Nostalgia Mode Initiate: Looking for Modern Gems vol. 5

This time around we have a Double Feature.  Both are games with a "notable" celebrity proceeding the  title, and both are games that you've likely only seen stuck on the used shelves presuming neither would see the light of day.  These games are Vin Diesel Wheelman and Clive Barker's Jericho.

I will be the first to admit it, I don't think I would have ever chosen to play these games if they were not recommended to me by a party that will remain anonymous...asshole.  Neither of these games have stuck out in anyone's minds, but of course, that is the nature of all gem hunts is it not?  So I decided I would indeed give these games a shot.  For the sake of saving typing space, I'm going to break everything down in one go per game so you don't have to read this for 10 minutes.

Vinny Behind the Wheel:

Vin Diesel Wheelman started things off strong with a HUGE install.  I mean I know that ps3 titles are known to sometimes require a mandatory install so the game won't have embarrassing load times (mission failed).  Even post install I still felt like I was sitting through the load times of GTA Vice City after and before every single fucking cutscene.  The voice acting is shit and the script was like watching a Vin Diesel movie (whouda thunk?).  To be fair, I actually like some Vin Diesel movies, Knockaround Guys was kinda cool, and I do like me a few racing movies, some somtimes fast otherwise furious can appeal to me at times.  If Wheelman were a movie it would play out like xXx: the chore boy.  It's fucking boring, the story is you are some sorta undercover cop that has to take down all the crime in Barcelona by driving and shooting.  Nothing special, but its executed like it was written by a 6th grade drama teacher (the same story writer behind the xXx movie ironically).  Vin Diesel digitizes his likeness and voices his character with a seemingly 40% increase on his volume compared to anyone else.  I can't possibly imagine while Vin Diesel was saying these lines he thought to himself, "Yeah, this is gold."

The gameplay is no better.  Driving feels like you are on rails because the car almost auto drifts when you hit the breaks and you have a "slam" feature that will automatically shift your car left, right, or forward to hit shit.  You can use this to edit your turn radius and make it so that you look like your car is drunk as all hell.  The cops are relentless as they are 3x faster than you will ever be and you cannot possibly escape them without luck or slamming the fuck out of them until they are dead.  Shooting feels like you playing a watered down GTA4 (which is not a good thing).  We had fun driving around trying to get the cops on us and "air-jacking" vehicles from time to time.   Yeah, I just said "air-jacking."  Its some sort of odd move that lets you hop from car to car like leap frog and steal them while they are moving.  Its absurd, ridiculous, and downright silly, and yet, maybe the only fun part about the entire game (expect watching Vinny walk while you crouch...hilarious).

This game is shit and it deserves to be treated as such.  Its no wonder you probably never played it right?  Now what I can't understand is why so many sites reviewed this game as good.  I mean...did you fucking play it?  I can only assume they didn't want to piss off Vin Diesel, with the exception of IGN almost every website I looked at for a review score gave it like an 8/10.  Well rest assured, I will prove obstinate to this injustice.  Fuck you Vin Diesel, stick to movies, your game eats dick.

A World Through Shit Tinted Glasses:

Clive Barker's Jericho is an exercise in meh.  The game is playable, but that is about as far as it goes, and it is upsetting because the ideas behind the game are actually pretty neat.  You enter the world of the occult as Jericho squad.  A rag-tag team of military badasses with special powers ranging from telekinesis to time manipulation.  You are sent in to right the wrongs of a being created in God's image that was so powerful God himself could not destroy him.  Pretty fucking cool no?  Well that is where the cool ends and the fuckining begins.  After that point you are delivered dead smack into the blandest environments this side of Mobile Suit Gundam: Crossfire and with a gunplay system that is similar to the Duty Calls flash game Bulletstorm let out as joke publicity.  The voice acting is stale with extremely generic dialogue, even with my main man Steve Blum leading the fray it just feels boring during all of the otherwise interesting parts of the game (interesting being a bit of an overstatement). 

After a few boring cutscenes you are lead straight into demageddon.  Your gun can fire shotgun rounds and machinegun rounds but against the most common enemy, the machinegun might as well not exist.  You can down them in about 1.5 shotgun hits or 1.6 clips of your machinegun ammo...do the math.  Every character has a different weapon and a different power, main guy can res allies and possess his team mates (meaning everyone can res everyone).  Ninja chick has a weak katana, a weaker gun, and blood magic which hurts you to immobilize 1 of 30 enemies on screen, easily your weakest and worst choice...but she moves fast?  You've got a goth lezbo sniper chick that has telekinesis used only to clear obstacles, and a sniper rifle.  It's strong but considering your enemies are never more than 20 ft. away, sniping is rather meaningless.  She can shoot a mind bullet that you can control, an interesting and cool ability, but ultimately worthless.  You have pistol akimbo priest who can heal allies from a distance and shoot the living shit out of some pistols...speeds I ain't never seen before.  But since he is the only other party member that can res someone, if you possess him you lower your net healer count necessarily (besides, he's not that good).  There is a minigun toting fire demon user.  Very strong, and the fire demon is quite useful, but he's slow and has shit for range.  And while your using your demon, your completely vulnerable, but he has a natural resistance to fire.  After him you've got blacky the astral projection unit.  He can take control of enemies and make them spontaneously combust into flames, he also shares the weapon of the main character so when he is gone, you still have access to that gun.  Last you have the reality hacker.  She has a really weak smg and some grenades you can lob about 4 ft.  But she can slow down time, an amazingly useful ability for all the reasons you can imagine, plus when your whole team dies you can slow time and try to res them all.  You will almost always have to control this character because she is the most well rounded and resurrecting your allies is the main focus of the game it seems.  In every single fight I didn't have any less than 3 people die on me.  The guns just don't really hurt the enemies so if you don't constantly res your allies you are going to be deader than shit.  She also has the ability to zoom in and see through cover, but the zoom in doesn't go away until you zoom in again for a farther zoom and then click r3 a third time, so you can be reloading, resurrecting allies, or whatever all while zoomed in 150 ft.  Its annoying and anti-intuitive.  Its even worse that the same thing can happen with the sniper chick, it at least makes sense if you wearing goggles or something, but who runs around with an eye on the scope while trying to find cover?

Overall the experience was playable, during the more hectic fights, the challenge can pull you away from the fact that the environments, story, character design, and certain game engines are shit tier.  It just isn't a fun experience, Clive Barker just didn't have it in him to make a game worth playing.  And all this from the guy who wrote Hellraiser?  Actually, that explains a lot doesn't it.

So what does it mean?

After playing through both games for as long as I could stand, I have determined that neither is worth looking into.  Both games lack key elements to create an engaging experience and both experiences fail to deliver a competent game.

32% 

+ Jericho delivered a playable game, though a bad one

- Wheelman was a worthless creation

- Did you even read what I wrote?

This is a combined score.  Both games worked together to earn this failing grade.  They are garbage at their very core.  Both have something to work with, but neither can hold their own as a complete title.  Vin Diesel and Clive Barker did everything they could to fuck this up, and it is on them to never make another video game. Not fast or furious enough.

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