Hydrophobia: Prophecy

Hydrophobia is a strange little game, and it really does feel like an unfinished product. It sets you up with elements of a psychological thriller, but then never mentions it again, half the characters you interact with just disappear without any explanation, and to top it all off it's only about 2 and a half hours long if you just buzz through it. And that's not to mention the sometimes infuriating combat and wonky camera controls which auto correct to the back of your character even when you don't want them to. The game doesn't look that great either (besides the water but I'll get to that later) but it's not ugly enough to do any more damage.

Honestly the most frustrating part of this game was just the complete failure to capitalize on the more interesting story and background elements that they set up for you. The game opens with the main character having a nightmare, in her nightmare she has drowned, and at the end she turns into a zombie and lunges at the camera, thus waking her up. Right off the bat I was thinking the character was going to be cripplingly afraid of water and that we were going to get into some really good survival horror type segments. Wellp, I was fucking wrong. THEY NEVER MENTION HER FEAR AGAIN. It's like it just never happened, seriously if you are going to make a game, and realize half way through that you cant afford to complete it as you originally intended, JUST CUT THAT SHIT OUT. I wouldn't have gotten my hopes up for it if you hadn't left it in the game. It's like if Live Free or Die Hard started with some fucked up nightmare sequence involving a goat and no small amount of crisco, but nothing else in the film was changed. It just feels completely out of place, like it doesn't belong there at all (that's probably what the goat was thinking). And the odd part is, I played the updated version, so that bizarre little tidbit made it through 2 iterations of the game.

Hydrophobia also has a problem with names. Throughout most of the game the main character refers to her handler as "Scoot" and the only other friendly character is the security chief, who is ALWAYS referred to by his last name. But when the terrorist leader captures one of them (i don't know who because the cutscene graphics are MUCH different than the ingame) she refers to him by his normal first name, so I had no fucking idea who she was killing or why it should matter. In a game this short, it seems like a serious misstep to assume that the players are going to know the characters well enough to recognize them by a name they have never been referred to with. It's REALLY HARD TO CARE ABOUT A CHARACTER'S DEATH WHEN I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHO IT IS.

And then we get to the combat, this starts up just shy of half way through the game, and is severely frustrating, especially when it all but cuts out the very entertaining platforming bits. The problem with the combat isn't balancing, your enemies are typically fairly easy to kill (and so are you). But they can pop out from god damned anywhere. But the thing is, the game gets you accustomed to a "kill what you see" approach, where you walk into a room, there are 4 enemies, you kill 4 enemies, and the fight is over. But then randomly it will throw respawning enemies at you, and their respawn points make NO FUCKING SENSE. For example, in one scene I was running down a narrow hallway, the door behind me was sealed and the room on the other side of it filled with water, ahead of me was one enemy, I quickly killed him, only to be shot in the back of the head by a shotgunner who came from NOWHERE. Did the fucking guy just happen to be out for a swim in that particular part of the ship? What the hell. And because of the lighting sometimes an enemy can be shooting at you, from somewhere in front of you, but remain completely invisible even when firing. That is just about as frustrating as combat can be, being killed by an enemy who is invisible not due to some special suit he is wearing, but due to bad lighting programmers.

However, beneath the many layers of dust and tarnish there is a pretty solid 3D platformer here. The story is pretty negligible, the combat is very very hit and miss, and the voice acting and story telling get pretty damn rough. But jumping and swinging and shimmying from place to place is really very fun. And the underwater scenes are usually tense enough (though they would be much more tense if the characters fear of water were ever acted upon). And, in keeping with its name, the water graphics are absolutely stunning, they achieved a rare feat here, water that actually behaves like water. When you open a door the room quickly floods, if you take a wave directly it will likely knock you over and sweep you away.

There are even a couple of Half Life 2 like puzzles that involve moving floating objects underneath platforms to get the platforms higher. Basically, whenever you don't have a gun, and you aren't worried about substance, Hydrophobia is a hell of an entertaining game.

When all is said and done, I have to take into account the fact that I only paid 3 dollars for this game. And for that price, it's absolutely brilliant (thank you steam sales). It is far from a perfect animal, but when I get more fun out of it than going to a movie, and it costs far less, I'd say I'm satisfied. As a game critic though I can't be biased and rate this game higher than it deserves just because it was cheap. So I give it a 5 out of 10. There really is a good game here waiting to be made, but it just isn't here yet. If an updated or finished version was released though, I would almost certainly be on board to give the franchise a second chance. Especially if it's released as another inexpensive title. At the best I get what Hydrophobia should have been, and at the worst I get an afternoon of fast paced occasionally frustrating entertainment. Hydrophobia is still on sale through steam for about 4 dollars for the next day or so, and it really is worth picking up if you have a few bucks lying around.


Hydrophobia Prophecy and Live Free or Die Hard are property of their respective owners
All else is ©Alex Jenkins 2011

Green Lantern (the movie)

I've been looking forward to the release of the Green Lantern for a while now, so when i popped onto rottentomatoes.com to see how things were looking I was more than a little bit dismayed by the generally low ratings and harsh reviews. None the less I made my way to the theater earlier today with some hesitation. But honestly I was pleasantly surprised. No it wasn't groundbreaking and it wasn't the best superhero movie ever, or even this summer, but it was really pretty good. I apologize in advance because this isn't much of a review. I'm really just trying to piece together why critics hated it so much.

The cast was solid, and the writing was pretty good for this kind of movie. I think where a lot of the summer crowd is going to lose interest is in its relatively deep back story. It doesn't jump straight to the action, it spends a lot of time explaining where the Green Lanterns come from, and how their abilities work. It's sort of a blessing that so much time is spent on this back story because when the action does kick into gear, it gets a little bit overdone. The special effects are more than good enough but some of the things used in combat are a little bit ridiculous. For example (spoilers) when the Green Lantern manifests two fighter jets to keep himself from being sucked into the sun. When things are kept in the realm of giant green fists and bolts of energy the action is cool. But a few goofy scenes do mess it up a little bit. So I guess I have to give the critics at least a point there, but really the weak moments are few and fairly far between so it's barely worth mentioning.

The cast was great all around. Ryan Reynolds did his typical smart ass personality and used it to great effect here, fitting the script and character perfectly. The female lead was thankfully not overly involved in the movie, nothing ruins a cool superhero movie like an overbearing love interest (*cough* Spiderman *cough cough*). But when she is on screen she is SUPER hot and a pretty decent actress, who, against the norm, ENCOURAGES, Hal to go beat up bad guys, and at one point actually HELPS. The supporting characters were all competent enough that they didn't take anything away from the movie, but only a couple of them actually added anything, most notably the villains lackey on earth played by Peter Sarsgaard. It's hard to explain much about him without ruining some things, so if you don't want things ruined for you, skip to the next paragraph. Sarsgaard plays an unassuming college professor and xenobiologist who is originally called in to examine the body of the Green Lantern who passed the ring on to Hal (aka Reynolds). He comes across as a nice guy and is even offended that his father pulled strings to get him a position that others deserve more than him. But he is corrupted by yellow energy (aka Fear), he slowly loses his mind and sets off, as you would expect, to try and kill Hal. When Sarsgaard is killed you really just feel bad for him, he is just as much a victim as any of the innocents.

Probably the best aspect of the film is the fact that it never takes itself too seriously. Reynolds friends and even his acquaintances immediately recognize him in his mask, and there are some subtle jabs at the superhero genre as a whole.

Again, I really have a hard time understanding why Green Lantern got hit so hard by critics. Obviously it's hardly an artsy or revolutionary film, I mean it's a superhero movie so what do you expect? Really I thought it was a step above most (not all) superhero movies that have been released as of late. The movie always felt like it knew where it was going and it didn't feel padded. But I suppose from the average American the fact that it goes in depth and doesn't have THAT much action means it's bad. Too much story not enough action. It's basically the same reason that video games have been gradually devolving. The general populace is so god damned stupid that any plot that goes above and beyond "ARRR YOU KILL PARENTS I DEVOTE LIFE TO KILLING YOU ARRRRR" is looked upon as needlessly complex and convoluted. This is sad and pathetic. I swear to the giant wizard in the sky, if we keep this up Idiocracy is going to come true.


Green Lantern is property of DC comics.
All else is ©Alex Jenkins 2011

Metro 2033

Well it's Russian. Which means awesome accents, lots of vodka, and one of the most deeply disturbing post apocalyptic worlds ever imagined. In Metro, Earth has fallen victim to a devastating nuclear holocaust. The surface has become incapable of supporting human life and is home to all kinds of horrific mutant creatures, so the people of Moscow have taken shelter in the subway tunnels beneath the city. As a result of this claustrophobic setting you always feel trapped, even when you come across one of the many human settlements in the tunnels (about half of which would rather kill you than help you). You would think that the few segments in which you see the open air of the surface would be a relief. But they are just the complete opposite, not only are they filled with far more dangerous enemies than in the tunnels below, but you must constantly wear a gas mask. This impedes your vision and hearing both, and every few minutes you have to stop and change out your filter. This constant stress makes you actually look forward to going back to the dark enclosed tunnels which have become your home.

There's a lot to talk about with this game, but I guess the most notable thing is the atmosphere of unrelenting oppressiveness that has been laid over the entire experience. From the moment Artyom (the player) wakes up in his tiny room, which makes a college dorm room look like a palace, to the final moments of the game, this feeling of hopelessness just never lets up. Ammo is almost always scarce, you are not survivable, and if you aren't paying attention you are going to wind up dead. Either because you will miss the enemy sneaking up on you, or because you will miss the fact that your pneumatic rifle is at 0 pressure and might as well be firing cotton balls. Or you could be in a dark corridor (they're ALL dark) and forget to charge your flashlight, and by the time you realize you can only see 2 feet in front of your face the mutants are right on top of you.

Most of the Time you will have a companion with you, and typically when you have a companion it's not as freaky, partially because of the company and because you cant get lost, they almost always show you were to go. But that's not to say that it's a bad decision for a horror game because what ends up happening is this. You get used to having a companion, they help you out, they keep you alive and vice-versa. But when your companion is gone, and you are still out in the tunnels, it makes everything seem that much lonelier, and that much creepier.

The story is relatively simple, though by current FPS standards it's positively transcendent. It more or less breaks down to this, Artyom's home is being attacked by mutants called Dark Ones. These Dark Ones break peoples minds to such an extent that a human who has been attacked by one will die within a day or two, without suffering any real physical injury. Artyom is for some reason resistant to their attacks, while they are still capable of giving him some pretty violent hallucinations, they can never quite manage to finish him off. But Artyom's plan is essentially to go to the surface, find a functioning nuclear silo, and nuke the shit out of the surface above his home, hopefully without destroying his home in the process.

A Hallucination

A Dark One

And finally that brings us to the graphics, which are nothing short of stunning. It can't be easy to make a subway and a destroyed city seem so beautiful. Everything is meticulously detailed, honestly I'm pretty nit-picky when it comes to graphics, but I never found anything to complain about. That could be because the pacing of the game is so relentless that you rarely have time to stop and look, but I really think it's because Russians are crazy and refuse to release an unfinished product. But here are a couple of really spectacular examples of the games gorgeous environments.

There were very few things about the game that I didn't like, but probably the most troublesome was the partial voice-over of the main character. It's not that the voice acting or writing was bad, it's that he only speaks during loading screens. This is very strange, why hire a voice actor, but only have him speak when no one else can contribute to the conversation? It winds up getting a weird on numerous occasions where other characters will ask direct questions to Artyom, wait for a second or two of silence, and then act like Artyom had given them the answer they wanted. I felt like I was watching post apocalyptic Russian Dora the Explorer. Usually this isn't a problem because your companions are typically quiet and you are often alone anyways. But it just seems strange to me to go through the trouble of hiring a voice actor, doing voice overs, but then giving him no in game voice. I understand that most games which feature a silent main character, do so in an attempt to make you feel like you ARE the main character, and that's fine (I guess, honestly I just think it's lazy, I'm lookin' at you Valve) but it only works if the character NEVER has a voice.


I'm going to skip the breakdown here because the above review basically IS a breakdown. All in all Metro 2033 is a great action game and a competent horror game with some well executed new ideas, and a solid foundation of tried and proven ideas. That on top of a solid story earns it an 8/10 in my book. Also now seems like a decent time to point out that there is a sequel that was announced just a few days ago called Metro Last Light. Here's the trailer for all those interested.

Metro 2033 is property of 4A Games
All else is ©Alex Jenkins 2011

More Excuses.

So, I haven't updated. If you are one of the 5 people who reads this you have probably already noticed this and may want to know WHY I haven't updated. And there are really a few reasons. First and foremost is that I am pretty well broke and currently looking for a new job, which has taken up a decent chunk of time to begin with, and is also very stressful and makes me not WANT to write. 2nd is that I can't find any of my older games that anyone might really care to hear about. But if you want to let me know which of the following you'd rather hear about that'd be great Mark, since I know you're the only one likely to read this. 1. Metro 2033 (a Russian made survival horror FPS) 2. Dawn of War 2 (either the original or the Chaos expansion, its a sci fi RTS) 3. Borderlands (FPSRPG) 4. Fallout New Vegas (you know what that is) or 5. Mafia 2 (sort of like GTA but in the 40's and with Mafia and somewhat less open). Let me know because I am an indecisive bastard lately and I just don't care.