“Cover Fire” is the latest title from Genera Games, the Spanish mobile games company that brought you the likes of “Frozen Free Fall” and—goddamnit—”Run Forrest Run,” the official endless runner tie-in to “Forrest Gump,” you know, the movie. Now, I haven’t played those other games, but I know one thing: “Cover Fire” is the epitome of cynical, pay-to-win, paywalled garbage the mobile platform is infamous for.

“Cover Fire” is a third-person cover shooter in the vein of every single other third-person shooter on mobile. You can’t move unless a context-sensitive prompt comes up to switch positions. There is absolutely nothing mechanically interesting about the game besides the fact that occasionally, missions put you in control of a sniper or RPG-in-a-helicopter-man. That being said, “Cover Fire” is pretty fun at first. It feels okay to play, which is an accomplishment for any touchscreen shooter, and the guns seem to have a nice punch.

But the cracks start to show very early on. Mission objectives, which must be completed in order to get skill points and cash, start out simple enough: get 2 headshots; finish in 60 seconds; kill 2 moving targets. The objectives are treated like any mobile game, with three stars being the maximum rating for a mission. With every objective you complete, you get a random reward. If you complete all three objectives, you get a bonus reward, meaning you get a maximum of four skill points after each mission.

But there comes a point where it is nearly impossible to get all three stars without upgrading the characters. Here’s the problem: it takes absolutely ages to make even the most trivial of changes to the skills. Putting 15 skill points into weapon damage—which can quite literally take 15 missions due to abysmal skill point drop rates—will only increase your damage 2%. When the game asks you to kill five enemies with a single, 20-round magazine, this just isn’t possible, especially in later missions where enemies take up to 10 shots, if not more, to take down. Sure, you can upgrade your magazine capacity, but it works in the same vein as the other skills: you get a 1% or 2% boost. I’m currently at level 3 in the Clip Size skill, which gives me 4% more ammo. Guess what? That’s not enough to bump my assault rifle up to 21 rounds, my sniper rifle up to 4 rounds, or my bazooka up to 2 rounds. Damage boosts work the same way. It’s insane.

On top of this, there is a global level-up system that has no benefit besides rewarding piddly amounts of the premium gold currency and some energy so you can grind out five more missions before your energy needs to recharge. Yes, that’s correct, Genera even included an energy system in this game. After the first chapter, missions cost two energy to start. You get a hard cap of 10 energy. As far as I can tell, it never increases. But wait! You can get unlimited energy by becoming a premium user for only $.99!

However, that boost only lasts for 7 hours, and then you’re back to 10 energy. Even if you bought the premium user boost, you need to combat the system used for mission repetition. So you need to grind to level up your skill to get one more bullet in your magazine? Well, too bad, because the level that gives out points towards the Clip Size skill can only be played three times in 24 hours. And so can every other mission.

The story of “Cover Fire” is vague, yet somehow manages to make it clear it packs in every possible cliche. Here is the official description from the game’s Google Play Store page:

“Lead your band of heroes to a war against Tetracorp corporation. Build your own strategy in the battlefield and attack your enemy from all sides. Visit the huge arsenal and use powerful weapons and level up your soldiers with unique skills. Limitless action in the best shooter game for mobile and tablet. Do you accept the challenge?

Are you the hero the human race needs?”

To address some things: I don’t know what the Tetracorp corporation is. You’re just killing its employees and guards for seemingly no reason. Also, you can’t build any strategy. Every mission is limited to one character, and you can’t change your angle, so there’s definitely no engagement from all sides. Also, the term “unique skills” seems overbearingly subjective. A burst of health regeneration or a few seconds of slow-mo is in no ways unique. And last of all, “limitless action” is such a blatant lie, it may as well be false advertising. Again—I want to make this super clear—you can’t play more than five missions before running out of energy. And being the hero of the human race is a little strange, considering you fight humans the entire game.

“Cover Fire” is not even a joke game. There is no reason to play it beyond the first several missions. It’s not something you can have fun with friends with, laughing at how bad it is. It’s just…bad. And money-grubbing.

I’d like to present this game review in a professional and respectable manner, so I have structured this review in a list of positive and negative characteristics.

The Pasture is a real game, that takes real time to play, and costs real money to purchase. Mikhail Maksimov developed this software which includes 3D models of actual Russian artwork. Sometimes You published this application, Steam’s community voted for this software on Greenlight, and this product will launch on January 17, 2017.

I have exhausted my list of positive features.

The Pasture is not a “game,” it’s more of an experience. The kind of experience that the “down-to-earth” hipster girl would praise while having a frappe at your local, free trade, non-GMO cafe. Which, sickeningly, makes this experience that much worse.

I have concluded that the developers intended to make a statement—just one that I will never understand. In my best interpretation, I believe that The Pasture is a satire on the curation of “modern art” while simultaneously mocking art in its entirety, or at least the upper echelons of artists from the past century. While conceptually Maksimov could have done plenty with this game to make it satirical, he fails to realize any potential. Maksimov should have added interactive commentary, included art of varying mediums, or at least incorporated the FEATURES LISTED, to improve the experience. Instead The Pasture presumptuously sits on its laurels and expects you to stand there, gaping, at the presentation. 

Maksimov’s game design requires the player to exercise an incredible amount of patience. Launching the game, I was assaulted with several different problems, firstly that The Pasture always launches at a resolution of 3840 x 2160 (4k). The game saves no preferences whatsoever, and you will be required to reset the resolution each time you restart the game. The main page includes your basic instructions. All user interaction for The Pasture requires the arrow keys, space bar, and mouse. The menu “music” is jarring and sounds like you’re standing in a tunnel while a plane turbine starts up. I found the user interface didn’t work either. Sometimes the mouse disappears and you can’t start playing, making my journey with The Pasture that much more frustrating.

“Well, how does the game play?” I hear you ask. Well, it plays like garbage. At startup the player has two “choices” about which character they want to play: Grandpa Eggplant-Bat and Goldfinger Dominatrix, each with their own unique characteristics and inflections. For instance, Grandpa Eggplant constantly speaks in Russian, while Lady Goldfinger incites violent coughing wherever you go.

The game controls like someone intentionally stapled your hand to piece of wood. Except this piece of wood is acidic and covered in dull knives. As stated earlier, the game accepts 5 inputs, but the exhibit is incredibly challenging to navigate. You look at your character from a “first-person perspective” and move by holding down. Essentially, you are moving through the game backwards while controlling the camera left and right. The game also prohibits you from moving for too long because holding the down arrow also increases the “time before you die” meter. This meter resets once you stop moving, but the audio visual feedback of the game is so atrocious you may just find yourself having a mental breakdown after a few hours of playing.

Now, I hear yourself saying, “Dave, why would you put yourself through playing this game for hours?” I don’t have a justifiable answer other than I needed to review this game. I don’t know if I beat it, but I have played The Pasture for about 5 hours now. The game has 5 tasks that you must finish. At first these tasks don’t seem too daunting. Most are tied to collecting art pieces throughout the exhibit. Unfortunately (fortunately) the game doesn’t acknowledge all the pieces you collect so it’s impossible to get the final check mark. So I don’t know how it ends and frankly, it’s not worth me finding out.

Visually the game is atrocious. It’s clearly running on a free engine and uses stock UI that is poorly translated. The 3D visuals are a Frankenstein’s monster of models that were hastily stapled together. Almost everything in the entire game moves with broken animation. The game is also covered in tombstones that read “You are Disabled,” and these tombstones are prominently shown when the player dies. I hope that Maksimov mistranslated the tombstones because otherwise this slight will insult anyone disadvantaged. I cannot believe someone could release such visual assault in the current gaming landscape.

Death in The Pasture is the second most insulting experience of the game to say the least. The player is overloaded with audio/visual feedback after they exceed their moving limit, while their character presumably murders the camera. Once dead, a satirical quote about art appears on the screen, affirming to the player that everything you just experienced was worthless. Why they subject you to watch this death sequence is beyond tolerance, but remember, this game is a test of patience. After each session, I found the experience offensive and cynical at best.

*SPOILER ALERT* (Can this game have spoilers?)

The most insulting content in this application is the “winning” scenario. You can “win” by getting your character to a loosely defined meeting point where, the creatures will sit themselves upon a throne made of feces and needles. The throne has emoji style poop floating above it and really drives home how worthless this whole endeavor is. If that wasn’t bad enough, the camera begins to spin wildly while the sound once again cranks all the way up, spamming your ears with painful music.

*SPOILER OVER*

I cannot recommend anyone play The Pasture. The game is cynical and half-baked. If you want to play a game that actually challenges the art of video games, try The Stanley Parable because it offers far more amusement for your money. Overall, I left this experience somewhat offended and depressed that anyone could have such a low opinion of art or video games. While this game’s premise has some potential, the overall experience truly fails to accomplish anything it has set out to do, and I feel the whole application is a waste of time.

TLDR: DON’T BUY THIS GAME.

This is a movie that I watched. Now I’m writing about it. What to say… what to say. Well, first off it isn’t a good movie and believe me, I hate that I’m saying that.

 

Alright, Gods of Egypt. This is a movie that I watched. Now I’m writing about it. What to say… what to say. Well, first off it isn’t a good movie and believe me, I hate that I’m saying that. I really do my best not to be negative about movies. It’s just that I know there are a lot of people who put a lot of hard work into these movies. I usually am able to at least take something from a movie. I enjoy most movies, there is still a part of me that actually enjoys Return of Superman. I know it has flaws but I can’t help myself. I will also say, despite going into this movie with low expectations I still found it quite underwhelming. Sometimes, if you go into a movie with high expectations it might make the movie suck less. However with this movie, I saw the trailer, it looked dreadful and I went to go see it anyway.

 

 

I will say that there was some oddly specific references to Egyptian mythos in this movie. A lot of deep cuts, despite having a mostly white leading cast. So that was entertaining. I’ll also say that Chadwick Boseman absolutely stole the movie for me with his portrayal of Thoth, the God of Knowledge. I smiled every time he opened his mouth. This also made me quite excited for Captain America: Civil War where Boseman will be playing Black Panther.

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is also in this movie. He plays the great Horus, God of the sky. Horus is basically trying to defeat Gerard Butler’s Set, another God but evil, for most of the movie. And that’s basically the plot. It’s a very simple, average story of revenge. I really won’t bore you with any more details. Neither Coster-Waldau nor Butler are really doing anything different or special in this movie. Butler is playing a spinoff of his King Leonidas character from 300 with his Scotish accent occasionally taking over, whereas Coster-Waldau is just playing a Lannister without any siblings, plus instead of missing his hand he’s missing his eye in this movie. Talk about typecasting.

 

 

This movie does some odd things, not only does it partake in the whitewashing of cinema, but it also is quite religious in its own way. You must be thinking, Nicholas, you’re watching a movie with “God” in the title, why are you surprised? I don’t know, I just was. The movie makes a big deal to point out how these mortals are getting into their versions of heaven and hell. There was so much Heaven and Hell talk that I began to have some existential thoughts while watching this movie. I began to wonder what heaven or hell would be like, I wondered if I would even want to keep on living after I died. I mean, my life isn’t that great. I certainly want to live until I die probably, but after that? That just seems exhausting. But I guess if I went to Heaven it wouldn’t be too bad, supposedly our human minds can’t really understand how great Heaven is. Plus, I do like change. I remember being in the theater thinking about all of this, thinking about all the people here on Earth and how I don’t really want to see any of them again. I don’t care if it’s all over when I die. That was sort of the deal I accepted when I came into this world. Is it wrong that I don’t want to see anyone after death? I’m a denier of grief?  I mean, I get sad when people die, but I just accept that I won’t see them anymore. Like after High School is over. You’re not going to see those people again, it’s sad but like whatever, that’s life. However, I guess in this case, that’s death.

Well anyway, that’s Gods of Egypt for you. Oh, I almost forgot to tell you guys, there was a scene in the movie showing the earth being somewhat flat. So all you conspiracy theorist out there, the Egyptian Gods got your back. And so do I. Never trust the government. Good bye.