XCOM: Enemy Unknown

I can’t even recall the last time where I was really entertained by a strategy game, not really. But if my memory is a credit to anything, I think it was maybe two years before this 2012 and the game was a little thing called RUSE, which was of course developed by EUGEN SYSTEMS. Much like RUSE, I stood or rather sat in one of my early morning marathons and was stuck looking at the marketplace for which Microsoft has utilized on their console. I came to XCOM, which I had heard of but knew absolutely nothing about other than my memory reminding me of a first person shooter.

This was not a first person shooter. The demo that XCOM ENEMY UNKNOWN gave me got me immediately interested, hooked, and dying to play it; so with what little change I had on hand I decided in favor of wasting it on this game and I will tell you right now I have no critical regrets about the decision, though I imagine my stomach will soon disagree. XCOM is a turn-based strategy that smells of the golden era of strategy gaming, which was in my opinion between the age of 12 and 16 for my experience. That said, XCOM is atypical of alien invasion science fiction and pulls out quite a few tropes.

XCOM is separated into two main sections; management and combat. The management section is divided between manufacturing items and upgrades through engineering, researching viable technologies and mission essential equipment, maintaining your infantry in the most basic way, responding to council requests for items or aid, and intercepting UFO’s. I may say that responding to aid from council nations can be the most taxing as do you really want that paycheck from China or those engineers from Russia? The catch though is if you ignore one or the other their stress rating goes up and if it hits the maximum there goes your funding for the project. It’s fun, but sometimes I feel the stress levels go up way too high, way too quick.

In the combat section, you have your squad in a turn-based scenario where you try to complete the objective of your mission. This usually ends up pretty vanilla; I do have to say as it’s usually one of four situations in my personal experience. Defeat all enemies, escort a vital civilian, rescue civilians before the aliens annihilate them, or my personal least favorite… disable the bomb. On the 360, the controls stick where they probably shouldn't as well, which is honestly the biggest complaint I have about XCOM. As I try to move an individual into cover, the analog likes to decide that person should die and be sent to an open area with no cover and just standing around like an idiot.

As for story, from what I've felt from owning it for like three or four days is pretty much simple and coasting. Alien invasions and abductions start happening and you are designating with finding out why and how to stop it. This ends up leading you out of the tutorial and into the bulk. I do like story in my strategy, but for some reason this doesn’t bother me.  The graphics are also simple but up to spunk as far as my tastes go and the voiceover work by the cast is just as well.


The game doesn't ask much out of you, except maybe to not die. Actually that is probably the polar opposite of what this game wants out of you as when you play this game you will die. Especially if you are not a veteran strategy gamer and coming from me who played difficult matches on games like Age of Empires II, Stronghold, and the Hearts of Iron series, I would say even the easy difficulty provides enough challenge at times for me. I love this game though, despite the tiny things like sabotaging my squad on the rare mission and having really no easy mode (easy is disguised, disguised as normal!), not to mention it has the most imitating score of “awesome”; to put it bluntly, the soundtrack pretty much sounds to me like Mass Effect, which is good. In the end, this is a good… maybe great strategy game and if you like alien invasion science fiction or turn-based strategy this is a must have in your collection.

Borderlands 2: Gunzerking Boogaloo

I have a confession to make: I don't really like co-op loot games. The reason why, is that even when I play with my friends, every chest found becomes a mad dash to get the best equipment; and if I didn't make that ridiculous sprint-jump, I get left with whatever dross the others didn't want. You know, the stuff that isn't even worth the $20 sell price.

Thanks guys, i'll just stick with the level 1 gun I started with

It's a story of self-preservation, of course. But it's also the story of why I played Borderlands 1 solo for my first two characters. So when all of my friends bought Borderlands 2 and called to me to join them on their shooty-shooty blow up stuff rampage, I decided i'd give the sequel a chance.

Provided with less dub-step than the commercials

So the story of Borderlands 2 is pretty much this: Four (or Five, depending on your DLC) Vault Hunters head to Pandora in search of answers, money, adventure and all that good stuff. And as always, each as special abilities that give them an edge in combat, so that they can get revenge on the asshole that tried to blow them up. 

Pictured: Asshole

So our four (or five) amigos all head out to get better guns and get stronger so they can shoot lightning, acid and flame rounds at him and his minions to get what they want. Which is...revenge...or to save the world or something. 

Honestly, the characters do fall into the classic RPG world of silent heroes. Apart from audio logs that give backstory and their shouts and grunts on critical hits or death screams, you'll be emoting your character's emotions in your mic more than they will with their voices. 

Picture: The Commando, The Girl, The Robot/Alien? and the Guy with an Accent

That doesn't mean there's a lacking story. Honestly, the characters in Borderlands 2 are silent to allow the previous protagonists a chance to talk and interact with one another. So the previous bland "Vault Hunters 1-4" now actually have fuller, dynamic personalities and how they react with one another.

Hey...remember us?

So far here's how Borderlands 2 can be subscribed, with regards to my friend and co-author on the blog Greg: "Borderlands 2 is just Borderlands 1 with a plot and more whacked-out guns."

And the answer is yes, it is. But there's more! Customization, new vehicles, a much more prominent villain! 

I love to hate you, Jack.

The real protagonist of Borderlands 2 is Handsome Jack. Wait...what? Okay, so he might not be the protagonist (since that's the player's job) but he is the impetus for all of the events of Borderlands 2. It's his story; it's his game. He's the one who has brought everyone to Pandora, he's the one behind the curtain; honestly, he's the best part of the game; and Gearbox understood that, and made him the voice in your ear throughout most of the campaign. 

You will love Jack when he talks about his awful pretzels or his diamond horse named Butt Stallion. And you will hate Jack when he does things to you; things I cannot say because they are HEAVY in the spoiler alert section. He kills, maims, destroys because he's a sociopath and he's convinced himself that he IS the hero of the story. 

Borderlands 2 is fun, it never takes itself too seriously, but when the drama does come down it hits you square in the gun and kicks you while you're writhing in pain. New characters add flavor and humor to the story; while getting to see old NPCs and protagonists reappear along your journey make the story worth experiencing. 

Oh, and there's this: 

That'sssssssssss a very nice Borderlandssss you have there.

It's that kind of game.

Halo 4: The Forerunner's Revenge of the Precursor's Plans of the Reckoning...Trilogy?

Well, we know it's got Master Chief in it.

Halo 4 is the newest Halo game out from Microsoft's internal studio, 343 studios, making this game a departure from the Bungie Halo games. Oh no, cried purists who grew distrustful any time a favorite game was doled out to a secondary studio.

I can say without a doubt, 343 studios has taken what everyone loves about Halo, and they've kept it sacred. There's something dangerous about putting a popular game on a pedestal, and refusing to change anything due to reverence of the past (or do to easy copy/paste jobs in games to keep a franchise milking money for years to come).

I'm looking at you Call of Duty Modern Warfare Black Ops Combat 25.

One great thing about Bungie's development of Halo is that they weren't afraid to change the schema of the game, adding dual-wielding, armor abilities, new playable characters, etc; as the series went on. 

The number one cause of me screaming BULLSHIT!!! in 2004. 

Bungie allowed the game to change and evolve, and each game has a sort of niche factor to it. Halo 1 had that classic deathmatch feel to it, Halo 2 was definitely an arms race on weapon load-outs, Halo 3 added ridiculous weapons like the gravity hammer; Reach added armor abilities. Minor tweaks of course, but each one changed how we played the game. While some of my friends really focused on certain weapons, like the Sniper Rifle/Battle rifle, each game I found myself experimenting with different weapons, different combinations, to really change my play style.

Of course I was brutally killed and tea bagged constantly. 

DAMNIT DUDE JUST STOP

Halo 4 does have changes in it. Gone is dual wielding (just like in Reach) and weapons have been changed here and there. Armor abilities are still in play, and weapons have been tweaked adding more power or "nerfing" of weapon types to get everyone out there experimenting to find their best fit. Wait. Armor abilities, no dual wielding, change in tone of the story, more Spartans than just the Chief...isn't this just Halo Reach with better graphics?

Now with more Master Chief! 

There are some changes! Hold on! It's just not a radical jump. Each of the changes have been, like I've said, tweaks and minor changes. Halo as a series has been the same throughout. There as super space soldiers, and they are fighting in space, or on earth, or on a colonized planet, or on a giant magical space gravity field planet...it's not War and Peace!

Still, have Nikolai battle some aliens and it'd be a much easier read.

   The biggest change is the story. The tone, I mean. Halo 4 is less of a race against time against an evil alien menace (I mean, there IS that, but it's more background) instead in the foreground is the relationship between Spartan John 117 and his AI companion Cortana. 

She keeps getting sexier and I keep getting weirder. 

Cortana, who has evolved from nagging voice in our heads, telling us to go to objective after objective is more prominent than any of the Halo games before. She's losing her mind, going into a state of rampancy (basically AI alzheimers mixed with a bit of a god complex) of which there is no known cure. So Chief does what he does best: He says he'll fix her, and off we go, guns blazing killing more aliens in the process. But even more so for the human element of Cortana, we get a heck of a lot more Master Chief in this game! 

And more of Steve Downes' smooth sultry voice.

For the first few missions, the dynamic is strictly Master Chief/Cortana. Back and forth quips as you blast your way through covenant and a new enemy that can be described as the villains of Tron with skull faces.

Wow. Commander Sark got scary all of a sudden. 

Of course the story takes a turn for the crazy when a ship full of fresh, meat shield ready space marines finds their way into Halo 4's crazy inside-out planet, and The Chief, Cortana and their new friends have to save the galaxy before bedtime. 

That's it for the story portion of the review. I'm the kind of guy who doesn't want to tell all the nitty gritty details, because then there's no point to play the campaign mode. So, next stop is the portion of the game I fear the most: Multiplayer! 

DAMNIT

There are 3 ways to play multiplayer in Halo 4. Co-Op campaign, WarGames (the standard team based/deathmatch/crazy rules multiplayer mode) and the Co-Op Spartan Ops: a new mission a week multiplayer game that tells the story of a Spartan IV team.

WarGames is the basic "multiplayer" mode. It has all the bells and whistles leading to 16 player deathmatches, capture the flags, king of the kills; all the good fancy game modes. Plus Flood Mode (infecting other players) and an improved Grifball mode.

Spartan Ops is pretty much mission based levels, where you're sent to eliminate X amount of enemies, destroy X amount of targets and head to extraction. For Co-op lovers like myself, it adds more fun (due to my terrible aim in games like CTF and Slayer) by allowing me to brutally murder the computer, who doesn't glitch to the top of the screen and doesn't tell me what horrible things he's done to my mother with the voice of a 10 year old. 

QUIT CALLING ME A NOOB!

The big difference in the online play is the new "load-out" system. You start out with your basic Assault Rifle and Pistol, and you kill your way to more experience points to unlock new weapons, new armor abilities and such. This "carrot-on-a-stick" leveling system is seen in other FPS games and in my opinion, has become something of a dead horse beaten on by every publisher now. Still, it does give a goal-system to unlock better abilities to be able to hold your own against other players. Just, keep your head down while those guys with the sniper rifles are lining your head into a shot.

The Verdict

Halo 4 is not going to change the face of the First Person Shooter forever. It still holds true to the form and function of Halo: Combat Evolved, ten years after its launch. And to be honest, that's not a bad thing. It adds new things with each new game, Master Chief and friends boldly travel to new worlds, spilling blue and purple blood to protect humanity, and it's still fun. 

Nothing beats split screen slayer, elbowing your friends and shouting to quit screen watching. Halo 4 can still deliver that, though now you'll need another tv, system, game and a LAN chord for the other two guys (thanks 2 person split screen). You can make parties with friends and spend hours killing, camping, sniping and tea bagging, or you can play with random people and risk getting called sexist and racial terms by kids. 

Hey, it's Halo. It's still fun. And it's good to see the Chief back in action. 

An Introduction and a Review

Hello, come one and come all to Half-Wit Reviews, my new blog in which I take games that I have played and review them. Pretty simple, right?

I'll start off introductions, my name is Drew Mears, and I've been around games since I was born. It didn't hurt that my two older sisters enjoyed playing games, and somewhere between 1989 and 1991, my parents purchased a Nintendo Game Console with around thirty games to choose. You had your standard:

Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt, Zelda, Zelda II, Mega Man, and  Mike Tyson's Punch Out!! Hell, we even had Snake Rattle 'n' Roll.

Damn you confusing Q*Bert-esque world!

Needless to say, I had a good start at gaming as a life-long hobby. Sure, my background doesn't hold as much weight as to those guys who grew up with the Atari 2600 or those blessed (cursed?) with an Intellevision.

What is this? I don't even...

I've grown up with the NES, SNES, Genesis, Sega CD, Playstation, N64, Xbox, Gamecube, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii....and don't get me started on the damn handhelds!

Behold, the battery devourer! 

So here's the thing: I've been playing games as long as I can remember. I love 'em. I feel that games can be great to waste time with, or to tell someone's story beyond the scope of the novel or the movie; since video games are the marriage of story and control. At the same time, I won't act as if i'm the end all idea of game reviewers. I'm not going to assign a score to a game and declaim it as gold or shit. Instead, i'm going to examine games I've played and do my best to give my opinion on the game. And that opinion  dear reader, is something you can take as you will. 

So, i'll start tonight off with a review of a game that has just released, and I have not 100% beaten. So, take it as a "spoiler-lite" review. Oh yeah, the game is Halo 4. 

Insert ambient music here.

Proceed to the review!