#best campaign bungie has made in the last 20 years

[thelvadams]

15 YEARS OF HALO 3: ODST • September 22nd 2009

Prepare to drop.

[zombiescantfly]

Halo and the Burden of the Extended Universe

Halo, as in the initial trilogy of games one through three, has been about one man, known only by his rank, traveling to exotic alien superstructures hanging in deep space, traversing their surfaces on foot and in a variety of human and alien military vehicles, and mowing down literally hundreds of enemies per level. Throughout that trilogy, we’re supposed to believe that these aliens, the Covenant, pose a great risk to all of humanity. We’re told, by way of the instruction manuals and some NPC chatter, that these aliens have pushed our own species, at the time a massive space-faring empire, back to the singular planet of our birth. 

In all three games, we just barely make our way to the latest superstructure, clawing our way there against what's said to be insurmountable odds. We're constantly told that we're low on resources, low on time, we barely have a foot in the door while the Covenant have already made their bed. And yet, every single game, we win. Effortlessly. Constantly. 

And not only do we win, but we prevent the total annihilation of all life in the universe no less than once per game, sometimes more! Untold hordes of enemies fall at our controller-wielding fingertips, but somehow we're meant to accept that this one is our last chance, for real, we swear. Still, problems come and go at the whim of an inattentive scriptwriter, built up to be the most important thing we've ever seen, left perfectly resolved at the end of a 20-minute level.

In every game, the goalposts are constantly shifting, pushed further and further back by writers who realize, sweat on their brows, that they've started with the destruction of all life in the universe and have to somehow amp it up from there. For three games.

To put it mildly, they are not successful.

What do we have to be afraid of? Not the Covenant, because even the worst weapons we have available to us can tear them apart. All life on Earth, the last bastion of our species, is put at risk a full three times over the course of two games, and every single time we, as the protagonist, turn our back on the problem and are promised it will be solved when we aren't looking. If the Halo rings are fired, all life in the universe dies! Except when it was fired in Halo 2 and only sent a standby signal before being deactivated. Except when it was fired in Halo 3 using a never-before-heard-of "tactical pulse" that is at perfect odds with everything it was stated to do in all three games. 

There's no threat that sticks, no threat that matters. Everything the games have told us to be afraid of are continuously revealed to be utterly inconsequential. Even the moment-to-moment threats become routine, the moment-to-moment losses, unnoticeable. How many times have you gathered a squad of friendly Marines only to lose them all in the next gunfight? Well, don't worry, here comes a Pelican with four new ones, no questions asked. Yes, we're running low on fuel and men and supplies, but here you go Chief, you're special.

But why are we special? Who is The Master Chief? We know some things, but not a lot. We're a supersoldier, a Spartan. We have a ship's AI in our head who tells us what LZs to clear and does all the talking for us. Across three games, approximately thirty hours of gameplay, our main character has a mere sixty-eight lines of dialogue, and most of it doesn't pass the five word mark. Cortana, in comparison, has nearly six hundred spoken lines. Our hero is characterized only by lines like "boo," "green, sir," "I need a weapon," "understood," and "we'll make it."

Truly, a fascinating and deep character to go down in the annals of gaming history. A man brimming with all the personality of a cardboard box, all the empathy of a brick, and all the motives of a potted plant.

And yet, every Halo fan out there will tell you how cool he is, how haunted by his past he is, how deeply he feels the loss of his comrades, and how much he cares for his tiny blue Garmin. 

Why? We played the same games, right? With all the same plot holes and haphazardly shifting priorities, the miniscule cast of named characters that never do anything to extend past their paint-by-numbers archetype? What are they getting out this that I haven’t?

Well, they read the books.

To them, Halo has an excuse. There aren't any plot holes, none at all, because you can just read this piece of licensed fiction to plug it. Are you still uncertain, well over a decade after the fact, just how much time passed between Halo 2 and 3? There's a graphic novel to answer that for you. What about the Arbiter, why didn't he stick around to try to form a proper treaty with humanity after the end of Halo 3? Read the book to find out. Okay then, the Flood invasion of Earth, how'd that get cleaned up so fast? Don't worry, watch the animated short.

This isn't how storytelling works. 

You don't get to present a player of your game, a buyer of your product, with one third of a story and then tell them the rest exists as multiple books. You don't get to ignore key plot points that would bring your story together just so they can be sold off years later in a different medium.

External media, should your property have it, should be to expand on things the primary property has no room for. Hinted-at background events. Formative character experiences. Something tangentially related that still ties in to the main story. If it's really that important, tell your writers to make room for it in the main product. 

Halo has the room for it. Each game will probably take a first-time player around ten hours for a first playthrough, and far less time on subsequent runs. These games are short, but they attempt to tell a story many times larger than they make room for. So make more room. End the focus on getting players in and out in a single weekend sitting. Let your characters talk to each other beyond exchanging stiff one-liners in cutscenes. Stop making every level a bombastic, breakneck setpiece and give the story room to breathe, to actually be told. If it’s the end of the universe we’re dealing with, surely you can spare us more than nine measly levels? Let us actually see the larger situation rather than being told about it. Do you really think Halo fans would complain about a campaign taking fifteen to twenty hours to beat? They love Halo, they want to spend time with it. Capitalize on that, and take the opportunity to finally, actually tell a story with all the parts in it instead of just a third.

Which brings us, finally, to Halo: Reach.

Certain Halo fans, largely the same group of them that defend the poor storytelling because “it’s in the books,” have a reaction to Halo: Reach that can best be described as ‘vitriolic.’ They don’t like it. Why?

Because it’s not like the book. 

You see, while Halo: Reach came out in 2010, a book by the name of Halo: The Fall of Reach came out some months before the first Halo game in 2001. They are both about the same event, but with quite major differences. This caused quite a lot of contention at the time of Reach’s release, mainly from the part of the fanbase that believed they were going to get a one-to-one retelling of this book in videogame form. 

They didn’t get that. Halo: Reach is an original story that tells the tale of a world’s final hours and one team of elite supersoldiers as they attempt to do anything they can to help delay the inevitable end. It’s not the most compelling story ever written, or even the most compelling version of that story ever told, but it’s effective. Even though we’re dealing with the imminent destruction of an entire planet, the story manages to stay small. Reach’s ultimate destruction is a common piece of wall graffiti or NPC combat barks, so the ending is known, leaving room for smaller objectives to take the spotlight. Rescue civilians trapped behind enemy lines. Delay an invasion force to buy evacuation efforts another hour. Clear the skies so supplies and medivac can go out. 

Halo: Reach has almost no connection to the series at large, and it’s quite the breath of fresh air. As a prequel, its ending is a forgone conclusion, but it does what it can with the time it has. The messy, convoluted politics of Halo 2 and 3 are far in the series’ chronological future, letting you fight two enemy factions at once for the first time in the series, away from the plot point that sees them at war with each other. The end of the universe isn’t constantly being dangled over our heads for the third time in as many games, so the characters have a chance to sit down and swap banter, tell us who they are. They aren’t anyone too terribly compelling - Bungie still hadn’t quite figured out character writing - but they’re tested archetypes played well enough for the story’s demands. The threat is known and static, the stakes grow higher by way of the ticking clock drawing us ever closer to the planet’s inevitable end. There’s no faffing around with “trading one villain for another” because killing the first one would have ended the story too quickly, so a new one has to show up with no lead-in. 

Even at the very end of that original trilogy, Halo’s story was too big for the time Bungie gave it. Its own plot points were shoving at each other, jockeying for position, knocking parts off themselves in an effort to fit into nine half-hour levels until all that was left were fractions of what you’d need to find in the books afterward.

Reach suffers from its own short length, but not in the same way. It suffers in that you can point to the characters and they say needed more setup, more time with each other, maybe another level or two here or there to really draw the relationship out. It suffers by pushing a little too hard at the “imminent end” angle, hurrying you through and skipping over hours of in-world time that probably could have been their own level.

But surely even the superfans saw that this was preferable? That a standalone story was the best way to go about things? Surely they understood that attempting to simply recreate the book would have ended with them not seeing any of what Bungie came up with for this new game? There’s a lot to like about Halo: Reach, and a lot to do in it that you can’t do in any of the other games. Surely even the most fervent defenders of the extended canon ended up coming around and being able to separate the two for what they both were on their own.

Of course, that’s not what happened. See again, ‘vitriolic.’ And so here we are at the question this whole thing has been building up to. When a company leans as hard into external supplemental media as Bungie did for Halo, is it then obligated to play by the rules and plot points outlined in those external entities? It’s a tricky question, mostly because up until that point, Bungie had gone ahead as if every book and animated short and comic and webisode was one hundred percent canonical. The reason superfans tolerated those gaping plot holes in the games is, again, because they weren’t holes at all when paired with their companion media. So now, in the far-past year of 2010, Bungie has suddenly decided that one of those sacred tomes of external knowledge is incorrect. 

I think the easiest answer would have simply been to...tell the proper amount of story in the first place, but I guess it’s a little too late for that, especially now. 

So what, then, is the obligation put forward by such a slavish devotion to external storytelling? Were they wrong to do something different? Were they right to forge ahead with something new for the benefit of freeing players who had never read that book and any other related to it from the web of multi-author canon? 

I’d say they made the right move. Let’s talk about Star Wars.

Star Wars and Halo share many a talking point, the most obvious of which is just the sheer amount of additional stories they have stapled to them. Great news for fans who are into it, but terrible news for the actual IP holders. All they do is get in the way when the primary vehicle wants to expand. Disney felt it more than Bungie ever did, but Bungie felt it first: cut away the myriad stories clogging up the canon or you’ll never make anyone happy. Try to appease the superfans and get burned by not touching on every single node of criss-crossing plot webs that is the result of decades of overlapping stories by as many authors, while alienating newcomers by being forced to pay lip service to concepts and characters they’ve never heard of and have no attachment to. 

Disney made the right call, and so did Bungie with Reach. What came next in Disney’s case isn’t relevant, and Bungie washed their hands of Halo entirely afterwards. 

If your story cannot survive without the propping-up of half a dozen pieces of external media, you have failed to tell a good story. If your answer to questions about this story is to tell the asker to read a book, you have failed to tell a good story. I understand the appeal of that expansion, of being able to have a celebrated setting grow and reach new places, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of the setup. The world has to exist before it can be expanded upon. The story needs to be in place for its offshoots to grow. And that’s what Halo fails at, so totally and repeatedly. Bungie was too excited by the prospect of having an extended universe that they forgot to make a universe to expand upon. As a result, the actual core universe exists smeared across half a dozen mediums and dozens of individual pieces, with no true convergence point someone can present a newcomer with and say, “Start here.”

The Halo games are a patchwork mess of uninspired characters, unexplored concepts, unknown stakes, and uninteresting locales. Because they rely so heavily on their companion media to fill in those blanks, there’s nothing there to entice a first-time player to do it themselves. If a character’s inspiration comes from one book, the exploration of a concept comes from another, the weight of the stakes is told through an animatic, and the otherworldly locales are shown in all their glory only in the pages of a comic book, what is the game even for? If everything you need to know about the Master Chief, the Covenant, the war, and the Halos isn’t in the games, what’s the point of them? What do Halo 1, 2, and 3 actually stand to add to a universe seemingly defined elsewhere?

They become wastes of time. Wastes of potential. Other people - artists and authors working under contract for Bungie, not Bungie themselves - did all the heavy lifting to create these worlds and these characters. Does Bungie even know who their own characters are? Could the original writer for Halo 1 tell me everything the Master Chief has become through the works of a dozen other authors over the course of twenty years? 

The books might be good. I wouldn’t know; the games didn’t inspire me to read them.

[guidetoplaystation-blog]

The 9 Best PlayStation 4 Shooter Games of 2019

The Rundown

Best Overall: Apex Legends at Amazon, “Apex shines with its fluid movement and fast-paced shooter action.”

Most Popular: Fornite at Amazon, “The ubiquitous battle royale game is so refined it’s hard to put down.”

Best Characters: Overwatch at Amazon, "With so much to explore, it’s no wonder Overwatch remains one of the most popular shooters ever made."

Best Multiplayer: Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII at Amazon, “Multiplayer enhancements and a new mode make this one a must-buy for Call of Duty fanatics.”

Best Tactics: PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds at Amazon, "Sticks to what it knows, with boots-to-the-ground combat, driving, and first-person shooter mechanics."

Best Visuals: Rage 2 at Amazon, “The desolate wasteland makes for a strangely beautiful and colorful experience.”

Best Open World: Far Cry: New Dawn at Amazon, “This new take for the franchise is a fresh and exciting open world odyssey.”

Best Co-Op: Destiny 2 at Amazon, “The shared universe shooter is the best way to work together with a group of friends.”

Best for Kids: Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 at Amazon, “A charming and creative shooter that provides a lighter, family-friendly option."

Our Top Picks

Best Overall: Apex Legends

No one quite knew what to make of Apex Legends when it was stealth released back in February 2019, on the same day as its announcement. But shortly thereafter, it took the digital world by storm. Going after the battle royale crown is a truly challenging conceit, but with a focus on strong gameplay and fluid controls, Apex Legends has quickly risen to the top of the pack, especially in the category of first-person shooters.

The premise is simple: 20 teams of three drop from a ship and land, picking up randomly generated loot as an ever-enclosing ring of death surrounds them. The goal is even simpler: survive, and win. Where the game shines is in its unique convergence of genres. It's hero shooter (see: Overwatch) meets battle royale (see: Fortnite), so while it features a diverse assortment of guns and character abilities, how you use them depends on your place in line ... waiting for death. After all, only one team comes out in top.

Most Popular: Fortnite

If you are itching more for a third-person battle royale experience, then turn your head to the most popular video game in the world right now: Epic Games' Fortnite. While its premise is ubiquitous, after playing it you'll understand why. The creativity and freedom it encourages leads to a boatload of fun, no matter how many times you queue up a new game.

Setting the template for what a battle royale game really could be, Fortnite is fundamentally rock solid. Its main value proposition is the flow of frequent updates, with everything from game modes, new guns, vehicles, and surprise celebrity cameo appearances touching down weekly. Strong shooting mechanics, unique visuals, and stable gameplay are expected from a game of its popularity, and Fortnite delivers on all fronts.

Best Characters: Overwatch

Overwatch was officially released to the public about three years ago ... although people have been playing it for longer than even that. First soft-launched (in closed beta) in 2015, Overwatch has been a mainstay of the current generation of consoles for quite a while now. And Blizzard, no stranger to supporting a game long into its life cycle, has felt no need to ever stop releasing new content, characters, and modes for Overwatch.

Now, some years later, the amount of pure content available to you within Overwatch is staggering. Still a multiplayer team-based shooter at its core, Overwatch now boasts an impressive amount of content for players to experience: dozens of maps, over thirty characters, and seven distinct modes, to name some. Even better? More content is still arriving at a steady pace for the game, and all of it is completely free to everyone. With so much to explore, it’s no wonder Overwatch remains one of the most popular shooters ever made.

Best Multiplayer: Call of Duty Black Ops IIII

Variety is the name of the game when it comes to Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII. Even with the developers at Treyarch foregoing a standalone campaign with the latest installment of their flagship franchise, you won’t be longing for content. There's enough to see, play, customize, unlock, explore, and share to keep you going for years. And that's before all the downloadable content in the pipeline.

Of course, there’s the flagship multiplayer mode, which is as polished and fun as ever. New additions this time around include predictive recoil and a specially enhanced ballistics mode, in addition to the change in the franchise’s standard regenerative health for a manual healing system. All these additions make for a more rewarding, engrossing experience. Combined with the return of the Black Ops series mainstay “Zombies” mode, and a full-fledged battle royale mode called “Blackout,” there’s more here than ever before for a Call of Duty title.

Best Tactics: PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds

There’s a battle royale game for everyone, it seems, what with Fortnite’s more cartoony third-person aesthetic and Apex Legend’s fast-paced, sci-fi trappings. But for those looking for something a more traditional, you don’t have to look much further than the granddaddy of the genre itself: PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG). Launched in early access in March 2017, PUBG set the foundation for the genre.

But while others have moved onto the supernatural, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds sticks to what it knows, with boots-to-the-ground combat, driving, and first-person shooter mechanics. However, in a genre like this, less is truly more, and the pure visceral experience of playing Pis enhanced by this realistic, no-frills approach. And with the game still being updated with new content, maps, and graphical upgrades on a frequent basis, there has never been a better time to jump back into the militaristic world of PUBG.

Best Visuals: Rage 2

With its punk rock aesthetic and absolutely manic gameplay, Rage 2 has made a big impression on the first-person genre. Developer Id Software’s long-awaited sequel to the 2010 original is unlike any other shooter currently on the PlayStation 4. Its impeccable style gleams and oozes a funky good time, making it stand out amongst the crowd of more drab looking military fare.

In Rage 2, you play as a bespoke ranger who goes by the name Walker, fighting for survival in a world torn apart by an asteroid that ravaged the planet years earlier. Life is scarce, and what remains of humanity has been mutated into deranged mutants. Armed with telekinesis, not to mention a huge arsenal of weaponry and several vehicles at your side, it's up to you to keep some sanity in this deadly world.

Best Open World: Far Cry: New Dawn

Ubisoft took a big swing when it released Far Cry: New Dawn. Unlike the Far Cry games of old, this sequel/spin-off takes place in a nuclear apocalypse following the shocking conclusion of Far Cry 5. You're set loose in this new iteration of Hope County, as a character known only as The Captain, on a quest to restore peace and order to the new world. Cults run wild, survivors need your help, and there's always the occasional mountain lion or bear to fend off while completing side quests and collecting missions.

Unlike most other games that take place in the midst of nuclear fallout, the world of Far Cry: New Dawn is not a bleak and grey one. In fact, the natural environment of the world is thriving after the initial fallout, with new types of flowers and vegetation springing up all over the place. And with the game’s huge open world at your disposal, you’ll have plenty of time to explore every nook-and-cranny of the new Hope County as you work your way through the game’s various collection of criminal bandits, crazed cultist, and everything in between.

Best Co-Op: Destiny 2

The sequel to the loot-driven phenomenon Destiny, Bungie’s Destiny 2 once again throws you into a massive world of missions, weapons, and sci-fi cosmic enemies. Set in our solar system, your fireteam of three teammates quest to defend the last colony of Earthlings from evil alien menaces.

Building off the “shared universe” concept of the original game, you have the option to play the game completely PvE (player versus the environment) or PvP (player versus player), with both modes serving as a vehicle to reflexive gun handling and innovative RPG elements. However, the game truly shines the most in the PvE scenarios, in which you get to team up online with up to five other players in order to perform various mission and raids.

Best for Kids: Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2

The breadth of shooters available on the PlayStation 4 aren’t just all gloomy, self-serious military simulators and mature shoot ‘em ups, or shmups. And for something a little more fantastical and kid-friendly, you can’t go wrong with Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2.

A sequel to the original third-person shooter and a spin-off overall of the timeless Plants vs Zombies free-to-play mobile game, Garden Warfare 2 ups the ante from the previous entry in the franchise by adding new modes like Graveyard Ops, a Zombie-helmed take on the original’s Garden Ops, and Herbal Assault, which sees the zombies defending their base from a besieging horde of plants.

What to Look for in a PS4 Shooter Game

Free online multiplayer - Look for a PS4 shooter game that works online without PS Plus if you don’t subscribe to Sony’s premium online gaming service. Most PS4 games require an active subscription if you want to take them online, but there are some great options that let you play with, and against, your friends for free.

Virtual reality - If you have PlayStation VR, then you have to check out some of the great PS4 shooter games that are designed to work with Sony’s virtual reality headset. Playing a first-person shooter in virtual reality is a game-changing experience, and you can grab a PSVR Aim Controller for an even more immersive experience.

Open world - Most shooters are pretty linear in their campaigns, and multiplayer matches take place on relatively limited maps. If you want a break from that type of shooter, look for one that’s built on an open world, where you have a ton of freedom to go where you want and shoot what you want, on your own time.

[gamerzcourt]

The Most Influential Games Of The 21st Century: Halo: Combat EvolvedThe Most Influential Games Of The 21st Century: Halo: Combat Evolvedvideo games

New Post has been published on https://www.gamerzcourt.com/the-most-influential-games-of-the-21st-century-halo-combat-evolvedthe-most-influential-games-of-the-21st-century-halo-combat-evolvedvideo-games/

The Most Influential Games Of The 21st Century: Halo: Combat EvolvedThe Most Influential Games Of The 21st Century: Halo: Combat Evolvedvideo games

Join GameSpot as we celebrate gaming history and give recognition to the most influential games of the 21st century. These aren’t the best games, and they aren’t necessarily games that you need to rush out and play today, but there’s no question that they left an indelible impact on game developers, players, and in some cases, society at large.

It’s hard to explain what it was like to be a console first-person shooter fan in 2001. While PC players had been enjoying FPS games for years, the experience was never as strong on consoles. Where PCs had the fluidity of the mouse-and-keyboard setup, controls on console struggled to capture the same feel–to this day, two of the best-regarded FPS games of the era, GoldenEye 64 and its follow-up, Perfect Dark, were played with controllers that didn’t even sport dual analog sticks. In the nascent days of console online multiplayer, squaring off against other players, the thing that could really make shooters exciting, was limited to split-screen battles (often on tiny TVs). There were standout titles of the era, of course, but the FPS field was nothing like what we experience today.

Imagine, then, the arrival of Halo: Combat Evolved. For the first time, the discussion around console shooters opens up to a huge number of new possibilities. The Xbox’s system link multiplayer, the console market’s first experience with LAN, meant you could play with seven other friends–and more than that, you could work together as teams and execute tactics that your opponents couldn’t anticipate simply by glancing over at your side of the screen. For those whose gaming consisted purely of console experiences, it was the first time a shooter experience would become something similar to playing paintball or laser tag. It was a glimpse of the possibilities of the shooting genre’s future, and it was glorious.

Halo’s arrival on the console FPS scene didn’t just herald the shooter future, it manifested it. From the jump, the game was unmatched. In the very first mission, as players took on the role of genetically enhanced supersoldier Master Chief, developer Bungie was throwing together elements that shifted how playing shooters felt on a fundamental level. First and foremost was the enemy design. The alien Covenant were generally not idiots–they fought hard and smart, taking cover when they were hurt, grouping up to channel their fire, throwing grenades to flush you out of your hiding places, and charging up when they knew they had you on the ropes. Every encounter with an Elite enemy in the original Halo was a harrowing one, because the bastards weren’t just tough and didn’t just absorb a lot of shots. They were also very good at finding ways to kill you (and never missed a chance to laugh about it afterward).

Bungie set a standard with enemy AI design in Halo. But it also did a lot to make its fights feel more like battles, capturing a feeling that many shooters have chased ever since. The mostly-pretty-good AI extended to allies as well, and much of the time in Halo, you’re fighting the Covenant with the support of a squad of UNSC Marines. You might be a one-player army in Halo, but you always felt like part of a team, and excited shouts of your squadmates as you take down a big enemy or set off a big explosion (as well as their cries as they got blasted by grenades) created the sense that there was more to Halo than just your role in the game. Few titles captured the feeling of stepping straight into a full, realized world the way Halo did, and a huge part of that was the idea that you were just one (really good) soldier in a much larger, active army.

Halo felt like it was doing something video games had always wanted to do, but had never quite achieved before.

So many of those battles managed to take on an epic scale thanks to Halo’s perfect combination of elements. Huge fields often had vehicles crossing them, some of which you had to deal with on foot, others which you could battle in tanks or Warthogs of your own, with marines jumping into the gunner positions to back you up. A phenomenal soundtrack and Bungie’s cinematic approach made those moments even more exhilarating, expanding the scope even further. The game’s smart level design gave you tons of agency–you could pick your way through engagements, slamming straight into enemies or finding ways to flank them out while your squad distracted them, hunting down vehicles or rocket launchers to turn the tide in your favor, or sneaking past enemies and avoiding fights altogether.

Halo felt expansive in a new way for shooters, setting the tone for massive, cinematic, action movie-like games that would follow. Level after level, Halo felt like it was doing something video games had always wanted to do, but had never quite achieved before. It wasn’t necessarily inventing new things, but it took the best ideas of the genre and turned them into a singular experience. When it comes to the AAA shooter experience as we now know it, Bungie cracked the code with Halo.

Shooters are still feeling the influence of some of the best and freshest ideas of Halo. The ability to carry only two weapons and think strategically about which you pick up? Halo. Recharging shields that force you to find a shady spot and consider your tactical options mid-fight? Halo. Grenades on a trigger button, ready at all times? Halo. The standard in console FPS control schemes? Halo again. The franchise it spawned was such a powerhouse that for years, developers and publishers hoped their games might become the “Halo-killer” to usurp its place at the top of the shooter heap.

Bungie elevated console shooters with Halo, but the even bigger lasting influence of the game might be how it shook the console landscape by legitimizing Microsoft’s Xbox. When Microsoft decided to leap into the console market, there was no shortage of skepticism, but Halo was the reason to purchase the new machine. The game proved that Microsoft was not just some late-comer trying to use an abundance of cash to muscle out the dominant PlayStation, and it would be Halo’s sequels that helped make Microsoft a bigger force through Xbox Live. Through its role as an Xbox exclusive, Halo helped lay the foundation for the next two decades of what gaming would become.

Halo changed the conception of what games could be for a lot of players. It rocked the shooter world with ideas that have become standards to this day, and its approaches to gameplay and presentation made for that truly “epic” experience that games have continued to try to capitalize on ever since. But more than anything, it altered gaming for console players, elevating the experience with an amazing single-player campaign, a huge and expansive game world, and the first steps into the future of multiplayer. Playing Halo in 2001, it felt like things had changed–almost 20 years later, we’re still feeling the shockwaves.

For a look at the rest of our features in this series, head over to our Most Influential Games Of The 21st Century hub.

GameSpot – All News

[breakingarrows]

Best Video Game Writing for June 2017

The Complete, Untold History of Halo

Steve Haske talks to sixteen developers about Bungie’s time with the Halo series, from founder Alex Seropian to Ryan Payton who was temporarily creative lead on Halo 4 prior to being replaced by Josh Holmes. The article covers the time leading up to Halo: Combat Evolved to Halo 5, though most of the detail wraps around Halo and Halo 2.

Outlast 1 & 2: Gamifying Found Footage Horror

Noah Caldwell-Gervais continues to be on of the best video essayists when it comes to video games, this time focusing on how Outlast and its sequel adapt the found footage horror genre for video games.

Prey vs. Prey [Total Spoilers]

Another Noah Caldwell-Gervais video, this time analyzing the differences between the two games that share the name Prey, and what each did successfully and not so successfully.

Does the Designer Behind ‘Nier: Automata’ Believe in God?

Patrick Kelepek of Waypoint talks to Yoko Taro, someone who has stated before his dislike of interviews which makes this a special occasion. The discussion has spoilers for Nier: Automata but some interesting themes from the game are addressed.

On the Terrific Power of Video Games as Time Capsules

Chris Scullion writes about how some games can help you relive periods of your life due to their recreation of specific areas during specific time periods.

The Story Behind Mass Effect: Andromeda’s Troubled Five-Year Development

Jason Schreier of Kotaku gives a detailed report on why Mass Effect: Andromeda took so long to make and why it released to a less than stellar reception.

Classic Game Postmortem: Sid Meier’s Civilization

Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley partner up to talk all about the very first Civilization game and its development.

The State of Virtual Reality

Brian Crecente of Polygon gives a summation of where virtual reality is complete with quotes from major proponents of the hardware/software production.

The Ringed City Review (Dark Souls 3 DLC)

Joseph Anderson closes out the Dark Souls trilogy with a video analyzing the final Dark Souls III DLC and his feelings on the ending chapter of the series.

Sports Games, Colin Kaepernick, and the Lie of Apolitical Stardom

Nick Capozzoli tackles how video games are failing to adapt a critical part of sports: the players politics.

Call of Duty: WW2′s Single-Player Seems Big on Thrills, But Lacks Soul

Chloi Rad of IGN talks about how the latest Call of Duty fails to deliver an experience different from past iterations despite some changes to try and make its campaign more emotional.

At E3 2017, Black Characters’ Hair Looks Better Than Ever

Gita Jackson of Kotaku covers the varying quality of hair on men and women of color who were present at E3 2017.

Nite Two at E3: Phil Spencer

Jeff Gerstmann of Giant Bomb sits down with Phil Spencer of Microsoft to talk about an hour about E3, the Xbox One X, and OG Xbox backwards compatibility.

Crash Bandicoot: An Oral History

Blake Hester talks to sixteen developers who all had a hand in creating the original Crash Bandicoot for the original PlayStation. He even includes a dispute between two independent artists and the Naughty Dog co-founders about who exactly “created” Crash Bandicoot the character.

Nintendo Explains Why They Didn’t Focus on Indie Games at E3

Austin Walker of Waypoint doesn’t avoid the tough questions with Reggie Fils-Aime of Nintendo when it comes to fan made projects like AM2R and the lack of an independent developer presence at any first-party E3 presentation.

God of War: The Quest to Redeem Kratos

Philip Kollar of Polygon speaks with Cory Barlog of Sony Santa Monica about Kratos’ previous inability to change and whether or not they will successfully make players empathetic towards his plight in the newest entry for the series.

Ghost in the Shell: A Gaming Overview

Lucas Raycevick gives an overview of the few Ghost in the Shell games that have been released and why each failed to properly adapt the source material in video game for.

Making Gran Turismo Sport: Real Driving

The IGN video team have put together a short documentary about Gran Turismo creator’s Kazunori Yamauchi and the upcoming GT Sport.

State of the Art: The Monsters of Prey

Philippa Warr of Rock Paper Shotgun speaks with Emmanuel Petit and Jason Timmons of Arkane about eh visual trickery that went into creating the otherworldy aliens of Prey.

GamerGate, Feminism, Cyberpunk: An Interview With ‘The Last Night’ Designer

Rob Zacny of Waypoint talks to Tim Soret of Odd Tales and David Martinez of Raw Fury about The Last Night’s themes but also Soret’s past comments regarding GamerGate and his current views on feminism.

Final Fantasxy XIV Documentary

Danny O’Dwyer continues to deliver high quality documentaries, this time on the death and rebirth of Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIV MMO.

How Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy Offers a Return to My Most Important Gaming Memories

Jonathon Dornbush of IGN gives an emotional reason for why the Crash Bandicoot trilogy’s remake will help him relive memories of his now deceased mother and their shared connection through the Crash franchise.

‘Persona 5″ Can’t Champion Marginalized Underdogs Without Queer Characters

Sloane Cee describes how Atlus fails to give a true underdog story of outsiders overcoming their status by excluding those who are actually discriminated against, focusing mainly on the lack of any LGBTQ+ characters and romance options.

IGN Unfiltered 20: RPG Guru and Interplay Founder Brian Fargo

Ryan McCaffrey of IGN continues to have great one on one interviews with the big names of video game developers/publishers, this time with Interplay founder Brian Fargo about his introduction to development at a very young age and the troubled history at Interplay.

How PlayStation’s Japan Studio Stands Out

Andrew Goldfarb of IGN speaks to Shuhei Yoshida of Sony Interactive Entertainment and Allan Becker of Japan Studio about how the developer differentiates itself from Sony’s other first party studios.

Metro Exodus and the Developer That Won’t Stop Fighting

Philip Kollar of Polygon talks to Andriy Prokhorov, creative director at 4A Games about how the studio lacks the size and money of the usual AAA development house but continue to pursue making games that are of that quality and maybe even surpasses it.

[entergamingxp]

Five of the Best: Beaches • Eurogamer.net

Five of the Best is a weekly series about the bits of games we overlook. I’m talking about hands, maps, cats, startup screens – things we ignore at the time but can recall years later because, it turns out, they’re integral to our memory of the game. Now is the time to celebrate them!

It works like this. Various Eurogamer writers will share their memories in the article and then you – probably outraged we didn’t include the thing you’re thinking of – can share the thing you’re thinking of in the comments below. We’ve had some great discussions in our other Five of the Best pieces. So come on, what are you waiting for? On we go!

When I gaze out of the big windows beside me I see building works and grey skies. Oh February. Oh England. What I wouldn’t give to be padding through the warm sands of a beach somewhere else, somewhere hot – somewhere I can splosh in and out of the water all day, drying lazily in the sun.

Thank goodness for games that can whisk us away. They can take us to untouched beaches with pearly white sands and turquoise seas. Or they can take us farther, to different worlds and the impossible beaches of fantasy. So dry off, sit back, and let’s get away for a moment or two. Let’s explore the best beaches in games.

Sega’s sandbox game

Sega’s renowned for its big, beautiful blue skies, and of course those things are often paired with equally magnificent beaches. There’s a roll-call of them throughout Sega’s most iconic games, whether it’s Jeffry’s stage in Virtua Fighter 3, the azure coast of the first OutRun or Sonic Adventure’s opening level. Which is all well and good, but what about the time that Sega made a game out of an actual beach.

First revealed in 2014 and still available to play in a handful of Japanese locations, this thing looks amazing, even if I’ll admit I’ve yet to track one down to play. Will it be as good as its premise suggests, as projections mingle with soft sand that’s begging to be sculpted? Maybe, maybe not, but I’m just so, so glad that it exists. It just goes to prove that, no matter what you say about modern Sega, they’re still the masters of blue sky thinking.

-Martin Robinson

Sea of Thieves

There’s no purer tropical fantasy than sailing a big wooden pirate boat and exploring barely charted islands for treasure, and Sea of Thieves nails it. You can even dress in ridiculous clothes and sing songs!

But what I really like about the tropics in Sea of Thieves is the contrasting weather. One moment it’s idyllic, the sun blazing and sparkling on the calm sea, and the next, it’s raging, rain pouring and thunder crashing, water rising like mountains around you.

Sea of Thieves knows what it is to make you feel humble in nature’s presence, and nature’s presence instils in me a deep sense of calm. I could bob up and down on those seas for days.

This video is amazing! I stumbled onto it in the Sea of Thieves forum.

Halo

“We’re approaching the LZ! It’s gonna be hot!” I couldn’t believe it. I just couldn’t believe it! As the UNSC dropship plopped Master Chief down on the beach at the beginning of The Silent Cartographer – which to this day remains the greatest Halo campaign level of all time – and thrust me into a skirmish on the shore, I found myself dumbfounded a video game could immerse me in such a heart-pumping, epic shooter battle. Amid the blast of grenades, assault rifle fire and grunt squeals, I looked up. That’s a huge ring in the distance, shooting up into the sky, wrapping overhead and coursing down the opposite horizon. We’re on an island on a ring in space. And there’s a jeep with a minigun on it!

What’s remarkable about The Silent Cartographer is that no matter what the player does or where the player goes, it doesn’t break stride. As you make your way into the island’s mysterious alien installation, going deeper and deeper underground, you start to realise that everything is connected in a way that at least creates the illusion of coherence. By the time you’ve fought your way topside and grabbed a pickup from Echo 419, Halo has taught you it’s a game that takes sense of place incredibly seriously. You really did land on the beach, jump in a warthog, explore an underground base and emerge victorious without a loading screen, without the video game itself getting in the way. The island feels real, even as the wizards at Bungie pull levers this way and that behind the virtual curtain. Back in 2001, Halo’s beach blew me away. Looking back at old gameplay of The Silent Cartographer now, nearly 20 years later, it still does.

-Wesley Yin-Poole

Crash Bandicoot

It’s not a real video game if there isn’t at least one clich in there, is it? Crash Bandicoot is a little wonky by modern standards, the jumping a bit finickity and clichs abound, and that little starter beach is no different. You wake up, face down, waves lapping at your feet, knowing this is a reference to something but not what, exactly, that reference is – one of those iconic scenes that seems to have transcended its actual origins to just be a recurring, ironic nod, like cartoons with baddies tripping on banana skins and clumsy characters trying not to smash a Ming vase.

But anyway, for some reason Crash, of all games, seems to nail the archetypal wake-up-on-a-tropical-beach clich more than anything else I can currently imagine. It actually is iconic, an enormously well-remembered opening, what with the jorts and the title music and that little eyebrow wiggle to the camera before you go flipping off into the jungle. There’s a single, long path ahead, and you’ve arrived at the beginning of it. Clich or not, it’s as good a way to start a video game as any.

-Chris Tapsell

Rime

Rime is drenched in the Mediterranean. The whole game is inspired by it, by a childhood spent playing on its beaches and swimming in its sea. In fact, the deeper meaning of the game grew out of a near-death experience Tequila Works’ creative director Raul Rubio had in the Mediterranean. He was trying to impress a girl by swimming out to a buoy when, all of a sudden, fatigue set in. Unwisely, he panicked, and the last of his energy left him. Then he began to sink…

It’s a story Rubio shared with me when we talked for a long time about the many meanings of Rime. That’s a longer piece published a while ago on Eurogamer. Don’t read it if you haven’t played Rime because it’ll spoil the surprise, but do play Rime and then read it. Or else. (Just pretend you’re terrified.)

The opening of Rime shows the island at its loveliest.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/02/five-of-the-best-beaches-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=five-of-the-best-beaches-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

[wayneooverton]

10 facts about New Zealand that will totally impress your friends

It’s a well-known fact that New Zealand is without a doubt the most incredibly beautiful country in the world. Okay, I kind of made that up. Let’s call it an alternative fact.

But still, you’ve probably been hearing a lot about New Zealand in the past five years because the world is finally discovering the tiny beautiful island and no one can shut up about it.

If you think you’ve heard it all, you’re probably wrong. Besides birthing heroes like Sir Edmund Hillary and Peter Jackson, there are heaps more to know about this little island nation to be learned.

Where is New Zealand? And other questions you’re too embarrassed to ask

New Zealand is full of hidden secrets and interesting little fact bombs. Next time someone tells you there’s one person for every 9 sheep in New Zealand, hit them with these much more interesting factoids.

They’ll be totally impressed. You’re welcome.

1. Kiwi fruit is not native to New Zealand

It may seem counter-intuitive since the word Kiwi is synonymous with New Zealand. The citizens are casually referred to as Kiwis, the fruit grows in abundance throughout the country and of course, the national bird is the kiwi, a flightless nocturnal bird that is rarely seen and endangered.

Despite this country’s undeniable love for all things kiwi, the kiwi fruit is actually not native to New Zealand. It comes from China and is also known as a gooseberry. Chinese gooseberries were exported into New Zealand in 1904 and were originally marketed under the name ‘Zespri.”

When New Zealand began exporting fruit to the USA in the 1950s, the name Chinese Gooseberry was a marketing disaster waiting to happen so instead, they suggested the name kiwifruit.

2. New Zealand is home to the longest place name in the world:

Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu.

If you actually tried to sound that word out, kudos to you because my brain skipped over the word after the second syllable.

Often shortened to Taumata, Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu is a Māori name referring to a hill in Hawkes Bay on the North Island.

For those who didn’t count, the word has 85 characters, 40 syllables and roughly translates to “The summit where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, the slider, climber of mountains, the land-swallower who traveled about, played his kōauau (flute) to his loved one.”

You can learn how to pronounce the word here.

3. About 1/3 of the country is protected national park

You probably know this already but New Zealand is a pretty beautiful place and while it continues to gain popularity and be developed for human gain, a large part of the country is preserved as national park or conservation areas, many looked after by the Department of Conservation or DOC as it’s locally known.

With 13 national parks and thousands of designated conservation areas, New Zealand is doing its best to preserve the magic of wild land.

All of the National Parks are easily accessible and you can literally find conservation areas everywhere you turn so getting into nature is super easy here.

4. Bats are the only native mammal in the country.

For thousands of years, birds dominated the animal kingdom in New Zealand. Almost no land mammals existed at all here, except for a species of bats. All of these species currently are either thought to be extinct or are critically endangered.

Human settlement has a truly detrimental effect on the number of bats in New Zealand. Logging and clearing of lowland forests have destroyed their habitat and the introduction of predators (like rats and stoats) has threatened their existence.

That’s why initiatives like Predator Free 2050 are so important here. Save the bats!

5. It’s home to the steepest street in the world

The Guinness World Record recognizes Baldwin Street as the steepest street in the world. The street climbs a vertical height of 47.22m with a gradient of 35% in the steepest sections.

If you want to see the steepest street for yourself, head to Dunedin, the second largest city in the South Island and take a stroll up the hill.

Whatever you do, don’t attempt to ride down the street, especially in a wheelie bin.

6. New Zealand is the least corrupt nation in the world

Anyone who lives in New Zealand will tell you it’s a pretty easy place to call home.

Things are straight forward and the small population makes it easy for change to happen and the people who live here are simply incredibly straight up and genuine. You never really have to guess what’s really going on in New Zealand because it’s mostly all out in the open.

According to the Corruptions Perception Index, New Zealand is the least corrupt nation in the world scoring 89 points out of 100. People value the concept of being fair and understand the importance of press freedom, access to information about public spending and independent judicial systems.

New Zealand continues to top the list year after year along with other non-corrupt countries such as Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Switzerland. Hell yeah!

7. Their hottest election of the year is for a bird

In the USA, years are spent carefully crafting campaigns around the presidential election. Billions of dollars are spent during campaign season, it’s nearly impossible to watch tv or listen to the radio without hearing a political commercial.

In New Zealand, the presidential campaigns have a short build-up and are quick to finish. But there’s on campaign in New Zealand that sparks outrage and combat every year: The Bird of the Year.

Each year New Zealanders ban together and decide on which of their beloved birds should be crowned with Bird of the Year and each year, tears and outrage ensue. In fact, last year there were even reports of cheating with over 300 votes for the shag coming from the same IP address. This is the sort of corruption that stopped us from getting the full 100 points in the Corruptions Perception Index.

For those of you who care, this year’s bird of the year is kererū, a stupid fat wood pigeon, who loves to get drunk on fermented berries and fall out of trees. Sigh.

8. New Zealand is home to a giant carnivorous snail

As it turns out, New Zealand does care about other species other than birds. A prime example is the Powelliphanta snail, a giant carnivorous snail found in the South Island. This snail can be as large as dinner plates and feeds on earthworms, sucking them up like a piece of spaghetti.

These snails lay about 5-10 large eggs a year with each egg measuring up to 12 mm long and once hatched, the snails can live up to 20 years, however, these giant snails are at serious risk from predators like stoats and possums as well as habitat loss.

I haven’t seen one, thank god!

9. New Zealand was the first country to give women the right to vote

New Zealand was embracing feminism before the rest of the world granting women the right to vote in 1893. In most other democracies, women did not gain the right to vote until after WWI. The women’s vote can be largely attributed to suffrage campaigners led by Kate Sheppard, who is now featured on the $10 note.

Granting women the right to vote laid the groundwork for centuries of starving for equal rights for women.

Three out of New Zealand’s 40 Prime Ministers have been women. Sure that number looks grim but it’s a lot better than many other democratic nations (I’m looking at you, USA).

10. New Zealand is home to the first commercial bungy jump

New Zealand is often credited with inventing the idea of bungy jumping and while it’s certainly a big part of our tourism identity, New Zealand was far from the inventor of this completely insane idea.

The first modern bungy jumps were made in the late 1970s from a suspension bridge in the UK by a professional climber who was inspired by “vine jumping,” a ritual carried out by the people of Vanuatu.

Nearly a decade later, a New Zealander by the name of AJ Hackett picked up the idea and decided to turn it into a commercial tourism activity. He had made his first jump off an Auckland bridge then continued to jump off insane heights (like the Eiffel Tower) before opening the world’s first public bungy site. AJ Hackett Bungy is still operating between Wanaka and Queenstown of if nearly jumping to your death is your thing, you’re in luck.

Whatcha think? Feel more knowledgable about New Zealand now? Any other facts to add? Share!

The post 10 facts about New Zealand that will totally impress your friends appeared first on Young Adventuress.

from Young Adventuress http://bit.ly/2vqGzGZ

[gamelyplanet-blog]

You Should Play: “Timeshift”

I discovered Timeshift by accident; it's on GOG's catalog and despite the site now also hosting fairly recent titles, the game finally qualifies as an oldie.

That’s because Timeshift came out in 2007. It was developed by Saber Interactive and published by the-now defunct Sierra Entertainment. It was part of that weird era of gaming, when PC gaming was slowly crashing, console gaming was on the rise, but it was missing a hook. It was that uncertain time after Halo, but before Call of Duty 4; consoles wanted first person shooters, but nobody had managed to deliver what Bungie had way back in 2001.

To pretend that Timeshift is a classic would be an abject lie; what it is is simple fun from a bygone age. You play a scientist working on a war-suit with time-manipulation functionality for the Department of Defense. A rival scientist, named Krone, steals one of the suits, blows the lab up and time-jumps away. Before being engulfed by the flames, you don one of the suits and follow Krone to an alternate timeline, where you join the resistance against the oppressive regime your rival has established.

It's bad storytelling, told through pre-rendered cutscenes that pop up in flashes and out of order, without any characterization for the protagonist or any other character. Saber seems to have an affinity for this kind of storytelling, as they did the exact same thing in their 2010 Gears of War clone titled "Inversion". Players don't get enough of the story until the end; it's confusing, it lacks context and it feels like an afterthought.

Fortunately, it's a shooter, so story isn't too important. The game mechanics are interesting. Timeshift is very derivative and by "derivative" I mean that it took Half-Life 2 and Halo behind the shed, blew off their heads, skinned what was left of them. stitched to one Frankenstein’s Monster dress and wore them smiling for the paparazzi on the red carpet of the Big Shooter Convention 2007. So you play a mute scientist in a fancy suit, who is not ever allowed to take off his helmet and show his face to the camera and who dredges through a European city that's torn in the fight between an oppressive "Benefactor" and rebel forces. The suit provides regenerating health and abilities that enable fast combat, there are levels where you drive vehicles and stop every two minutes to clear a checkpoint and your pockets aren't big enough to carry more than three guns.

Gunplay relies on movement, instead of sitting behind cover for those all-too-important, all-too-flow-breaking few seconds it takes for health to regenerate; health-recharge is fast and there are tricks to accelerate the process; this makes encounters fairly tense, when a squad of soldiers are closing in while the hero is one finger-flicking away from death and players have to improvise on the spot how to move around and survive as camping behind cover isn’t really an option.

The weapons are many, but limiting the player to an inventory of only 3 is a problem. Enemies are bullet sponges, as it was common in that era and the weapons feel a little bit floaty; that's not a bad thing in itself, because combat relies on constant movement and proper weapon management based on the situation at hand. The issue is that outside of a long-ranged weapon (preferably the crossbow with the explosive bolts) and the shotgun, the other weapons range from situational to interchangeable. The best counter for this, usually, is allowing a large inventory, so the player isn't forced to use only what the enemies are carrying (for ammo), but instead choose what they want to use at any given encounter in the game.

The unique gameplay mechanic is the titular "time-shift"; that's the ability to slow time down, stop it or turn it backwards and it works surprisingly well, even though it never goes the extra mile. The game is a corridor shooter that requires mixing the time-shift mechanic with traditional puzzle-solving, platforming and, of course, combat. The puzzles can become dull; they're quickly solved and don't kill the flow of the action, but from some point on it becomes obvious that time-shifting is used to remove obstacles that every other FPS hero would've had to work twice as hard and three times as smartly to overcome. In other words, instead of providing intelligent solutions to complicated problems, time-shifting for puzzle-solving feels like taking a shortcut; both for the player and the developer. 

The mechanic adds an extra layer to combat, as it forces the player to move about a lot and engage the enemy in more tactical ways, even though arguably the game never makes the most out of the mechanic in those parts either. Encounters are exciting using time-shifting at first, but the more you play, the more you realize it’s really just a glorified bullet-time mechanic. It would've been a lot more interesting if the time-reversing and time-stopping functions of your suit were implemented to be tactically used during encounters.  Sadly, they last too little and there aren't the necessary tools to really take advantage of them during shoot-outs. Enemy AI is simplistic, but aggressive. Their tactics are telegraphed based on their weapon of choice, but they will do their damnedest to flush the player out of cover once they're aware of their position.

A strong point of the title is the visual fidelity. The game runs on Saber's own engine and it produces a very pretty-looking game (particularly when it comes to environmental textures) with good optimization. The art-style is weird, however; the game takes place in an alternate timeline in the 1930s, but the direction is confusing, logically and aesthetically. Technology is far too advanced (down to using electronics) and a lot of levels are modern-ish looking bases and strongholds. Other areas look old and rusty, like a Soviet or at least old Russian province ripped straight from the Metro games. The enemies are decked out like modern super-soldiers, but Krone himself dresses like a Nazi officer. Visual variety leaves a lot to be desired and, ironically, that's largely because of the lack of consistency; war machines and vehicles have unique and interesting designs, but they would work much better in a visual setting consistent with steampunk, or alternate universe pseudo-futuristic style, instead of this mishmash of modern and old (that’s not art deco), which fails to make an impression. It's odd, because most of the game simply looks the same and yet it lacks internal, artistic consistency. The little variety that exists, exists in all the wrong places and nothing is memorable. Instead of impressing, the few aesthetic oddities merely stick out like a sore thumb. It's like someone made a cake that tastes like mud and gets stuck between your teeth, but they also sprinkled three different kinds of topping on it and it leaves a confused taste in your mouth.

It's not hard to see why Timeshift was released and promptly forgotten about. Most user reviews cite it being generic as its biggest downfall and they're not wrong. Timeshift implements a number of ideas well, but it never takes that extra step to timelessness. Level design is good, but ultimately forgettable and from the start of the campaign to the end, you fight the same black-clad super-soldiers in similar situations. The FPS genre was in a transitional stage at the time and it was looking for a new standard; that new standard came a year later in the form of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. But the time of the MW type of shooter has come and passed, like the Halo era did before it and we've been seeing a resurgence of traditional shooters with games like Wolfenstein: The New Order, Shadow Warrior and DOOM (though I'd argue DOOM is a bad return to form). Timeshift isn't anywhere near as good as those titles; but for the FPS player that now misses the Halo/Half-Life style of shooter, during a sale Timeshift can certainly provide.

Notes:

- When Sierra Entertainment shut down, it was bought out by Activision. This means that the game is available on GOG and Steam, but it costs about 20 bucks. Don't encourage this kind of practice; wait for a sale to purchase.