BulletPeople

I played this through on PSVR in about 20 hours. The scenery and weather effects in VR are beautiful, The music and sound are haunting. Without auto-mapping, the cave exploration will be a challenge, but although you may find yourself lost at times there are enough things to distinguish the different areas you can regain your bearings after some exploration. The load times are taxing, that's for sure, but there are a wealth of things you can do by jumping out of the game to the PS4 user interface during loading that after realizing this I never minded the load screens again. I loved the exploration aspect, and the survival aspects were not difficult enough to be frustrating. I appreciate greatly how you can set the difficulty to 0 and essentially not have to deal with the food/water survival cycle, and I only used that option when I had completed the game with all but 2 items and had to wander far and wide to find them--still cheating but I had essentially beaten the game at that point. It was interesting that at 0% difficulty it becomes a different, very laid back and wonderful exploration game. I am tempted to replay it entirely on 0% difficulty just to witness the spectacle of the amazing level design at my leisure. I really loved the level design and special effects. You did feel like you were on a different planet. I tried the 2D version after beating the game, and it was a very different experience, one that felt very small and weak compared to seeing the world around you in VR. Very much looking forward to what this designer produces next.

Many reviewers of Clive Barker's Jericho write that you spend a lot of time reviving squad mates. Some write that the characters aren't balanced and that they always use Black and Delgado. Some point out it is just another corridor shooter. Kill a bunch of guys, move forward, repeat. Ho hum. All those complaints are accurate. Yet this is one of the most fun, exciting, awesome looking, and nerve wracking games I've ever played. I went zip lining across treetops in Mexico once. It was cold on the speed boat that took us to the peninsula. The exhaust from the leaded gasoline engine of the bus we road through several tiny Mexican villages stung my nose. The donkeys we road to the top of the mountain smelled bad. You get my point. If you look for bad stuff, you'll find it anywhere. I find it hard to take seriously folks who complain about a game because it has less-than-ideal game mechanics when that game presents you with dozens of "I've never seen that before in a game" moments. Here are the things I loved (spoilers): - The blood and viscera carpeted walled enclosures. - The yellow-pustuled exploders appearing as you round a corner. - The crucified wretches you can put out of their misery--or not. - The ferocious slashers whose speedy attacks are satisfyingly stopped with a headshot. - Black's slow motion sniper shot that can take out multiple enemies - The disgusting yet beautiful shiny reflection of your flashlight against the organics-coated hellscapes. Soooo deeply and deliciously RED! - Music scored to push your squirming brain to the edge of madness. - Level design that presents regularly vistas of enormous scale and of nightmarish design. - Atmospheric effects that have you peering unblinking into the depths in search of the visual cues that might keep you alive. - Creature design that could teach Hieronymus Bosch something about the grotesque. If you are a first person shooter fan who expects the conventions of the genre, this may not be your game. If you like well executed artistic design and unusual experiences, you may like this title. In short, if you have patience to put up with some deficiencies in execution in order to experience a one-of-a-kind sensory experience, buy this game.

By no means a triple A production with cadres of designers and programmers, The History Channel: Battle for the Pacific nonetheless manages to be a great deal of fun and offers several innovative ideas and flourishes that others would do well to copy. Cons:You can gripe about a somewhat stuttery framerate that happens often. The sergeant and other team members you follow can get stuck and do nothing until you try something to wake them up like press on forward past his stationary form. There's no friendly fire on your fellow soldiers. Some others have complained that aiming is difficult but I wonder if that particular challenge is not intentional, as it gives you the feel of trying to bring the 9 lb M-1 rifle or a 31 lb Browning machine gun to bear on a target. Likewise, lack of boss battles is a net plus to me because using a video game cliche like bosses really has no place in a game based on history. Pros: Something about the design of this game just makes it all work to make it feel like what it must have been like for real. There are things I've never seen in any other game. - You are constantly chasing someone who is giving orders, who moves when you might prefer to stay because there are other objectives he has in mind, and who sometimes recklessly plows guns blazing into enemy fire. There's a saying "you can't manage people into battle, you have to lead them." It's a cliche that someone has to lead the charge, to go over the perimeter first, and rally the troops to take the hill. We see that in this game, maybe not done to perfection, but done in a way that makes you realize that's what it must have been like. You may want to stick around to get that last of 3 snipers that opened up on you but the sergeant is going around the bend yelling at you to keep up. If you lag too far behind you restart the level, so there's lots of incentive to keep up. - Try as you might, you won't be killing all or even most of the enemy. In fact, if you don't keep up you can enter a firefight, duck in shame, and when you finally get nerve to peek out again your comrades have already mopped up and are, once again, moving on and calling you to catch up. - Sometimes you're just trying to save your skin and basically ignore everything else but to follow your sergeant. So just as in real life there's no artificial goal to kill every enemy. It's good enough to make it onto the beach, past the falling artillery, through the machine gun fire, and over the embankment to safety. - Flanking the enemy produces the most satisfying moment in a FPS I've ever experienced. They don't scatter in 8 directions but are simply taken out by your machine gun in a line. - Your path through the battlefield takes twists, turns, backtracks--all of the things you'd expect in the fog of war. When your sergeant hauls off to the left fork in one of the many trenches don't be surprised if you run into a dead end and come back. And now you've finally taken the position? Good for you, but you might give it back in two minutes and have to retake it later. - Don't expect to take your time behind that mounted gun the sergeant asked you to take over. Before they stop coming at you he may call you off of it--time to move out. If you are at all willing to forgive less than state-of-the-art mechanics for a unique experience, try this game.