Playing: SNES -- Super Star Wars

Ah Star Wars. This title is for Super Nintendo, which I'm running on the Snes9x emulator for Mac OS X. As with most platformer-shooter games, it can get tough. But it's fairly fun and follows the classic trilogy storyline. Throughout the game you can play as Luke, Chewie or Han Solo. You also get to ride around the hovercar and shoot those pesky Jawas. Levels include the Jawa sandcrawler, Mos Eisley, the Death star, and more. Apparently I'm almost done with this episode, too - a rather short game. Then it's on to Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, and Return Of The Jedi.

Review: Mafia

Website: http://illusionsoftworks.com/

Minimum Requirements:
- Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
- 500 (700) Mhz
- 96 (128) MB RAM
- 16x (32) CD-ROM
- 1.8 GB hard-drive space
- 16 (32) MB video card
- Direct X 8.1

To my knowledge, there hasn't been even a handful of Mafia oriented PC games. There was "Gangsters", an isometric strategy game, and unfortunately that's all I can think of. Either way, "Mafia" by Illusion Softworks and Gathering of Developers picks up the slack. Though it was released in 2002, after completing the game I have since considered it a timeless game - and with it being set in the 1930's, such eras never really become "old". Mafia brought me a memorable experience. But enough preamble, here's the dish.

Story
Your role is as cab driver Tommy Angelo, in the fictional city of Lost Heaven, which is nicely inspired by the urban locales of New York and Chicago. During a night on the job shift, the sound of gunshots grabs your attention and little had you anticipated you would become the next tool in the local mob toolbox. Some of Don Salierie's gangsters immediately pressure you to drive them away from a rival mob, and this is where the gameplay begins. Once you've successfully evaded and lost the rival mob and dropped Salierie's men off at his bar, you are given an offer by one of the gangsters to join the Salierie family.

Well enough, gameplay picks up upon the next day, back at your job escorting customers to their desired destinations - only to be foiled by some Morello family gangsters, who want your blood for helping the Salierie gangsters get away. After evading them on foot, you revisit Salierie's bar. You reflect on whether you want to live your life working in your current job, rather dismal and not so well paying. Or, you could join the family and come to riches. The real answer is, if you don't join now, the Morello family will get you someway. Now you are no longer Tommy the cabbie, but Tommy the gangster. Throughout the game, Tommy learns more about himself and the inner conflicts of his decisions, manages to find love but at a price, and much more.

Gameplay
The really neat thing about this game is that story is correlated via cutscenes of Tommy conversating with a detective about his history in the mob. Tommy wanted to give up the mob life, while his entry into and out of the family and everything inbetween, is primarily the gameplay. Your first mission since joining the family is taking revenge on the Morello gang, and destroying a handful of their shiny new cars with a baseball bat and dynamite. If you're just not ready to jump into action however, you can take a tutorial on combat and driving, which is a nice addition to orient yourself with.

Mafia features two main play modes: combat and driving, either of which you can and will do at anytime throughout the game. The city of Lost Heaven is immense and fairly detailed - over 12 square miles of inner-city and country roads, skyscrapers, landscapes, traffic, pedestrian and police. As you progress throughout Mafia, you learn to lockpick a variety of cars and trucks - from the basic buggy types to streamlined 30's autos - 60 individual model variations, though all with fictional brand names. If you're looking for a vast selection of getaway cars, you'll have no complaints here. You are also given a selection of 1st person and 3rd person driving views. Joystick, gamepad and wheel users should be happy to know that you may use these to drive, instead of the keyboard and mouse. If you are stealing a car within sight of any police officers, you will be chased after and arrested if caught, otherwise you are able to evade and lose your arrest warrant. Handling of the cars is an important issue, and I found that even with a keyboard and mouse, the handling was well done. It should be noted that these cars obviously are nowhere near the power of the sports cars of today, but I thought speeding at 70 - 80+ MPH was fairly fast. Driving up steep hills is really a chore though, and you typically can't reach beyond 15 MPH going up them. By law you cannot exceed 40 MPH, and there is a handy speed limiter function you may turn on in case you wish to avoid getting a speeding ticket. As long as no cops on foot or on car patrol are in range, speed all you want! Just watch those sharp corners.

This also brings up a handy feature, a basic radar in the upper left corner of your screen. Cars are represented by light-green marks, cops by blue, cops or mafia in pursuit of the player in red, and yourself in white. The radar has a basic 360 degree range that is a bit short but not too problematic. I only wished cars weren't represented by mere line ticks, but by dots or squares. The car driving also features auto or manual gearing, limited fuel (you can fill up at gas stations), a horn - which is useful for clearing your path of pedestrians, and the ability to shoot a one-handed weapon out the side of your car, while you are driving. This mode brings you to a 3rd person view, whereby you can manipulate your aim with the mouse. Drive-by's aren't the easiest facet of the game, however. Usually up to 4 or 5 people can fit in a car, this includes you (typically but not always the driver) and other passengers throughout the game. Lastly, a very cool facet of the driving gameplay is the ability to blow out tires - whether by bullet or wreckless driving, shooting off the wheels themselves, and blowing the car up by hitting the gas tank.

On-foot combat is handled entirely in 3rd person. You may carry several weapons, but you cannot conceal all of them. For instance, if you have a Tommy gun and a rifle, you'll need to usually drop one of them somewhere, and you can hide the other within your coat. You cannot leave a weapon in a car, unfortunately. Weapons range from a variety of handguns, rifles, shotguns, grenades, brass knuckles, molotov cocktails, a baseball bat (my melee favorite) and of course your bare fists. By holding the fire/attack button for about 5 seconds, you can charge up melee attacks for a stronger hit. By doing this with the baseball bat, you can typically knock someone out cold while walking up behind them. Weapons should also be hidden from public view - this means pedestrians and cops, or else the cops will be looking for you and will arrest you. If you find yourself in such a predicament, you still have the freedom to defend yourself from the cops, run or drive away to lose their tail and your "Wanted" level, or all of the above. Sometimes you will find yourself flagged down by a cop in the heat of a battle or in a quick getaway. The ensuing chases can be quite fun, though sometimes frustrating, as the cops are very hardheaded about arresting you and will slam your car, setup barricades or fire at you. One little thing to note - you are free to walk around holding a baseball bat, as it is not considered a weapon - although if a cop sees you beating on somebody with the bat, they will still give chase.

An entirely seperate play mode entitled "Free Ride" allows you to do pretty much as you please throughout the city or countryside during day or night. You can set the abundancy of traffic (this includes police cars), pedestrians and police patrols. A similiar but goal-oriented mode is "Free Ride Extreme". By playing this mode, you can unlock various extra cars - some realistic and some just crazy hot rods or very fast race cars. You may then use these cars in the normal "Free Ride" mode as well. "Extreme" is no exaggeration either - this play mode is quite tough, but either "Free Ride" option provides a fun means to take a break from the story and goof around. On an unfortunate note, it seems that the developers never released their proposed patch that would implement a multiplayer mode, which is too bad - that would be loads of fun.

Experience
Your 20 missions throughout Mafia are well varied in goals and difficulty. A few memorable missions are a bank heist, an assassination on a steamboat, a challenging car race, and a rooftop escape. In the bank heist mission, things start out quiet and fairly normal but only for a short time. Your mob pal Paulie informs everyone that this is a heist, and keeps things in check, while your goal is to get to the safe and grab the dough, all while avoiding security guards. Once you've gotten the loot, it's time to escape quickly as possible via car to a hotel.

The steamboat assassination is rather fun. Before you board the boat you need to con your way onto it. Once aboard, it's smooth sailing from there, provided you can escape unscathed to a nearby boat. The boat was a memorable location because of the social groups gathered around with their own conversational dialogue, and even a band performing on the upper deck, while the city can be seen along the horizon and the sun is set.

The rooftop escape takes place after another assassination and may be one of the more difficult missions, having to watch around and above you rather cautiously for policemen with handguns and rifles.

Given that the game has no checkpoint or quicksave features, such missions are likely to be frustrating attempts. It would have been nice to have at least a limited number of saves per mission. Despite the way things are handled in this context, replaying a mission isn't always so bad, because usually the locales are big enough to allow different strategies or paths to complete the missions. Control of Tommy on foot and in car generally felt well done, but if you wish you can use a gamepad, joystick or wheel in addition to keyboard and mouse.

Throughout the game I felt like I was watching a movie. The characters involved in the story really have a believable depth and personality to them. This is partially due to some very nice voice acting. Dialogue is not exaggerated or "cartoony". It generally sounds convincing (although does sound a bit as if read straight-from-script). Though Mafia is just a video game, I did have a kind of emotional understanding and attachment to Tommy's life, conscience and his personality. I really can't vouch for many games that pull me in and move me to some degree, like a movie could. Trust me, the story and character elements are definitely not overlooked in Mafia.

Conclusion
If you want 3rd person action, convincing characters and story, and an all-around well done game - Mafia is it. With it's varied gameplay, extra play modes, suspenseful and tense shootouts and car chases, Mafia is a definite classic.

RATING: 5 out of 5

Pros:
- photo-realistic graphics
- believable characters and story
- long, challenging and variable action-oriented gameplay
- extra play modes
Cons:
- promised multiplayer patch never released
- no manual save system

Quick Review: Doom 3

Website: Doom3.com

Doom 3. Long anticipated and then it finally arrives. Yes the graphics set another milestone for id Software. So what. Doom 3 is a well done retelling of the original Doom. It provides a backstory throughout the game, and all of the levels are quite cohesive, as opposed to the original Doom. Monsters are varied and most are from the original Doom lineup, such as the Imp, Cacodemon, Zombie-infantry and Hell-Knights. Weapons are varied and generally fun to weild. The BFG makes an excellent come back as well, although seems a bit underpowered compared to the original. No big deal though. Audio is top notch here, from monster sounds to weaponry and definitely the atmospheric ambience, which really lends to the creepy factor in Doom 3. In fact I would go so far as to say the audio alone makes up half of the immersiveness.

While the game is initially fun, it gets boring about midway. You'll find you're navigating the same ol' military base halls, all of which are quite dark. Once in awhile you'll venture out into small, mars outdoor areas, but not for long. It really is a breath of fresh air (figuratively speaking). You will interact with the environment such as quite sharp, computer interfaces, or other soldiers and people of the military base. Monster, human and weapon models are all finely detailed and done well, although human-lip-sync for speech audio is nothing to write home about. Occasionally the game will introduce an attention grabbing, in-game cinematic or moment - such as an Imp suddenly springing in front of you, clinging to the glass of the room you're in, then dissapearing. This is one method of scares in Doom 3, among others such as the infamous and rather gimmicky "monster closets". It sounds ridiculous but it couldn't be more true - wall panels opening up and a monster popping out. It happens dozens of times and it gets cheap real quick. Eventually you travel to Hell and then come back and yada yada save Earth from the demon infestation yada yada...

Ah I can't forget the reliance on PDA's. You can collect handheld computers, PDA-CD's and access cards throughout the game, and often you'll need a soldier's PDA to gain access elsewhere. Not only that, you may need to peruse e-mails and audio logs to unlock a storage locker or a door to progress somewhere. This got so tedious. I appreciate that it was a little something to inflict story and interesting little bits about soldier life at the Mars facilities, but I thought this avenue of progression was too forced.

Doom 3 was a fun experience but not for long. In addition the overall game length felt short. It's reliance on cheap scares and ad-naseum dark base corridor navigating - ultimately little variation in gameplay and experience, kept Doom 3 from being a keeper for me. Is it worth $20? Yes. But don't pay any more for it.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Pros: The graphical and audio quality and detail, overall immersiveness
Cons: Short game that becomes too predictable, too soon, to save itself.

Review: Max Payne 2

Originally written on 6.15.04
Website: http://www.rockstargames.com/maxpayne2

Minimum Requirements:
- 1Ghz PIII/Athlon or 1.2Ghz Celeron/Duron processor
- 32MB AGP graphics card with hardware transform & lighting support
- 256MB RAM
- 1.5 GB hard drive space
- Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
- DirectX 9.0

The original "Max Payne" was a born classic released some years ago about a cop's revenge of the murder of his wife and baby. Executed very stylishly in 3rd person with features such as "bullet time" (a'la The Matrix action scene slowdowns), level interactivity and comic-book narratives, Max Payne had everything going for it. Story, action, drama, looks. Now in Max Payne 2, you pickup as a more matured Max Payne. No, it's not Max on Geritol, but at least he doesn't have that constipated smiling face permanent-like this time. In the sequel, Max deals with plot twists, haunting dreams, love for a murder suspect, confusion and crumbling trust. To quote the Max Payne 2 box:

"His life in ruins, Max Payne finds himself back on the NYPD. During a routine murder investigation he runs into Mona Sax, a woman he thought dead, a femme fatale murder suspect. She holds the keys to the questions that haunt him. But nothing is simple in the dark and tragic night of New York City. An army of underworld thugs stands between Max and the answers he seeks. His journey deeper into his own personal hell continues."

The game is very similiar to the original Max Payne. Still in 3rd person, you still have bullettime and shoot-dodging. It's pretty much more of the same, just with a different story, a little more detail and high on action. I haven't played Max Payne 1 yet, so I cannot make too many comparisons. The game begins with Max (the player) awake from his hospital bed in an abandoned hospital. You can search the various cabinets for painkillers, but you won't find any weapons just yet. A couple flashbacks hit you in a blurry in-game cinematic, hinting at what is to come. Eventually upon discovering a dead victim, you grab his gun and have your chance to fend off a commando. Things get confusing for Max, but as you play the story unfolds nicely over in-game cinematics, and comic-book narrative screens complete with voice dialogue.

Along the way, over 3 parts, and 21 chapters, you will encounter the heated combat and tense level roaming. There is the occasional requirement to progress in the level, such as having to shutoff the gasline to stop feeding an apartment complex fire that is otherwise hindering your path forward. A welcome change in the game is the ability to play as Mona Sax, the beautiful female star of the game. On one such Mona mission, you must defend Max from the "cleaners" - disguised killers. If Max dies, you must start over. This particular mission is very tense, but with a zoomable MP5 gun or sniper rifle and some patience, it shouldn't be too hard. Another very fun mission is to escape an exploding and crumbling building, which really shows off the game's physics engine. Ceilings and walls will fallout and explode, objects whipping about while you dash for an exit, leading to a really nice, dangerous cinematic. Your arsenal throughout the missions include pistols (9mm, Desert Eagle), shotguns (Striker auto-shotgun, sawed off), semi-autos (AK, MP5, etc), molotov cocktails, grenades and more.

As far as visuals are concerned, there is no lack of detail throughout the game. Each weapon has brilliant firing lighting, individual bullets and their smoke streams can be seen, and hi-res textures compliment the level design quite well. Physics are very well done here too. Fire a couple bullets into an explosive barrel, and boxes and other objects will blast away, even enemies. More present here than in Max Payne 1 are ragdoll physics. Say you fire a load of shotgun buckshot at an enemy, he will lunge backwards - spinning or flipping. If they are near a rafter or steep edge, they can roll straight off and plummet to the ground. Enemies bodies will "conform" to tables, boxes or chairs instead of being stiffened corpses.

Bullettime is a wonderful feature. Often, I use the shootdodge function. With this, you can dive forward, backward, left or right in bullettime and fire as you wish. It's fun zooming in with an MP5 in shootdodge mode and firing a paced shot at an enemie's head, for that one-shot-kill. Gun firing, objects falling/hitting, and character voices are all done very well. Enemies will shout "whack him!" when they spot you, among other dialogue. Some will yell "oh shit!" and run when you toss a grenade near them. Occasionally you will hear enemies conversations between eachother. Here you can wait and listen, or interrupt with a few fiery streams of bullets. The missions in Max Payne 2 are often well paced and suspenseful. Unfortunately, though 21 levels may seem like a good amount, the game really feels too short. There are 3 difficulty modes to play the game through, and also a "Dead Man Walking" mode - where special maps with enemy spawnpoints release enemy after enemy after you, with your main goal to survive with the most efficient timing. I personally don't like this mode, but others seem to enjoy it. An additional mode is "New York Minute", just as in Max Payne 1, where your goal is to get the quickest time of completing the levels. The exception in Max Payne 2 as opposed to Max Payne 1, is that you never run out of time in this mode.

I really enjoyed the game. I was quite impressed by everything. But I felt a bit robbed on it because it didn't take me too long to finish the game, about 2 days. I still believe it is worth the money (I got it used for $25), and since Max Payne 2 is also modifiable, there are a number of mods (such as first-person-view, 007, Kill Bill tribute, new weapons and features...) available online for you to download. The developer has also released level editing tools online for free. In summary, Max Payne 2 is a thrilling and fun ride, albeit a short ride.

Get it!

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Pros: The detail, the physics, the fury!
Cons: Some may want multiplayer, you won't find it here. 21 missions really isn't enough.

Review: Project I.G.I. 2

Originally written 6.29.04
Website: http://www.codemasters.com/igi2/

Minimum Requirements:
- P3 700 or equivalent
- 32MB AGP graphics card
- 128MB RAM
- 1.9 GB hard drive space
- Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
- DirectX 8.1

Where the hell do I start?

I just completed the game and it was a very satisfying game at that. I'm almost so excited to just summarize the game and command you to play it, but that wouldn't be fair, so I'll have to give it a well deserving review. "I.G.I. 2" is a sequel to the first, "Project I'm Going In" which was blanketed with bad reviews. My impressions from it's demo were on par with them. I decided to give "I.G.I. 2" demo a try, was definitely interested and bought the game. Your role here is as "David Jones", a member of the "Institute for Geotactical Intelligence" group - pretty much your world security/counterterrorism "team". Ah yes, you have to save the world again. Ho hum. While the plot may be typical tactical/action shooter fare, the game has lots of tense fun for you. The plot is as follows:

"As the Cold War drew to a close, the world believed that peace would reign across the globe. It seemed that a new age had dawned, an age of lasting unity between nations. But this was not the case, instead the fight for global supremacy had only been forced underground into the battlefield of covert ops and evil acts of terror. Into this arena sprung a new force, masked behind the guises of subterfuge, plausible deniability and "information management", the Institute for Geotactical Intelligence" raised the sword against those who would subjugate the world. Though the malignancy of terrorism has broken our world on occasion, the global crucible has not yet boiled over into World War 3. For that thank the one-man army David Jones, and the forever-unsung heroes of I.G.I."


Your first mission begins with a cinematic explaining your goals and revealing the plot along the following missions via cutscenes using the games engine. You begin in a massive outdoor area within a factory outset at night. You are allowed 4 types of weapons at one time, and throughout the game you will be able to use around 30 weapons. Amongst them: the MP5, frag grenade, flashbang, M16/M203, SVD Dragunov sniper rifle, RPG-7 rocket launcher, SOCOM pistol with laser sight, silenced and non-silenced automatic light firearms and much more. Typical weapon assignment is: heavy gun slot (RPG-7, sniper rifle, M16 etc), light gun (pistols or light semi/auto guns), knife (always equipped), grenades slot, and accessories slot (rarely found health syringe, laser designator, etc). Also usually permanently equipped are thermal goggles (which can see through certain walls), binoculars and a very handy satellite PDA-type zoomable realtime map - which shows the location of objectives, enemies and yourself.



As you progress, the missions will involve even more thinking. Various objectives include cutting fuel tanks, turning on power generators, hacking computers, opening locked gates, infiltrating and stealing objects and more. These are not always typically sneak-around-and-snipe type missions. You are not required to play this way. If you are spotted, you will either be fired upon, an enemy will sound an alarm, and/or enemies will hunt you. In some missions, being spotted or letting the alarm sound means game over, and you will have to restart that mission. Most missions, however are not this strict and you usually have a huge environment to hide about in. There are also destroyable cameras, and non-destroyable cameras. If they spot you for a certain number of seconds, an alarm will sound. Some cameras can be turned off either momentarily or permanently via computer. Shooting a camera to explode will often alert enemies.

Because "I.G.I. 2" uses Innerloop's "Joint Strike Fighter" fighter jet simulation engine, amazingly wide and mountainous environments are possible. You are not limited to interiors in this game. When you do encounter interiors, they really aren't that detailed but they do alright for their purpose. A big plus in this game is that, the missions do not have linear paths. You can usually complete Objective 4 before Objective 2 if you think it's safer, or what-have-you. There is often more than 1 or 2 ways into an objective area, giving the game a good replayability factor, aside from it's easy, normal and hard difficulty settings. Playing "I.G.I. 2" on Easy, I completed the game, 19 missions - in 2 weeks, playing everyday. The game's saving system is limited to I believe 4 saves per mission when playing "Easy" or "Normal". I am not particularily opposed to this system, as it makes playing a bit more challenging. You need to think economically and play efficiently. Another important thing to note - if you find you needed that sniper rifle in say, mission 6 - make sure you had it in your hands in mission 5, and it will be carried over - unless it is a particular mission that assigns you entirely different weapons. There are some missions where you find yourself without weapons and recon gear, save for your combat knife! I am so glad this was not a 2 or 3 night blowover. There are no training missions in "I.G.I 2", but those could've been kinda fun.

Enemy AI is alright here, but nothing impressive. Depending upon if you are in their line of sight, they may spot you if you are running or standing. If you crouch or crawl prone, your chances of being spotted are much less. Sound is a factor here as well, and there is an appropriate sound meter in the game's minimal but effective interface. You can often sneak up on guards and slice them with your knife, or even break their neck. When spotted, some enemies may run to sound the alarm, or attack you while other enemies come in to aid. Sometimes alerting them or the alarm will trigger a helicopter to come and unload even more enemies. Sniping is really fun for me, and in many cases when sniping someone, nearby enemies will be looking all around for you, but it may take awhile for them to spot you. Some enemy snipers will spot you immediately, and it's best to find cover - because they can be deadly shots. You can take cover behind trucks, crates and other objects. You can even crawl beneath trucks and hide there for a moment or awhile. Getting around in "I.G.I. 2" you have a few options besides walking, crawling or running. Sometimes there are "zip lines" - typically a power cable that you can grasp with both hands and slide down or ladders. In the first mission, for instance - you can reverse a conveyor belt in order to get inside a factory. One very memorable mission has you playing gunner in a flying helicopter. Here you can really see the game's graphics engine at work and it's very 3D terrain.

Character detail is good, but hands seem to be bigger than normal. Cutscene characters feature more face closeups, which were done alright. You won't find photorealistic character textures here though. Weapon detail is good, with various movable parts, reloading animations, zoom in/out views, etc. Other nice details you'll come across are a rocket launch site, complete with gantry arms accessable via stairs and elevator, a big guarded Chinese temple, outdoor remote locations such as a snowy Russian environment, sandy Middle Eastern town and more.

The game's 19 missions are just enough, but even though I'm satisfied with the mission count, I could always use more. I am just happy the developer's didn't dissapoint us with say, just a handful of missions like other tactical/action shooters have. "I.G.I 2" also features Multiplayer via the internet, or LAN. It is more akin to Counterstrike - with teams and their goals, and buying weapons, earning cash. I have not yet played Multiplayer, so I can't comment on it. I imagine it would be fun though. I've seen this game get bad to OK reviews and was rather unsure of buying it, but when I tried the demo I was convinced. And after completing the game, if this genre is your type of fun - you can't pass this game up. The developer also offers a free map editor, but I've read it is Multiplayer only, which is kind of a letdown. I have not seen any mods for the game either. I am definitely keeping this game though.

Great blend of tactical and action shooting!

Rating: 4 out of 5

Pros: Immense terrain environments, varied weapon selection, good amount of challenging and fun missions.
Cons: Interior environments arent too detailed, AI could be better.