Recently 4A games and Deep silver remade their cult classic post apocalyptic shooter, Metro 2033. This remakes biggest selling point was that the developers had completely re made the game from the ground up instead of just converting the old engine, this allows for a better looking game that also performs better on lower power systems. The last light engine allowed new features to be implemented into the game, things like the weapon customization and different play style modes (one more action oriented with standard shooter combat, and the other a more realist style with limited resources and an emphasis on staying hidden and taking out enemies in the shadows.)
They did a very good job keeping the original games ominous atmosphere and even intensify it with the improved graphics and audio (I am personally a big fan of the lighting effects this engine has.) which will still give you that "I've found a very special game" feeling every time you play. As is always important in shooters the guns in Metro 2033 redux are exceptionally nice feeling, Revolvers have a slight delay while the cylinder rotates, smg's sound snappy but don't handle like they're made of paper, shotguns pack such a punch you can almost swear you felt recoil when you fired it, assault rifles feel naturally balanced between power and control and finally sniper rifles look intimidating and sound even more so with each shot ringing out full seconds after firing it.
The new engine included an improved ai system, upon my short time playing a bit of both the new and old version of 2033, I noticed myself having to think more tactically as my enemies now swapped cover and worked together to flank me.
As the final month of the year rolls around so does another thing, holiday themed game events. A commonplace in payday 2 seasonal events offer players a chance to play a special holiday themed heist, which also unusually rewards the player with a limited time mask only obtainable through the heist.
This years Christmas heist is a particularly interesting one. You are tasked with rescuing Vlad's (a criminally insane contact in the game) alcoholic brother in law from his downed plane and rescue as much of the cocaine he was transporting before the cops get a hold on it. The heist takes place at a logging mill and the evidence of a plane crash is evident, burning fuselage litters the map standing out bright orange from the dark greens and browns of the trees creating a setting that looks straight out of an action movie. The layout of the map is very interesting with multiple viable strategies from holing up in the logging warehouse in a "king of the hill" way, or if your team is fairly fast the trees and rock piles provide ample cover to dodge between. The mission starts with you having to escort the drunk pilot to a safe location and signal the escape chopper before the cops show up, after that it's simply holding off the police while simultaneously trying to recover the scattered boxes of coke in the forest.
Along with the heist this years event came with 4 user designed Christmas masks themed after things like the Grinch and the homicidal robot Santa from the popular show Futurama, and if everyone on your team are all wearing different holiday masks and you play the heist on the hardest difficulty you can search find a special mask or rather beard that's modeled after the producer of the games beard. Everyone was also immediately given a new weapon in the form of the iconic Chicago typewriter tommy gun (think 1940's-1950's era mafia). The gun is fairly decent with medium damage and accuracy and a very large ammo capacity, to balance this the gun has awful stability making very difficult to provide sustained fire unless stability improving modifications are added to the gun.
This years update was definitely a fun one with lots of good new content added and even came paired a long with a payday themed version of "12 days of Christmas" which you can listen to here.
Medal of Honor Warfighter is a first person shooter developed by Danger Close and published by Electronic Arts. Warfighter is the most recent installment of the Medal of Honor series and has been overlooked by many as another generic shooter with a few neat gimmicks.
Warfighter has a multiplayer mode that on the surface seems fairly basic but once you get into it shows all of its colors. The most intriguing part of the multiplayer is the fireteam buddy system, this pairs two players of the same team together and encourages you to work with one another by allowing you to respawn on your buddy, replenish your health and ammo and when your buddy scores points around you, you also get a small bonus. In order to help keep you with your buddy the game constantly shows you their silhouette (which can be a life saver in some situations) and also silhouettes the person who kills them allowing you to "avenge" your buddy, if you can kill the enemy player before the silhouette disappears your buddy gets a reduced respawn time.
Now moving on to the player and their weapons. The first thing I need to say about warfighters guns are that they look, sound and handle amazingly. The guns are all based off real world variants that the different nationalities use. The customization is fairly in depth allowing you to change the length of the guns barrel, the flash hider used and the orientation of the weapons stock allowing for a numerous variations of the same gun that perform uniquely. The game lets you start off picking any soldier from any weapon class and then changes the order in which soldiers and weapons unlock for you based on who you choose. The soldier classes are the assaulter (uses highly adaptable assault rifles), Demolitions (heavily armored and uses short range high caliber carbines), Point man (uses assault rifles similar to the assaulter but moves faster and has flash-bang grenades instead of lethal grenades), Heavy Gunner (uses light machine guns to provide suppression), Special Ops (very similar to point man but geared more towards short range conflicts), and the sniper (not much to say about them they use sniper rifles and designated marksmen rifles to fight from a distance).
The multiplayer mode has your generic modes like team death match and capture the flag but has an interesting mode called hot spot. Hot spot has one team try to defend one of five bomb caches at a time while the other team tries to destroy it, the catch is that the defending team knows where the next bomb cache will be before the attackers do allowing them to setup a defensive position.
Warfighter is a great game that was overlooked by many due to bad review at launch because of un-addressed launch bugs. While there are still a few active servers (around 2 to 3 full servers on weekdays and around 5 on the weekend) it could be more lively. The game is pretty fun to play and if you can find it for cheap i'd recommend getting it.
