Cheapskate!

Yeah, call me a cheapskate! I don't mind, not at all. Why can you call me a cheapskate? Well, because I bought three games on the cheap lately. Not all of them I'm that proud of owning either, each for their own reason and one of them actually turned out to be a pleasant and surprisingly great purchase!

But let’s keep that one for last and take you through the paces starting with the first one I played!



Review

Played on: Xbox 360
Released: 2007

First, is Blacksite Area 51. A title that really impressed me in it's playable demo, back in 2007. As time went by, I simply forgot about it. Having recently been reminded of its existence, I picked it up recently and started playing.

The game begins in Iraq, fighting as a US Special Forces team. At some point you discover some strange biological experiment creatures, and well, without spoiling the story, you'll end up back in the US, in Area 51 nonetheless, fighting alien creatures.

Blacksite is a first person shooter and plays rather well as such. The guns could've felt more powerful, but work fine. The environments are large and varied. Ranging from deserts and cities, to small town America and laboratories. It’s all powered by the Unreal Engine 3, so it looks good overall.

There are many different types of enemies and you even have a sort of commander option allowing you to give orders to your fellow soldiers in your squad.

Overall, it’s a rather enjoyable shooter, short but a fun ride straight through. It’s one of those titles you easily forget a year later but feels good when playing. It could've done with leaning more into horror actually, would've made it stand out more and represent the playable demo's eerie feeling
.

Worth a shot, though, if you've ran out of shooters and want something at a low price!




Review

Played on: Xbox 360
Released: 2009

Next up is Terminator Salvation, you're allowed to hum the Terminator theme while reading this, is a prequel game to the movie with the same title. Let's just clear one thing first, I love the Terminator movies, I loved the TV series and I adore the setting, the story and the whole premise of a supercomputer that’s hellbent on killing the entire human population. To do so, it's using robots as killing machines, complete with scary metal skeleton faces and glowing red eyes!

In theory, this setting should translate into a fantastic game! Well, it doesn’t, so if you're disappointed already, just go play Fallout 3. It’s the same type of post atomic war setting and a million times better! Salvation fails at so many points. 

Firstly it looks like a PlayStation 2 game in HD, the environments are tiny, the character models are terrible and the animation is basic.

The worst is the presentation, it just skips on explaining things and has a horrible way of clipping back and forwards between gameplay and cutscenes that simply feel as cheap as….hmm….cheap as a low budget game in your local stores bargain bin…which it is!

The core gaming mechanic and the shooting isn’t that bad, however, and it tries to be a sort of Gears of War. Combining it's third person view with covering and flanking. There are too few, but quite different types, of robot enemies that at least require some skill and good shooting to get past. At times you'll actually have fun and feel the intense battle when a Terminator is walking towards you.

But it's all over so fast, the battles are set on sort of 
arenas, in other words, you know what's about to happen. There's an overhanging sense of bad quality through the whole title.

The eerie atmosphere of killer robots, that was in the movies, is totally absent. It feels like you're fighting in a badly textured world, full of retarded Terminators that were abandoned by Skynet for their stupidity.

What can I say? Avoid it?! Yeah, the only positive side being it’s fairly easy on the hard difficulty and a title to consider for 1000/1000 achievement points. I heard it can be fun in local coop, but haven't tried this.




Review

Played on: Xbox 360
Released: 2009

Last of the bunch is Halo 3: ODST! Finally, a game that’s far from low-budget! I played through Halo 3 last year and really enjoyed it and became a fan of the franchise. I found ODST the other week, really cheap at a store and decided to play through.

Unlike the previous Halo titles, ODST is actually best played alone for the singleplayer, as it’s much more atmospheric and requires you to get that sense of being alone.



You play as a stranded, dropship, ODST soldier, set in futuristic New Mombasa city, investigating what has happened to your fellow soldiers. Each time you find a clue about one of your fellow ODST soldiers, you get to play from their point of view of what happened to them. These flashback levels shift the game away from the dark, neon-lit city, to whatever location the found soldier fought in. A neat way of making varied environments!

The setting and the way they present the story is fantastic. Even though the Halo 3 engine is getting old, ODST really shines with its sci-fi environments and large areas to explore. Some of battles are huge and really epic. I also love that dropships and other massive vehicles are vulnerable to be shot at, and can be destroyed!



ODST plays exactly like Halo 3, however, you don't have the regenerating health shield like Master Chief, so you’ll have to find health packs located in the levels, just like the good old first person shooters. It's a
 rather lengthy shooter, considering being a spin-off of the main series. The difficulty will challenge most Halo players too, especially the harder settings.

I loved the dark atmosphere, the loneliness and the variation in environments, so I'd strongly recommend ODST. That is, of course, if you enjoy sci-fi and have played Halo 3 first! Play the game solo,
 though, at least for your first run and keep coop for a replay run, the lonely atmosphere is kinda broken with two players!




That will be all for now, I'm off for my summer holidays, so until next time: Play nice! :)