It's been a while since I actually wrote a blog about videogames. Anyway, I beat Bulletstorm a while back which was a blast to play (it's nice to actually play a FPS that doesn't fall in the vein of "modern combat" or "enemy communist at war with Americans" that are all but cliche' nowdays). I actually rejoiced when the main melee button is the Spartan Kick instead of a knife stab :lol:. And as idiotic as the script is, I had quite a lot of laughs from the dialogue alone. Not very often I say it, but the game's immaturity left me with some very fond memories of collossal battles (don't want to spoil anything, but if you've played it...well, think Godzilla...then think homoerotic one-liners in an elevator :lol:.). Yes...playing Bulletstorm is one hell of a breath of fresh air :D.

Now, it comes down to crap: I played Shadow Harvest: Phantom Ops, and I hate it :|. I mean, there's nothing I do like from this game...it leaves a bad impression the moment I booted up the game. Let me tell you, I'm not one to judge things like bad acting or a terrible script because my B-Movie tastes leave me pretty tolerant to these things. But man...listening to the main character talk is so boring! I mean, I can literally imagine the voice actor rolling his eyes as he soulessly reads the script. As for controls...ok, in a game where you're in Somalia fighting one of the most brutal militias, why...WHY is there no sprint button here? :evil: Better yet, this is the WORST kind of game to not have a regenerating health...I mean, in this day and age, I was shocked that I dropped dead on the spot...because I didn't quite expect to have to actually use med packs (which are a pretty rare find in this game as it is...not to mention with the controls and the utterly horrible way of using cover that's actually worse than Kane and Lynch...). So, let's talk about the other, more insignificant ways this game tries its hardest to piss off any unlucky buyer. For some reason, the soldier character has some strange power that slows down time. Why is this in there? Hell if I know. I tried using it, maybe it'd lessen the burden of...looting med packs...but no. There's actually a limit that doesn't replenish on its own (and I've yet to figure out how to do so) and nothing really explains the purpose of...well, how to do anything.

You also have a useless night vision mode. Night vision? Useless? :o Yes :|. You see, it's not actually NVG...it's a green light that paints dark walls green, so it's still pretty damn hard to see where the hell you are (seriously...I would've settled for a flashlight...which this thing basically is, just a lot more painful to use than it should be). And there are encounters that completely catch you with your pants down. I mean, as linear as the game is, I still found it hard to find out exactly where I'm supposed to go (in one moment, I'm supposed to protect some rebels from a tank that's going to fire a shell at the building in 30 seconds. I'm expected to find an RPG...somewhere in the building to take it out. I failed the mission three times because: it was dark, and found out the hard way that I'm supposed to go up some indistinguishable stairs around the corner :lol:.).

Perhaps the worst offender is the way the guy holds a gun. It looks normal when you equip a two-handed rifle, but I :lol: when he's holding a pistol. You see, nothing wrong with holding a pistol with two hands, but when it looks like the guy's eating an invisible footlong sub sandwich...well, it's pretty lame. It's saving grace is when you play the stealth missions as some really teched-out broad. The optic camo is pretty cool (if completely useless, since you pretty much have set moments where you use it...most of the time, that thing's depleted until you find some batteries...which only last you as long as you're required to ninja through an environment). But that excitement wears thin when you see the weapon selection you have: a crossbow with different kinds of arrows, and the ability to sneak up behind people and melee kill them (oh...and don't get me started on the horrible, HORRIBLE introduction when you first play as her...there's a guy just...standing there, and the game tells you to move from cover to cover, because "you can't kill the guy because no one's sure if he's the opposing force, or the ally":roll:. So, you kill the guy, the mission fails. Anyway, took me a while to realize that it's "okay" if I get spotted for three seconds, because there's an indicator on how long you can be stared at out in the open before you hide and the guy shrugs it off :lol:. That's right...everyone in this game is completely wasted, and they need a good five seconds to figure out if this dame sneaking around is actually a super spy, or just a figment of their imagination. Oh, and by the time you get spotted about four times trying to move from cover to cover, you finally get the OK to wast the guy :|).

That's right...forget a silenced 9mm, or something equally useful. Let's stick to a one-shot crossbow, and hope the next guy doesn't turn around soon, so I can sneak up behind and stick a...Preadator claw....into his neck (you know, because for realism sake...no one's going to be caught dead carrying a bunch of primitive arrows on them, right? Naturally, running out of ammunition for said crossbow is pretty often...and the game loves to give you the middle finger when you do trigger an alarm, considering the woman refuses to pick up the AK 47 by her feet...nope, it's the ninja code of honor to die by the blade...or crossbow...or steel claw). Oh, and the one cool feature that's pretty much an excuse for why the programmers didn't feel like giving you the ability to hide dead bodies: you have these...nano...something that creates optical camouflage and makes dead bodies invisible for a time (no, I'm not making this up, sadly :lol:.). Which doesn't matter anyway. I've yet to experience AI that actually wonders what happened to the other 15 soldiers that oddly went AWOL a few seconds ago.

And, I must say...this game loves to show you cutscenes. I mean, in case I've got ADD and tend to forget what happened a minute ago, when you see the female ninja for the first time, I kid you not...I must've watched her repel down a chopper about 4 times :|. I mean, twice while playing as the male soldier, and when it snaps back to the ninja broad, I've watched it another two times. You know, just in case I'm wondering how it all happened again. Like I said, playing the stealth missions were a lot better than the all out wars, but not by much. It's like when your dog poops on the floor: cleaning up solid poop is a lot better than cleaning up diarrhea, but you're still playing with crap.