ThisIsTruth

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Nostalgia kills your previous glories of industry. I'm just a digital child who wants to die an organic man. Halo 1 - playable, level design is primitive. Halo 2 - kind of awful and even worse level design with no directional markers as you play as the Arbiter.. Truly a time waster. Halo 3 - nicer textures and worlds, but a garbage vehicle ending. ODST- surprisingly enjoyable FPS mixed with noir elements. Halo 4 - kinda garbage, the remnants or the forerunner "enemies" are revealed to be previously human just make for bummer bullet sponges in two ways: #1 less xenophobic characteristics in the narrative #2 just lame remakes of the Covenant "enemies"

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Something of a "huh" after the "climax" of Halo 3, I guess the "new" enemies are part of the extended universe/mythology. Unfortunately, the new enemies behave just like the Covenant, but more annoying. There's the little floaters that regenerate the big guys that completely dodge your aim, wasting time even for a video game. The new weapons are just old weapons with different ammo capacities, truly boring. The level designs are pretty good, until near the end when you have to fly through an object course of ****. Truly awful and lazy game making. Cortana is basically crazy and sexy, lifting from Inception.

A game that was state of the art when released 13 years ago now runs on my budget laptop. Gameplay is generally fun, but after 13 years, the cracks are showing a bit in my replay.T he graphics are a little bit monotonous via my settings, with the backgrounds and foregrounds feeling somehow very samey. There's some nice splashy gore when your bullets are tearing through enemy soldiers. The story is seemingly a continuation of Crysis with the character Prophet passing on the Nanosuit to another soldier before taking his own life. You're partnering with a scientist to learn more about the enemy aliens, who are intermixed with the more common human enemies. You make your way through a New York city (not NYC, but I think at the beginning they say Rochester?), which has and is put through some geographical catastrophes like earthquakes and apparently a tsunami like event. Your suit gives you tactical options via a special view (similar to binoculars from Crysis 1). Gameplay is distinctly not open world like the first Crysis, and in my opinion this is for the better. The first Crysis plays a little too much like Far Cry 2, with aggressively accurate AI sharpshooters, and it's "map" is practically useless, leaving you to wander to the next checkpoint. Speaking of checkpoints, Crysis 2 can be frustratingly stingy with it's progress autosaves (there's no manual save feature). Although your nanosuit has armor and invisibility powers, you're no superhero, meaning your really meant to avoid close contact encounters with a gaggle of enemies who will most definitely drop you. Thus, I find myself creeping in crouch mode, trying to find an isolated soldier or two to take down, then retreating to cover and going invisible in case I'm being followed. All good fun until you've been clearing a level for 5-10 minutes then suddenly run into a group of 3-4 soldiers who have their guns aimed at you. You're game restarts however far back the last checkpoint is, which can be very frustrating. Level design is relatively linear, though you have different cover options within a play area. You're presented with paths for "stealth", but I've found enemy AI detects you traversing those paths, or you get to the end of the trail, exit, and end up facing 3 or more enemies that kill you, sending you back to the last checkpoint. Thus, the stealth options don't seem like viable options if the end of the line is getting gunned down.

Uh, yeah, open world was neat at the time. Unfortunately the gameplay is about as tilted to unfair as Far Cry 2 - lots of enemies have you in their sites despite your magic power suit. I'm not sure how far I am but there's a helicopter machine gunning me to death when I'm trying to stealth and a ton of enemies rendering me bullet ridden if I try to cross by land. The open world graphics are neat, although the provided maps and narrated direction are awesomely worthless. At one point your told to stealth enter a cliff located station only accessible by rope bridge. After that, you're told to take a road to the next waypoint, which I found a much more direct line via river. Kinda ****.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]