i-forgot-to-throw-the-grenade

Exodus From the Earth (2008)

Mike’s dying breath: “h-hurry up.. go save the universe!”
Frank: “but.. how?”
Mike: “ah you’ll cope with it, just find the fuckin’ memory block.”

if Deus Ex: Invisible War and Half Life 2 were outta condoms and also had a geriatric pregnancy. merging Invisible Wars severe neurological disorders and Half Lifes scope. 2008’s ‘Exodus From the Earth’ is an increasingly notorious game. apparently even being featured as a vessel for one of penguinz0’s $10,000 speedrun exhibition challenges. typically reserved for more crappier games that are held together with hopes and prayers (and duct tape). while notorious, the games digital footprint doesn’t spread far. there’s always been ‘slop’ and with today’s ease of access, there’s a never-ending succession of crappy games. but for around 2008.. the game shows an interesting fervor. before diving in i expected a quick 4-5 hour excursion through some copy paste firefights, not a ~ 12-ish hour marathon akin to Half Life. don’t get me wrong. point blank; the game is crappy. length doesn’t make a game better. often enough it becomes even more painstaking. but aside from the slog that it is, there is a jarring attention to detail (as well as lack-thereof.. somehow). this game left me stumped in every way possible. this review might be short.. but there are some things i’d like to say.

someone on Steam left a review calling it ‘slavjank’ which is the best word to describe it. jank.. uh and Slavic too, i guess. gaming as a whole is on a weird trajectory. i’m critical towards anything outside of shooters. i’ve also got a record of attempting them start to end, no matter how crappy (i.e. Daikatana). surprisingly though, i think the fact i finished it is a testament to its loose soundness. from the jump you’ll notice the games inspirations. the games looks take after Deus Ex; with its turn of the millennium interface and e-books, most of which consist of gibberish. you can grab and move objects which works on the Deus Ex front. i don’t know the extent to the games routing so just distend belief for a moment. there’s a couple janky obstacles where i relied on some objects/pseudo-speedrun tech to get by. for the most part though, pieces of the game often don’t make sense (more on that later). while i am dim, in hindsight these parts kind of gave the illusion of Deus Ex’s “no play-through is the same” mantra (no idea if it’s true or not). you can also get a feel for it through our protag, ‘Frank Rixon’. he’s like a machismo amalgam of J.C. Denton and Duke Nukem. did i say machismo? he’s more-so like Postal Dude. he talks in frayed one-liners while adorning a sick pair of specs. his implications are trivial to me because i just don’t know what they are. the story’s jagged and hard to follow only figuring it out an hour or two before the ending, it pretty much plays like the good-guy’s philanthropic deed turns out to be a malicious facade. and also trying to get people hooked on drugs à la Deus Ex’s Neuropozyne. Frank’s hired to get in there and investigate the A.X. corporations affairs. and to escape Earth. by whatever year it is (i remember reading 2016 – don’t quote me on that), we’re adept to interplanetary travels as a preemptive measure for Earth’s soon-to-be implosion. our investigation leads through the sprawling A.X. Corporation. through tunnel subsets, cargo holds, and even a cosmoport. this place could give Black Mesa a run for its money. this is sorta where Half Life bleeds through. it’s mostly illogical and never ends when it should. a harboring resentment i have for both games. the audacity.. to make them.. *pants* so long.. my playthrough’s listed as 17 hours on Steam, but subtracting all AFK moments and dawdling, it’s closer to 11/12. for what reason? it’s not engaging enough for it to be this arduous. unrelenting.. would’ve been a lot more enjoyable if it was pocket sized. so.. i guess you might be wondering just what kept me playing? while the story’s busy being incoherent (due in no smart part by the bumbling stroke-victims referred to as ‘voice actors’). one word.. or two.. the 〈gunplay〉. it’s fun.. the game shows a weird competency at times. the most surprising being the warfare. which can be considered the only saving grace in the face of the games biggest sin: the AI’s absolutely busted. _{^{not again..}} it reaches a point where you start to wonder if.. it’s a you problem. like an incorrectly configured setting, or a kink spurred on by my poor karma. you have to treat this game with delicacy. engaging enemies like it’s Counter Strike. peaking over corners without a moments hesitation. or maybe you enjoy getting insta-beamed when taking on more than 2 engagements or softlocking yourself by an inopportune quick-save. oh yeah, forgot to mention. this one of those ‘bind your quick-save/quick-load keys somewhere comfortable, where you can easily reach, cause you’ll be using them a lot’ situations. i’ll start off a positive note and get the weapons out of the way.

1. Axe
first weapon ya get. i’m not sure why it’s here.. you can use it to break some door locks, but that’s bout it. and using it on the soldiers would just be a waste of time considering how quick they’d kill you. Half Life crowbar’s bizarro relative.

2. Shotgun

little fella. i think this shotgun’s unique in the ‘every FPS shotgun is significant in their own way’, type of way. it’d get a video essay made on it about how it’s a progenitor of the shotgun family tree, or something. he has a way about him. he’d be the deadpan snarker of the group. in action this thing can be useful. it can take out enemies in rapid succession. its alternative fire power increases the strength of the pellet. shooting 3 bullets instead of one. like the the covert ability of Half Life’s SPAS. you could make the argument that it’s the best weapon overall. i say you could because sometimes it’s shoddy (*audible snickering can be heard*) leaving its intended target unharmed, and yourself dead. i’d put it down as a runner-up.

3. Pistol

standard affair. reliable, effective, and something you’ll have endless ammo for. approaching it with the same tender love and care in hip-firing like you would in CS:GO, you can bamp a lotta enemies in the head, taking ’em out instantly. which is easily the most efficient way of clearing a room.

4. Akimbo SMGs

really expressive, but i wasn’t big on them. they’re probably my least used bit of armament. you can’t ADS as you normally would because of its akimbo nature with speed and control being the trade-off. they’re rendered useless against the AI’s aimbot which is pinpoint. they’re a little too wild. -0/10. i’m indifferent.

5. Sniper Rifle

“He was a good man… What a rotten way to die.”

6. RPG

in a surprising twist, the RPG is the most scant gun next to the sniper. of the two instances i counted, one was more of a surprise loot variable, and the other only lasted about half a mission before it’s meager ammo capacity ran out. before taking it away from me in sequence where i had to regain all my weapons. my prognosis; because it’s too good? continued below;

7. Remote Bomb

a neat inclusion. since your impulses lead you to panic press ‘Q’ or ‘G’ or.. – whichever floats your boat – you end up lobbing most of your nades early. it’s hard to hold off on ’em in big crowds like these. so be me when i find out i’ve still got a stash of them, and they’re made better with remote controlled detonation. these are really good, and saved my ass a ton of times. which is why i think the RPG is so low on the totem pole. more on that below;

7. Assault Rifle

the only gun that gets things done. this games AR is leagues above the rest of the tools in our loadout. it was always in my reserves standing as the only gun that never ran out of ammo. it domes enemies like the pistol does, but at a faster rate of fire. it’s so slight and pinpoint when you ADS with it. the scope helping a ton. the added added benefit (or detriment depending on how you see it) of no penalties when sidestepping or jumping, gives you a leg up on the enemies. engagements become slightly more fair. because no matter the distance, enemies will be locked on you. it’s a perk of some older, less rigid shooter titles. reload canceling, rocket jumping, extreme jank; things of that sort. but the best part? it comes equipped with an under barrel grenade launcher, filling in the role as its secondary ammo ability. it can be described with just two letters. O.P. well sorta. it’s ultra effective against mechanical enemies, especially turrets. one nade and they’re down for good. they’re also good against any maneuverable mechs. just nix the final boss. it can take out pools of infantry without as much as a blink. but that’s redundant when you could just save ’em for fiercer foes.

the enemies, similarly to the pistol, are another standard affair. the A.X. corpo soldiers are a carbon copy of a carbon copy. they’re just the spec ops soldiers that barge in a quarter of the way through Half Life. or F.E.A.R.’s Replica forces. which are kinda just carbon copies of Half Life’s spec ops soldiers, which are just.. you get the point. i think they even reuse voice lines. but it’s one of my favorite archetypes, so no complaints from me.. they have a habit of shooting bodies though, even when after they’ve turned their enemies into pulp. must be a bug.. or sentience.. the aforementioned mechs are sick as hell. they give off an unsettling feeling as they chase you through a cargo port. and between motor pools. it’s a looming itchiness that forces a brief glance at your 6 o’clock every couple seconds. eugh.. *shivers* i’m always perturbed whenever i face off against a killer automaton.. frankly they’re more finely tuned than the standard A.X. soldiers. i found that rarely ever did they unfairly melt you – and if they did it was as a justified punisher. the final boss is a different story. but i’m getting ahead of myself. lastly are these weird mutants you’ll encounter at the precipice of the game, once we escape Earth and crash land (?) onto another planet. the tonal shift also marks a shift in the gameplay. the mutants are large, and come equipped with a drill for mining some powerful ore that’s to be used as part of the A.X. scheme. they’re basically slaves. at the behest of their handlers and made to work. they’ll also grow aggro towards you, so negotiating isn’t possible >_>; fighting them was an odd relief. they’re only capable of meleeing you with their drill arms, a brief interlude between the constant barrage of gunfire and 0.5 millisecond deaths. to me it’s just odd how every other encounter aside from the long line of grunts are more carefully ironed out rather than the ones you’ll encounter 10-1.

the game has you starting in the A.X. facility’s reception room. another not-so-subtle Deus Ex nod is visible front in center. a mock sculpture of a hand holding a globe. it’s so rigid and industrial. instead of an ethereal warmth. you get an even more upfront sense of that feeling while talking to all of the workers. it’s hard knowing just exactly where they stand as most of their complaints are simply warnings. their caution turns to exasperation as you press on, forcing their hand and breaking an allegiance we once had. the guards (soon-to-be enemies) at each of the exits don’t try to hide their hand, as they tell you not to come any closer – under threat of detainment. luckily we’ve got an in; a man named ‘Mike’. he stays under cover for most of the game, providing assistance over COMM lines. he’s one of the only few characters in the game that speaks with an intonation like that of a real human, unfortunately he’s murked partway through the game, exchanging one of the funniest bits of dialogue (what you read at the start of the write-up). i mean it was kinda sad. and if i hadn’t read some quote that had came from the games publisher, stating they’re; ‘ready to usher in a new generation of gaming with Exodus From the Earth’ (i’m paraphrasing i can’t find the source), then maybe just maybe it could’ve been more endearing. for the most part i found unironic fascination with it but there was a point where it became too unaware of its irks and lucricities. it was difficult to immerse myself, feeling the same drive that Frank had. i couldn’t really understand it. it made our mission to ‘exodus’ off this friggin’ Earth feel.. f-f-flaccid. Mike’s death feels for naught when taking a detached look at the bigger picture. the odds are just way out of his favor. it’s a miracle that Frank lasted as long as he does cause Frank-ly (eheh) he isn’t the brightest bulb in the shed. though i’m pretty sure he dies in the end (or he’s got some serious plot armor) with us digging a trench too deep. guess we’ll never know.

just after the reception room is where the rest of the game begins. an endless marathon of annexes taking you from one firefight to the next. the zones themselves are fun to fight in. the game looks very flattering considering all the other glaring, in-your-face shortcomings, and for the time it was released. guess another major reason as to why i felt compelled to reach that damned ‘cosmoport’ (this is a reference to your mission dossier, where it’ll constantly update and change as the mission progresses. showing which tasks you have or haven’t completed. reaching the cosmoport was left uncompleted for like half the game. since it was our most drawn-out goal). if you recall earlier when i droned on about how it hits a wall just over halfway through you’d be wrong in thinking the cosmoport is the ultimate objective, with exodus-ing being an end to the chapter. but instead, you fight through the enemies last lines of defense, to escape.. just to crash land.. and focus is switched to a new planet. names i hadn’t heard since the start, like the games overarching occultist ‘Jack Crizby’ and members of our coalition start to reappear. the whole time i spent anticipating facing Crizby was actually just to escape. none of it built into Crizby or the vaccine. so it’s held off until we’re there. we’re given a cryptic dream sequence in which we see him.. but internal-playback is cut short as it’s morphed and twisted to match the dire straits that we found ourself in (an induced coma). and aside from possible mentions in scattered e-books (like, who’d ever read those? just kidding. i tried but they’re mostly unintelligible) he went unmentioned. but neither was it condensed enough to feel like the penultimate showdown. the penultimate showdown only comes eons after crash landing. it.. just.. never.. ends.. i wish it had been structured differently. i wish the villain was almost too villainous, and we’d get to see his perspective of things. one that feels looming (as the game suggests), but there’s no impact to match its scale. it feels like a facade. it appears to give an otherworldly journey from formation to termination.. even though it feels more like getting on some placebo medication that you start to see through. eventually.. that’s when panic sets in.

the latter half of the game changes course. while there’ve been a handful of ultra convoluted puzzles the end starts to throw insane curveballs. when we were back on Earth i never had to look anything up. compared to the end where i had a no-commentary guide on standby in the most-likely case that i’d have to use it again. many of these puzzles were broken in some way – where progression became permanently stunted. AKA, softlocking the game. i’ve learned that sometimes people don’t consider it a softlock if you’ve got a recent enough save, and generally i was never too far down creek without a paddle – but the persistence that i found myself in these progression-less purgatories was too often for my liking. a more plausible reason; these puzzles didn’t work right in the first place. you’d be wrong in assuming this is where the game ends. after escaping the complex we’re giving a sweet buggy to ride in. a joyride taking in all our spoils. there’s a part where we’ve got to cross a gap. even a blind person could eyeball it and tell that we weren’t gonna make it. so finding a way around is in order. that’s when things get finnicky. a broadcast over COMMS makes it out to be a static wave shooter thing, with more forces airdropping in. in hindsight, i mistook the ordeal. confusing a time-limit, with passing through a checkpoint that would then summon the next dropship. instead i bumbled around bypassing the checkpoint and finding myself in a static limbo with no idea where to go. the liminal coastline provided some temporary ambience as i went for a stroll. since this near-miles long section was intended to be traversed with a vehicle, i decided enough was enough and i restored a previous save. but that still didn’t resolved the issue. in the end i had to bust out some weird, pseudo-speedrun tech – activating a lever inside a crawler moving a blockade stopping us from jumping the gap, and cheesing it back over unto the other side. maybe that was the.. intended.. solution? maybe? it’s a reach but hey, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, amirite?

“so it’s held off until we’re there” (me a few paragraphs up), this half also houses a chunk of the games story. we’re finally face to face with that Jack Crizby fella. he gives a standard monologue showing his full hand. something something “for the fate of mankind”, or whatever. he’s deluded himself and many others into thinking his cause is for the best (what that is i’m not exactly sure of). there’s nothing we can do to stop him as the room’s separated by a forcefield. this isn’t the only elephant in the room as a dozing mechanoid sits in place to the left of us. he’s unlike any of the ones we’ve faced yet. not as bulky as ones we’ve met before, it’s more-so defined by it’s skeletal look. it’s static, unemotive face. looking like an even more badass Cyberdyne Systems Series 800 Terminator (or T-800 for short). lots of things are kinda based off this guy. that might be the point. there’s not much time for amorous ogling before he ushers us into the boss battle arena. his booting sequence doesn’t hold him off for long. his heavy thuds reverberate through the walls, sending chills down my spine as i race for the exit 0_0; back to that automaton thang.. gives me goosebumps. those goosebumps soon dissipate. the final boss zone is so totally cattywampus. i don’t know where to even begin. i’ve got a bad habit of dreading environments like these. so many differing mechanics, all jutting out at you.. i guess i don’t like it because it forces me to think. luckily most of the arena is useless. forcefields, and underground corridors that seemingly serve no purpose. our only real clue sits overhead. an automatic bridge used for transport of cargo. i gotta get up there. not much time with that mech on my ass.. i’m only a hairs way away from the top of the ladder when he catches up. his loadout’s made up of plasmatic weapons with his strongest being a charged shot. its splash damage is something to look out for. he doesn’t miss either. even with my head start he’d beeline for my hiding spots. must’ve got.. ESP hacks or something.. orgh.. my ammo preservation was something to be ashamed of. i didn’t have much to use against him. but i figured; this has gotta be the final boss, might as well unleash the lead.

yeah welp.. turns out that wasn’t the solution. that’s not the problem though. in anticipation of a lotta bosses, my general rule of thumb is to damage them enough to stun/punish/lure. often time utilizing a neat new strategy. the mechanical bridge overhead connects through to unreachable ledges overhead. get up there, reach the other side of the bridge, and initiate phase two, all while trying not die. sounds simple right? it seems a corridor on the second floor was bugged out. an invisible wall appeared to block me from entering. i just assumed it was missing the forcefield texture, or was just an oversight. luckily there was a ledge to the right i could use to get over. the bridge acted as it should’ve and i was greeted by an interactable panel on the other side of the room. it’s tense as the robot tries in earnest to kill you. the circumference of it’s energy attacks slowly inches closer as you wait for the panel to do its thing. a quonset hut is lifted from the floor below. “good, phase two”, i’m thinking to myself. all the while i’m taking as many cheap shots as i can. i leapt off out unto the battlefield in hopes of making quick work of this fight. but there’s nothing inside. nothing but a dimmed out control panel on the outside. and so here is where i’d be stuck.. for the next 48 hours. this is my story.

i’m only kidding. it took me 20 minutes before my warewithal completely drained, and i went back to the trusty no commentary playthrough. and to my surprise it turns out that not only A) i should’ve been able to enter that forbidden corridor, but B) i was supposed to lure the mech into the middle of the hut where the control panel would light up and give you the option to power him down. the ‘A’ part’s not important (just weird), but the ‘B’ part was.. uh.. also weird. i guess in hindsight it’s not the biggest stretch. i could’ve read the ‘deactivate robot’ button on the panel and thought to try that. but it felt like there was another step missing in-between before that. i spent those 20 minutes quickloading, and brainstorming. ultimately, coming out defeated. i thought back to where it all began. back to the confusing dialogue.. the jank.. the annoying 0.1 second TTK. the solutions being detached from any sense of reason.. so i thought, “eh whatever” and looked it up.

if i were Jack Crizby i’d be quite angry seeing Frank walk back into his office alive. though there’s still a forcefield between us. he attempts to take matters into his own hands, before getting lost in his own monologue when outta nowhere the leader of Frank’s investigative coalition, ‘Harry Southgate’, appears on Crizby’s side of the room cutting his speech short. it seems like he was able to reach this place hiding in the shadows of my exploits. gasp.. a betrayal! but wait, that’s not all. we’re given not one, but TWO failed villain monologues when Crizby – not dead – activates a switch adding another mech to the equation, killing Harry. the facility is sent into red alert chaos now with both the leader and nearly every member of the A.X. militia indisposed. left dead in our wake. Frank makes a quick getaway back through the way he came, but not quick enough. the game ends on a scene of Frank frozen mid-air just seconds before a flashover.

all-in-all? this game could’ve been covered in an email.

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