Club Retro 2019: Superhero September
Sept 8, 2019 6:53:20 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Sept 8, 2019 6:53:20 GMT -5
And now for the Keanu Reeves video game everyone has been waiting for...
Constantine [PC/2005]
A video game adaptation of the Constantine movie from 2005 which was developed by Bits Studios and released for PC, PS2 and Xbox. Same devs who also developed Wolverine: Adamantium Rage and a couple of Spider-Man games in the 90s actually, since that's the monthly theme. Constantine is a third person shooter that puts you in the shoes of John Constantine, anunholy union of a hard-boiled noir detective and an exorcist.
The game's setting is LA and John can switch inbetween the real world and Hell just by stepping on water and performing an enchantment. Apparently, Hell is just an infernal reflection of the actual world, not unlike the Otherworld from Silent Hill. Once you enter Hell, the screen even takes on that very same grainy filter you know and love from any Silent Hill game. Switching inbetween both realities is required to advance through the games and solve some puzzles. Puzzles that are quite easy to solve and are pretty sparse throughout the entire game - Constantine is all about action, for the most part.
The weapons at your disposal definitely look pretty unique as you can tell by the cross-shaped shotgun John is wielding on the game cover. The shotgun spread is also cross-shaped, which is pretty cool. Your starting weapons are a couple of mean looking revolvers, the Witch's Curse. Later on, you'll get the Crucifier, which is essentially the Nailgun from Quake since... it shoots nails. Its rapid rate of fire as well as the added advantage of being able to pick up the nails you just fired and use them again made this my go-to weapon for most of the game. Not to mention how you can even upgrade the nails as long as you manage to find the upgrades. Incendiary nails? Sounds good. Nails that ricochet off the walls? Yeah sure, why not. Explosive nails? Sign me in. Needess to say, the Crucifier became pretty OP towards the end of the game.
You also get the Holy Shotgun which isn't too shabby at all, a flamethrower called Dragon's Breath which was wack but pretty effective against a certain boss and the Purger which is a powerful crossbow with a very slow rate of fire. You also have 'grenades' of sort: Holy Water bombs that reveal the true identity of demons disguised as humans making them more vulnerable to attacks, the Screech Beetle which stuns enemies and the Shrouds of Moses that annihilates all demons on the screen. And you also have spells you can perform, the most useful being Storm Crow, which looks a lot like Force Lighting and never fails to burn all surrounding demons to a crisp. Can't be used against bosses. It's so OP, that all spells you learn later in the game feel completely useless and redundant, who needs to make demons fight each other or turn them into stone when you can just kill them in one fell swoop?
Your spell energy recharges slowly over time as well as by killing demons and absorbing their souls, so you can't abuse it too much. Constantine also has a power called True Sight which allows him to navigate darker areas, find out secrets and see through a demon's disguise. When you use True Sight, the game switches to first person and I used this power quite a bit because of how useful it is and because I needed the improved aiming sometimes. During combat, you can also perform a 180° turn - this is not only useful to fend off enemies trying to creep behind you, but also because it activates a sort of bullet time-like slowdown.
John Constantine is not an unlikeable character, but the whole noir detective shtick feels a bit shallow. Other characters are mostly nondescript and uninteresting except for Gabriel, whose role was reprised by Tilda Swinton and you can tell because the voice acting is heads and shoulders above anyone else. Story's par for the course, not really worth mentioning. Demon design was so-so, pretty predictable stuff. One of them looks almost exactly like the Revenant from Doom. The environments were mostly a positive for me, especially the Hell sections. Music either blended into the background or stood out nicely on a few occasions - again, especially during the Hell sections. Fine but unremarkable:
Another nice touch was all the stuff Constantine does when you don't touch the controls for a little while. He'll start to yawn and stretch, to crack his shoulders or to double over and cough. Being a chain-smoker, sometimes he'd even light himself a cigarette... Interestingly enough, smoking drains a little bit of your health. Huh.
So, main issues: 1) Wack story, weak characters; 2) Storm Crow makes all other spells completely useless; 3) Cool weapons, but the Crucifier makes all other weapons fairly useless as well.
Minor nitpicks: 1) Keanu doesn't reprise his role as Constantine; 2) True Sight is useful and you'll use it quite a lot, but the game wasn't really designed with first person combat in mind; 3) So-so demon design, bit derivative.
Good stuff: 1) Constantine actually looks like Keanu, great character model; 2) Fast paced combat, cool weapons and spells; 3) Decent to good settings and atmosphere.
It's a good game.
3/5
Pics:
Constantine [PC/2005]
A video game adaptation of the Constantine movie from 2005 which was developed by Bits Studios and released for PC, PS2 and Xbox. Same devs who also developed Wolverine: Adamantium Rage and a couple of Spider-Man games in the 90s actually, since that's the monthly theme. Constantine is a third person shooter that puts you in the shoes of John Constantine, an
The game's setting is LA and John can switch inbetween the real world and Hell just by stepping on water and performing an enchantment. Apparently, Hell is just an infernal reflection of the actual world, not unlike the Otherworld from Silent Hill. Once you enter Hell, the screen even takes on that very same grainy filter you know and love from any Silent Hill game. Switching inbetween both realities is required to advance through the games and solve some puzzles. Puzzles that are quite easy to solve and are pretty sparse throughout the entire game - Constantine is all about action, for the most part.
The weapons at your disposal definitely look pretty unique as you can tell by the cross-shaped shotgun John is wielding on the game cover. The shotgun spread is also cross-shaped, which is pretty cool. Your starting weapons are a couple of mean looking revolvers, the Witch's Curse. Later on, you'll get the Crucifier, which is essentially the Nailgun from Quake since... it shoots nails. Its rapid rate of fire as well as the added advantage of being able to pick up the nails you just fired and use them again made this my go-to weapon for most of the game. Not to mention how you can even upgrade the nails as long as you manage to find the upgrades. Incendiary nails? Sounds good. Nails that ricochet off the walls? Yeah sure, why not. Explosive nails? Sign me in. Needess to say, the Crucifier became pretty OP towards the end of the game.
You also get the Holy Shotgun which isn't too shabby at all, a flamethrower called Dragon's Breath which was wack but pretty effective against a certain boss and the Purger which is a powerful crossbow with a very slow rate of fire. You also have 'grenades' of sort: Holy Water bombs that reveal the true identity of demons disguised as humans making them more vulnerable to attacks, the Screech Beetle which stuns enemies and the Shrouds of Moses that annihilates all demons on the screen. And you also have spells you can perform, the most useful being Storm Crow, which looks a lot like Force Lighting and never fails to burn all surrounding demons to a crisp. Can't be used against bosses. It's so OP, that all spells you learn later in the game feel completely useless and redundant, who needs to make demons fight each other or turn them into stone when you can just kill them in one fell swoop?
Your spell energy recharges slowly over time as well as by killing demons and absorbing their souls, so you can't abuse it too much. Constantine also has a power called True Sight which allows him to navigate darker areas, find out secrets and see through a demon's disguise. When you use True Sight, the game switches to first person and I used this power quite a bit because of how useful it is and because I needed the improved aiming sometimes. During combat, you can also perform a 180° turn - this is not only useful to fend off enemies trying to creep behind you, but also because it activates a sort of bullet time-like slowdown.
John Constantine is not an unlikeable character, but the whole noir detective shtick feels a bit shallow. Other characters are mostly nondescript and uninteresting except for Gabriel, whose role was reprised by Tilda Swinton and you can tell because the voice acting is heads and shoulders above anyone else. Story's par for the course, not really worth mentioning. Demon design was so-so, pretty predictable stuff. One of them looks almost exactly like the Revenant from Doom. The environments were mostly a positive for me, especially the Hell sections. Music either blended into the background or stood out nicely on a few occasions - again, especially during the Hell sections. Fine but unremarkable:
Another nice touch was all the stuff Constantine does when you don't touch the controls for a little while. He'll start to yawn and stretch, to crack his shoulders or to double over and cough. Being a chain-smoker, sometimes he'd even light himself a cigarette... Interestingly enough, smoking drains a little bit of your health. Huh.
So, main issues: 1) Wack story, weak characters; 2) Storm Crow makes all other spells completely useless; 3) Cool weapons, but the Crucifier makes all other weapons fairly useless as well.
Minor nitpicks: 1) Keanu doesn't reprise his role as Constantine; 2) True Sight is useful and you'll use it quite a lot, but the game wasn't really designed with first person combat in mind; 3) So-so demon design, bit derivative.
Good stuff: 1) Constantine actually looks like Keanu, great character model; 2) Fast paced combat, cool weapons and spells; 3) Decent to good settings and atmosphere.
It's a good game.
3/5
Pics: