Recent reviews by KarlStolls

It's been a long time, Max.

Max Payne 1 and 2 were high water marks for third person shooters, the first for its gunplay and style and the second for pairing those elements with a tight story focus. The second game wrapped things up conclusively, such that fans could be justified in scoffing at the idea of a sequel. I certainly did when Max Payne 3 was announced, and it took a while before I could give it a fair shake. In the end it's not without problems, and any recommendation should come with a few warnings attached, both for series fans and people just looking for a shooter fix. Still, credit where it's due, Max Payne 3 earns the right to the title, even if (or perhaps because) it brings a different aesthetic to the table.

On the gameplay front, MP3 mostly succeeds at combining cover-based shooting with the more frenetic, two-fisted gunplay of the first two games. The mechanics and effects of shooting - how bullets hit the environment, how enemies react to being shot, how the guns sound and feel - are quite solid, though I do miss the old unlimited inventory for weapons. Cover works fine, bullet time is largely intact, and (on hard at least) your BT gauge recharges while you're under fire, as opposed to solely through kills. The "Last Stand" mechanism gives you a chance to take down your would-be killer after an otherwise fatal injury, provided you're carrying painkillers. Other gameplay modes remove the feature, but I found it a welcome backstop that didn't cheapen the danger of each encounter.

There's a good variety of environments for each chapter, and even the dingier locations usually don't settle for brown and gray. A couple flashback chapters touch on Max's life after the second game, and how he got to Brazil in the first place. An exploration element encourages you to look around, as each chapter has various clues that either explain the immediate situation or give broader context: a newspaper with financial reports, invoices, conspicuous bloodstains, etc. These don't affect the narrative in any way, but it did well to invest me in what was going on. Favelas in video games always seem to overstay their welcome, but I rarely got tired of one place before being carted off to somewhere else.

There are significant problems, of course. Level design is sometimes conducive to good gunfights, but too often you'll shootdodge, kill an enemy or three, and land right in the open where you are killed on the spot. I wound up using blindfire a lot simply because sticking my head up for more than a second was profoundly unwise, often getting me shot by enemies I didn't even know were there. Last Stand can sometimes trigger with an obstacle blocking your line of sight, preventing you from killing your target and forcing you to die. You can't even reload the last checkpoint during this, and must instead wait to die before doing so.

The game's cutscene-heavy approach has an awful habit of yanking control and dumping you in a dangerous starting position. Worse, it often inexplicably switches Max to a handgun regardless of what you're carrying, meaning you will start several fights under fire and waste precious seconds switching back to your main gun. Exploration is undermined at times by NPC friendlies urging you to hurry up, and you wind up in contrived shooter situations with annoying regularity: turret sections, forced slow-mo dives/breaches, escort missions, etc. To their credit, the escortees usually have the sense to get somewhere safe, but a few will die over and over until you figure out what you're doing wrong.

Storywise, I went in with low expectations but was pleasantly surprised at the overall quality. New York Noir has been swapped for a somewhat surreal stranger-in-a-strange-land motif. There's no Norse mythology, but Max remains the fallen hero to end all fallen heroes. He has since spent his life in a haze of booze and pills, and he's only just waking up to the larger goings-on. The highlighting of key words in a conversation works well with the use of unsubtitled Portuguese, giving the impression that Max, who doesn't speak the language, is gradually learning to pick things up from context. I'm curious if a native speaker can attest to the authenticity, but careful cutscene direction helped to establish characters' intentions, and the game did an excellent job selling the atmosphere to me.

The plot was intriguing and smartly grounded, a contrast of South American politics and high society with crushing poverty and pervasive corruption; less shadowy conspiracy and more the kind of evil that might actually happen when no one's looking. The writing does stumble at times, and Max's voice is wasted describing basic actions, like turning a valve wheel or picking up another bottle of painkillers. The game also lacks for a strong, memorable villain, but many of the main characters did make lasting impressions and offered glimpses of deeper personalities. A quiet conversation between Max and his employer was one of the game's high points, where the latter dissects his own flaws with brutal honesty.

Max himself starts off as the alcoholic, anti-heroic killing machine advertised in the trailers, which is a bit of a backslide after MP2, but it's handled plausibly. It quickly becomes obvious that for all his claims of being burned out and washed up, there remains a decent person on the inside: torn between being unable to forgive himself and wanting to be something other than a walking, talking action movie stereotype, and still thinking like a cop besides. He's not too jaded to be horrified, and not too busy feeling sorry for himself to fight a grave injustice; a failing, flailing mess of a man that still knows right from wrong.

Few things can top the artistry and efficiency of "I had a dream of my wife. She was dead, but it was all right," and nothing in Max Payne 3 quite gets to that level. Instead it shoots for something else, confidently building its own atmosphere and narrative, and taking its own chances with the character. Doing my best to discard nostalgia, I don't think it's as well written as the first two games and it was sometimes frustrating to play. Nonetheless, it's a respectable and respectful followup, a late welcome back for a series I didn't think I wanted to see again.

Like its namesake, Max Payne 3 can be a hazy mess of issues that are more than skin deep. But also like its namesake, the game succeeds where it counts: killing an army of bad guys in style, all of whom can't seem to grasp that the crazy, wordy substance abuser with the guns stubbornly refuses to die. Get a good sale price and there's no reason not to pick it up.

Trust us now. It's time to let me go.

Did they pull it off?

I don't quite know what I was expecting when I first backed the Kickstarter. Wasteland was a beloved classic, my first proper PC game, and it showed me just what games were really capable of. Problems with more than one solution, missions that could be failed without forcing a game over, the player's responsibility to build a balanced team, the combination of descriptive paragraphs with the limited graphics to paint a more vivid picture; the experience blew my fragile little mind at the time. A contemporary title can do many or even all of those things, but whether they can match that feeling - the impression that I'm playing something truly groundbreaking - is a much more loaded question.

Many positive reviews of Wasteland 2 frontload the criticism, ending with some variant of "but I liked the game anyway because etc." It's easy to see why: bugs still being ironed out, a rather clunky interface, widespread locks and traps with long skill use animations, overuse of a limited pool of music, some weak story elements, large chunks of wasted space... you don't have to look too hard to see some serious flaws. The enjoyable aspects are likely to be subjective: how well the combat clicks for the player, whether they like the setting and overall fiction, the extent to which building a proper team is enjoyable, and so on. Indeed, in their bid to create a classic-sized PC RPG, it seems inXile could have made the game play better without sacrificing its hardcore appeal.

For instance, the locks and traps thing: consider the Baldur's Gate games, which also made use of frequent locks and traps on obstacles. Where BG has the advantage is that skill usage is practically instantaneous; the character moves to the trapped item and, if successful, the trap field simply disappears. WL2 added some needless visual flair to the process - your ranger rubbing their hands before working on the object, or kicking it repeatedly as a meter fills, or whatever - which adds a few seconds to each skillcheck. In a game with hundreds of them, those seconds start to add up. Little changes to things like that could have smoothed out a lot of reviewer complaints, with few if any adjustments to the core mechanics. No doubt patches will address this and other issues over time, but the impression has set in nonetheless.

I'll be blunt: I put a fair chunk of change into the Kickstarter, and I can feel the little nagging doubts in the back of my head. Would I be fair if I saw something that bugged me, or read criticism? Would I go easy on the game, knowing that some of my own money was somewhere inside? Would my opinion be more biased than others? It's a reasonable question, and I never did come up with a good answer. Even putting that aside, I'm not gonna deny I was a little nervous when this came out. It's been a long time since the Infinity engine was king of the hill. Did I still have the stomach for a big PC game? What if my appetites had simply moved on? Doubts upon doubts upon doubts.

Did they pull it off?

Like putting up with the wizard fight at the Friendly Arm Inn while you're still level 1, the appeal persists: a game that won't pull its punches, that will try its best to bring me down. WL2 definitely has the spark of those classic RPGs, that hard-to-define something that makes them hard to put down once I start. Fights were tactical, kinetic affairs: cover got destroyed, enemies repositioned, backup weapons were handy, well-timed explosives turned the tide, and even a difficult encounter could be mitigated with the right preparation. Environments presented their own challenges, and with several ways through a given obstacle I was more often than not encouraged to work around a failed skillcheck rather than savescum. Uncooperative plot elements or even bugged out triggers could be answered by force-firing, and there was no problem that the right size bomb could not solve.

Arizona did drag and suffer from design problems - the Prison being chief among them - but it held its own curious charms, and it presents a neat contrast with California. At the start, you control a bunch of customizable scrubs whose mission rapidly spirals out of control. Echo Team starts in known territory and gradually pushes the boundaries, earning their stripes in the process. Water is precious, communities are scarce, and civilization is on the knife's edge atop a pile of late 80s-early 90s rubble. By the time I did get to California, Echo felt every bit the veteran ranger squad, doing what rangers do best: venture into wild territory and bring order to chaos. There, the script is flipped: water is everywhere, settlements are common, and it's on us to put our best foot forward. Every arrival the base, every interaction with the public, every time we stepped in to right some wrong felt like it mattered somehow, like it could have gone differently - and like everything we'd done before had shaped us for that encounter.

That's a key spice to those old titles: variety. What happens if I do this instead of that? What does this guy say or do if I mention this? What if I didn't have that skill, item, or party member? What are the consequences if we just kill everyone? Is there a way to get what I want peacefully, and if so how bad do I want it? I was constantly asking myself those questions during Wasteland 2, and it's for those reasons that I know I'll be back. There's more to see, even if I think I've seen it all; there's more to try, even if I've already sunk some 80 hours into the campaign. Old PC RPGs sometimes get a shot of life from modding communities, but even before I had heard thing one about mods, there were some games where I knew - just knew - that I'd be back, just to see what happened this time.

And god help me if I didn't get drawn in at times, just a little. I searched frantically during a hostage situation, wondering if there even was a third option between 'take down the enemy' and 'save the hostage.' I debated whether to intervene in a loophole-ridden religious dispute, and if so how. I paid attention to the radio broadcasts in LA, making mental notes of who's who in the neighborhood. The villain was something of a one-note antagonist - there were moments of good writing, but his was a stock grand scheme - but there was a respectable sense that something was tracking Echo and the Rangers. There's a strange appeal to being stuck in uncharted territory, surrounded by potential enemies, with friends well out of reach and one hell of a longshot goal ahead of us. It's predictable in the end, but not without its highs; the trick of bringing back everyone you've made friends with for the final battle is an old one, but no less effective.

Sometimes it's not the game I'm after, but the adventure, the challenge. Sometimes it's the sense that I am probably going to lose if I play this game like I play every other game. So it was with games like Arcanum: flawed to hell and back, difficult to recommend, but special in a way that most games simply aren't for me. So it is with Wasteland 2.

Did they pull it off?

In my humble, flawed, biased opinion: yeah, I think they pulled it off.

The racing game for those of us who lean more towards Rock 'n Roll Racing or Twisted Metal. Now this isn't like those in the slightest, since car combat is really a subgenre, but Burnout Paradise scratches a very similar itch: the urge to DESTROY EVERYONE ELSE with your car.

One of the very first races you come across lets you drive like you're in an action movie, wrecking pursuing cars as you try to cross a checkpoint. The first time you slam someone into a guard rail and watch them spin end-over-end in a shower of paint and scrap metal, you'll understand that this game was created to sate your basest desires that involve a ton and a half of fast-moving steel.

Doesn't quite have the up-all-night-playing-it staying power, but if you're at all interested in wrecking things in a car, you'll be back to this one from time to time.

While it's not *quite* as good as "a blend of Thief and Deus Ex with a dash of BioShock for style" would suggest, it's still an excellent game by any standard. The stealth aspect is well developed, the gadgets and powers are fun to use, each problem has plenty of clever ways to get around it, and it has some of the best worldbuilding in recent memory. Holds up well to replays, too; you'll see a bunch of things go down differently depending on what you do in the early game.

Should you buy Dishonored? Indeed, I believe so.

It's Rune Factory for people that don't normally like Rune Factory or even know what Rune Factory is. If you play only one game about an adorable little girl running an item shop to pay down her negligent father's adventuring debts, you probably don't play many games from Japan.

Recettear is a cutesy, lighthearted RPG with tongue-in-cheek dialogue and a well polished shop management hook. None of the gameplay should give anyone trouble, with optional tutorials explaining the mechanics top to bottom: you stock your store, buy low, sell high, haggle with people, make your loan payments, and make friends with progressively weirder adventurers to comb dungeons for free items.

The genius is how it comes together. Before long you're tailoring your shop to draw specific clients, figuring out what each person is willing to spend, anticipating price spikes/drops, and preparing for the stampede of little girls who just have to have the latest Booze of the World. The fairly simple dungeon crawling probably wouldn't stand on its own, yet surprisingly weighty combat and your colorful roster of friends make it a net positive for the overall package.

And it's just so charming. It never commits to a full parody of RPG cliches - a playful ribbing at most - but neither does it get within shouting distance of serious business. It's just a cute little girl trying to convince someone the apple they found in their attic is only worth 70% of its current market value, armed only with a fairy accountant and her own made-up vocabulary.

It's fun. Remember fun? You'll have it when playing this, guaranteed or your money back*.

*offer not valid in any markets, see participating stores for details, however there are no stores participating in said offer therefore all sales are final. Capitalism, ho!

Proof positive that not everything needs to be a first-person shooter (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Okay, fine, details. You don't have to be familiar with the series to appreciate the concept - nutshelled as "ALIENS WRECKING OUR STUFF KILL THEM TAKE THEIR STUFF STUDY IT TO KILL THEM BETTER" - and there's little pesky plot to get in the way of managing the crisis. In fact, "crisis management" is probably a better name for this type of game, as it blends sim elements with turn-based strategy to deal with alien threats across the globe.

As hybrid games go, XCOM hits the sweet spot that makes it very easy to keep playing, regularly introducing new mechanics, toys, and threats to deal with. You'll feel the difference as you unlock new tech, and feel is the right word for it; it's immensely satisfying to start flinging lasers and UFOs right back at the enemy. Environments are destructible on a Silent Storm scale, meaning you can blast through a wall if doors and windows are inconvenient or too boring. Rockets and grenades become tools for the imaginative.

It's not always fair, even by hardcore standards, and I would caution against an Ironman run on your first time. There are too many bugs and interface glitches that can ruin your day in a single turn, sometimes by spawning actual bugs which kill your team then reanimate the corpses to kill the rest of your team. It's that kind of game.

Here's the bottom line. Do you like turn-based strategy? Do you enjoy advancing under overlapping cover, trying to coax foul Xenos into your carefully-arranged chokepoint? Do you dream of managing base construction so your power generators are linked for redundant bonuses? Can you live with occasionally fussy movement controls on multi-level missions? Then go welcome them to Earth already.

It's a Bethesda open-world sandbox miscellaneous buzzword RPG developed and written by Obsidian. Just make sure you have space for mods and your family doesn't mind not seeing you for a month or so.