The Shrine

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '><i>Bottom line:</i> Intriguing concept, good presentation, middling execution (no pun intended)

<i>Overview:</i> You've probably heard of it already. The latest controversial game from Rockstar, but this time with vividly depicted executions and enough blood and gore to fill a swimming pool.

<i>The Setup:</i> The player takes the role of James Earl Cash, a death row inmate who gets "executed" in the opening cinema, only to wake up a few hours later to hear the voice of a man calling himself the Director coming over the intercom. He tells Cash to put on an earpiece, and once he does, tells him that he is the star of his latest snuff film. He is sent out into a city swarming with thugs whose only instructions are to kill him, and told that his only chance of survival is to kill the hunters searching for him - but to make sure it looks good for the cameras.

<i>The Good:</i> The presentation is excellent. The game looks appropriately grainy, the cutscenes have numerous artifacts spliced in them that make it look like a hastily slapped-together camera rig is shooting the action, the music is appropriately either creepy or frenetic, and the voice acting, while not uniformly excellent, is still pretty good (luckily, the Director is the voice you hear most often throughout the game and his actor does an excellent job). The plot concept is a nifty one, and the various executions are shocking enough the first time you see them.

<i>The Bad:</i> However, much like the summon animations in any Final Fantasy game past VII, the executions get repetitive really quickly, considering that there are only three of them per melee weapon and you're encouraged to go for the "gruesome" version as often as you can.

Not to mention the stealth-based gameplay also gets old really quickly; hide in shadows, make noise to split apart hunters, follow one who isolates himself, execute, repeat ad nauseam. The hand-to-hand combat system is simplistic and clunky, and while I liked the "lean up to corners and fire around them" system, it's only used to good effect in a few places, and everywhere else you're allowed a gun as a weapon, you're so hopelessly outnumbered for the most part that the only thing that allows you to take out a sufficient number of enemies without getting reamed is the incredible stupidity of the hunters.

Sure, the AI does some cool things like call for help when they find a body of a hunter you've already killed, or run away calling for help when you've beat them to near death in a melee fight, but what kind of morons continue to send one guy at a time running up a staircase where their prey is waiting at the top, peering over the railing and shooting at least seven guys in a row in the back of the head?

On top of that, the game is waaaaaaay too long for gameplay that repetitive. There are 20 "scenes" to play through, each one more torturous than the last, and when I got to the parts where one mistake meant guys chasing after me armed with assault rifles I wanted to put my head through the wall.

And finally, while the plot had a very promising beginning, there were a couple of massive plot holes as the game neared conclusion and the ending was horribly disappointing.

<i>Recommendation:</i> Rent it or borrow it. The experience of playing through the first few levels was very cool, and it did take a while before I wanted it to be over. Play it until you get bored, then make up your own conclusions about how the game ends, as opposed to the so-obvious-I-didn't-even-think-it-would-end-that-way actual ending.

<i>-57</i></div>

<div style='font: 11pt ; text-align: left; '>I want spoilers!</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Some more gripes I had that give a few things away.

1) No "executions" with firearms

Huh? I don't get this. So the folks at Rockstar are clever enough to find disgusting ways to kill people with stuff like plastic bags, meat cleavers, and even sickles, but they can't think up three clever executions with a handgun? How about:

normal - Kick him in the back of the knee, shot to the back of the head.
violent - Clock him on the back of the head, come around to the front, stick the barrel in his half-conscious mouth, bam. You could even add a muffled scream if you wanted to be sadistic.
gruesome - Two words: pistol whip. (Mmm, pistol whip...)

And why couldn't Cash have used the assault rifle or the shotgun just like a baseball bat?

Not only are those better than nothing, but they even could have justified them as stealthy by some bullshit like the guy's head being so close to the blasts could have muffled the gunshot or something. With the way they've got the game set up, assuming you can even find a melee weapon and then forcing you to use it if you want to maintain stealth or get style points means having to leave all the ammo just floating around the stage, which ends up disappearing (which is crap), meaning either way you're screwed.

2) Too many different kinds of one color of firearm

So you kill a guy with the revolver, and he drops a light handgun. Light handguns have a larger clip so that's the better weapon to take, right?

Not if the next six guys are only using revolvers and you don't get any more ammo for the light handgun!

Man did this piss me off. How are you supposed to know what the other guys in the level are armed with? I know beggars can't be choosers, and Cash is certainly a beggar, but this was one more annoyance piled on top of a shitload of other annoyances in the second half of this game.

3) Piggsy

Where the fuck did a sentient, homicidal, half man-half pig come from? Why was he living in Starkweather's attic?? Where did he get a chainsaw??? And where did all the weapons Cash had when he was riding in the elevator suddenly disappear to?

This many questions about your "final boss" = lazy writers

4) Plot holes in the last couple of stages

First - all the way into the final cinemas, you can see Cash wearing the earpiece Starkweather gave him. Why doesn't he take it off? Why doesn't Starkweather try to contact him again once he escapes from the subway?

Second - Starkweather watches Cash throughout the entire first half of the game via a sophisticated network of cameras that follow him virtually everywhere he goes. And you're telling me that he doesn't have an equally sophisticated camera net on his own property? (Plus, I love how convenient it is that the only cameras in the game that you can actually destroy are inside Starkweather's mansion itself.)

Third - Cash escapes from Starkweather's clutches when the reporter rescues him. She then tells him that she has enough evidence on Starkweather to put him away. And instead of getting the fuck out of Dodge on the night he narrowly escaped getting executed on Death Row, Cash is instead going to go assault his heavily guarded compound crawling with professional soldiers, all of whom are armed with guns?

Fourth - Hell, speaking of the reporter, what was with her? Isn't she on the side of the law? Why would she need Cash to escort her to her apartment when the cops were the only ones there? Why wouldn't she want Cash to face justice, if she's got her panties in such a bunch to get Starkweather? I mean, Cash was on Death Row for a reason - how did she know that he wouldn't rape and kill her first chance he got?

5) The ending, and the plot as a whole

Okay, I have a real problem with this. Based on Starkweather's ranting about how pathetic all the Hunters are, coupled with all of the white supremacist/Christian extremist/dumb redneck sound bites, Cash is being chased by, and killing, the absolute dregs of society. Where's the mention of Starkweather's motivation for (essentially) paying these guys to die? Where's the subplot where Starkweather has delusions of being a hero for disposing of all them? Where's any sort of social commentary whatsoever?

Hell, where's any of Starkweather's motivation? One of the bonus pictures I got after beating the game gave all this backstory on him, where he used to be a respected director who eventually fell out of favor and that drove him nuts. Why wasn't that mentioned at all during the course of the game?

Also, the game threw a curveball at me when it introduced the cops as enemies. During the first half of the game, I think it was trying to set up Cash as an anti-hero - the hardened Death Row murderer who goes in against guys as bad as him and then takes 'em out, and I didn't mind that much. Turning Cash into a cop killer just made me feel icky.

And they didn't really do a good job of portraying the reporter. She was much more sleazy than the game made her out to be - she aided and abetted a convicted killer while he killed cops, and then nonchalantly reported on it, feeling all high and mighty about it. It doesn't make sense at all that she even made it through the night - there were the bodies of six dead cops in her apartment!

Like I said, the concept and presentation were nifty, but the storytelling was just really clumsy. It's more disappointing because the game could have been a lot better.

<i>-57</i></div>

<div style='font: 10pt georgia; text-align: left; '>Wow, great post. Thanks.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt arial; text-align: left; '>Hopefully people will soon begin to realize that Rockstar are a bunch of one-note hacks</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "arial narrow"; text-align: left; padding: 0% 5% 0% 5%; '>We'll see. Rockstar's Canada branch does a good Warriors game, then I'll be sold on them forever.</div>