.H. (Tank-y As Hell) M.I.B. (Men In Black) soldiers while Paul sits idly in his apartment gave me an odd sort of chill. knowing that my choices are for naught. either leading to our imminent capture, or Paul’s death. the games switch-up part way through is what helped it feel so doom and gloom. this subversion kept me around, curious to see just how it’d play it out. suffice to say.. things ensue.. uhm.. like.. terrorism.. a-uh.. AI.. and so forth.. Area 51.. Invisible War.. *thinks for a second* oh, and uh Greasels.. anyway, back to LaGuardia Airport. no matter your route the game funnels you into a secret MJ12 base just below the UNATCO base, where JC’s detained. first time around i thought it was dependent on whether or not i lost to Navarre. i remember spending an upwards of any hour figuring out how to cheese her fight.. deep in the the bowels of New York’s subway system. well, turns out you never really had a choice. you’re swiftly taken prisoner. the room JC finds himself in is cramped. a mirror, a toilet, and a cot are all that meets the eye. at first glance it’s not much. until you see Agent Navarre walk into frame in the corridor just outside. either it’s a 2-way mirror (a facade, similar to the ceilings at the start of Invisible War) or simply the texture loading/de-loading mistakenly gave off the impression of a mirror. my money’s on the first one. things are pretty dire. JC’s augmented nature is his own pitfall. unfortunately by method of being programmed there are some things that are hardwired. the mere mention of a ‘killswitch’ has me sweating. just how much time is left? is there even a kill-switch, or is it a bluff? without much else to do we’re left to stew in these thoughts. until the lights go out.. and a strange voice is transmitted through our info-link. it’s garbled, and rushed. the info-link only gives us the name ‘Daedalus’. the door unlocks while the lights are blacked out. they explain that our chances at escape are slim – a razor-wire thin window of slim. made harder by just how entrenched we are. i’ll save the rest of the exposition for another time, to make a long story short; we’re deep below Liberty Island, below the UNATCO HQ wherein we familiarized ourselves with the game. many allied with UNATCO have already made their escape. while some shelter in place to the best of their abilities. tides turn as you fight UNATCO soldiers, even allying with an NSF captive (Miguel). people you considered peers suddenly transform into foes. with JC having to carefully navigate each tight corridor all-the-while still receiving cryptic comms from ‘Daedalus’. i was floored. having had played Human Revolution before the original (shameful, i know), a sudden rush of mirth took hold of me. to have it click that my favorite part was a ‘callback’ to the original – a game which is leagues ahead of the former, assuring me that i’d be in for one hell of a ride.. and a hell of a ride it was. though i recall this being a write-up on The Missing Link. now with the stage set, we can begin.. (i’d like to reiterate that this is from the lens of a stealthy “Foxiest of Hounds” play-through. while The Missing Link is more free flowing than the base game, stealth still feels most canonical to me. i won’t consider pacifism to the write-up since killing guards makes no difference from just K.O.ing them).
Adam Jensen, our augmented pro-tag finds himself ensnared. at the mercy of 2 new faces. we’re left to fill in the blanks as to what happened between now and the last we saw of him. after Jensen […] [REDACTED]. so how the hell did he end up augless, beaten within an inch of his life and bound to a chair? we come to find that we’re aboard a ship; the Hei Zhen Zhu (Chinese: 黑珍珠, meaning “Black Pearl”) [pasted from the Deus Ex Wiki] which is bound for a ‘Rifleman Bank Station’. a voice over the intercom relays progress as it bears towards its destination. our captors (as well as terrorizers) are the two commanding officers in charge of the vessel.
Netanya Keitner: Sex [Female], Age [Unknown], Origins [Israel], Occupation [Rifleman Bank Station Commander], Augmentations [Cybernetic Arm Prosthesis], Status [Alive].
Pieter Burke: Sex [Male], Age [Unknown], Origins [United States], Occupation [Belltower Operative], Augmentations [Retinal prosthesis, Advanced Dermal Plating, Cerebral implants], Status [Alive].
Netanya takes lead for the time being. with Burke falling back to the sidelines. that doesn’t mean we’re clear of him though. loud whispers among the ship’s crew paint him out to be one tough sonuvabitch. earning his infamous rigor from his time in the Marine Corps – he’s also head of the Rifleman Bank Station detention center. detention center? but we’re on a cargo ship.. Burke relishes in the abundance of power that he holds. with guards often warning others of remaining in line, lest they want to end up like the other “popsicle-sticks” in his detainment center. typically i’m wary of the overzealous hothead character but i find Burke to be an amazing exception to this rule. his demeanor is calm. sure he’s quick to anger, but it’s typically measured with a composed aptitude. his drawl is sharp, like a snake’s tongue. and his stare’s leering. he’s hot headed – but perfectly tame. everything about him oozes tyrannical foe. frankly i think his design is peak Human Revolution. a hell of a lot better than the base game’s bosses. as a matter of fact, this goes for every newcomer (and old) here. i like the contrast of most of the characters in this game. unfortunately his boss fight sucks just as much as the rest, but i’ll save that for later – back to Keitner. she’s the good cop to Burke’s ””bad”” cop (that is if you consider someone implicit in beating a man to such a gnarly degree to be ‘good cop’). her tune does change once you make your escape.
the electromagnetic chair Jensen’s bound to is deactivated moments after Keitner’s through with him. hrm.. “without much else to do we’re left to stew in these thoughts. until the lights go out..” this gives Jensen a chance to flee, but he’s nowhere near in the clear. the first hurdle is a tame maze of hallways. cargo zones and corridors. sticking to the shadows works the best. this way we can utilize the game’s over reliance of vents. the optimized guide for obtaining the pacifist, stealth, and factory zero (no augs, weapons, or items) achievements has some pretty neat strats in avoiding the guards. many-a times following them closely in-line with their walk cycles. pulling these tricks off can be extremely satisfying. though these are still low-stakes. everyone else is none-the-wiser. Jensen finds his old gear (items you had in the base game) and a hidden note meant for Jensen. just when an oddly familiar voice cuts in. due to poor reception it’s unintelligible – and most of it cuts out – though their motivations can’t be deciphered, it’s worrying that they know our exact whereabouts. no matter how sneaky we’ve been..
tucked away deep in the recesses of the cargo bay is a container housing a tattered stasis pod. this discovery also comes with an achievement, ‘Never Forget’. no.. it’s not a 9/11 reference. at least i don’t think so.. it’s awarded upon finding the pod. the description reads; “You revisited the site where Belltower discovered and captured you” (Belltower being the overarching private military corpo that propagated the main events of the base game). guess somehow Belltower got tipped off to Jensen’s presence in the cargo container. how he got in there? i’ve got no idea.. heh (´ ‿｀) just kidding, i have an idea.. from the looks of things they didn’t treat him all too kindly. there’s blood etched into the crate. it’s doors pried loose. he’s literally been ripped out.. seems he went out with a fight. technically it makes sense for Belltower to be wary of Jensen. he’s an intruder. though whether or not he intentionally meant to wind up here is up for debate. Jensen’s motives were entirely spurred on by Belltower, when they […] [REDACTED]. still can’t say.. continuing on.
the automated female voice alarming throughout the cargo port gives us an accurate timeline of events. we’re bound for the port any moment now. the best part about being held captive on a boat is that it’ll have to dock eventually, giving us a chance to slip out. emerging through hatch out onto the starboard side the game splashes us with a cold dose of reality. spotted in the close horizon is a lone station. Rifleman Bank Station. we’re shit outta luck. not a single other isle – or structure of any kind – in it’s periphery. smack dab in the middle of the South China sea. what? what’re we supposed to do? swim to shore? pssh.. yeah.. sure, real funny.. at least we’re out of that stuffy cargo bay.. a headcanon i believe in is that DX:HRTML looks better than the base game. the hazy incandescence cast by the rain and the ship’s masthead lights obscures the station in a really ominous way. it’s uninviting. precisely how the original Deus Ex felt. mixing it’s grit with the newfound cyber-topology the newer games are known for. the rain adding a slick gleam to everything whenever outside. it’s like driving on the freeway while it rains. when the lights refract – striking your pupils in blurring forms. Belltower guards post up waiting for the moment we dock. still unaware of Jensen’s escape.
*tssst*.. the soft hush of a cigarette being stubbed out, signaling the start of the guard’s walk cycle. i’m nearing the main central unit of the ship. where the walls are furnished in that maritime wallpaper. accented by freshly polished wood floor. my heart starts to pang in anticipation. hacking the doors key-code leaves me vulnerable. locking me into place during the hacking ‘mini-game’. with a camera overhead. keeping the guard alive just ups the ante. i’m in a race against the clock. luckily it’s level one. without upgrading my augments with praxis kits i wouldn’t be able to hack anything higher (an immersion hole that’s already been ran through). all of the DLC feels this way. making it all the more satisfying when i successfully make through undetected, and unscathed. these instances are once again core Deus Ex. you get to level the pros and cons. engaging with every obstacle leaves room for potential, or some consequence. you’ll be backtracking through a lot of the same rooms. do you maneuver ’round the guard? or take him out? leave his body out for the rest to find, or risk lugging him over behind cover? okay okay, that sounds like every game ever.
the ships CIC (Communications Center) is free from any surveillance. no cameras, sensors, or guards. and aside from the guards protecting the perimeter of the ship both Burke and Keitner are nowhere to be seen. even though they’d been interrogating Jensen just moments before. there’s no varying degree to them ‘hunting’ for us. it’s more-so Jensen stealthing his way through the facility Solid Snake style. it’s the simple rigama-“roll” of cover-to-cover, stealthing. it’s a lot more fun than going in guns-a-blasting. rebuilding your augment collection and deciding which is more pertinent to navigating the station. the way it’s integrated in to the Director’s Cut of the game is a humbling moment. akin to the woes of Icarus.. *yawn* before now we curated an insanely cheese set of augments. since the DLC juts out ~ 75% of the way in. cloaking paired with silent movement nulls most of the game. i could probably play a New Game+ while snoozing.. for the write-up i copped the standalone version of the DLC. in the Director’s Cut release of the game you get your gear back early into the mission, giving you more of a fighting chance (though it awkwardly has to account for you having less space in your inventory, providing you more loot at the tail-end of the DLC). you’re not given that grace in the standalone version. you start from the ground up, forcing you to be more methodical. think it’s cooler this way. all of that’s ironic considering it’s Deus Ex. though it would’ve been cool to hide from a roaming Burke, or Keitner. considering how we were mysteriously freed from lockup, i’d like to think this office isn’t typically this empty. some outside force is behind this..
the room’s gradient goes from a blue naval-like sensory and into a deep hellish red. a voice cuts through the centrifugal computer system. the same one that came through earlier. nearly identical to that of ‘Daedalus’, just unmistakably Russian this time around. even having the same fuzzy voice filter. this is the exact reason why it clicked to me so suddenly on my first playthrough of the original Deus Ex. the concept is so damn kino.. it was a great facade in the original to enlighten us on the corrupt web of goings-on. this time is the same. the voice on the screen doesn’t identify itself. just saying they’ve gone through a hell of an effort and getting us outta here. if played like a ghost, he’ll make a point to say that this won’t last long. eventually they’ll find out we’ve escaped. he is right though.. like i said earlier, there’s not a single other vantage point in sight. only the ship and the station. i escaped; now what? it’s heavily guarded with security checkpoints and personnel. getting out is secondary to to not getting caught. also, who the hell’s posted up all the way out here? already with keen info on us – and to know us enough to trust that we’d follow his breadcrumbs. forgive me for being weary, it’s just a lot to be so suddenly thrusted into. hrm.. whatever. he gives us directions to a contact located just beyond the ‘sally port’, the connector between the ship and the station. apparently there’s someone looking to speak with us. mkay.. i’m at the rendezvous point.. and all that’s here is an airshaft and.. *gasp* K-Keitner..?
if you’re at all confused, hopefully this is where things start to come together. in the write-up i mean. this is only the tip of the iceberg game-wise.. first of all; Keitner does not seem to be one-in-the-same with our Russian ‘bratán’ that we’ve been in communications with. she’s just another pawn, like Jensen. though she’s unaware of the voice comms we’ve been receiving. as it turns out Keitner is the lieutenant of the Belltower sector situated within Rifleman Bank Station. overseeing day-to-day operations and the more lax front-facing side of Belltowers exterior. while Burke retains utter control of the top-secret detention center.. much to Keitner’s frustration. the stormy skybox outside isn’t the only thing that’s brewing. the tension within the station can be felt in every breath. Burke’s hotheadedness and Keitner’s crummy attitude leaves everyone walking on eggshells. but it’s a relief to know that a part of her demeanor is just a front. she’s able to confide in Jensen what’s actually going on. a few months earlier, an agent with Interpol (ICPO-INTERPOL – the International Criminal Police Organization) came in contact with her about a black project going on within the station. on Burke’s side of affairs. as you’ll see in game, the detention center is filled with a bunch of civilians which seem to disappear just as quickly as they appear. often marked as M.I.A., or deceased. as you’ll soon see in-game, the detention center is simply a prison. a command watchtower sits in the middle with cells encasing the perimeter. prisoners (or ‘terrorists’, you can hear the guards argue back ) call out from behind tempered glass. desperate to escape. DX:HR has a tricky time in showing the severity that the world finds itself in. with it’s small and cramped hub world, and NPCs with the personalities of cardboard, there’s never any chaos to match the panic. it tries, but falls flat. Rifleman Bank Station is the games best showing at this. it’s clear that the people caged up aren’t really terrorists. Burke and his team are. dozens of them trapped against their own will. neither Keitner nor the greater public knows what they’re doing here.. or the whereabouts of past detainees. and even if they did escape, where would they go? compared to the stilted commotion back in Detroit, or Hengsha.. or Montréal, Jensen’s decisions lead to an actionable doom for the entire station. it’s the most dire of tightropes. one that only Jensen can walk. she pulls out a.. bioscan.. telemetric-doodad.. thingamajig.. changing our biometrics to that of a ‘Corporal Alan Tyler’ (which is like the funniest thing in the whole game) so we can bypass security checkpoints. aaand that’s that. before leaving she gives us the option to visit a minor contractor below the loading bay sector, to fulfill our ‘procurement’ needs. a contact of a contact.. his name’s Quinn.
Garvin Quinn is the stations engineer, and makeshift quartermaster. an Irishman, he’s got a quick tongue. even now as inch deeper into unknown territory, he has an ability to ease the tension in the room. just a bit. he’s on the same odd end of the stick that Jensen is (not a euphemism). his duties require him to be upstanding, but with an underground dealings in weaponry, he puts himself in a risky spot. it seems his connection with Keitner was established after his secondary market had been found out. bribing her with ‘info’ and allying. his corridor acts like the games safe zone. but it’s silent about it. there’s two ways in and out, both free of surveillance. it’s like hiding beneath the floorboards. enemies encroaching above.. through an airshaft ventilation, or an elevator. both being a bleak affair. going down gives you time to breathe.. to think on the events that’d transpired. but the ride up is the same dooming feeling you get before leaving home for class on a caliginous first day. staring out at the sea’s vanishing point. all muddled.. gray.. it’s a neat atmosphere to double-wield. feeling safe but also uneasy. Quinn keeps to himself, never really dishing too much about Rifleman Bank Station but giving just to enough to know he’s keen on the goings-on. he too is augmented. a cylindrical cutout encases the front of his face, kinda looking like a top down view of a PS1. nuts ‘n bolts complimenting his widow’s peak. he’s slick. i know sometimes they bear a character’s likeness on outside sources (or ever so rarely their VA), and even though it’s kinda true here, he contrasts nicely with all of the other augs. they’re like snowflakes. no two are alike. that is, unless you’re a nameless NPC and your model’s copy pasted all throughout the hub world.. ultimately his use boils down to being a merchant. a spot where you can resupply on goods. he’a handy, good with gear, and someone Jensen can almost find himself confiding in. on a weird side-note; Quinn gives you a side-quest looking for spare parts to build a grenade launcher. the 329-Series MPRS to be exact. the same rocket launcher you can find everywhere else.. in the.. game. it’s a really redundant quest that you promptly forget about upon leaving his shop. until you find the scope (the most accessible of the three parts) and promptly forget about it again. nothing ever comes of it, which’s kind of a let down. you don’t see much of Quinn at all after the initial meet and greet. guess he works in the shadows.
the detention center and interrogation room by extension are dreary affairs. not a single vantage point facing outwards into the abyss we call an ocean. it’s probably for the best though. maybe it’d give everyone motion sickness. a mess of air ducts, shafts, and crawl spaces intertwine this sector of the station. yes the game has an over reliance on vents. that we can agree on. since DX:HRTML is one environment, it gave focus to fleshing it out. giving it maneuverability. it’s especially noticeable when you zoom out, taking in it’s smaller square footage. there’s a lot of secret passageways. the skeletons of former work crews in the form of abandoned gear. emergency ladders and an elevator shaft built with the circumference of real people. rather than a cramped hub world only fit for an inhumanly svelte Jensen. it’s excessive use is justified here.. somewhat. some routes are still hella cheese though. a lot of it is hiding in plain sight. most of the game wouldn’t have gone so smoothly if the guards were just slightly less daft and actually spotted Jensen.. y’know.. doing their job.. the detention wing is made up of seemingly tens of dozens of tiers. though we’re only able to access the up to the 3rd most floor. it’s made up of restless detainees. crying for rescue. exclaiming that they aren’t terrorists. their wishes answered somewhat indirectly. on polar ends of the room are entrances in and out, with a security checkpoint built-in. beyond the furthermost checkpoint is the fabled interrogation wing. a sector i wasn’t prepared for.
it’s a corridor straight outta a horror game. i almost expected a boss chase.. or insane war to be wagered. it feels like we’ve been transported straight into the Death Star. the floor glows a searing red hue and nearly all overhead lights are cast the same. just much more dimly.. rooms sect parallel down the hall. those tell-all two-way mirrors house space for the interrogators and interrogated. the space’s null and void. luckily no interrogations are being conducted at the time of our arrival. the glass arrays on the floor (where the red glow’s coming from) houses more rooms. these ones more grim than the observation rooms. a body can be found slumped over in a chair. actually, all the rooms below have the same chairs. these cells are more worse off than the ones we saw in the detention room. just a chair.. least the other ones had a toilet.. and toiletries. that floor’s actually accessible. the corridor we’re in leads down into that level. the locale directory lists that level as housing; the Archives ⬇, Storage rooms ⬇, Examination Rooms ⬇, and.. Morgue ⬇ o ~0; should be mentioned; a new vessel of storytelling only found within the DLC (to my knowledge) are these audio log devices. basically pocket secretaries, just audible. though i’ll be honest i didn’t listen to them until it was necessary for this write-up.. whoop.. a recording can be heard between a “Gary” and a “Tiffany”, regarding those detained and their relation to a ‘Hydra Project’. she’s clearly distressed, and even namedrops Burke. saying they should have steered clear of him. “those poor women”. it’s enough to give us a clear image of Burke’s villainy. pocket secretaries, guards, and audio logs all elude to what he’s doing here. illegally detaining (yeesh, i’ve said this word like.. a hundred times) people all over the world for some.. purpose. in fact, we don’t even need pocket secretaries, guards, and audio logs to glean information from u_u on the first cell to the left is a living participant, a ‘Nina Sullivan’.
we’re pulled into conversation with her. Nina’s a college student from Canada who was kidnapped whilst on a trip to Cape Town, South Africa. which i guess is a real place. i hadn’t heard of it before now. scary.. erh-.. her situation, not the place. bet it’s beautiful 𖦹 .𖦹 she mistakes Jensen for a guard. exclaiming she just wants this to end. she’s been specifically picked for further examination, eluding to being a good candidate. a perfect match for whatever the hell Burke and his crew of scientists are working on. poked.. and prodded.. her genes tested on, unwillingly. she makes mention of the “participants” who never come back. afraid they’ve been transported somewhere else. or worse. Nina’s an odd fragment of the game. Jensen at the end of the conversation warns her that he can’t save her just yet. and i mean he’s right, for her sake. if she just waltzed right out there.. i’m sure you get the picture. but we don’t ever find closure with her plot-point. which is weird considering how she takes precedence of this rattling sector. she simply disappears on our return trip. no explanation. it’s actually haunting thinking that maybe they took her elsewhere in between the time since we last saw her. but that’s it. it’s hard to explain why i feel this way without getting ahead of myself. cause of choices we make later in the ending, altering the course of the timeline, she can be saved (?) but that decision – and by extension, the spot she’s been relocated to – are really out of the way. especially in respect to the first play-through. the play-through i consider to be the most canonical, yano. places you’re not privy to until you’re given a second go at them. it’s not a complaint since it shows the true doom that the prisoners are in. when Jensen leaves her, warning her to stay put, she lashes out in desperation. threatening to tell Burke and the guard if he doesn’t free her. juxtaposed to the tentative back and forth we’d had just seconds ago. and on our return trip back – she’s gone. it sends sharp chills down your spine. making ya think.. what could’ve been.. maybe we should’ve let her free when he had the chance. but we don’t have the chance to (only indirectly.. like i mentioned before). ultimately left to dwell in the pyrrhic victory. it’s slightly in contrast to Deus Ex’s maxim of ‘freedom of any possible solutions’, or whatever.. she just goes the way of the wind. sigh.. shit hits the fan real quick though leaving you with marks of sudden whiplash; Burke’s in the next room over. the Morgue.
Jensen lurks in the shadows. unclear if Burke’s already been here, or if he just arrived. with us trolling just a few steps behind. the lights are still low.. the amazing bloomy hue compliments this bit of the game sosososo well.. there’s a heated tone. Burke and two scientists, who we’d come to find are the same from audio log; Tiffany Kavanaugh and Gary Savage. hm.. hang on.. i’ve heard that name before. ‘Savage’..? *pulls out the great big Deus Ex Strategy eGuide book, blowing off the dust coating the topmost layer* let’s see here.. *licks thumb and flips through the pages* Gary.. Gary Savage.. Gary.. section.. ‘D’.. Dramatis Personae.. a-aha..! here we are. *enhances image* Gary Savage, Conscious-Stricken Genius;
–
“Gary Savage is the J. Robert Oppenheimer of the nanotechnology revolution. He was instrumental in creating a technology capable of destroying the world, and he (perhaps belatedly) came to realize that such an act carries with it a certain moral imperative. While the basic theory behind nano-tech predates him by decades, it’s pretty safe to say that Gary Savage is the man responsible for making large-scale, practical nano-engineering a reality. He’s the one who took all the pieces and put them together. His ultimate achievement is the first fully operational Universal Constructor, a machine with the potential to create pretty much anything. As he became more aware of the potential of his creations, he also became more aware of the agenda of the organization that sponsored them, Majestic 12. Together with his co-workers and his idealistic daughter, Tiffany, he conceived an audacious plan to break his second UC free of MJ-12 control, and thereby create a sort of balance of power. As might be expected, such a move would inevitably draw reprisals.”
– Bell, J. G. (2000). Dramatis Personae. In Deus Ex: Prima’s Official Strategy Guide (page 23-25). published by Prima Games.
he’s from the first Deus Ex game.. just an awfully lot younger this time ’round. checks out since the events of DX:HR take place before those of the first, and subsequent games. making it a prequel. a detail that’s sorta irked me for awhile. i’ve got this immersion issue when it comes to media depicting the future or past when it’s clearly not, production wise. take Breaking Bad (something currently pertinent to my frontal lobe..) i’m nearing the end of Better Call Saul.. and like.. it’s clear the actors are 10-15 years older. as well as the world around them. the production quality, and filming techniques have aged alongside it. utterly changing in tone. i personally think a lot of the soul’s been ripped out. and we’re left with this modern day version of the franchise, akin to shows that took too long to end. ultimately jumping the shark (it’s not a bad show by any means), but this doesn’t to feel like the bleak precursor to Breaking Bad that it’s meant to be. i’d say the same here with Deus Ex. the games are entirely different, and each a byproduct of their times. the original Deus Ex is nutty, but DX:HR ups the ante. in regards to the geometric artstyle, and depth of technology.. IMO. it’s not befitting to the original. a lot of Human Revolutions critiques would almost be nulled if it wasn’t a Deus Ex game. having played both it’s clear that it tried replicating the first, making the gunplay (the first games weaker skillset) just as much of an awkward jankfest. just cause it needs to be Deus Ex. similarly with the rest of it’s awkward stumbles. ones that were charming in the first game. hope this makes sense.. eh- anyways.. so yeah.. he’s an OG, putting it lightly. the quote above may read like a garbled mess and it’s honestly not important to this write-up as i’ve still yet to dissect that game completely.. but he’s quite the left-field pull. interestingly enough his lab assistant Tiffany Kavanaugh shares the same forename as his daughter, Tiffany Savage. the dots become even stronger considering this line from Burke; “i turned a little blind eye to your office romance, Savage..” eluding that they’re in some sort of relationship. one that puts the two at a crossroads. circling back around to Jensen and the discussion had inside the morgue.
Burke’s questioning the two doctors in regards to the increasing die-off of the detainees. those being used a for a project they often refer to as the “OCM”.. both Savage and Kavanaugh are flustered about different aspects. Savage, of the failure of the participants. and Kavanaugh, of the moral implications of what they’re doing. their willingness, or lack thereof, is now abundantly clear. and on this point Burke hits her with; “and are you volunteering yourself, Doctor?” to both their chagrins. which is also where the mention of their office romance comes from. he’s willing to break any moral code in pursuit of results. favorable.. results. even sinking low enough to use one of the head researchers of the project. the two step into an elevator into the unknown, which seems to be controlled by Burke’s retinal prosthesis augment. lastly; there’s mention of [Megan] Reed. for the purposes of this write-up, she’s not important. but she is to the game at large. she’s Jensen’s lost.. love.. woman.. lady.. you get the picture. what ensues is his efforts in tracking her down and rescuing her. which is what led him here.. oh, whoops.. i said that was [REDACTED], didn’t i..? crap. whatever. the mere mention of her gives Jensen enough warewithal to finish what he started. if only he could chat with Kavanaugh.. but we can’t access the elevator without Burke.. the guy we’re hiding from. deu(x) crap. Keitner comes in through comms. turns out there’s a convenient backup eye in Burke’s office. well, neat. that’s convenient. did i already say it’s convenient?
i read that some considered unfavorably. that it’s too fetch quest-y. too linear for a Deus Ex game. i think the open sandbox that is Rifleman Bank Station is fun. it’s not tedious enough to gain the title of ‘fetch quest’. rerouting back through the station is more difficult than the first time around. more guards to face and encounters that are way too close for comfort. i do think the fact Burke’s just got a retinal prosthesis sitting on his desk is a bit.. nyeah.. his personal quarters are a bit of a mess. concept art shows it was intended to be this way. rather.. avant-garde.. it’s clearly meant to reflect a state of mind. things aren’t stacking up in his favor and Jensen washing up is just the cherry on top. retrieving the prosthesis (after accessing Burke’s secret stash, of course) and returning back to the morgue sector, we can dupe his retinal recognition measure, initiating the elevator. it’s trajectory.. below. if my calculations are correct, this would take us deep underwater.. the station’s sprawling. especially when considering the seemingly multi-story length tiers of the detention bay. but like a nitwit i hadn’t even considered the amity of the ocean. i’m really into cataloguing elevators in video games (an end year write-up you can jot down in your calendars) and Deus Ex may have some of my favorites. *link spoiler warning-ish* the stations underwater labs slowly form into view through the dense and murky waters. little clawed submarine forklift hybrids float on by. seemingly unaware of our impending arrival. though, since we’re still disguised as ‘Corporal Alan Tyler’ it checks out. aside from awe, the idea of further eluding Burke is nerve-racking. we’re still on his turf. his domain.. his rules.. (҂⌣̀⌣́)
on one hand it’s relieving to learn that the labs are limited to just one room. and Burke’s nowhere in sight. but on the other; there was less to explore than i thought. it seemed sprawling from within the elevator. the foreground phasing away, out of view. i mean it’s probably still extensive. but it’s relegated to a singular spot. it’s not even a hindrance considering how the game swells in in the ‘autotelic’ (i just learned this word..) aesthetics that insanely resonated with me. it’s this sort of climaxing moodiness that Deus Ex games are only capable of pinning down. i rather like it.. it also comes with increased stakes. as soon as you descend into the Mariana Trench level laboratory (la-bore-a-toooor-e), you’ll be forced to try and compartmentalize your emotions. there are those women.. erh, ‘test subjects’ i mean.. pinned to examination tables. they don these Deus Ex-ian outfits, begging Jensen just to put them out of their misery. the music swelters.. their cryptic calls for help. you can’t help but feel crummy for their predicament. Dr. Kavanaugh’s unaware of your arrival as she facilitates more experimentations at the behest of Burke and Savage. luckily both are nowhere to be found. in confronting her.. you kind of thrust her into a weird spot. where she has to explain both sides to just what she’s doing. despite her refusal, she still partakes in the understanding and research aspect of whatever sick.. twisted.. crap is going on here (see below image). but; she’s willing to turn whistleblower. providing evidence to Interpol, exposing Burke’s participation. rather useful considering there’s an Interpol agent out and about here.. just wonder who.. (o`_’o) doesn’t mean we’re home free, though. Burke’s got the submersibles on lockdown, and seeing how we’re in the middle of FREAKIN’ NOWHERE; she can’t just leave. she’s expendable enough for Burke to see her contract as nulled. religating her to whatever fate houses the women on these tables.. we’ve got to enact a way for her to escape. preferably unscathed.
a wise man once merged man with machine. together, for the betterment of mankind. this man was JC Denton. why do i bring this up? not too dissimilar to this event is the OCM (Organic Computational Matrix) project. just much more.. grim. i’ll skip the spiel about p-dot clusters and mutagenic-gene-whatchamacallits.. and all that science.. crap. as it’s not pertinent. we already know about the guise cast by Burke and his team, regarding the “”detainees”” and how they’re experimented on involuntarily. treated like expendable lab-rats. results are showing a less-than negligible markup with many subjects being outright terminated. basically; they’re tryna build a supercomputer out of humans. females, to be exact.. darn these bastards to hell.. Kavanaugh’s research shows they all-too-frequently ‘fry’, burning up inside. causing catastrophic systems-wide failure. and being useless to their endeavors, Burke leaves them to writhe in pain. haphazardly cross-wired between themselves and an array of computers. still conscious privy to the pain.. i hear some of you think; “now that’s unethical..” true.. which is why Burke chooses to enact a ‘code red’. alarms start blaring as the elevator we had just rode comes to a screeching halt. our comms with Keitner become garbled. and they begin to cut in and out.. but in the mesh of words, it’s obvious it’s not Keitner on the other end. or our comms have been intercepted. a voice completely foreign to hers can be heard cutting through, accenting her desperate plea for Jensen to escape. luckily the elevator shaft came prepped with emergency exits. a vent leads up into a crawlspace just above the morgue, allowing us to re-enter and narrowly avoid the soldiers stationed to ambush us. is.. liek.. role reversal.. we so stealth.. it’s funny, i learned through the speedrun route that you can actually be as loud as you’d like without the guards spotting you. i find scripted moments like these to be neat. the fears they forcefully inject into you by way of “alert! alert!” blaring. you wouldn’t dare run, risking alerting the guards. so you play it slow, on the edge of your seat. neat.. duno. our path back to the detention center marks the last time we trek through the searing red hue of the interrogation wing.. aaand another scan..
when, *wham* straight into a cutscene with Jensen juxtaposed to a dying Keitner. unexpected and out of nowhere, the last we saw of her.. she’d been laying low. her random appearance this deep within Burke’s sector, paired with the strange voice that had emanated through her side of communications.. something feels off. there’s something sporadic, and inconsistent about her. she feels.. like a pawn. which is basically confirmed, only indirectly. she’s the one who clues us in to Burke’s “code red”. scorched Earth.. clearing house. even someone like Keitner – with administrator privileges who ranks highly – is on his list. he’s literally clearin’ the place out.. our problems only get worse when it turns out he also enabled a controlled gas meant to take out the last of the stragglers. Keitner lets out a final “mh.. hngh-.. duh!” giving us a classic Deus Ex ultimatum just before keeling over. you’re given 3 options;
through the control center you can redistribute the gas to the detainees, saving Kavanaugh. “her going whistleblower would be good for exposing Burke to Interpol.. though it throws an enormous morality wrench into everything. the detainees never asked for this. and despite Kavanaugh’s disdain for Burke’s methods of research, she’s still partaking in it. sullying her good graces.” or you could redistribute into the deep-sea labs below, killing Kavanaugh. and our chances at exposing Burke. she was our golden ticket.. – or – you could search (not very far at all) and find the super secret third option.. the centrifugal gas canister housed within the walls of detainment center. utterly detached from the main control center. destroying the canister (which is tough to do on factory zero) stops all gas flow. saving.. well, everyone! w00t w00t. doing so gets you a gleeful ovation from the l33t Russian h4x0r, who’s been listening the whole time. the choices are fair, but anyone with even half a cerebral cortex could’ve found the route to rescue everyone. i mean, i did.. on my first playthrough. out of sheer will for scav-ing every corner.. uh, anyway – you’ll receive comms from the Russian hacker ushering Jensen back to the loading bay to face-off against Burke. it’s time to talk.. about.. *looks at notes* aha.. a Human Revolution boss fight.. my favorite!
Burke’s monologues stand as its sole authentic, boss-like attribute. the only thing in stopping us from [REDACTED], is Burke. and the only thing keeping us from Burke, is another security sally port. but in a quick blindside we’re denied access. Burke chimes in letting us know the ‘Corporal Alan Tyler’ jig is up and he won’t be letting us slip through his fingers, (once again). Keitner’s dead. Kavanaugh too (in high likelihood) and Quinn – our only other in – falls through. he calls us just to say “thanks for everything” and that he’s flying the coop. abandoning ship. depending on how you go about dealing with the internees, Kavanaugh, and an early QTE event, he’ll leave you with a parting gift. and free reign of his shop. tucked (not so secretly) away, beneath crates of explosives and tech doodads is a button unlocking an actual hidden compartment. it feels kind of stupid. with the button being so big and easy to find. it nulls the secrecy of the facade. plus, Quinn’s already an outlier whose every action is met with scrutiny. one wrong move.. in the beasts own personal lair, and wham! all his efforts.. all his planning.. gone. his fugacious stint to turned to a life-sentence. i duno.. just a thought. oh-..? his plans? did i say plans? i-i mean.. i.. eh-.. u-uh.. ho-.. O__O;;;;; welp.. i guess the cat’s out of the bag.. seems i’ll have to explain myself.. the computer sitting on the desk just in front of the button is a ploy. the ditzy email correspondence between him and his mates seeking to set up their next pub outing, and of guards looking for help with odd-jobs around the station, are cute. to say the least. but another computer hidden inside the secret stash room tells a different story. the emails talk cryptically about some augmented fella you’ll recognize as ‘Corporal Adam Tyler’ or, Adam Jensen. his whereabouts, objective status.. even his proposed priviness this deep in. do i have to keep going? it’s revealed at the end, but Quinn is behind the whole le Russian hacker thing. more on that later.. gotta tackle this boss fight first.
i don’t think any of the Deus Ex games had that great of boss battles. that said, the ones in the original were good. they had a weird, moody penultimance to them. they were never like an enclosed chore of punishes and waves.. if you wanted to you could stomp ’em out within the millisecond you see them. the faceoff against Maggie Chow was a boss fight was boss in the literal sense, though i remember making quick work of her. but some like Gunther, and ones even later by the end took serious levels of elbow grease. it’s almost like they don’t count for the purposes of this write-up. the two aren’t even in the same world as each other. i’m also not Mr. Authority on Deus Ex.. i’ve gotta play through like.. 9 times over again before i feel comfortable talking about it. Human Revolution’s on the other hand, are glaring. they were definitely made with the original games soul essence. just nix Burke’s battle. at first it’s setup to be a hell of a showdown. guards are geared up in spots that had originally saw no activity. you have to re-orientate yourself, fumbling through air-ducts and cover-ways you could’ve sworn led you to your escape.. not of the bathrooms.. for the third time. and paired with Quinn’s phone call reinforcing his total:scorched:Earth protocol. Burke’s gaze is searing. his taunting is backed up by a severe snarl. he has us outnumbered in a place made up of his own elaborate ordinance. fighting in his domain, his dojo (more accurately a sally port). this one falls short of being awe-inspiring. something even the base-game got right. i like the aesthetics of the game. the look of the DLC feels right at home with the rest of the game. but it does lack flair. the game thrusts you straight into a fight. snipers take aim on the overhead conveyor belts, and a 80-X Boxguard unfurls in the middle of the room. near inches from our face.. for us factory zero/pacifist/foxiest of hounds achievement hunters, it’s a manual reload nightmare. it encourages you to go in guns slinging. if you’re quick enough you can take cover behind the rails. it’s not impossible.. just the fact it’s so suddenly jeopardized is not very Deus Ex-ian. and so on. no matter how you choose to take him on, Burke will stand idle in his office. with his pistol drawn, of course.. look! here’s a photo of me behind him. he’s got no idea.. hurhurhurh.
and that’s.. it. i mean basically. the game forces you to take down all the goons. no matter how you choose to navigate the hangar. stealthily, or not. erasing the rush of ninja-ing by everyone. it’s even dissatisfying engaging them with guns. the layout around the room is extremely symmetrical. hurdles parallel each other the whole way down. all the while Burke remains static. he’s just standing there.. not very menacingly. it’s Burke’s boss fight but his instincts (or lack-thereof) render him the easiest obstacle out of everyone there! it’s insanity O_o;;;;; it’s not all that long, and it’s not all that difficult. thankfully you can choose how to take Burke out with free choice of your armory. it sounds silly to say, but this fact alone makes it better than any of the base games since all of those culminated into a cutscene, barring your choices from being anything meaningful. this becomes a double-edged sword. the game doesn’t know how to react to this change. the guards remain unaware of Burkes death. even ones scouting the adjacent hangers back behind us. the lack off comms doesn’t seem to phase them.. even the 80-X guard disintegrates on Burke’s takedown. eh.. i mean, i’m not complaining. those things are total pains in the ass to deal with.. but Deus Ex: Human Revolution – The Missing Link, more like.. Deus Ex: Machina.. Link.. hurhurhurh.. reminder; we’re in the most rigorous, top security lockdown in the western Pacific. how come everything in its vicinity dissipates at its most crucial moments? they need to do some staff restructuring after this..
for all these blips in the DLC’s cohesion.. i still like it a lot. the detective work is fun.. unfurling an oddly strung web in Belltowers cogs. adrenaline searing as you infiltrate the detention center, cargo bays, and even an underwater lab. Jensen runs circles over Burke. foiling his villainy, but at what cost..? the choice is almost too high stakes, too on the nose for it be all that deep – but it’s still a choice nonetheless. your heart’s sonar system sends out doleful pangs with each every choice and lapse in futility.. saving Kavanaugh, or the prisoners (or both). the lackluster boss fight is whatever – with the mission being carried by its atmosphere, layout, and sturdy array of characters characters. it’s only like 36% anticlimactic. and speaking of characters.. i hope you’re sitting down, because what i say might cause an epileptic episode.. you’re sitting? good. the Russian hacker.. it was Quinn.. all along.. the whole time.. *gasp* he conducts an arrangement between himself and Jensen for discussing their next steps. lurking in the shadows of the sally port, is Quinn. though not ‘Quinn’ himself per-say. in his Russian voice he says that Quinn met with a horrible fate and will be M.I.A. the persona of “Garvin Quinn” seems to have died while making an effort to escape. his real name is unknown. adopting a fully Russian accent. the reveal came earlier inside the elevator, but i’ll admit to dropping a “ohmagah” upon putting two and two together. it’s so bite sized.. i wish he could’ve been a piece of the base game. i’d trade anyone for some more time with him.
anyway, this is his only appearance. and outside of a reference found in the games successor, Mankind Divided (and possibly a mention in the books, but i don’t know what’s the be-all and end-all of canonicity there) his story is left untold. for him to be relegated to this one-off DLC is a damn shame (҂⌣̀⌣́) he spills the beans on what’s going on here, his ties to Interpol, and relationship to Keitner.. all the while keeping his lips sealed on his true identity. yadda-yadda. Jensen’s still hell bound on locating what he originally came here for. yano, [REDACTED]... *in Burke’s voice* “MaEgaN”. luckily Quinn was able to intercede comms from a nearby boat with space for one more cryo-pod, guaranteeing a spot for Jensen and tying the DLC together in a full circle. him enclosed in another pod.. hopefully he reaches his intended destination this time around. this prompts him to say “it better be the right fucking boat this time”, to which Quinn rebukes in his faux-Irish accent “don’t worry mate, it’ll be grand.. besides, i thought you Americans liked riding off into the sunset?” a quote i still don’t really get.. the camera pans upwards signaling the start of the end for Jensen. but that’s.. not the end of the DLC. a brief post game cutscene plays wherein we can see Jensen hitching an airlift to the boat, before a conversation between Quinn and a ‘Janus‘ juts in. Janus.. but pronounced like.. JAY-nus.. like.. J + anus.. i’ve never heard it this way.. and paired with his ugly mug (o Д O ; ) i’m left seriously stumped and confused to who the hell this guy is. he’s newly integrated to the series through this game and those subsequent, with ties to the Juggernaut Collective. who are enemies of the Illuminati (Mankind Divided ball knowledge.. stuff i know nothing about). so he’s a big deal. his voice has the same vocal filter and cadence as the Russian hacker. a detail which i’m 999.9% sure is meant to be noticed. so.. stay with me here.. i think Janus might’ve been the hacker guiding Jensen all along. with Quinn working subservient to him. Janus is described as an adept hacker. his role in the aforementioned collective puts him on a high pedestal. his motives are cryptic, as is his entire conversation with Quinn. they elude that everything was pre-planned, “exactly as [Janus] instructed.” they’re keened into Jensen’s innerworkings with him acting as a pawn in their story. possibly for the ensuing events of the base game. aka World War Augment.. and on that note.. you’ve seen Deus Ex: Human Revolution – The Missing Link through to the end.
the game would’ve been harder to understand if it hadn’t been interwoven into the base game through the Director’s Cut. it highlighted the Hyron Project in a better way. but i’m kind of dim, so all that hushed secret Illuminati talk just goes over my head. it works as a great appetizer for the events of the games end. filling in a spot of the game with plausible shenanigans and leaving no trace of tampered cohesion. it’s linear in the sense of a mission funneling you where you need to go (i.e. back in lockup) but it’s not always the case. Rifleman Bank makes for a fun new locale to scavenge. it feels larger on that first playthrough. probably not so much your second time through.. or your third.. or fourth.. there’s always a chance you gut the thing you love in the process of engaging with it but i say this one passes the test.. even after like 5 times through. though the Burke fight really blows. in our last chat with Quinn, Jensen asks him what he’ll do with Burke. i don’t remember his response for if you take him down lethally.. something something ‘he’s out of the picture, for good’ while taking him out passively gets you a; “i’ll find a more permanent solution once you’re gone.” from Quinn. like, verbatim. Burke’s guards still think he’s alive. so they take order like he his. in the time Quinn and J-man have been talking the base has been operating on code red. they should probably check on Burke.. but, oh.. right; Janus – or.. i mean, Quinn (?) – can send out fake comms using a computation matrix cross-connecting voice synthesizer. or something. i think it’s dumb. what happens if Burke wakes up? or the guards waltz in on our little rendezvous? or is this whole place superseded by Janus? i guess Quinns woes could’ve been part of the ploy.. ironically the devs went too far in re-adjusting course for future boss fights (possibly after how poorly people took to the games first handful) finally one that lets you dictate the fate of your enemies outcome.. just for the outcome to null any reason to care.. while we don’t spend much time with Keitner (or Quinn for that matter) that doesn’t make her death any less tragic. being humbled at the start and losing core gear, as well as augs and weapons, was a nice touch for the end game. it’s neither grueling nor is it easy mode. the parallels it shares to the original DX’s story maaaay be doing a lot of heavy lifting.. some of Human Revolution’s best traits are ripped straight from the first game, meaning this write-up may be biased to some extent; o well. my fun meter almost broke the scale just about here (and in the subsequent end game). hopefully this shone through in the write-up without me having to write about the rest of the game. that’s an endeavor for another day.. thank you for reading.
Filed under: Exodus From the Earth
Mike’s dying breath: “h-hurry up.. go save the universe!”
Frank: “but.. how?”
Mike: “ah you’ll cope with it.. just find the fuckin’ memory block..”
if Deus Ex: Invisible War and Half Life 2 were outta condoms and made due. and also had a geriatric pregnancy. merging Invisible Wars severe neurological disorders and Half Lifes scope. 2008’s ‘Exodus From the Earth’ is an increasingly notorious game. apparently even being featured as a vessel for one of penguinz0’s $10,000 speedrun exhibition challenges. typically reserved for more crappier games that are held together with hopes and prayers (and duct tape). while notorious, the games digital footprint doesn’t spread far. there’s always been ‘slop’ and with today’s ease of access, there’s a never-ending succession of crappy games. but for around 2008.. the game shows an interesting fervor. before diving in i expected a quick 4-5 hour excursion through some copy paste firefights, not a ~ 12-ish hour marathon akin to Half Life. don’t get me wrong. point blank; the game is crappy. length doesn’t make a game better. often enough it becomes even more painstaking. but aside from the slog that it is, there is a jarring attention to detail (as well as lack-thereof.. somehow). this game left me stumped in every way possible. this review might be short.. but there are some things i’d like to say.
someone on Steam left a review calling it ‘slavjank’ which is the best word to describe it. jank.. uh and Slavic too, i guess. gaming as a whole is on a weird trajectory. i’m critical towards anything outside of shooters. i’ve also got a record of attempting them start to end, no matter how crappy (i.e. Daikatana). surprisingly though, i think the fact i finished it is a testament to its loose soundness. from the jump you’ll notice the games inspirations. the games looks take after Deus Ex; with its turn of the millennium interface and e-books, most of which consist of gibberish. you can grab and move objects which works on the Deus Ex front. i don’t know the extent to the games routing so just distend belief for a moment. there’s a couple janky obstacles where i relied on some objects/pseudo-speedrun tech to get by. for the most part though, pieces of the game often don’t make sense (more on that later). while i am dim, in hindsight these parts kind of gave the illusion of Deus Ex’s “no play-through is the same” mantra (no idea if it’s true or not). you can also get a feel for it through our protag, ‘Frank Rixon’. he’s like a machismo amalgam of J.C. Denton and Duke Nukem. did i say machismo? he’s more-so like Postal Dude. he talks in frayed one-liners while adorning a sick pair of specs. his implications are trivial to me because i just don’t know what they are. the story’s jagged and hard to follow only figuring it out an hour or two before the ending, it pretty much plays like the good-guy’s philanthropic deed turns out to be a malicious facade. and also trying to get people hooked on drugs à la Deus Ex’s Neuropozyne. Frank’s hired to get in there and investigate the A.X. corporations affairs. and to escape Earth. by whatever year it is (i remember reading 2016 – don’t quote me on that), we’re adept to interplanetary travels as a preemptive measure for Earth’s soon-to-be implosion. our investigation leads through the sprawling A.X. Corporation. through tunnel subsets, cargo holds, and even a cosmoport. this place could give Black Mesa a run for its money. this is sorta where Half Life bleeds through. it’s mostly illogical and never ends when it should. a harboring resentment i have for both games. the audacity.. to make them.. *pants* so long.. my playthrough’s listed as 17 hours on Steam, but subtracting all AFK moments and dawdling, it’s closer to 11/12. for what reason? it’s not engaging enough for it to be this arduous. unrelenting.. would’ve been a lot more enjoyable if it was pocket sized. so.. i guess you might be wondering just what kept me playing? while the story’s busy being incoherent (due in no smart part by the bumbling stroke-victims referred to as ‘voice actors’). one word.. or two.. the 〈gunplay〉. it’s fun.. the game shows a weird competency at times. the most surprising being the warfare. which can be considered the only saving grace in the face of the games biggest sin: the AI’s absolutely busted. not again.. it reaches a point where you start to wonder if.. it’s a you problem. like an incorrectly configured setting, or a kink spurred on by my poor karma. you have to treat this game with delicacy. engaging enemies like it’s Counter Strike. peaking over corners without a moments hesitation. or maybe you enjoy getting insta-beamed when taking on more than 2 engagements or softlocking yourself by an inopportune quick-save. oh yeah, forgot to mention. this one of those ‘bind your quick-save/quick-load keys somewhere comfortable, where you can easily reach, cause you’ll be using them a lot’ situations. i’ll start off a positive note and get the weapons out of the way.
1. Axe
first weapon ya get. i’m not sure why it’s here.. you can use it to break some door locks, but that’s bout it. and using it on the soldiers would just be a waste of time considering how quick they’d kill you. Half Life crowbar’s bizarro relative.
2. Shotgun
little fella. i think this shotgun’s unique in the ‘every FPS shotgun is significant in their own way’, type of way. it’d get a video essay made on it about how it’s a progenitor of the shotgun family tree, or something. he has a way about him. he’d be the deadpan snarker of the group. in action this thing can be useful. it can take out enemies in rapid succession. its alternative fire power increases the strength of the pellet. shooting 3 bullets instead of one. like the the covert ability of Half Life’s SPAS. you could make the argument that it’s the best weapon overall. i say you could because sometimes it’s shoddy (*audible snickering can be heard*) leaving its intended target unharmed, and yourself dead. i’d put it down as a runner-up.
3. Pistol
standard affair. reliable, effective, and something you’ll have endless ammo for. approaching it with the same tender love and care in hip-firing like you would in CS:GO, you can bamp a lotta enemies in the head, taking ’em out instantly. which is easily the most efficient way of clearing a room.
4. Akimbo SMGs
really expressive, but i wasn’t big on them. they’re probably my least used bit of armament. you can’t ADS as you normally would because of its akimbo nature with speed and control being the trade-off. they’re rendered useless against the AI’s aimbot which is pinpoint. they’re a little too wild. -0/10. i’m indifferent.
5. Sniper Rifle
“He was a good man… What a rotten way to die.”
6. RPG
in a surprising twist, the RPG is the most scant gun next to the sniper. of the two instances i counted, one was more of a surprise loot variable, and the other only lasted about half a mission before it’s meager ammo capacity ran out. before taking it away from me in sequence where i had to regain all my weapons. my prognosis; because it’s too good? continued below;
7. Remote Bomb
a neat inclusion. since your impulses lead you to panic press ‘Q’ or ‘G’ or.. – whichever floats your boat – you end up lobbing most of your nades early. it’s hard to hold off on ’em in big crowds like these. so be me when i find out i’ve still got a stash of them, and they’re made better with remote controlled detonation. these are really good, and saved my ass a ton of times. which is why i think the RPG is so low on the totem pole. more on that below;
7. Assault Rifle
the only gun that gets things done. this games AR is leagues above the rest of the tools in our loadout. it was always in my reserves standing as the only gun that never ran out of ammo. it domes enemies like the pistol does, but at a faster rate of fire. it’s so slight and pinpoint when you ADS with it. the scope helping a ton. the added added benefit (or detriment depending on how you see it) of no penalties when sidestepping or jumping, gives you a leg up on the enemies. engagements become slightly more fair. because no matter the distance, enemies will be locked on you. it’s a perk of some older, less rigid shooter titles. reload canceling, rocket jumping, extreme jank; things of that sort. but the best part? it comes equipped with an under barrel grenade launcher, filling in the role as its secondary ammo ability. it can be described with just two letters. O.P. well sorta. it’s ultra effective against mechanical enemies, especially turrets. one nade and they’re down for good. they’re also good against any maneuverable mechs. just nix the final boss. it can take out pools of infantry without as much as a blink. but that’s redundant when you could just save ’em for fiercer foes.
the enemies, similarly to the pistol, are another standard affair. the A.X. corpo soldiers are a carbon copy of a carbon copy. they’re just the spec ops soldiers that barge in a quarter of the way through Half Life. or F.E.A.R.’s Replica forces. which are kinda just carbon copies of Half Life’s spec ops soldiers, which are just.. you get the point. i think they even reuse voice lines. but it’s one of my favorite archetypes, so no complaints from me.. they have a habit of shooting bodies though, even when after they’ve turned their enemies into pulp. must be a bug.. or sentience.. the aforementioned mechs are sick as hell. they give off an unsettling feeling as they chase you through a cargo port. and between motor pools. it’s a looming itchiness that forces a brief glance at your 6 o’clock every couple seconds. eugh.. *shivers* i’m always perturbed whenever i face off against a killer automaton.. frankly they’re more finely tuned than the standard A.X. soldiers. i found that rarely ever did they unfairly melt you – and if they did it was as a justified punisher. the final boss is a different story. but i’m getting ahead of myself. lastly are these weird mutants you’ll encounter at the precipice of the game, once we escape Earth and crash land (?) onto another planet. the tonal shift also marks a shift in the gameplay. the mutants are large, and come equipped with a drill for mining some powerful ore that’s to be used as part of the A.X. scheme. they’re basically slaves. at the behest of their handlers and made to work. they’ll also grow aggro towards you, so negotiating isn’t possible >_>; fighting them was an odd relief. they’re only capable of meleeing you with their drill arms, a brief interlude between the constant barrage of gunfire and 0.5 millisecond deaths. to me it’s just odd how every other encounter aside from the long line of grunts are more carefully ironed out rather than the ones you’ll encounter 10-1.
the game has you starting in the A.X. facility’s reception room. another not-so-subtle Deus Ex nod is visible front in center. a mock sculpture of a hand holding a globe. it’s so rigid and industrial. instead of an ethereal warmth. you get an even more upfront sense of that feeling while talking to all of the workers. it’s hard knowing just exactly where they stand as most of their complaints are simply warnings. their caution turns to exasperation as you press on, forcing their hand and breaking an allegiance we once had. the guards (soon-to-be enemies) at each of the exits don’t try to hide their hand, as they tell you not to come any closer – under threat of detainment. luckily we’ve got an in; a man named ‘Mike’. he stays under cover for most of the game, providing assistance over COMM lines. he’s one of the only few characters in the game that speaks with an intonation like that of a real human, unfortunately he’s murked partway through the game, exchanging one of the funniest bits of dialogue (what you read at the start of the write-up). i mean it was kinda sad. and if i hadn’t read some quote that had came from the games publisher, stating they’re; ‘ready to usher in a new generation of gaming with Exodus From the Earth’ (i’m paraphrasing i can’t find the source), then maybe just maybe it could’ve been more endearing. for the most part i found unironic fascination with it but there was a point where it became too unaware of its irks and lucricities. it was difficult to immerse myself, feeling the same drive that Frank had. i couldn’t really understand it. it made our mission to ‘exodus’ off this friggin’ Earth feel.. f-f-flaccid. Mike’s death feels for naught when taking a detached look at the bigger picture. the odds are just way out of his favor. it’s a miracle that Frank lasted as long as he does cause Frank-ly (eheh) he isn’t the brightest bulb in the shed. though i’m pretty sure he dies in the end (or he’s got some serious plot armor) with us digging a trench too deep. guess we’ll never know.
just after the reception room is where the rest of the game begins. an endless marathon of annexes taking you from one firefight to the next. the zones themselves are fun to fight in. the game looks very flattering considering all the other glaring, in-your-face shortcomings, and for the time it was released. guess another major reason as to why i felt compelled to reach that damned ‘cosmoport’ (this is a reference to your mission dossier, where it’ll constantly update and change as the mission progresses. showing which tasks you have or haven’t completed. reaching the cosmoport was left uncompleted for like half the game. since it was our most drawn-out goal). if you recall earlier when i droned on about how it hits a wall just over halfway through you’d be wrong in thinking the cosmoport is the ultimate objective, with exodus-ing being an end to the chapter. but instead, you fight through the enemies last lines of defense, to escape.. just to crash land.. and focus is switched to a new planet. names i hadn’t heard since the start, like the games overarching occultist ‘Jack Crizby’ and members of our coalition start to reappear. the whole time i spent anticipating facing Crizby was actually just to escape. none of it built into Crizby or the vaccine. so it’s held off until we’re there. we’re given a cryptic dream sequence in which we see him.. but internal-playback is cut short as it’s morphed and twisted to match the dire straits that we found ourself in (an induced coma). and aside from possible mentions in scattered e-books (like, who’d ever read those? just kidding. i tried but they’re mostly unintelligible) he went unmentioned. but neither was it condensed enough to feel like the penultimate showdown. the penultimate showdown only comes eons after crash landing. it.. just.. never.. ends.. i wish it had been structured differently. i wish the villain was almost too villainous, and we’d get to see his perspective of things. one that feels looming (as the game suggests), but there’s no impact to match its scale. it feels like a facade. it appears to give an otherworldly journey from formation to termination.. even though it feels more like getting on some placebo medication that you start to see through. eventually.. that’s when panic sets in.
the latter half of the game changes course. while there’ve been a handful of ultra convoluted puzzles the end starts to throw insane curveballs. when we were back on Earth i never had to look anything up. compared to the end where i had a no-commentary guide on standby in the most-likely case that i’d have to use it again. many of these puzzles were broken in some way – where progression became permanently stunted. AKA, softlocking the game. i’ve learned that sometimes people don’t consider it a softlock if you’ve got a recent enough save, and generally i was never too far down creek without a paddle – but the persistence that i found myself in these progression-less purgatories was too often for my liking. a more plausible reason; these puzzles didn’t work right in the first place. you’d be wrong in assuming this is where the game ends. after escaping the complex we’re giving a sweet buggy to ride in. a joyride taking in all our spoils. there’s a part where we’ve got to cross a gap. even a blind person could eyeball it and tell that we weren’t gonna make it. so finding a way around is in order. that’s when things get finnicky. a broadcast over COMMS makes it out to be a static wave shooter thing, with more forces airdropping in. in hindsight, i mistook the ordeal. confusing a time-limit, with passing through a checkpoint that would then summon the next dropship. instead i bumbled around bypassing the checkpoint and finding myself in a static limbo with no idea where to go. the liminal coastline provided some temporary ambience as i went for a stroll. since this near-miles long section was intended to be traversed with a vehicle, i decided enough was enough and i restored a previous save. but that still didn’t resolved the issue. in the end i had to bust out some weird, pseudo-speedrun tech – activating a lever inside a crawler moving a blockade stopping us from jumping the gap, and cheesing it back over unto the other side. maybe that was the.. intended.. solution? maybe? it’s a reach but hey, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, amirite?
“so it’s held off until we’re there” (me a few paragraphs up), this half also houses a chunk of the games story. we’re finally face to face with that Jack Crizby fella. he gives a standard monologue showing his full hand. something something “for the fate of mankind”, or whatever. he’s deluded himself and many others into thinking his cause is for the best (what that is i’m not exactly sure of). there’s nothing we can do to stop him as the room’s separated by a forcefield. this isn’t the only elephant in the room as a dozing mechanoid sits in place to the left of us. he’s unlike any of the ones we’ve faced yet. not as bulky as ones we’ve met before, it’s more-so defined by it’s skeletal look. it’s static, unemotive face. looking like an even more badass Cyberdyne Systems Series 800 Terminator (or T-800 for short). lots of things are kinda based off this guy. that might be the point. there’s not much time for amorous ogling before he ushers us into the boss battle arena. his booting sequence doesn’t hold him off for long. his heavy thuds reverberate through the walls, sending chills down my spine as i race for the exit 0_0; back to that automaton thang.. gives me goosebumps. those goosebumps soon dissipate. the final boss zone is so totally cattywampus. i don’t know where to even begin. i’ve got a bad habit of dreading environments like these. so many differing mechanics, all jutting out at you.. i guess i don’t like it because it forces me to think. luckily most of the arena is useless. forcefields, and underground corridors that seemingly serve no purpose. our only real clue sits overhead. an automatic bridge used for transport of cargo. i gotta get up there. not much time with that mech on my ass.. i’m only a hairs way away from the top of the ladder when he catches up. his loadout’s made up of plasmatic weapons with his strongest being a charged shot. its splash damage is something to look out for. he doesn’t miss either. even with my head start he’d beeline for my hiding spots. must’ve got.. ESP hacks or something.. orgh.. my ammo preservation was something to be ashamed of. i didn’t have much to use against him. but i figured; this has gotta be the final boss, might as well unleash the lead.
yeah welp.. turns out that wasn’t the solution. that’s not the problem though. in anticipation of a lotta bosses, my general rule of thumb is to damage them enough to stun/punish/lure. often time utilizing a neat new strategy. the mechanical bridge overhead connects through to unreachable ledges overhead. get up there, reach the other side of the bridge, and initiate phase two, all while trying not die. sounds simple right? it seems a corridor on the second floor was bugged out. an invisible wall appeared to block me from entering. i just assumed it was missing the forcefield texture, or was just an oversight. luckily there was a ledge to the right i could use to get over. the bridge acted as it should’ve and i was greeted by an interactable panel on the other side of the room. it’s tense as the robot tries in earnest to kill you. the circumference of it’s energy attacks slowly inches closer as you wait for the panel to do its thing. a quonset hut is lifted from the floor below. “good, phase two”, i’m thinking to myself. all the while i’m taking as many cheap shots as i can. i leapt off out unto the battlefield in hopes of making quick work of this fight. but there’s nothing inside. nothing but a dimmed out control panel on the outside. and so here is where i’d be stuck.. for the next 48 hours. this is my story.
i’m only kidding. it took me 20 minutes before my warewithal completely drained, and i went back to the trusty no commentary playthrough. and to my surprise it turns out that not only A) i should’ve been able to enter that forbidden corridor, but B) i was supposed to lure the mech into the middle of the hut where the control panel would light up and give you the option to power him down. the ‘A’ part’s not important (just weird), but the ‘B’ part was.. uh.. also weird. i guess in hindsight it’s not the biggest stretch. i could’ve read the ‘deactivate robot’ button on the panel and thought to try that. but it felt like there was another step missing in-between before that. i spent those 20 minutes quickloading, and brainstorming. ultimately, coming out defeated. i thought back to where it all began. back to the confusing dialogue.. the jank.. the annoying 0.1 second TTK. the solutions being detached from any sense of reason.. so i thought, “eh whatever” and looked it up.
if i were Jack Crizby i’d be quite angry seeing Frank walk back into his office alive. though there’s still a forcefield between us. he attempts to take matters into his own hands, before getting lost in his own monologue when outta nowhere the leader of Frank’s investigative coalition, ‘Harry Southgate’, appears on Crizby’s side of the room cutting his speech short. it seems like he was able to reach this place hiding in the shadows of my exploits. gasp.. a betrayal! but wait, that’s not all. we’re given not one, but TWO failed villain monologues when Crizby – not dead – activates a switch adding another mech to the equation, killing Harry. the facility is sent into red alert chaos now with both the leader and nearly every member of the A.X. militia indisposed. left dead in our wake. Frank makes a quick getaway back through the way he came, but not quick enough. the game ends on a scene of Frank frozen mid-air just seconds before a flashover.
all-in-all? this game could’ve been covered in an email.
Filed under: Killzone
Sony’s response to Halo. or one of them, at least. err.. Killzone is one of those games from a bygone era of those looking to take down one of the “greats” (or to simply steal the limelight). back when everyone set their sights on CoD or Halo. they all had their clones.. or variants trying to impede on each others grounds. far before the times of franchises self-sabotaging, and intentionally suicide bombing their IPs for no apparent reason. many used to have to compete to take the kings down. Halo’s full stranglehold acquisition of the zeitgeist made it completely impenetrable. and i would say that it won this battle, and every other. i don’t think anything ever even came close to toppling their reign. no.. they’d eventually succumb to defeat by way of their own hands.. Halo would eventually mark the downfall.. of Halo. truly an unpredictable fate. one we never could have surmised.. at the forefront of this war; Killzone. a game that would eventually come to find it’s own footing, for a brief time becoming a flagship title. before being sent into the backlog of abandoned franchises Sony’s been amassing. a large reason behind it’s hype? it was going to kill Halo.. entirely. growing up with a Playstation, some of us never got the chance to familiarize ourselves with Master Chief. or the Energy Sword.. some of us have had tough lives, being exclusive to Playstation. never being in the know on that half of the world. so, quite a few titles began to appear. dubbed.. “Halo Killers”.. Killzone being one of them. the Halo style had begun to be interpreted in a lot of different nodes fitting onto a graph. plus it’s relative simpleness (affectionate) made it not all that difficult to ctrl + c, ctrl + v.
thinking back on it, i’m hazy on whether or not i’m simply mistaking Killzone 2 for Resistance, or if i even played it at all. but i know for sure i never played the original Killzone. it was released before i was born, on a system i’ve never touched, the PS2 (though i think maybe the first one was remastered and re-released for the Killzone Trilogy on PS3 systems (scratch that, after further research that seems to be exactly the case, but it also got it’s own standalone release on the PS3.. an HD version. or something. which makes it a part of my generation)) still, intended for the PS2, it left a smaller and more poorly received footnote. i was mostly oblivious to Halo as a whole, let alone Killzone.. my only exposure of it stemmed from the games crossover inclusion in Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale, a Smash “clone” (i’d disagree..) with the Killzone franchise being front-lined by Radec. a character who isn’t even from the first Killzone. and with the foreseeable future determining it to be on an indefinite hiatus, it really feels like it’s been sidestepped. not given the proper love it deserves.. actually, it’s inclusion in the aforementioned Playstation All-Stars were awesome as hell (though i originally mistook Resistance’s crossover stages for Killzone’s.. they’re pretty cool too.. i really gotta play that soooon..) Dojo, arguably one of it’s most iconic stages features a disturbance from a Killzone 3 enemy known as the “Helghast MAWLR”. it wreaks havoc in the background, even acting as a stage hazard when it shoots rockets at the Dojo. which no longer stands intact. day turns to dusk as the sky darkens into this impeding red doom.. and a giant.. friggin’.. kaiju version of the Dojo master appears.. and destroys the MAWLR, saving the day. i’ll link the vid here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df6QIJwHoKk. i gotta write about this game too.. *my eyes widen n transform into anime-style swirls when i see how long my games-list is* 𖦹. 𖦹 anyway. the other map is a more meh amalgamation paired with Ape Escape. it’s memorable (for me at least) too. just not as moody as some other maps. probably cos of the Ape Escape crossover.. but i used to love playing as Col. Radec. of course if i wasn’t already playing as Toro or Sackboy or something.. heh. he felt well-rounded. like really beefy and punishing but still flexible enough to maneuver how i liked. i could really gush about this game for a million millenniums. i think it’s so slept on.. ahem – back to the game at hand.
like i alluded to earlier, even though it eventually found it’s own way, Killzone wasn’t the Halo killer that everyone hoped it would be. with it being especially clear why in the first game. i’d say it has a lot of amazing qualities, with a couple awkward ones. but considering it in the scope of gaming as a whole, this game is over 2 decades old. it’s a snapshot at it’s first attempts at life. in the grand scheme of things. i think it’s pointless to nag about. or even be disappointed over. especially when considering the timing it was on.. well, as long as you weren’t a Halo fan. there’s a lot i liked here, and some perceived jank and discrepancies. a heavy emphasis is placed on attempting to capture Halo’s ability to create vast, complex, and interwoven environments. without being explicitly to scale. somehow stretching the missions length, and feel. it’s not always obvious. it’s slightly copy paste in this case, but it’s severely boosted by the missions atmospheres. it’s basically slathered in it, and it’s sept into it’s creases and folds like sealant. 9/10 times, it makes up for it’s awkward shortcomings.. eheheh.. an aspect of Halo games that i liked were the rare, industrial urban cityscapes they took place in. this seems to be divisive among the fandom.. these were mostly prevalent in Halo 2, 3: ODST, and Reach. typically the man-made human locations. while these games are beautifully layered in a level of exposure and pallet that gives it a lot of life; Killzone keeps it cemented in grittiness. really.. it’s an attractive game. it has this sexy dark complexion that you never ever see anymore. it made for perfect screencaps. the games earlier missions are for sure the best ones. that Halo layout can be felt, and they progress smoothly. conveying scale even though i barely covered much ground. levels like Helghast Assault -> through Escape strike on those desolate urban war-zones. while incorporating newer facets of war that Halo never had. like trenches and camps. replicating the familiar sight-lines of WW1. courtyards, shopping malls.. there’s an approaching sense of doom in these missions. seeing the Helghast pop out of the smokey haze.. forcing us to retreat. most of the time we feel outnumbered. our recent wins are unfathomable to some. maybe.. just maybe.. we can win this after all. unfortunately, the latter half of the game transforms into your same-y tactical FPS game. like a Ghost Recon, or mission from an older CoD campaign. just with less.. flavor. simply walking to the next checkpoint. feeling a lot smaller and compact. those Halo lengths gone. it just becomes an unintuitive maze. it doesn’t even attempt to reach Halo’s “quirkiness” either. which is perplexing to me. yano, given that it was planning to kill Halo.. it just loses that feel in the second half.
just like how Halo had the Covenant and the UNSC forces, Killzone had the Helghans and the ISA. they’re basically interchangeable. some of the Helghasts (interchangeable) are even referred to as Elites. a sub-class merc. even based on the games cover art you can tell how awesome the Helghast are. these dope – yet mediocre – games always tend to ball out when it comes to the enemies.. they’re just so gratifying to face off against. even when the gameplay becomes stale. unlike some other games there is a solid variety of weapons. but sorta like the others the fun ones end up being more rare than others. TBF i don’t understand this because these games are already short as is. what’s the point in locking them behind scarcity if i only get a few chances to use them? i think it harms replay-ability.. at least they aren’t conservative with the ammo though. i vm like the abundance of reserves you can pick up. so you’ll never run out. unless you got the rare guns, of course. and paired with the controls of the DualShock it’s a return to that authentic couch gaming feeling.. it’s so unbelievably difficult to control. i mean that’s probably just a me problem.. my transition from controller to keyboard turned me into a different kind of gamer. n now i’m not used to holding one. there was a learning curve. this wasn’t an issue since the Helghast AI is a bit on the slow side. randomly blue-screening to give you an edge in combat. it probably would’ve been a harder time without their forgetfulness. though, the difficulty could also be coming from the recoil.. which there is a lot of. you just need to unlock that feel for each weapon. i’ll go into depth on them below..
1. StA-52 SLAR
the goat of this playthrough.. it’s earned early on, in like the first or second mission. and it acts as the games only sniper rifle/long-range gun. it carries a fine amount of ammo.. not too much, not too little. and it’s relatively common. except in the mid portion of the game. though, that could’ve been on me missing some caches, or something. the StA-52 SLAR is mostly standout for it’s 1-tap ability (2-tap for late game tanks), making it one of the most consistent means of arms. it’s chunky and compact, and coated in a layer of tiger-striped camouflage. but it’s standout feature.. no reticle.. you heard me.. this allowed me to get some great screencaps. since you can’t remove that little bugger.. even the ADS provides some usefulness. cos of the slight input delay that i experienced, having a full scope made for an easier time following and tracking enemies. last thing; i don’t know if this was a bug. but you can’t move while ADSing. even though i’m 99% sure i could on earlier missions. for some reason like halfway thru i noticed this. idk what it’s a result from.. but that made it slightly awkward to use. still definitely a gun i’d keep strapped on me.
2. StA-52 Assault Rifle
Killzone’s answer to Halo’s classic rifle. my source? i mean, just take a peek at it. it feels like the Assault Rifle’s exoskeleton. like a beta version. orr alternate take. it’s just as reliable. it can get a little bland to use.. but since both it and the ammo are bountiful in supply, you’ll always have it in your arsenal. a gimmick that only a few guns share is a “special” reserve of ammo. think like incendiary rounds. or in this case, a masterkey attachment. this gun comes with useful shotgun shells, helping take down tank-y enemies in one final blast after laying a whole mag into them. it’s the perfect all around reliable gun. one you find yourself starting and ending with.
3. StA-3 Light Machine Gun
just like the StA-52, this one is overly prevalent. lots of Helghast forces carry these. especially the “heavies”. i don’t know their name. just think.. heavy.. it’s suuuuper nasty at the start of the game. being one of those lucky pickups. unfortunately it petters off midway through. i still kept it with me since i was conditioned to rely on it, but at some point it began to shoot packing peanuts. makin it kinda bleh for those late game encounters.
4. BP-02 Pup, M327 Grenade Launcher, & Pnv-3 Siska
i grouped these few together.. these are all the games nade-launchers. nix a couple fixed turrets and handheld grenades. they’re similar to the sniper as they’re a gun you’d always want to keep in your back pocket. just in case yano. the BB-02 Pup is a revolver that shoots nades. neat. the M327 Launcher is the exact same, just without the audacity of being a revolver. it’s a common launcher architype; think War-Machine from CoD.. n the Pnv-3 Siska.. was waaack. it remained in my mind since it appeared vvvvvv late into the game. it packs a hell of a punch. especially in the hands of the Helghast, with their elite aimbot-y skillz..
5. M82 Assault Rifle/M66-SD Submachine Gun
to me these were basically the same guns. with the M66 acting kinda like a pocket SMG version of the assault rifle. theeese were my favorite. the guns sleek design is cast with a green hue. even adorned with a green red-dot/reticle sight.. they may have even been suppressed too. they were by far the most satisfying to use. and were fun to unlock. becoming slightly scarce in later missions. the M82 had this weird grenade attachment, in the same vein as the StA-52 Rifle. but it was completely overlooked. outside of it’s introduction i never once came across ammo for it.. i never really got a chance to use it..
6. Everything Else
okay while writing i kinda realized i don’t have a lot to say for these xD the guns i listed above were the only ones i became familiar with. there are other rifles, secondaries, and a couple case-specific launchers and support weapons. but these were rare. or tied to a specific character/faction. there’s a knife you can equip but i heavily advise avoiding this. slashing and stabbing is not a prudent form of combat for this game. like seriously. the Helghasts tendency to flinch mixed with their poor trigger-finger discipline, often cause their stray shots to hit you. and when your health begins to deplete.. it becomes chaos. these leads me to my next point (also i didn’t like the LS13 Shotgun).
there is an obvious difficulty spike around halfway in. their way of doing so seems to be upping their health and damage output. even a Helghast grunt can become a one man army of his own. especially in the cases of the Elites, and base commanders. this turns into a haphazard war in futility.. where you’re forced to fight methodically. taking cover and putting plenty of consideration into your choices. paired with the jank controls.. it became a real challenge. but one i was excited to engage with. even though there wasn’t much of a payoff once i reach that light at the end of the tunnel.. something compelled me to fight through it all. it was fun. gaining back this genuine, noobish gameplay again. i’ve missed this.. it was a terrible sight though most of my end game reports showed a really crappy bullet hit percentage. at least i’m safe from ridicule here. so yeah. at first the game is easy mode. while the Helghast were believably uniform and arrived in large numbers, they were sorta inept like i described earlier. but once that spike becomes evident, their poor AI begins to work against you. beaming you from across the map. the hit indicators don’t exactly do a good job pinpointing whom shot at you. turning the mundane eye-glazing act of shooting into a fight for your life. it’s fine in those moments where you aren’t getting one-tapped. it just wasn’t natural is all. i also believe that certain guns are more effective on different enemies. i have no proof of this.. but i theorize it. i swear rifles were more effective than LMGs, which is usually not the case.. *shrugs*. it was complicated but it wasn’t much of an issue for an elite gamer like myself..
soo.. what’s it about? well, it’s.. it’s surface level. i’ll say that.. this is one of those stilted fanfic-esque melodramas. i mean TBF the CG in the cutscenes are reaally good for it’s time.. i can find a sense of relief in this. but you’ve kinda got to suspend belief for it to make much sense. like the typical contrivances. you play as a sergeant apart of the ISA forces, Jan (/jɑːn/) Templar. who shares an uncanny appearance with Alex from Deus Ex: Invisible War.. am i the only one who sees this? moreso in their baked models rather than concept art. Jan’s your average, run-of-the-mill soldier type. he’s got his eye on the prize.. and will coordinate with his team however he can to succeed. he’s slightly dull.. and he’s got a very veryyy odd on and off type of relationship with another playable character, Luger. during the first few early missions you’re made to unlock the rest of the 4 playable characters. these 4 are the prime protags, and once you’ve collected/rescued them, they join your party in a way. this brings up a really neat detail. how does the game gauge who you play as? the playable characters are all polar opposites of each other. there’s no way their strategies and dialogue will apply to each other.. who’d direct who? well, it seems like the game’s got different dialogue for each character you choose. and different possibilities for each. Luger, for example, is capable of fitting into ventilation and “sneaking”. sneaking is actually surprisingly viable in certain parts of this game. while it’s a little lackluster and easy to fumble, it’s still something i’m weak for.. i was genuinely kind of surprised. i think you can sneak while playing as other characters; but Luger seems best fit for it. she’s like a female Splinter Cell guy (i’ve never played the games so unfortunately i’m not on first name basis with him). she’s got a night-vision toggle, and comes with a karambit and the M66-SD Submachine Gun. this arsenal makes a lot of sense for her.. she’s a “Shadow Marshal”, a sly assassin type. she’s disciplined, and sorta the “cold” one of the group. ironically though, i think this makes her the most tolerable. Jan’s wimpish interactions with Luger was always off-putting. he’s entirely written to be a steadfast soldier, who not only battles the Helghasts, but also his hung-up emotions for Luger. causing him to have this kind of anime boy charisma.. i wasn’t very subtle nor was it worked in well. it just attacks you with this every cutscene. there’s this one moment where somehow he and Luger end up on top of each other.. after like a crash, or fall or something. and he’s like; “well, this is familiar”. n it’s just like.. yeeesh.. now isn’t the time.. it’s awkward. i guess they dated in the past? and are now made to work beside each other for this mission. but they always depicted Luger as the harsh one.. while honestly, i ended up liking her demeaner, she was more focused on the war. on the fate of this planet, “Vekta”, which is being seized by the Helghans. it’s sad to think she apparently just disappears between games..
besides Jan and Luger, you’ve got Rico. he’s the LMG-wielding fomenter, letting his emotions take control of him. he acts with conviction, but it’s not always for the best. he kind of irked me. maybe i was oblivious to it, but it wasn’t totally conveyed who these people where when i encountered them. i understood the assignment when i saw the greyed out names in the character selection screen, but i guess there wasn’t much exposition to it.. but maybe i missed it. we may never know.. it was unfortunate because i think Rico had the best weaponry of the bunch. besides Luger, everyone else had standard infantry, simply a StA-52 Assault Rifle and some secondary. his LMG was neat.. but because of his annoying demeaner i wasn’t able to convince myself to play as him outside of his initial introduction. he has this internal beef with our last recruit, Hakha. believe it or not.. Hakha.. he’s a Helghan. (⊙_☉) aw hell naw.. how could we work with one of them!? yeah well.. he’s a spy. or something. we’re tasked with rescuing him from his captors as he holds key infos. in the Killzone universe, Helghans are more of a race than a faction. based on their depictions in box-art and brief moments of exposure, i simply determined them to be soldiers of a different contingency. but nope. they aren’t utterly alien, besides their green-ish hue and bald head (and that accent..), they aren’t too off from humans. but when side-by-side it’s discernable enough. it’s funny cos they end up all looking alike.. i wasn’t sure who Hakha, or the guy from the intro cinematic, or the other countless baddies. i’ll just say they look cooler with their helmets on. Rico (naturally) is untrusting of Hakha. and after some faulty info causes a mission to go haywire, his trust in him reaches deathly low levels (literally). i wouldn’t fault him on this if Hakha hadn’t already proved his devotion, by killing hundreds of his own kind once he allied with us. this should have proved his devotion. or devils advocate – he’s so undercover that he’d kill his own to ensure his faux-allegiance with us. and like i know the Helghasts are attempting to seize control of the planet, and have no problem killing our soldiers. they are the bad guys. but Rico’s just extra angry and bigoted to a really forced extent. every comment is some quip about Hakha. if he was a good soldier i think he’d put their differences aside to save the world.. or whatever we’re fighting for. at least Luger split the difference, heeding Hakha’s warnings and assisting in his attempts, showing that we can work in assistance to each other.. idk. maybe i’m being extra. he’s just got no levity. fortunately by the end of the game Rico finally ditches his ego in order to save Hakha, just seconds before he could have died. it was heartwarming.. honestly by the end, i finally felt their charm begin to shine through it’s crevices.
our newly extended roster proves useful for future engagements.. ISA forces seem to be stretched thin. pushed back at every turn. they could really use some miracles. baseline; it’s your standard war affair. capturing certain points of interest to spot the Helghan onslaught. you’re transported from one place to another, covering different terrains. in the first mission, “Helghan Assault”, you’re deep into the trenches. the Helghans are a tough opposition though. they push us further back as the land begins to terraform until we’re set up in this factory block. the style of amalgamation almost feels like a Resistance game. i don’t know if this was intentionally meant to be so bending, but the abrupt transition between scenery was so cool. a convenient light is laid on our path as we entrench ourselves deeper into the neighboring warehouses and factories. ascending their levels until we have nowhere left to go. the last bit of the mission reminded me a lot of “ONI Alpha Site” from the Halo 3: ODST campaign. fighting off waves of Helghan in this final showdown in a courtyard. with tanks and mechs making brief appearances..
from here we’re guided into these really sexy.. technozen-like offices. dimly lit.. and decrepit. these early locales feel like we’re at the site of the wars epicenter. buildings feel as though they’re about to topple over. constant sounds of warfare playing on repeat in the background. it’s hellish.. but we claw and scrape our way through. blown out floors guiding us deeper.. catching our last glimpses of the true sky. in all of it’s gloomy honor. we fight through the remaining offices, and even into the facilities reactor zone. all the while, swarms of Elite Helghans pick off the last of the nameless, expendable ISA soldiers who accompanied me. our trek leads to a train station and then out into a courtyard, adorned with cherry blossom trees. this sector was simultaneously one of the most visually gratifying parts.. as well as most confusing. for some reason i couldn’t find my way out of there. the whole yard was encased by fences. and since you can’t jump over anything (besides scripted pop-ups for mantling over pipes or fallen trees), i felt totally trapped. of course since it’s a courtyard, it’s vast with open space. getting lost wasn’t too difficult. i really wish you could jump.. it’d probably end up just as jank as everything else in the game. but it feels hollow without. it has that exact same feeling of sitting in the backseat of a car but the child locks are on on your window. and you can’t roll it down. it’s like impossibly frustrating. but also the most mundane thing ever. i’m simply noting.. here in the courtyards is where we recruit Rico. he assists us by mowing down oncoming Helghans and taking out their tanks. and it seems like he’s already got word of what we’re looking for.
rescuing Hakha (the hostage spy) is imperative, if we want to push back the Helghans. being that he’s one of them.. he can provide us with some useful infos. we trek on to recover him. passing thru a containment yard crawling with enemies, and eventually guided towards a “Waypoint Arcade”.. we’re still in this metropolitan area. ravaged by the ongoing war. there’s not a single civilian in sight. just bodies of our dead comrades. just before we’re ambushed, there’s a wounded soldier. he sputters out his last words.. guiding us in the direction Hakha was taken.. before dying in honor.. “QUICK! Describle Killed Mid-Sentence here, before something bad happe— BZZZZT!” d’aw crap.. this reminds me. i’ve totally blanked on the “villain” slash other overarching characters. since this write-up is suuuper small in scope, i don’t feel all that bad about falling out of focus. obviously we were put up to this by someone. namely being General Vaughton, an ISA officer. i read that his VA died a few months before the games release. that’s pretty crappy.. his acting credits lead all the way back to the 50’s. holy cow. his memory will live on in Killzone.. and this write-up. unfortunately, his character was too spotty. i’m not privy as to why but the story ends up being so rushed. so sporadic all around. characters will appear, without an understanding as to why. Vaughton falls victim to this. his first appearance is somewhere during the 3rd/4th mission’s cutscene cinematic (i’m pretty sure). while his appearance appearance made him look evil. his stringy hair. his pale, withered look is adorned by a scowl. i originally pegged him for a traitor.. which sadly isn’t the case. as he’s killed later on by another commander, General Adams. who’s actually the traitor i’d been expecting. alongside Hakha. for some reason he’s working with the Helghan militia, allowing their assault to succeed. he’s basically sabotaged the entirety of Vetka. you could say he’s a real bastard. i don’t know why he’d be helping them as the Helghans plans don’t seem very promising for humans. you have to remember it’s not humans against humans. the Helghasts are an entire different race. there’s a huge separation between the 2. if they’re allowed to have full dictatorship over the planet, who’s to say Adams won’t be killed too? luckily for us, our every move works against him. with each attempt of his backfiring. slowly rattling him. it ends in a (semi) climactic face off, where we launch ourselves onto his ship and put an end to his treachery. it’s interesting to consider both sides to this. as there’s both a Helghan spy, and an ISA spy. well.. eh, i guess traitors would be a more fitting word. they work to better each side, giving away key details. but like i view Hakha’s as admirable – while Adams is a total fucker. maybe.. just maybe.. i’m a hypocrite. *shrugs*.
with all the characters unlocked, i’m able to continue on. i still mained Luger. but sometimes i’d use Hakha. he’s the brains of the group. but he’s not nearly as annoying as Rico.. or even Jan. which he’s just a carbon copy of. Hakha’s basically the Falco to Jan’s Fox. except he go through laser systems meant for Helghasts. allowing him to slip through unaffected. we’re spit out into this shipping yard. across from a bridge. the vistas here.. immaculate. it’s total beach warfare out here. looking more like D-Day, than an alien assault 300 years in the future. i loved it. i had some visual inconsistences.. but that didn’t stand a chance in harming the visual spectacle presented just before me.. this here feels like Halo. where it stretches.. and stretches.. and stretches.. cranes loom into frame as you walk it’s outskirts, avoiding the main facility. the sun is peering through as the rain fills your face. it elicited that feeling of getting mist in your eyes. oh it was beautifulll.. unfortunately.. it kinda flatlines from here. so far we’ve been navigating areas that are somehow connected to one another. but from this point onward we break that flow, as now we fly and transport our way around. plus the war begins to escalate.. things start to get down to the wire. there’s no conceivable way of getting back and forth without a snap of our fingers. the end of this mission culminates in a tough firefight. and an orbital strike in the far horizon. presumably aimed at an ISA “fortress”. by now there’s been a few mentions of the “Earth fleet”. huh, finally glad to hear of a familiar face. i guess much of our solar array has been colonized at this point. at this point it’s only a matter of time before Adams attempts to destroy the incoming fleet, along with the rest of the ISA forces. but we’re far from close. while en route to the fortress, a Helghan commando is hellbent on taking us out. stationed with an RPG of sorts.. he takes fire at our commandeered vessels, sending us of course and crashed into a marsh. ugh.. yep. we’ve arrived at the dreaded swamp level T_T
i’ve made my disdain for these sorts of levels clear in past write-ups of mine. from Fallout 3’s Point Lookout add-on, to L4D2’s (somewhat bare-able) Swamp Fever campaign. hell.. even those crappy canal missions in Half-Life 2. there’s something about water that screws up a whole games trajectory for me. especially if it’s got that gloomy swamp aesthetic. and double especially if it takes place in Louisiana. i hate having to navigate through murky waters, while my vision’s obscured by fog and vegetation that’s awkward to maneuver around. there’s never any real cover found in these sorts of locations too. besides the few sunken tree trunks.. i just don’t like it. though, Luger’s infrared heat-seeking goggles finally come in use, since the Helghasts tend to blend in. by now these guys are kinda beefy too. one badly timed reload, or blindly neandering into a firefight aaaaand – bam. you’re done for. this mission was just a huge pain in the ass. not helped by the weird map layout too. for some reason halfway through the game everything just.. changed. with the map design starting with those clever Halo-like facades, to starting just outside the zone you need to reach. their clever way of blocking it off? roadblocks. actual roadblocks. which seem to tract and detract on their own will, or with a conveniently placed button. this got me thinking.. couldn’t we just go around it? the top is lined with these really small spikes, so there’s no way in hell we’re climbing over. and i mean.. sometimes there’s debris that’s like a foot high.. but i don’t know. we seriously couldn’t just walk (or in the worst case scenario), climb over it? i got lost so often, and i was confused to find that the exit was just outside the levels start. giving you the perfect chance to reminisce; “oh uh.. look. that’s where i started”. i feel silly for complaining about something like this. insert .gif of turtles emerging from incubation and beelining for the ocean. but it’s such an irking thing. back to what i said ages ago, the stages go from solid to a bit flimsy. more trudging along as the waters begin terraform into a riverine. and Helghan Elites are becoming all too common.. my bullets also seem to go from solid to flimsy, as they don’t do jack. this is kinda where i realized the LMG wasn’t carrying me like it had before. every encounter became a close call. resulting in quite a few “restart from last checkpoint” moememtnnszzzzzszszszssz.. but actually i’d be remiss not to mention the really cool 1-on-1 against a Helghan hovercraft. and then we’re placed right.. back out into.. the.. wilderness.. though this time the environment resembles Halo’s more classic hillsides. it’s gloomy.. and it’s still pretty. but there’s still that damned water. it plays more naturally but i still found myself rushing it. though the next mission “Forging Paths” (cute) brought me right back in. you’ve still got the option of choosing whichever character. if you go with Hakha you’re blessed with a BDL-23 Dohvat Laser Designator (originally i mistook other mentions of this as detonator but designator does make sense). this thing is the freakin’.. bomb.. literally.. you can target an orbital airstrike down with a press of the button. comes in handy when dealing with the many tanks and encampments the Helghasts have set up. this thing is so OP. it’s low mag capacity makes it a back-of-pocket weapon, but it’s totally reliable. that is kind of how it’s intended though as it starts and ends with this mission. you can bring it into the next mission but there’s no more ammo. it’s also something you’ve gotta be dedicated too, cos zooming in lasts a few seconds. and if the tanks catch a glimpse of you.. pray that it’s quick. it also comes with a red laser sight. but i learned a neat trick where if you sprint/animation-cancel before scoping in, it’ll bug out and remove that invasive red sight.. and you can zoom in and out more freely. so just.. uh.. remember that for when you play.. oh lastly; the gun was featured in Playstation All-Stars as an item. [1] which is nuts cos i remember picking this up a billion times. i’m surprised it was so common in that game when it’s so singular here. brief aside over.
this part gave me hope for a light at the end of the tunnel. like we were back on track. destroying their setups with the laser designator was so satisfying. especially after getting owned by them for so long. we aren’t in the clear just yet, though. as we’re funneled into the strangest section yet. the adrenaline is still running high from my last engagement as i take in my surroundings. we’re now in a.. jungle? whuh.. this didn’t sit right with me. i mean on one hand it’s still cool. i’m not complaining because i having a totally miserable time. but this just felt wrong for a game of this caliber. i’m reheating leftovers talking about this again.. but this is meant to replicate Halo. never once did Halo confine you to an environment where you could literally see the textures overlap and create a ceiling, nulling the facade they were attempting. even in it’s lowest, underdeveloped points it remained expansive. it’s also wrong for this urban warfare they’re going for. i guess maybe they’re goin for a guerrilla (heh.. whoever gets this gets a chocolate coin.. or something) warfare thing.. maybe.. i guess. i’d assume the people heading the games design envisioned limitless possibilities for the stages. i’m just surprised this made it out the incubator. like i said the “jungle” facade is wayy too obvious. i don’t care about crappy graphics.. frankly i could bask in them for days.. but this environment was not fooling me. i know the game’s already easy, but c’mon.. still, this beats the marshes by a landslide.
at least our trek has it’s worth made, as when we emerge from the brush we’re face-to-face with a bridge. a bridge that is: A) imperative to their Helghasts invasion. for some reason. politics n supply routes n whatnot. and B) fragile enough to destroy. they actually installed self-detonation button on their bridge for us, how kind! pressing that releases it’s support pylons.. disrupting their supply chain, and giving us another double-u. by now General Adams has murked the former general, while also showing his whole hand to the rest of the ISA. the jig is up.. we gotta put an end to his treachery ASAP. problem is, even though we’re undoing all his effort.. he’s still always a step ahead of us. and Jan’s still too busy acting like a chump over Luger.. not to mention the infighting between Rico and Hakha.. we just need to pull it together. but there’s hope; the next mission’s hue is no longer drowned out by greens (a bittersweet feeling), signaling a change in environment. hell yes.. the next part of the game was probably the most surreal to me. i might have difficulty putting into words. lemme try and set the scene..
taking place above (and soon below) a missile silo, the top of the base looks like a battlefield. remnants of past warcraft linger. tanks.. planes.. possibly acting as cover. the skies clear up, and we’re able to catch our first glimpses of a grey.. slate-blue atmosphere. the ground; literal slate. the concrete’s cracked.. and like, every color strikes here. for some reason.. i’m transported back. way back. it’s 2013, and i’m at my spring/summer program (Boys & Girls club) and everything’s grey. with that same slight tinge of blue. the smell of freshly wet bark-mulch infiltrates my nose. the playground’s barred temporarily, back when they still had a fire-ant problem. their exoskeletons sticking out on that bleak, sunless asphalt. it’s kinda windy.. the interior’s got that accursed (to some) early 2010s, sterile, and skeuomorphic look to it. mostly washed out, with those random pops of colors. weird seating arrangements, adorned by a lunchroom that more resembles a fro-yo shop than your typical cafetorium. and i’m in the gymnasium. crouched down on the floor, battle droid minifigure in hand. totally oblivious to what exists outside the zone of my sightlines. everything’s just kind of a breeze. and in this.. transpondence – this is how my world looked. this is where i was. this was the place. and then some kid lends me his Halo Mega Bloks figure, cementing this world forever in my index. i’d never even played Halo (as expressed before T_T”) but that’s exactly how it looked to me. that’s how i imagined it. ya know what this means..? they succeeded.. it felt like Halo. and simultaneously.. like cloud nine. this is that place i’m fated to be. everything is pulled from here. it’s gotta be this past life thing.. because it only makes sense.. maybe i’m coming off as dramatic, and this place isn’t as untoward everyone else. but i’ve been here before. and somehow this game did this. not to put it down or anything, i just couldn’t have possibly expected it.. o-oh.. “the gameplay?” i can hear you asking.. it’s.. er.. well.. just a standard static turret section. ya gotta shoot some Helghan operated combat vehicles as they pour out of the base. ultimately disrupting their supply line further. vehicles in this game follow that vehicle damage = instant fireball logic, so they’re destroyed pretty easily. erh.. so yeah.. that’s that.. hands down one of my most surviving moments. there isn’t really a reason for this to have stuck with me in the way that it did. it’s average. but it’s beautiful. this game is so beautiful, especially in it’s desolate characteristics. i stand on business when i say it looks good for its time. i mean, F.E.A.R. came out a year later. they’re both rough around the edges. no game’s perfect. and i’m not about solely judging a games merits based in graphics. but i mean, you compare the two.. maybe i’m just a sucker for its doom n gloom ヽ(。_°) who’s to say? i don’t really know anything. this place also reminded me a lot of a select few maps from CoD: Advanced Warfare. i don’t have the most familiarity with that game, but it comes from that pool of games that attempted to re-propagate that late 2000s pastiche..
i can’t reminisce for too long. the silo’s waiting. we descend down an odd number of stories, passing some mundane rooms .. so on. we don’t even stay here long as after taking out some high ranking Helghast official, we take his ride over towards the final act of the game, a be-snowed uplink among the mountains – aptly titled “Onwards and Upwards”. here, they’ve finally hit on all the environments. from haze-y and cloudy, to urban, to grassy, and finallyyyy.. snowy. wahooo.. rejoice.. i know, i know. i had to rub my eyes in order to believe it too. anyways.. onwards and upwards. fighting on the snowy mountains was a nice change of pace. it still felt like i was playing a tactics shooter from the modern day. not like 2357. i think the tech isn’t represented correctly for the time period. everything’s too standard. the inclines pretty tough. by now the default Helghan soldiers (like the ones you see on the cover) have been phased out. replaced by Elites and Commandos. this takes double the time it would’ve originally taken. the amount of deaths would take like.. at least 3 sets of hands to count. it’s challenging enough. at least they’re forgiving with the checkpoints. by the end of the game i’d turned into one of those people who found themselves cursed to reliving the same death over and over again. respawning every morning like clockwork, forced to face death.. for the foreseeable future. until i finally got their pathing under control, and i could gauge their next moves. like any game ever.. but i think they sidestepped that ultra frustrating feeling of tedium. it’s balanced.. some Helghan Elites even tote a Pnv-3 Siska, knocking you down in one go. this difficulty comes to a head when we’re made to cross this drawbridge so tight that there’s only way forward and across. most likely the game would’ve ended if i didn’t have all this plot armor. Killzone doesn’t have any “bosses” per-se, but there are pseudo ones – like one of the Helghan commanders, or a pack of ultra busted Elites. it’s clear through the stages geometry that these are some of the toughest foes we’ve yet to face.
the whole reason for making a stop at this detritus weather station was so we could hitch a ride from one of the uplink’s shuttles towards one of the orbital platforms commandeered by that traitor scum, Adams. the extreme presence and firepower from the Helghasts show just how pivotal this is for Vekta. even beelining for the button is a campaign of its own. considering how we’ve been on a trek through the wilderness for the past couple hours, returning to plain metallic quarters was a breath of fresh air. swapping off from that green haze induced by the facilities alloy grating, into a snowy trek. it’s taken awhile.. but we’ve finally reached the top. the shuttle’s on lockdown, but it can be lifted by a button at the tip of the air control tower. the pinnacle of the mountain. the route there is maze-like. teeming with soldiers. at least we’ve got the upper-hand. our teams co-ordination is finally coming together.. and mixed with the adrenaline of reaching the strike-platforms in time.. we’ve got one hell of a final mission ahead of us. entrance into the orbital platform is rather easy. instead of well-guarded barrage, we’re simply allowed in.. d’aghh we’ve made it this far. there’s no point in making a fuss over crap like this.. though we are greeted by the most peculiar looking level yet. the interior of the platform is of course space looking. replicating that feeling of cramped-ness that i get whenever i see the inside of the ISS. showing off its long verticality. the walls are numerous and hex-like. there’s (what i assume to be doors) reaching sll the way up to the ceiling. it feels like i’ve stepped foot into a beehive. ICL though, the whole time i was just thinking about the “Deadly Complex” map from Pixel Gun 3D. maybe that’s too much of a deep-cut.. not really my fault as this mission replicates that every-man-for-himself, Hunger Games feeling. i think it’s apt. thankfully it wasn’t as much of a maze as much as it was just a straight shot. the team decides to split up here. playing as Luger was probably the right pick. so far the multiple character gimmicks only barely won me over. there have been a few clues as to who does/doesn’t work best in each match. someone like Luger is often beamed down during those large firefights, while a guy like Rico can tank it with no problem. Hakha can cross Helghan laser-wire and Luger can sneak in and around through ventilation.. while Templar can.. do.. well, nothing. he’s just.. bland.. i mean geez; his skin is one of the two default NPC models. or maybe it’s the other way around. but even his loadout is done better; see Hakha. why play as him when the other characters, (even Rico) are cooler, and whose built-in mechanics already justify you picking them. shrugs. Luger’s sneaking ability shines within this mission. instead of runnin’ n gunnin’, you can sleuth through. like before, i’m still stumped at the stealthing capabilities of this game. the AI is just naïve enough where they aren’t always all-knowing. and the sneak takedown is instantaneous. making it ultra satisfying. it’s more fruitful to go in guns-a-blazing, but having the choice.. them incorporating an attempt at a spin.. it felt like a breeze rolling thru the window. it’s almost too subtle for it’s own good. i’m just hoping that it’s built upon in the next games. back to Luger; you can sidestep the firefights by sneaking through the ingenious, conveniently human-sized air ducts, which leads me straight to where i need to be. i had a bad habit of only picking Luger for missions that had no unique route for her. i guess since Hakha and Templar’s frames aren’t svelte enough for them to fit.. those vents.. sticking out.. taunting me. it became a sore sight.
nevertheless this segment finally cemented the mechanic into my databanks. i passed by so many vent grates, but due to the consequences of my actions at the start of the mission i had to give up hopes of ever entering them. when.. when will i learn? will my fantasies ever be quenched? unsure. i’ll answer this later; right now, we’re soo close to General Adams. the platform’s expansive. we’re only the bottom part. he’s most likely towards the head of the craft, near it’s control source. taking a conveyor out towards the other side, it finally clocks to me. we’re in space. as in.. outer space. it’s funny, for a Halo killer there hasn’t been much of that. better late than never i suppose. the conveyor itself is translucent. Vekta’s swirly, painting-esque expanse instantly fills your entire view. and ships glide back and forth. ships that bear a striking resemblance.. to.. the.. aw crap.. – it’s the Earth Fleet! they’ve arrived. looks like we’ve finally cut it too close. and with General Adams still at the helm of the Orbital Cannon Beam of Death™.. this won’t end well. as if on queue with my thoughts, a giant ray-beam blows into the ship at the head of the fleet. and chaos ensues. the Earth Fleet never got the notice to avert from Vekta. a remarkable divide is drawn in the sand after the betrayal of both Helghan and ISA honchos. it feels as though the conveyor couldn’t possibly go any slower. i’m lost in thought as to the extent of damages. and by the vista that appears just behind it.
the tip of the platform has the same makeup as it’s previous components. somehow the hexagonal pattern that adorns the wall’s become even more fragile and bleak. uncertainty fills the air, seemingly thick enough to cut with a knife. from both sides of the war. our crew decides to split up. of course i played as Luger.. allowing for a more elusive route to General Adams. weaving from duct to ladder. you can listen in on the conversations had between the final front of Helghan soldiers where they not-so-subtly describe how scattered their forces have become.. (little did they know..) more than just my teeth are clenched as i’m involved in a handful of fumbled stealth maneuvers. i’m lucky enough to reach the control room unscathed, where i soon realized i came underprepared. this final assault consists of a new type of enemy.. Helghan Bodyguards. set to protect those of the highest order. General Adams, with his back firmly against the wall, is accompanied by 14 of these bastards. and they seriously mean business. these are the toughest enemies by far. playing as Luger, all i’ve got is a submachine gun and pocket knife. as much as i’d like to go in slicing and dicing, my gear won’t stand a chance. i’m no match for this onslaught. doomed to die, reload, die, reload, ’til the end of eternity. attempting to find something.. anything to cheese this encounter. i try all the tools i can.. rummaging hopelessly through my bag of tricks. that’s when i realize.. the sniper, while not technically fit for this encounter, it seems to do enough damage to the Bodyguards – with the added benefit of somehow being able to strike through glass. i’d be remiss if i didn’t mention the giant soccer ball shaped dome in the center of the control room, which is translucent with glass. this could work.. the games solution to increased difficulty is to simply give the enemies aimbot. doesn’t matter if they’re turned around, or if i’m bein sneaky.. their bullets travel right through unto me. but i persist. Templar, Hakha, and Rico waltz on in just barely before it’s too late. there’s only so much space for me to be pushed back unto. unfortunately they’re not much help. they never allow for a brief lapse in recouperation. every time i think i’m safe, a Helghan slips through my grasp and manages to catch me off-guard. they stand there idly watching as i take him out. but i persist!
the uncertainty of the back ‘n forth closely resembles an arm-wrestling match. advancing on; that’s when i finally see him. General Adams. that bastard himself. off to the right in one of the last sectors left unsearched. he couldn’t even face us like a real man.. hiding behind his mothers skirt (e.g. the Bodyguards).. visually you know this is final showdown. in my experience, it’s easy to mistake the penultimate battle for the final battle. but there’s no mistaking this one. in a karmic twist of fate Adam’s is the one with no space left to maneuver. his back is *literally* against the wall. the architecture of the final room is oddly flat. the same could even be said for the entirety of the showdown. the riskiness of our arrival is conveyed well. and so is the franticness of our final offensive. we’ve hampered their efforts enough for them to resort to the big guns. but i just don’t know anything about General Adams. in fact; this games biggest blemish is just that. it feels as though we’ve been thrown into a second season of a TV show, but without the added context of the previous episodes. Adam’s betrayal didn’t make any sense to me. yeah, you know he’s a bad guy (the cinematics make that clear), but those are the only times we get to learn about him. he has no extended dialogue.. or something like a chase sequence, where motives are explained – he’s simply noted as being here. and he has a semi-monologue. but it’s anxious and nonsensical. though it was expressed very well.. through his tone/emphasis. fihgting him, he’s got a lot of health. but the true foes here are the other bodyguards in the hallway. it took me a while for me to realize he wasn’t exactly that tough of a foe. yet for some reason i still kept focus on him. guess i was motivated by my disdain for him.. hm.. maybe he kinda works afterall. i admit gunning him down was extremely satisfying. and for once there was a sense of brevity. without any other tricks, this really is the end of the line.
the game transitions from his lifeless corpse into a cutscene depicting him at 1 HP.. the entire platform is engulfed in flames. and Adams finds himself caught between it all, whimpering.. and unable to find his way out. dooming to death by the rubble that’s caved in. crushing him and muffling his scream. our heroes may have cleared the room, but they’re not free yet. while managing their escape Hakha finds himself facing down the barrel of the same fate as General Adams, as he’s caught beneath some equipment. pressured by the imminent launch of the shuttle, and lost in the sea of gunfire and explosions.. it seems as though they’re going to need to leave him behind.. that is until Rico steps up.. tossing aside his grudge for the Helghan race, and rescuing Hakha. and i’ll admit – it was endearing. the entire time Rico’s nearly screwing over the team by his refusal to get along with Hakha.. even though he’s proved himself more than worthy of joining our cause. i guess there’s the chance that he’s a deep cover operative, made to go to extreme lengths to foil Jan’s plans. if he’s got to kill his fellow kin, then so be it. but i don’t think this is the case.. (especially after playing it.) it was very unexpected.. i mean, considering how trigger happy Rico’s been. it shows how these trials and tribulations have united the group, even through their inner-conflicts with one another. they work well as a team. with Hakha around his shoulder, the group attempt to fend off the last wave of enemies before launch. caught in the crossfire Rico takes a shot to the chest. luckily.. he’s pulled into the shuttle just in the nick of time. with Adams defeated, the remainder of the Earth Fleet is able to make it by. the ending’s vague of whether or not the Helghan threat is relieved (we all know it’s not). but for now. all is still. their shuttle lingers through a debris field as we’re given one final shot of the orbital platform.. before it erupts into a fiery explosion. and this.. was Killzone (2004). woah.. it really hasn’t clocked to me just how old this game is. a lot of it’s shortcomings could easily be attributed to this. it’s just that old. but in many departments i consider it to have a strong foothold. the trickiness of the controls and a return to form made it a challenging, yet genuine. yeah.. the cast is a bit spotty. but it’s gimmick of alternating routes and abilities was a worthwhile introduction. no doubt there were map variations i missed while i was lost in the heat of a firefight. it’s perfectly bleak and detritus. using a diverse array of locales, not so dissimilar to Halo. though not nearly as eccentric. i generally think that the “Halo Killer” shtick wasn’t necessary, and was ultimately what doomed it. i think it’s beautiful for it’s own merits. it’s gritty, and in an ideal world my own perception would be coated in that pulchritudinous grainy texture. and to be frank.. it looks good for how old it is. it toed the line during the time where most games began to switch from that glued together, low-poly hell heaven (different strokes for different folks) to something far more polished. besides a few distant facades it’s make-up is surprisingly not outdated. gameplay-wise; i’m a bit iffy. it replicates Halo’s repetitive landscape that sprawls on and on.. it’s passible. it rarely stretches on too long. though i think it could have benefited from taking place strictly in urban environments. from all of the cinematics it’s made clear that we’re meant to be fighting through Vekta’s cityscapes. i like the snow, and the vegetation. but it wasn’t fitting. it felt oddly.. vacant. the gunplay too was similarly passable. i don’t really have more to say that hasn’t been said already. at times it did scratch that Halo itch. and for a franchise exclusive to the Playstation.. i believe it’s something to be commemorated. it wasn’t simply a crappy clone. the silver lining is it’s distinct persona.. and fast-forward a few years; Killzone didn’t stop there. don’t know how others feel, but the Killzone 2 was everywhere. extremely acclaimed. while the original Killzone was tied to the PS2 the rest of the series would find homes spread out through future consoles. before being totally phased out. left to rot in Sony’s backlogs.. (to be cont.. look forward to my Killzone 2 write-up U_U)