09 & 10: A Double Pack of Wii Shooters!

I decided to not bother with the so far usual Photo to proof that I have beaten the games mainly because I´m too lazy to copy them from my Phone to my PC. Abd with that out of the way we jump straight into todays main meal: The Conduit and it´s sequel Conduit 2 for the Wii, a pair of First Person Shooters. You take control of Agent Michael Ford who works for an Agency called "Trust". Ford is send into Washington D.C. to recover stolen Trust technology from a terrorist organization led by Prometheus. However once Ford did everything Trust whanted they turn against him and Prometheus becomes his new best friend. At this point he has deal with his former employer while fighting off an Alien Invader called the Drudge. The Story is neither great nor memorable, heck, they even forgot to give it a proper ending or at least a true boss fight at the end, it kinda just ends after you fought off a few waves of Drudge at the end while trying to open a Conduit (that´s what they decided to call Portals) to escape from Trusts Headquarter / Drudge Factory (Oh, yeah, Drudge are manufactured or something) because that facility is about to self destruct. You never get a chance to to fight John Adams, the Boss of Trust and the very man that tried to ditch you a while earlier. Gameplay wise The Conduit is a solid FPS with nothing too special about it. Weapons are a mix of SMG´s, Shotguns, Pistols and Drudge weapons wich are mostly energy based and IMO more fun to use. Since it´s a Wii game you have to use Motion Controls, though they are fairly good and considering the game doesn´t support the Motion Plus feature it is actualy fairly precise. After the first few levels I didn´t mind pointing the Wiimote at my TV anymore and I began to really enjoy the game. Soundwise there is nothing to complain here, weapons sound like you would expect, voice acting is good, but nothing too special and the Soundtrack is at least not annoying. Back in the day The Conduit was praised a lot for it´s visuals and while it does indeed look rather good for a Wii game, however for the most part, even in outdoor areas, it´s just a bunch of corridors with a few larger rooms in between, but they are at least varied enough to keep it from getting boring.

Conduit 2 picks up right where the first one ended: On the other side of that Conduit-Portal that you used to espace from the Trust Headquarter. You are now on a Oil Platform and right away you start to hunt down John Adams. After defeating a giant sea monster Ford is taken to the Atlantis, the very ship that brought Adams, Prometheus and the Drudge to Earth. There you first get a fancy suit of armor and then awaken Andromeda from her Stasis. She then reveals that whoever is wearing that armor has to destroy The Pathfinder, who just happens to be John Adams. A wild hunt around the world and a few bossfights later you finally get your chance to kich Adams Drudge-Ass. While the story for Conduit 2 isn´t anything special either the game itself takes itself less serious than the previous game. The Weapon selection is similar, but you still get a few new toys to play with and control wise you can now use a Wii Classic Controller (Pro) instead of the Motion Controls, the latter now support the WiiMotion Plus feature. For some wierd reason you can´t use the Classic Controller when Motion Plus is activated in the Options Menu. For the sound departement I have the exact same thing to say as for the first game, the graphics however are greatly improved and I would go so far to say this is probably the best looking Wii game period. You get much more varied levels visualy wise with some of them even having a much more open feel to them than anything the first game had to offer. Sadly Conduit 2 ends on a Cliffhanger with former US Presidents from Outerspace, and I somehow doubt that we will ever see a Conduit 3, wich is a bummer considering the 2nd game made a lot of right design decisions and it had the potential in it to become a bigger franchise than it is. Since you can pick both games up for a fairly low price there is really no reason why you shouldn´t at least give them a chance.

06: Is it a game or a movie?

Love or hate the games from Quantic Dream, but one thing is for sure: You can´t say that they don´t at least try to deliver a experience that is different from most other games. The problem is, and this is where a lot of hate towards their games comes from, that with the exception of Omikron: The Nomad Soul all of the Studios other games shifted more and more towards the realm of Interactive Movies with gameplay often consisting of not much more than choosing Dialouge Options and Quick Time Events. I tend to enjoy their games. What they lack in gameplay they more than make up in Storytelling. Just take Fahrenheit / Indigo Prophecy as an example. In this game you play both as the Agents working on a Murder case and the guy who did it. As the player you both whant to get the guy you are after yet at the same time you don´t whant to get caught. The Story get´s a bit more complicated than that, but overall it is a insanely great way to kick the game off. Beyond: Two Souls takes this Interactive Movie aproach and just runs with it in every way possible. The game runs in a 21:9 Aspect Ratio at all times to give it more of a movie feel, two of the main characters are acted, both in voice and motion capture, by real actors and the ingame models are modelled exactly after them. These are Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe, both with Hollywood fame prior to this games release and their acting isn´t bad either. Cutscenes and gameplay sections often have transsitions so seamless that sometimes you end up making controller inputs during cutscenes. 

You play as Ellen Page´s Character Jodie and the Entity Aiden that is with her at all times. At first Jodie grew up with foster parents, however after an incident where Aiden almost choked a boy to death during a snowfight Jodie is taken to the Department of Paranormal Activity (DPA) in an attempt to understand and control Aiden. Once at the DPA she grows up there until she enters the CIA as a Teenager shortly after she was able to shut down the reactor for an experiment gone wrong that was intended to get acces and control the world of the Entities, now dupped the Infraworld. At the CIA Jodie taks part in a couple of Missions, however after she learns that the CIA lied to her about who the target of one of her missions really was she decides that she no longer whant´s to be a part of the Agency and runs away, living homeless on the streets for a while and hiking through the country and making a few friends in the process. After some time she get´s back to the DPA and agree´s to go on a last mission with the CIA to shut down a chinese developed Condenser before it is used to attack the US, in return Jodie get´s offered a new Identity to start a new life. The Mission is a succes, however the CIA doesn´t really keep their promise and they whant to put Jodie in a coma-esque condition. Nathan, one of the Doctor´s Jodie grew up with at the DPA, decides to shut down the containment field of the Black Sun dubbed Condenser in an attempt to reunite with his dead wife and daughter in the Infraworld. During the Shutdown Jodie learns who Aiden really is and she has to decide if she want´s to stay alive or if she whant´s to join the people she lost on her Journey in the Infraworld.

Ingame the Story is presented in a non-linear way. At least that´s what the game does by default, because the PS4 Version has at least the Option to play it in a Linear presentation. Why this wasn´t patched in for the PS3 Original is a mystery to me. The real issue is that both the non-linear and the linear aproach of telling the story aren´t perfect for this game. With the non-linear variant the game jumps around in it´s timeline that it get´s confusing at times, but that isn´t the real problem here, the actual order is. For instance you take part in a mission for the CIA in a Warzone, however because at that point you already played sections of the game where you are running and hiding from them, and because of this you already know that there can´t be any real threat for Jodie here because you know that she obviously didn´t die during the mission. With the linear aproach the game takes a real long time to pick up the pace, and at that point you might have lost interest in the game. With the PS4 Version you can at least pick your poison. Gameplay for the most part is a mix of Quck Time Events, manipulating objects or people as Aiden and fighting against other people or Entities. When fighting against other people it really is a slightly different form of QTE, in those fights, and some other instances the game will slow down and you have to push the right stick in whatever direction Jodie is moving. Sounds simple enough, but somehow it isn´t always obvious wich direction the game expects you to input. Luckily you are allowed to fail these inputs as much as you like because in an attempt to keep the Story going Beyond; Two Souls doesn´t have a failure state, but there are different ways in wich the scenes can end.

I played the PS3 Version and it is one of the best looking games on the system. It is really amazing what Quantic Dream did here with the system and the visuals are on such a high level that the very rare low-res texture and jagged shadow stick out as if a flashing arrow where pointing at it, but that´s really nitpicking here. Sure, the game has some Slowdowns, however considering how incredible the game looks and that the PS3 was already 7 years old by the time the game was released you can´t really complain that much. Both the Sound Effects and the Soundtrack are on a similar high level, but the Soundtrack isn´t memorable, it is just there. All of the Voice Acting is really well done to a point that paired with the visuals you can really mistake the game for a CGI movie at times. Sadly the game never really explores it´s gameplay capabilities to a full extend. Especially the Missions you do for the CIA and DPA show how much fun a game could be that gives you control over an Soldier and an Entity that allows him to control the enemies or to manipulate the world around him in his favour. As it is Beyond is a fun experience and it is worth at least a try.

04: Sand in my Shoes

OK guys, this is my 4th attempt on getting a nice introduction for this one, but Spec Ops: The Line doesn´t make it easy for me. At first I wanted to talk about how I don´t like 3rd Person Shooters that much, but it felt unimportant. Then I tried to approach it from the controversy that sourrounds this game and again it felt wrong. What I tried to say was: I get what Yager Development was trying with this game, but at least for me it doesn´t work because I think that Yager themself missed their own point. I do get that they want to take an anti-war position with this game and in both the cutscenes and the Storytelling itself it really works. They show you what effect your actions have, the characters question if their actions where necessary or not or if it was even the right thing to do. And the twist at the end really comes as a surprise and it works. I love the game for this, I really do, however it sadly still falls flat on it´s face and leaves you with very mixed feelings because the gameplay doesn´t support the anti-war approach the game tries to take. The big issue here is that Spec Ops is just a run off the mill cover based 3rd Person Shooter with a few turret-sections mixed in for good measure. And to make matters worse the violence during gameplay sections is way over the top with heads exploding with huge amounts of blood leaving bodies with a clean cut at the neck. It just feels wrong to have a splatterfest while mowing down waves of enemies and then trying to tell the player "Look at this, this is how bad war is and it does bad stuff even to tough soldiers!", it just doesn´t work.

This issue is even sadder when you realize how much Yager managed to get right with Spec Ops. Sure, the gameplay isn´t anything special, but Dubai covered and partialy buried in sand from a series of Sandstorms makes for both a very unique and in places surprisingly beautiful setting. In other places you really feel that this version of Dubai is a place where people have to fight to survive and fear for their lives on a daily basis. The environmental storytelling works and it feels like a lot of thought went into building a believable place. The Soundtrack is a mix of a less memorable original score and much more memorable licensed music by Deep Purple, Jimmi Hendrix and Bjork among many more. Amazingly each of these Songs fits the scene they are used in perfectly. The Story itself? A somewhat forgettable mess. Like mentioned above Dubai was hit by a series of Sandstorms and while the rich and wealthy upper class left the city before things got too bad the working class got trapped in the city. When Colonel Konrad, leader of the 33rd Infantry Battalion heard about the Sandstorms he vouluntered the 33rd to help and ignored orders to abandon the city. When the Storms got so bad that the city got cut off from the outer world Konrad declared martial law and the 33rd began to commit atrocities to the civilians left in the city. Some members of the 33rd didn´t like this and they tried to stage an coup d´etat, wich failed and got them exiled. The CIA then send in a Black Ops Team to investigate, as a part of this plan they started a revolution with the civialns to bring Konrad down. After a looping radio transmission get´s out of the city a three man Delta Force Team is send in to gather information.

Like I said the Story is a bit of a mess, heck, most of the time I wasn´t even sure if the CIA and their followers where on my side or not and at some point I stopped caring  about who it was I where shooting at. Sure, this may have been the intention of the developrs, but at the point I didn´t care anymore about my enemies the whole idea of the game already fell flat for me. Don´t get me wrong, I really enjoyed the game as a cover based 3rd Person Shooter, and as that it is great, but in my opinion the anti-war message they tried to get across doesn´t work when the gameplay doesn´t support it. For that the game schould have been much slower with much fewer enemies and a more realistic approach to violence. Yes, I do know that a slow, realistic game with an anti-war message would have been much harder to sell and andvertize, but I feel that it is the only way to really get the message to the people that play the game. I still recommend that you play Spec Ops: The Line yourself, just don´t expect that everything feels like it should belong in the same piece of media.