Let me get this out of the way right off the bat: the first FEAR was a better game. The enemies seemed smarter, the weapons felt deadlier, and the overall level of difficulty was unquestionably higher. FEAR was hard but fair, and the Achievements reflected this: one required you to beat the game without dying, another demanded you find every hidden collectable along the way (missed one? tough, start over). I played all the way through it three times, and I still don’t have the Achievement for using less than 500 bullets in the entire campaign (that one is a little finicky, as the way the engine handles shotgun shells causes each pellet to be counted individually). Even the controls were demanding, forcing you to click in the right analog stick to aim – a conceit that was grudgingly tolerated in exchange for some of the best gunplay you could get on an Xbox.

FEAR 2 isn’t like that at all. FEAR 2 is the friendliest shooter in the world. For one thing, the checkpointing is excellent, never requiring you to replay more than a single encounter – though you might never know it, since even on the hardest difficulty, you’ll only ever die in a handful of places. (Contrast this with Call of Duty on Veteran, where you’re expected to die at least once on every checkpoint just to figure out which way you should be sprinting to reach the next trigger volume.) And unlike most spooky haunted shooting gallery games, the corridors in FEAR 2 are (relatively) bright and colourful, while the rooms often fulfill recognizable human purposes (such as laundry, or waiting), making it difficult to get completely turned around the way you might on a sufficiently-advanced spaceship.

The use of colour and brightness extends beyond the environments. Activating bullet time (called here… hmm… bullet time, I guess?) causes enemies to glow and pulsate. Item pick-ups are framed by a colour-coded “you-can-interact-with-me” square that’s visible even through walls. Even the collectable story-expanding text logs are not so much hidden as placed to encourage exploration; I finished with 69/70, and finding the last one was a simple matter of consulting the mission select screen(!), which displays the number of collectables in each level(!!) and tracks which ones you’ve found across playthroughs(!!!). (Of course this is all stuff that platformers have been doing for twenty years, but most shooters still tend to treat their collectables as an afterthought – something to be wedged in dark corners to fill out a features list, and yet another way for the level designer to punish you for not being clever enough to think exactly like him.)

FEAR 2 is a game almost completely devoid of rough edges. You’ll finish it in a weekend, completing every optional goal along the way, and you’ll have a reasonably entertaining time doing it. It’s unrelentingly earnest and cheerful in the way that Dead Space is unrelenting bleak and disgusting; it saves its obligatory subway tunnels for near the end, and when it finally makes you climb on a turret to fight off waves of baddies, it at least has the decency to fire up some generic heavy metal gun-shooting music for accompaniment (not a patch on the industrial track that played as you shot a hundred ghosts in slow motion at the end of FEAR 1, mind, but appreciated nonetheless). Monolith has been treading the same ground – ruthless corporations, unethical pseudoscience, blood-stained urban slums, gigantic sprawling parodies of real buildings, faceless soldiers working hand-in-hand with unexplained zombie guys – since at least as far back as Blood II, and they’ve clearly got it down pat by now.

Verdict: If you like Doom clones, this one is on the high end of mid-tier. Positive!

Comment in the forum.

Jerry Whorebach

Editor’s note: Did you know there’s going to be an extra-gritty, realistic take on a new Mortal Kombat movie? It’s by the guy who did some version of GLEE. The author of this post was too lazy to in-line the fake trailer, and so am I, but you can see it here. When that gets removed from Youtube, try searching for “Mortal Kombat Rebirth.”

Jerry Whorebach was consulted on what roles the characters ought to take. Before he was deported, this is what he presented.

LOU KANG

– Louis “Lewey Kay” Kang

– Earthrealm fashion designer

– travelled to Outworld in search of new materials

– found instead the perfect models – crucified human slaves

– fights to free “his people” (as in “Have your people call my etc.”)

JAX

– Abel “Apple Jax” Polanski

– granted the power to choose any form he desires

– chose “black guy with bionic arms” as it was most physically potent form he could imagine

– although posesses the capacity, has never attempted another form (“Once you go black etc.”)

JOHNNY CAGE

– comes from a future where Johnny Cage never died, instead going on to win the tournament and procreate more than any man in history

– as a result, everybody in the future looks like Johnny Cage and is named Johnny Cage

– this Johnny Cage had only moments to escape in a time machine before the temporal disturbance caused by Johnny Cage’s death rewrote the timeline

– still a tragic character, knows even if he wins he will have to fuck 10,000 women, any one of which could be his own grandmother

– did I mention he’s gay, bam double tragedy

KINTARO

– originally conceived for MK II as half-man, half-tiger

– final mixture was closer to 99% Goro, 1% tiger stripes

– apparently prototype fursuit “looked retarded”

– my design: 98.5% babe, 1% tiger stripes, 0.5% bikini

– bikini number possibly too high?

BARAKA

– is a Muslim now

– everything else pretty much the same

– has potential to be most controversial change

– should be handled with sensitivity

LEX LUTHOR

– not technically an MK character

– so well-integrated into story and gameplay of MK vs. DC, it’s now impossible to imagine a new MK without him

– possible trademark violation

SOME NINJAS

– tag-team of six colour-coded elemental masters who live in a van

– must return to van to “tag out”

– mysterious; may in actuality be as many as six guys or as few as one

Comments? Join us on the forum.

Editor’s note: The year is 2003. Web comic creator Roop Dirnup developed Melted Brain, a MMORPG-based strip that used, for the most part, actual posts by prospective MMORPG fans as comic dialogue. Thought lost in time, Caltrops will be posting a Melted Brain strip every Friday for the rest of the year. Click for the huge version.

Link to comments.

Roop

Diamond Mind Baseball is a text-based baseball sim. I’m going to explain why I like it so much, but I should state that I’ve been in a league with seven other guys for the past five years. I’ve played 84 games a year and the game hasn’t become stale yet.

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Hey there, I’m famous. To put it in terms more palatable to the audience of this site, I’m as famous as Erik Wolpaw was when he wrote that he was as famous as John Stamos. And, to clarify, I’m as famous as Erik was then, not now, after he made two of the greatest things in the history of computer games: Portal 2 and Jonathan Mak confused.

No, I’m just kidding, I’m not famous, or even Internet-famous, not like this goddamn cat. I’ll tell you who is, though — that cat’s owner, and one of my favorite independent film makers: Jason Scott.

Full disclosure: I was in one of Jason’s movies. But it was about text adventures, and it’s not like there’s this huge potential cast list there. He wasn’t exactly going to be able to interview Bob Saget and an Olson Twin, for instance. Although I’m sure Bob would have figured out a way to make “Leather Goddesses of Phobos” dry heave. So please let me table the transparent conflict of interest for a moment: while my childish desire for attention would have had me agree to be in one of his movies if he were stirring up a batch of frottage-fueled shag porn, many of my colleagues would have declined if he wasn’t fair, dedicated, talented and meticulous. Oh, and if he didn’t make great movies.

And he does! Look, I love documentaries that are thinly-veiled, vicious character attacks. I can’t get enough when it comes to Bluray transparent smears. Everybody loves watching Billy Mitchell be made an asshole, even though it’s probably unfair, because everything in “The King of Kong” was as fake as “2001: A Space Odyssey” or the NASA moon landings, depending on how you roll. Everyone is going to love Michael Moore ripping whoever the next Republican president is, assuming the six Navy SEALs guarding him don’t slice him up like a tauntaun after what’s sure to be a mild and unassuming winter. But the tar-and-feather doc is the documentary equivalent of a popcorn flick.

But sometimes a well-researched movie pays off. I don’t have the vocabulary to describe the opposite of a popcorn flick. Looking at Rotten Tomatoes, there are movies with made-up words like “Colombiana,” which sounds like something even the Eragon cretin would have turned his nose at. But whatever those proper documentaries are called, Jason makes them, and he’s launched a Kickstarter to make three more. One on Arcades, one on the 6502 processor, and one on the medium of TAPE.

I think these are great ideas for films. I used to be an Assembly programmer for Cyrix, and together, we had some good times making you finish last in Quake. I’d put my arm around you if a processor from 1998 that lacked floating point math could “do” arms. With that in mind, programmers who worked in Assembly for systems that families actually enjoyed, like the 6502-based Apple II and Atari 800, are dying to tell their stories. The arcade documentary is about the spirit of the place, not necessarily arcade games themselves. I’m trying to purchase the cut footage of Robert Mruczek’s expansive vagina frescoes from the makers of “Chasing Ghosts,” but Jason’s replies back must have been accidentally flagged by gmail. I don’t know anything about magnetic tape, except that after the Nazis invented it in 1928, they’ve finally made enough of it to completely encircle your mom.

I’m confident that you’ll want to support these films as you learn more. Jason releases his movies via a Creative Commons license. They’re impossible to “steal.” An agreement he made with Thom Henderson let Thom host an episode of one of Jason’s previous movies, BBS: The Documentary, on-line. Click here and then click on the link that gives you the episode. I initially avoided watching the episode on PKZIP because I thought it would be the most boring story ever told, except for every episode of “Star Trek: Voyager.”

The PKZIP one is actually the best episode of the bunch. If you don’t think so, that’s cool, but if you dig it like I think you will, well, this film maker is going to create three more documentaries with proper funding. He doesn’t get anything through Kickstarter if the full amount isn’t pledged. At $33 grand each it might sound like a lot, but he’s just a guy, not HBO here. He needs to fly to find these people. There’s other stuff, as well: he funded an excursion to the actual cave that “Colossal Cave” was based on for GET LAMP. For all I know, for the TAPE documentary, he’s planning on going to the building where Watergate happened and where you liberal scum effectively stabbed America to death. I don’t think these expenses are that crazy for the product we’ll get. I put up $250 in the name of Caltrops Dot Com to support him, and I hope you will find it within you to pledge funds, too.

Ice Cream Jonsey

There’s no time for an opener! The Cable Brothers are going to tell you if The Legend of the Mystical Ninja is still worth playing in 2011.

Comments? Join us on the forum.

Today was my day off so I dedicated an unhealthy chunk of time to Space Marine.

Results!

7-8 Hours to beat single player on Normal.
1-2 hours to get to level 10 in multiplayer.
Totally stable the entire time, never got stuck, but a few odd glitches (you move into chaos marines when you execute them. happened 100% of the time.)

It’s OK I guess. If anything it made me more appreciative of DXHR and reminded me why I never played any of the Halos. Switching between melee and ranged feels really good, but the melee is still just right click right click right click F, right click right click right click F over and over for every weapon. You can only hold 4 weapons and your first 2 slots are always your pistol and bolter, but some of the guns just feel really really off (sniper and lascannon especially) so I just stuck with the melta shotgun and grenade launcher. The combat feels best when you’re fighting orks since the Chaos troops all tend to hide behind cover and chip at your health while a few demons attack in melee. The highlight is probably when you have a 3-way war between everyone and you just sprint into the middle with a thunder hammer. After that they start throwing bullshit shooter sections and force you to improvise cover while you have no way of healing since all the enemies are waaaaaaaay over there*. Wasn’t their whole schtick that they were breaking the Gears of War trend and making a big gun brawler hybrid? Did they scrap the plan halfway through? Is that why so much is ripped straight from the Gears of War template?

Everyone already knows the story. You’re fighting orks. Then the chaos comes. Then you fight the chaos while resisting the warp. It’s the same as every other 40K game. They try to spice it up by adding audio logs, but of all the games that have had this feature, this is probably the worst example. Part of that is probably because they’re usually a way to expand the universe and characters, but since the 40K universe is already firmly established the whole thing just falls flat. I thought giving the player history lessons on the horus heresy or how space marines are made would have been way more interesting but they were just trying to play it safe.

The whole thing is one long corridor, but it’s a pretty one, especially at the beginning. The end felt a little too purple/black and just wasn’t very impressive. The sewers came about 1/4 of the way though, I think. It was a very short section. Crates are everywhere but you can’t break them.

I was really hoping they would have some dreadnaughts/kanz, or to have a giant battle of 50 IG against 1000 orks, or some good bosses (there’s 1 “real” boss, the other 2 are you shooting down a ship and a 3 minute QTE). Like I said, they were playing it safe and really just stuck to the GoW example.

One thing I noticed is that when you’re doing the execution moves to get back health, enemies can still hurt/kill you. It does feel better than “OK time out while he kills our friend”, but it usually leaves you with the same amount of health or less if you got a long animation. You get an armor upgrade later in the game that helps a ton (all upgrades are automatic. You just find them in drop pods as the game goes on). The fury mode also gives you health, but if you use it when you’re at 50% and falling you’re pretty much dead.

Multiplayer is a hot mess. If you ever played Dead Space 2’s multi then you know exactly what to expect here. It’s not nearly as blatant and unfair to level 1 players, but the same problems are there. Everyone keeps trying to use the MW2 model without realizing that there’s a difference between earning a rifle that shoots slightly faster and more accurately and earning the demoman’s sticky launcher. Team balancing is non-existent as far as I can tell and there are only 2 modes and no last stand mode (I give it 5 months before they release it as DLC for $10). I’m also playing from Vietnam so my connection is horrible and I’ll still get shot well after I’ve turned a corner. It works both ways though so that’s not too much of a deal breaker. Plus the assault marine/raptor works fine even with terrible lag.

Overall I don’t regret my purchase and I had a pretty good time with it. Rocket jumping all over the place with a thunder hammer feels awesome. The game fails when it tries to play the battles and mechanics safely and succeeds when everything goes batshit insane. Plus it came with Darksiders so yay. I’ll probably have more fun with the Binding of Isaac though.

*It actually doesn’t happen that often but when it does you’ll hate it…

Lurker 56498

Editor’s note: The year is 2003. Web comic creator Roop Dirnup developed Melted Brain, a MMORPG-based strip that used, for the most part, actual posts by prospective MMORPG fans as comic dialogue. Thought lost in time, Caltrops will be posting a Melted Brain strip every Friday for the rest of the year. Click for the huge version.

Link to comments.

Roop

Editor’s note: The year is 2003. Web comic creator Roop Dirnup developed Melted Brain, a MMORPG-based strip that used, for the most part, actual posts by prospective MMORPG fans as comic dialogue. Thought lost in time, Caltrops will be posting a Melted Brain strip every Friday for the rest of the year. Click for the huge version.

Link to comments.

Roop