Back into the Wasteland Part C

Greetings from Jacobstown. Im still chuggin and pluggin away at Vegas. I picked up SFxTekken and Soul Calibur 5 yet I'm still playing this, so that tells you something.

So updates from the last post. I found a 4th Casino, the Atomic Wrangler didn't take long to hit the jackpot limit there either so again, I felt a little jilted that I spent so many points on luck for a game based in Vegas. I did get to take my winnings over to the doctor and get a few implants. Adamantium bones, self re-genning health, and tougher skin; I'm all about damage reduction and being like Wolverine. Ive also done some side faction stuff but I cant figure out if I should dump the floating robot eye and get rex, or keep the improved enemy finding. Ive also read I can get the other sniper from Novac to join me and he'll do it even if rex or ED-E is with me.

There have been a TON of Fallout 1 and 2 references linking this game to the past much better than Fallout:DC did. I meant yeah DC had the tree guy Harold, but it wasnt the same. Take a funny ghoul with a tree growing in his head and make it a lame tree with a suicidal ghoul stuck in it, Fail-tastic. Now in this one, Marcus is Marcus and he FEELS like the Marcus of old. Even has Michael Dorn (Lt.Worf from Star Trek TNG) doing the voice acting in this one too.

And hes not just there for show, he has things for you to do and the things he wants done fall in line with the Marcus of old, I was legit impressed, much more so than the passive mentioning of older Fallout people and places, and even Tandi being an answer to the trivia question in a side quest for the king. This is definately the game Fallout:DC should have been. Ive got an old bomber to get out of Lake Mead, hopefully the deathclaws wont rape my candy ass again. I would have loved to find a hedge stone or something for the "Chosen One" or even a broken GECK or waterchip.

Till next time,
T

PS Gamerscore is OVER NINEty THOUSANNNNNDDDDDDD

Back into the Wasteland Part B

Well, I didn't expect to be in Vegas like 8 minutes after I wrote that last post. The main story is moving along, and a good portion of the side quests are well thought out and make you actually WANT to complete them. The multiple courses of action I loved so much from FO1 and FO2 (and that were pretty much absent from FO3) are thankfully back this go `round. I plotted and schemed with a cohort of my enemy to ambush my would be killer in his room but ended up running into him on the Casino floor and my plans went to shit. I decided to go kill some time at the tables before leaving the one area of the game I was really looking forward to getting to.

I was a little disappointed that there are only 3 casinos, and that after you win like 10,000 caps they wont let you gamble anymore. That sort of foiled my plan to blackjack my way into having killer gear, but I got a pretty swell piece of armor "on the house" for being a high roller. I have yet to win a single game of Caravan , despite me buying and looting every card that comes my way. I just want to win 3 for the stupid cheevie cheeve :/

I'm back off into the wastelands, headed for Caesar and Fortification Hill....I had to kill even more feral zombies , I mean Ghouls, yeah, they are nothing like zombies. I still plan to do as much as I can before the pending faction choice comes up (spoilers?) Hopefully I can play from that point and see all the endings before doing operation "achievement clean up" I'm strongly considering the expansion packs for this gig (and the ones for Saint Row as well!) and not just for cheevie points.

Back into the Wasteland Part A

I know what youre thinking "Didnt this game come out in oh ten?" it did. This "review" is for the people like me, who had a bad taste in their mouth from F3 and may have other wise passed over this title.

And back to the west coast, where Fallout belongs. First things first, the title of the game is deceptive, I'm over 10 hours in and Vegas is still off in the horizon. I'm on my first play through so I'm trying to do as much as I can on the initial play through, so I know what I can skip next time. I'm sure if I lowered my head, holstered my guns, and ran full speed, I could be losing all my caps at blackjack as we speak.

Let me start by saying this game *FEELS* more like Fall Out , much more so than Fall Out: Washington DC. My MAJOR gripe with FO:DC was the zombieeeeerrrrrr Feral Ghoul population, Im pretty sure I single-handedly cleaned out every single one from the subway tunnels (with almost no gun skills but man was a smooooooooth talker). Thankfully there have been a relatively small number of "Feral Ghouls" to dispatch this go `round, I killed more of those in DC than Ive killed zombies in all the Resident Evil games combined.

The writing, dialog, everything feels more Black Isle Studios. I've done a little reading at No Mutants Allowed ( http://www.nma-fallout.com/ ) and found out the reason for this is some ideas from Van Buren and some people from the real Fallout 1 and 2 teams worked on this game. I suppose this is the closest we'll ever get to a real sequel. If only the instruction book was the same style as the first two games, bound like an old ledger book from grade school

So now some minor complaints. Keep in mind I really like this game so far, so none of this stuff bothers me all that much. First off, the graphics. The seem a little bland and unpolished, and all the interiors of everything seem to look alike. The game is massive so I'm OK with quantity over quality and nothing looks terrible but this game doesn't live up to some of the other 360 titles. Weak mapping and confusing building layouts are counter productive, I ended up drawing maps on paper to find my way around. The one-two punch of the bad layouts is you frequently need to traverse the same floors multiple times, like the REPCONN building.

SAVE FREQUENTLY. Srsly. I was messing around and tried to pick pocket Davison (no spoiler on who/what he is) and I didnt save first, so when I reloaded the save it was firefight central, and I hadn't saved for a good 30 minutes before that. You can save pretty much anytime anywhere so theres no reason not to. This saving mechanic makes it easier to goof off, lets you play in as small of chunks as you want....the downside is it makes the game a tad easier.

A ton of DLC has been released, I may wait until I finish then see if I can pick up a complete collection game cheap or just just get the DLC ala cart. So far Im not hating this game even if I didnt get a poker chip or lunch box with purchase.

I will follow this up after finishing the game or at least getting into the Casinos. Until then, Im out.



~Malenko

PS Operation 100k still isnt done, heh

Habitual Line Crosser (Street Fighter x Tekken)

So, while Capcom and the Internet hotly debate the meaning of words like "value" and "customer" and "entitlement", the game; Street Fighter x Tekken has finally been released. Against the cries of all my convictions I bought it because frankly, it just looked too damned fun to miss. The catch is that in doing so I pat Capcom on the back for practices that previously caused me to relegate their games to Gamefly only status, but I'm not the one on trial here, they are!

So, the simple truth is, despite its turmultuous development cycle and release, SFxT is a suprisingly solid game. Being a crossover, it won't exactly be winning any awards for creativity or innovation, but it does manage to mash together a couple mechanics from the core franchises with some new goofy ones to create an enjoyable wholesome punching people in the face type-environment.

The flow of battle itself is most akin to SF4, with footsies and safe jump-ins playing the pivotal roles. Where Tekken comes in is the wealth of moves that are now designed to stun or juggle or even bound on counter hit or when pumped up to EX with a meter of super. All those situations in SF4 where you were like, I should be able to tack another move on the end there, now you can... except for all the times you can't. While the engine is pretty flexible, the game does seem to have some rather arbitrary rules on what juggles when and how. I'm sure with time it will become second nature what works and what doesn't, but at this point I am frequently mystified when even a super passes clean through an enemy floating helplessly through the air.

The other major deviation from its parent series is the tag mechanic. On paper its a minor rewrite of Tekken Tag's "2 guys 1 ko" system with some mandatory tagging when certain moves are used, but without a hit there's no safe (or free) way to tag out, so a good bit of strategy is just waiting for your enemy to press the panic button and putting him in traction for it. As a result, the team emphasis is heavier on complementary characters than just guys you're good with. That big damage tag combo you put together isn't really meaningful if you have no good way to get in or out of the match without eating one yourself.

Fortunately the (current) cast is pretty well rounded so whatever your fighting game archetype of choice is, you got a few options for team mates. Pixies, shotos, grapplers, zoners, they're all in there. If you wanna call the SFers easy mode you can because their movelists are pretty straight forward, fireballs, uppercuts, and rekkas. The Tekkens are at least a little wilder on the surface, as they all have a bunch of canned strings and chains in addition to a selection of heavy hitting moves buffed up to SF style specials. The lines are certainly blurred here and there with characters like Juri getting almost Tekken style combo freedom and mix ups while Jin has been granted weird space controlling fireballs, so there's no guarantee a love / hate of a character will be carried over but I wouldn't say at this point anyone has been done injustice. Boring Tekken characters like Julia and Ogre have been animed up to where they actually stand out from the cast, while SF fossils like Ryu and Zangief can use stuns and bounces and the games weird charge up super mechanic to really spice things up.

And that's all very good news, because despite its big boasts, the game is certainly missing some polish. Out of the box (lets re-read this review in 9 months, shall we?) SFxT has a number of features that should be really impressive, but compared to its major rivals there's lots of cut corners that mire its potential. It is one thing to wave off the preschool writing in the arcade mode, no alternate costumes and a record low # of palette swaps. But the fight request is woefully inadequate (even to SF4 and MvC3), and the couch co-op mode (which only works on PS3, mind you) barely accomplishes what MK did just as well a year ago. Some olive branches have been extended when it comes to extraneous single player content but the trials and missions and tutorials are still inferior to KoFs, there's nothing at all to unlock, and the games singular unique feature (gems) are equal parts complex and inneffectual in actual application. Certainly, the pros will turn out some fantastic youtubes by its hand, but for the regular joe gamer it just doesn't hold your hand anywhere near enough to get you interested, and it doesn't engage you enough in battle to make you want to stay for dinner.

That being said, for a fighting game put out by Capcom post-SF4 it is a remarkably rewarding experience to play. The extended feature set has a bit of an after taste, and you may outright vomit if you spend any time at all researching the dlc situation, but it has a damned fine engine running under the hood and a lot of new toys for a cast of characters that have grown tired and antiquated in their host series'. I've had the opportunity to work with it against the cpu, local vs, and online vs and I can't honestly say any of it was a bad experience, which is a damned good sign for gameplay no more ambitious than punching people in the face. So I say keep your internet blinders on and enjoy the ride.

-F.

400 is too many.

My disdain for pointless scavenger hunts is extensive, so its nice to know that Rocksteady put the same love and affection into what is typically the industry's favorite replay value killing achievement ruining "feature" as everything else in the game. Unfortunately, no matter how interesting / rewarding you make "collectibles" the reality is 400 is just too many.

The game seems to get it as well, as for all the riddler trophies that need a gadget or some sort of creative intuition to collect, there are quite a few that are just sitting there or hang waiting to be picked up. Certainly, the narrative can facilitate the idea that the riddler left some easy ones just to screw with Batman, but the last hundred or so just seem kind of pointless.

Still, Arkham City's scavenger hunt extends the olive branch in so many other ways, it seems almost trivial to complain. Its still light years ahead of the competition, and its not like I didn't get all 400 of them in the end.

In any event, this will be the last of my Arkham coverage for a while, I've got lots of games I'd rather dive into than beating my head against mission mode for the riddler's approval. Like Outlands, whose color change mechanic has gone from from cute to mouth frothingly tedious in less than a week of gameplay.

Balls deep in the Row

I'm posting this about 75% through the "story" of Saints Row 3. I'm not going to sugar coat it and say it's a fantastic story because its not, and its not supposed to be. What is, and what it does perfectly, is let us run through a city acting like a total asshole and have a blast doing it.

First I start will the Pre-order and collectors edition crap. Of course I pre-ordered it and got the octopus gun that shoots mind control mollusks and I got Professor Genki's Manapult but honestly, I barely used either of them and the Shark gun DLC puts the octopus gun to shame. Being as it was my birthday, my GF Bonnie got me the collectors edition of SR3 which came with headphones. Headphones that don't work with xbox live and are pretty chunky with a big ass SR3 logo on the side, they haven't and probably will never leave the box, unless one of my nephews or something want them. No extra missions. No art book. I am dissapoint.

That's really the only glaring bad thing about this game. I know when games are hyped like this, they usually come up short but in all honesty this game delivers what it promised. The storyline missions are varied and pretty eventful (though none have lived up to the escaping the airplane from the beginning ....yet). All of your favorite , well MOST of your favorite mini games are back from the 2nd Saints. Heli Assult, despite much improved controls, is still there and still pretty frustrating. FUZZ sadly enough, was no where to be found. New mini games include "Guardian Angel" which is just Heli Assult but the CPU flys the choppah, and "Professor Genki's Super Ethical Reality Climax" which is actually a pretty fun rendition of well, a mix of Smash TV and The Running Man; it also makes it easier to hit that "kill 200 mascots" challenge. Septic Avenger, Fight Club, Crowd Control also go the big ugly axe. Freckle Bitches was no where to be found on the map either, in fact you cant even buy food for your dpad menu anymore.

Ah yes, the challenges. Remember all the goofy shit you can do for respect, like driving in the oncoming lane? Well the game now tracks that stat with a purpose. Once you do it for 10,000 feet you get a cash and respect bonus. Some challenges are pretty tame like "compliment 50 people" some are a real pain, like nailing 15 base jumps. Most will come in time playing the game, others you are going to have to make time to do this. They mention FUZZ a lot in the description, so I believe this is part of the replacement for FUZZ. Ironically, you can buy a Steel Port Police Department uniform in the game.

One thing I really liked and appreciated in SR2 was completing mini games to unlock perks. Do this, you get unlimited pistol ammo, do that and you don't take fall damage. Unlocking perks like that is gone, now you buy the perks with cash you earned. This was done for 2 reasons, something to spend money on, and getting perks that you couldn't because you cant beat a mini-game.

The refined controls are reason enough to head back into the row. They changed the priority of the cars so that the players car has more mass/inertia. Its a godsend, no more getting bullied by a pinto when you're driving a SWAT van. Powerslides, burnouts, even getting up on 2 wheels is just easier to control and that saddest part about that? Racing is no where to be found =( Perhaps some real honest to goodness DLC will come out. Ive been eyeballing the "Season Pass" DLC but I'm hesitant to pull the trigger. God knows I didn't really use the MK Pass like I thought I would.

The graphics are a big jump. They are as much of an improvement over SR2 as SR2 was over SR1. Lower poly counts but improved textures do wonders for the visual appeal. Pop ups still happen but they don't affect gameplay. Occasionally you get some weird glitches, for example, traffic signs getting stuck inside the car, cars sunk into the ground, and more than once I "Bo-Duken'ed" into a car and for some reason took a ton of damage and died. Thankfully dying just takes away some money, you keep your guns so you can jump right back into the game.

Overall I am having a fantastic time, I'm 20 hours or so in and still having fun just goofing around. I plan to finish up the "story" after I get a few more "insert gang name here" specialists killed. Brutes are brutal, but I gotta say, its a good Rowvember.

And the award for the ballsiest licensed game ending goes to...

So, I put Batman's plot down this weekend, capping 2 week long nightly gaming binge and leaving only the side missions, riddler trophies, new game plus, and challenge rooms left to do. Thom has already bailed on the 1K, so its up to me to claim the highest Arkham City % on my friends list. Its a shame that an excellent game so effectively packed with content and unlockables has to be mired by some of the most predatory cockpunch style dlc tactics in use these days, but that's the way it is. In the long run, knowing there's two more full characters and seven costumes already done that are just being held back to make an extra buck really tarnishes the games majesty, no matter how many kitchen sinks they dropped into it.

Still, despite whatever insults Warner Bros. may lay at my feet, Rocksteady, I take my hat off to you. Twice in a row now you have made the concept of action games, licensed games, DC comics games and Batman games all shine at once, a feat only Spiderman has otherwise achieved, and only because Activision is just gonna keep slamming him into the wall annually until they get a hit. Wherever it is you decide to take your talents next, I will happily follow.

Meanwhile, Deus Ex waits patiently in its Gamefly sleeve praying that I will accidentally knock it off the shelf and into my Xbox one of these days. Days ago, it seemed likely that Deus Ex would be next, a cyberpunky shooty distraction to keep me from immediately diving back into Dark Souls and getting my feelings hurt. Now, I have an angry space marine revving his chainsaw gun, and the Third Street Saints breathing down my neck in addition. And that's disregarding Hydrophobia, Trials, Outland, and whatever else I got lying around the living room unplayed.

The good news is, barring a Gamefly send, I'll have nothing new in my queue until I wrestle with the decision to buy Anarchy Reigns next year, and after that, probably nothing until SFxT, which flip-flops between guaranteed buy and waste of space with each new tidbit of information Capcom eeks out onto the internet.

Here's hoping that craving I had for some multiplayer demon slaying action stays just a craving, and doesn't blossom into another month of grinding in Castlevania: HoD.

-F.