Resistance: Retribution on my PSP

As you may have read around or experienced, Resistance: Retribution is awesome, incredibly fucking awesome.

Resistance: Retribution is a third person shooter released in 2009 for the PSP. Set between Resistance: Fall of man and Resistance 2, the story revolves around the British Royal Marine Lieutenant James Grayson in a one man army battle against the Chimera looking for vengueance over his brothers fate; During battle, Grayson discovers a Chimera conversion center and there he finds his brother Jhonny who has been partially transformed into the Chimera; as protocol demands, he is forced to kill his brother but this sets him on a Chimera killing frenzy, as he abandons his troops and goes on a solo mission destroying every Chimera conversion facility he finds. He destroys plenty of this places and becomes a war hero, but the British don't take desertion so lightly, as Grayson is placed on trial and condemned to death. While awaiting the gallows, Grayson is offered a reprive by Lieutenant Raine Bouchard from the "Maquis" European resistance movement in exchange for his help on delivering a serum that will counteract the Chimera virus; Grayson agrees and the game is on.

Grayson's character is one of the best game characters I've ever played, his role in the game is so well stablished since the beginning of the game and many of his comments as the game progresses make the gaming more intense or interesting; the overall history is great too, beautifuly paced by Parker's voice on the chapter transitions, the ingame secuences and the cinematics, tell the story well enough to keep you interested; the game graphics don't stay behind either, a Modified Logans Shadow engine -From Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow- makes R:R's world a great sight, with pretty characters and astonishing enemies.

The game is a third person shooter, one of the most amazing things of this game is the combat; it's great, it's fluid, it's fast and it's satisfactory. While facing an enemy, Graysons crosshair will automatically choose an enemy and direct the bullets to it; the aiming is helped by 4 yellow markers, if you center you enemy on the yellow markers, the crosshair will automatically go to it; this is a great help when fighting, because R:R will throw at you hundreds of enemies at once, all of them shooting crap at you from all directions, allowing you to keep the shooting fluid and accurate on your side while dodging and looking for cover without having to tilt you crosshair awkardly on your enemies with the face buttons -this option can be cancelled on the menu if it's not hardcore enough for you- ah! the cover system, the cover system kicks hairy ass all the way to Chimera invaded Paris; While facing enemies, Grayson will automatically lock onto a nearby object that can be used for cover and... cover there; and while taking cover, you can make him attack by just pressing the fire button, and as you release the button, he will automatically go back to cover safety, swift and smooth. And the music score, it's just great, from beginning to end.

The weapons are great too, what is a shooter without amazing guns? You have your standard bullets rifle, a Chimera rifle resembling the Bullseye, sniper rifle, chaingun, grenades, rocket launcher, the Auger, and some other unlockable guns. I have not to much to say on multiplayer because I'm not so into online multiplayer, and I have no friends to play with on ad hoc -my fiends just play FIFA games and shit-. R:R has an amazing characteristic too, if you connect it to a PS3 while Resistance 2 is loaded, it unlocks some amazing stuff on your R:R like new outfit, guns, gameplay characteristics, new intel and the main story changes -tho I've heard that no so much, I haven't played it myself- making the replay value climb the fuck up. In my country, the UMD is about 40 US dollars, so, all this characteristics make the 40 bucks worth it a lot.

But that's enought of ass licking, the game has it's flaws -no game is perfect- and I don't mean to be rude on it, but there's just some things that fucked my gaming at times.

First of all: the dificulty. This was one of the things that brought my piss to a boil more than one time; the hardest game is not the best and an easy game is just shit as well, but there were times that R:R was just being an asshole about it; having swarms and legions of Chimera coming at you with rifles and augers and chainguns and flying craps, and barely killing all those shits just to find out that giving two steps ahead spawned another legion of Chimera while having no health and no ammunition close was fucking frustrating as shit, those where times when I would just turn the PSP off and do some other shit. Sometimes the difficulty was not the hundreds of enemies, but enemies coming right in front of your face giving you a quarter of a fucking second to react and avoid getting hit -there's no regenerative health- or killing a lot of enemies just to get three flying turrets with machinguns right in your face. Whenever you die, you backtrack to the last checkpoint, and while some checkpoints are conveniently placed, some are placed fucking far one from another, and sometimes theres like a fucking thousand swarms of Chimera and big enemies between one checkpoint and the next; and that was fucking frustrating as well. Yes, choosing the right gun will help you go through with ease, but sometimes it just takes a lot of trial and error.

Another problem, well, for me, was that it was repetitive, yes, I know, it may sound stupid being this game a shooter, but considering the length of the game -I'm not sure how many hours my first playthough took me... a lot- the gameplay wears out on you by the last part of the game; it's like: walk, Chimera swarm, shoot, walk, Chimera swarm, shoot, walk, Chimera swarm, press button, Chimera swarm... it just grows weary on you by the end. sure, it has some parts where you drive a Hammer and are fucking awesome, but the game can be brought down to shoot, walk, shoot, walk -and considering that you will die a lot in some parts, and you'll backtrack a lot, it's just makes you get tired of gaming and leave it for another day-

Well, this was a short opinion, not a book, so, to wrap things up, despite a couple of things that personally bothered me, Resistance: Restibution is an amazing game and I really enjoyed playing it, of course, this already you knew, but there are some people out there who haven't played it -well, I know some "gamer" friends who haven't played or don't know about some great games like BioShock or Fallout or games like that, they only play FIFA and Call of duty-. In my opinion, it was a great game, sometimes hard and unfair and frustrating, but amazing overall. If you haven't played it, play it, it's definitively worth your money and time.

If I had to put a number... 8.5 out of 10. Thanks for reading, see you next time.

007 Nightfire on my PC!

While not entirely crappy, 007 Nightfire is a game I'll never play again. I will try not to praise GoldenEye all the way, first because I know and you know that one's a freaking awesome game and second, because this is not GoldenEye, this is Nightfire.

Ported by Gearbox in 2002 -the same that gave us the Half-life expansions and Halo (I guess)- Nightfire is your standard FPS bringing you Pierce Brosnan as James Bond! -I think that's pretty cool- I don't know much about the Bond books, only the movies, but it appears that this one is not taken from any of them, it's like a made up plot from both the books and the movies. The intro of the game is just awesome -and in my opinion better than many of the openings from the movies-, The song is "Nearly civilized" by Esthero by the way, it's a collage of all the cheesy images we like from the movies, very pretty.

A nice thing is that the graphics are really good, and the modeling of the characters is just perfect -2002 perfect for the stupid kids that dislike old games because of the 'Shitty graphics'-, the faces look nice and the environments are well done too, visually, I have nothing to say. The music is nice and the sounds too -despite some that i'll talk about later- but overall it's ok; the controls are fine too, tight and responsive; weapons and gadgets are nicely made and all, nothing to say there either...

One thing that I must admit is that, even if the plot is well made, It felt rushed and I always felt like I was left out of it, even to the point that I didn't get it right at all, I don't know, it was like getting someone to resume me Moby Dick, you can get to know what happens, but it's not like you actually read it.

One of the shittier aspects of the game is AI, they are plain dumbasses! I don't know how to explain myself, but they are simply dumb, sometimes you shoot one from a distance and he turns around and runs the other way while the soldier besides him is just standing like nothing happened, or he runs and shoots the hell out of a wall or runs straight at you while you shoot him, or shoots a rocket to you while standing just in front of you, I mean, they feel dumb and odd. One thing I just hated is that sometimes you shoot the shit out of them and they keep on shooting you -pretty much like the soldiers from Half-life, but at least those where smart- or you shoot them in the head and they don't die -the inverse is totally likable, sometimes you shoot them in the arm and they die instantly :D-, also they scream things, but all of them say the same thing, like "Identify yourself" -while you're shooting him- or some things in japanese that sound really stupid, at first it seems ok, then you get bored of it.

Sometimes I felt that there was a lot of unfair challenge, I know this is some kind of stealth game and you have to avoid enemies and all that, but there are times you are walking and just killed a bunch of dudes when the door behind you opens and a guy with a rocket launcher blows the shit out of you! Come on! I don't have an eye inside my butt hole!

While playing I felt that there was no technique or tactics or anything, yeah, you can go past by some guards and all that, but I preferred to run and gun everyone because there are times that you are going stealth fine and a dude like a kilometer away spots you and alerts the 50 guards you just left behind and they shoot the shit out of you -Pretty much like the mercenaries from Far Cry-

Your partners are crap too, there's this mission where Allura -I guess it's her- joins you and she is carrying a sniper rifle, but damn she's so dumb! she never shots that shit! sometimes the guards are in front of her shooting you and she just stands there watching! sometimes when you reload, she respawns in front of a guard and neither of them does a damn thing xD

The game is really buggy at times, sometimes you try to open a door, but you have to be standing at a very specific spot to get it open, also, there is a part near the end of the game that a camera spots you and alerts the guards, but I’ve never been able of finding where the hell that camera is placed! On that same spot, there’s a security room, you can’t open the door, the guards come out and you’re set, but sometimes they don’t open the door and try to shoot you through the door, and this is a game stopper, I stood there like ten minutes trying to get them to open the door and eventually had to reload the game. Sometimes the corpses fly away when they die xD

A special mention goes for the ninjas near the end of the game, they are just fucking shit! You can’t shoot them because they run around and they take like a million bullets to go down while they can bring you down in no time -I mean, it’s James Bond, not Chuck Norris-

Even walking in the game is odd, you feel like you’re floating or something; and the guns feel odd, I don’t know how to explain it, but they are odd, they don’t feel like when you play other games and you feel the shots, remember playing Return to castle Wolfenstein? Remember how it felt shooting Nazis with a Luger? Remember how it felt shooting vortigaunts with a shotgun, like a real shot? Well, that doesn’t happen here, it’s an odd feeling that makes it even more bothersome and crappy to kill the dumb soldiers, even the sounds of the shots sound odd, and that makes your experience even crappier.

Well, this has gone too long right? To wrap things up, 007 Nightfire is a good game but fails in many many aspects and that is what does not let this game become a great game –or get close to Goldeneye-, I enjoyed playing this game, but sometimes I hated it and wondered why the hell was I playing this shit. Play it if you can have it borrowed or something so you don’t waste your money in it –Or if you can get it for a console, try it there, I’ve heard it’s better there-

PD: At least, boobs look nice :D