J T wrote:Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (PC) 1/5
I recently purchased this because it was fairly cheap, but I haven't played it yet. The last one I played in the series was the first Modern Warfare, so I'm a little behind the times. But after hearing your talk on Spec Ops: The Line, I think it sounds like I would enjoy it more.
Anyway, on to beaten games.
1. Sniper Elite V2 (PS3)(TPS)
2. Teen Agent (PC)(Point and Click Adventure)So for those of you who are unaware, I enjoy a good stealth-based game from time to time, and that is what the Sniper Elite series goes for, only as opposed to dropping in with a sword a la Rikimaru in Tenchu, wearing a variety of costumes to infiltrate a locale while hunting my target via Hitman, or relying on an array of gadgetry and personal skill like in Splinter Cell, Sniper Elite expects you to be able to do it with a non-suppressed rifle. So missions mostly entail you making your way to a firing position and then making a well-placed shot...though you usually have to kill quite a few people to get there.
The plot in Sniper Elite V2 is a pessimistic take on the end of World War 2: you're a lone American sniper, sent in to Nazi-held Berlin in the closing days of the war to assassinate five scientists who worked on the V2 rocket before they can defect to the Soviet Union. But Berlin is steadily collapsing, so you will have to navigate its deteriorating cityscape as battles break out street to street between the Nazis and Soviets...neither of which like you. Sure, the USSR was with the Allies...but not really. In fact one of the missions is to stop the Soviets from launching a chemical weapon at London so they can claim the Nazis did it and end WW2 with Britain in a much weaker position to stop the spread of Communism. So in reality, Sniper Elite V2 is not a WW2 game, it's a game about the Cold War and how it was being waged even before the death of Hitler.
But hey, it's still WW2. So rifle scopes don't have a ridiculous number of zooming levels, the only suppressed weapon you get is a British bolt-action pistol, and what you carry is taken from whatever you can scrounge off dead soldiers from both enemy armies. There are snipers in every building, tanks drive up and down the streets, and machine gun nests are as common as cockroaches. Probably the worst point of breaking this feeling was with your binoculars, which let you tag and track enemies and also display personal data about each soldier's rank, what they are wielding, and what their attitude is in regards to you. Admittedly a good sniper would know his enemies rank insignias and firearms of choice, so it's just a way of displaying that info to the player, but it feels like a severance from the time period.
There are a couple of other problems. The game suffers from some minor control issues, such as button prompts appearing when you are still too far away to perform an action. I was never able to climb on the first attempt. And there were several points where enemy AI would just go haywire, such as one level where a group of Russians decided to never leave their truck, but I had to kill them all to proceed. That was annoying.
Oh, and remember how the latest Mortal Kombat would show you x-rays of people getting devastated under your onslaught? There's a bullet cam that does that in Sniper Elite V2. It is disturbingly satisfying to see the damage you do with a well placed shot to a piece of the human body, being it watching their teeth go flying in a fountain of gore, their eyes pop as you slam a round through, or their heart and lungs tearing apart from a bullet you just fired. I severed one poor bastard's lower spine, and the round and bone fragments then tore through his intestines. I had to pause and set the controller down for a few minutes for that. I intentionally avoided testicular shots, but the game will show you those rupturing too.
Perhaps the coolest feature of the game, at least for me, is its focus on realistic bullet physics. As you play on higher difficulties, you must pay more attention to bullet drop, wind direction and resistance, and the possibility of a ricochet, as a shot not properly taken may bring both the Brownshirts and the Reds down on top of you. There is a lot of waiting in Sniper Elite V2, and impatience will more often get you killed then taking a steady hand and heart to your bloody business.
And now on a completely different note...
Yes, Teen Agent is free on GOG, which is the only reason I played it. I'm glad I did, as I thought the plot did make me chuckle occasionally, which allowed for some lightheartedness after finishing Sniper Elite V2. But it's a bizarre point-and-click game that doesn't always make sense in how you are supposed to go about things. Perhaps that is part of its quirky charm, but titles like Monkey Island managed to do things much better in my opinion. Ds, this is definitely not one that will change your mind.