Seasons Gamings

Since this will probably be my last post of the year, figure I'll run down everything that's up in my gaming world in one super post.

Castlevania SOTN - There's nothing I can't say here that isn't already known, so this is more of a declaration of love than anything else. Is there a scale with which this games awesome can be measured? More than a decade later this is still one of the best and most rewarding experiences a gamer can have. It doesn't require any concessions about difficulty, or plot, or gameplay, or community, or anything. SOTN stands on its own as a masterpiece of both tech and design and the entire Castlevania series and staff should be damned thankful they have its haughty coat tails to cling to. Hats off, Konami. Now do it again on a non-portable console (I'm looking at you, Dawn of Sorrows!)

Enslaved - Cut from the same "Journey to the West" fable that gave rise to Dragon Ball, Enslaved follows one man's harrowed journey across a post apocalyptic wasteland. The catch is that he'll do so leashed to a helpless and often irritating female companion. Enslaved embodies everything that is wrong with escort missions in general, but unlike most games that incidently fall in those trappings, Enslaved lavishes in them. Practically highlighting them as bullet points on the back of the box.
Outside of that, the game is basically Prince of Persia, which ain't a bad thing. Running, jumping and combating in linear episodes that appear open ended but really aren't. You get a few needless upgrades, and there's some a few ranged combat scenarios that feel almost like mini-games, but by and large its just a question of reflexes and intuition, figuring out what the devs want you to do, and do it fast.
The best part is that it actually feels kind of epic. There's the knowing comfort in the back of your mind that obviously the story doesn't conclude with you falling off a tree and plummeting to your death, but many times it seems like that's within the realm of possibility. The exhiliration of scampering about is often on par with the joy of scaling giants in Shadow of the Colossus. Too bad they went with The Matrix ending tho.

Fallout New V. . . nah I'm just kidding, if I haven't sold you yet, "what should I do?". Instead,
Final Fantasy XIII - I know, this again, right? Its weird, the same thought goes through my head every time I turn it on. Every time. Yet, I keep doing it. Even the wife is questioning it, now. Is it the endless promises that somewhere beneath all the stupid decisions and incomprehensible "game" design is a solid rpg experience? Does my fanboy blood still run final fantasy crystal blue after all these disappointments? Am I just bored? I can't say for sure. I promised myself I would never make the Rumble Roses mistake again, but it really feels like I'm getting there with this.
So what have you missed? Another 10 hours of nothing. Absolutely nothing. Every single thing I ranted about in that last post about FFXIII is still true. The character stupidity, the needless filler flashbacks, the single serving gameplay portions. Led around this great big world by a linear leash, then tied to a game play stop sign while my master goes off to do something that looks really fun. Why won't they just let me cut loose? Would it be so bad for a player to excel and see what this Crystarium really has to offer? And what the devil is an Eidolon anyway?! I swear, there are so many seat belts in this game, its practically impossible to drive the car.

Marvel vs Capcom 3 - My disdain for all things MvC2 is well known, but that obviously hasn't tarnished my love for the series as a whole. An high tech orgy involving my youthful nostalgia and marvel's marketing machine? Sign me up. I am absolutely unabashedly hype for this release and it can't get here soon enough. Now if only they would get rid of Crimson Viper.

Minecraft - Somebody bought it for me, so yes I'm playing it. I still don't "get" it, but that may be the hater in me keeping it away from my hype center. I don't know. There is an allure to building and just seeing what will or won't happen, for sure, I just wish there was a reason besides don't get murdered at night. Time will tell.

Mortal Kombat - Rivaled only by Batman Arkham City in terms of inciting raw fanboy excitement within me is MKs return to glory next spring. It's uncertain if the loss of Midway's incompetence or just the need for a "break in the norm" game like MKvDC is to blame for Netherrealm studios sudden interest in magnificence, but not one iota of information regarding MK gives me bad feelings, which is both bad and good because there's a criminal shortage of it. DO YOU WANT ME TO BEG LIKE A DOG FOR A SCRAP OF YOUR HYPER VIOLENT MASTERPIECE?

Super / Street Fighter 4 - My whole life is governed by competition. Every motivation from going to work to carrying out the garbage is based on the notion that I am better / getting better at something than somebody else. So there was only so long I could watch the entire fighting game community polish this knob before I'd give it another go, and so I did. First, I popped my SF4 disc back in and instantly remembered everything I hate about it. The only thing thats changed is me, now instead of wallowing or raging at the gameplay, online community, storyline, achievements, everything, I view it as a unique opportunity to make sport with Dan Hibiki, the best character Capcom ever ripped off.
But then Gamefly sent me SSF4, and while I won't say I've completely changed my spots, I can say I've actually had some fun with it. A lot more (on my own) than I did with "vanilla" sf4, thats for sure. Naturally, it's to be expected that after you release a game, make a ton of money, then retool it and rerelease a year later (at full price, mind you!) you're going to make some improvements. Simply put, SSF4 is the best SF4 could hope to get. The cast is diverse enough, the gameplay is facilitative enough, and the music is nostalgic (once you unlock the character theme option) enough that I can actually get into it.
Now that said, its still full of crap designs, crap decisions, and if you ever hear the words "I love / like / don't entirely despite ultra combos" come out of my mouth, you'll know I've been murdered and replaced with a cylon. But, I spent a few hours on saturday and a lot of hours on sunday making people respect Dan's mediocrity (say it like Cartman's authoritah for maximum effect), and slamming people face first into the floor with T. Hawk and I feel better for the experience. Will I be able to do this every day? Is it worth the 20 bucks gamefly is willing to let me keep it for? Probably not, but at least it has a shot. . . until MvC3 gets here.

-F.

Viva Las Wasteland

It would seem my time in the wasteland is winding down. Like every preceding Fallout, I hit level cap long before I ran out of side crap to do (and boy is there a lot of side crap to do), and that really takes the wind out of my fucking sails. So much so that I found myself sleepwalking through the climactic last few missions where you decide who lives and who dies a horrible death by slideshow and narration.
Yes, the sad part is NV continues the trend of declining ending quality in a series that is otherwise still unpeaked. Even top notch voice work (Cyclops, Whistler, Machete, even Codex to name a few) can't take away the fact that Fallout 1 has a better understanding of the phrase "ending cinematic". I suppose the payoff was supposed to be the gigantic battle in which you not only participate, but decide which side comes out on top (something that was missing in Fallout 3), but all the explosions, gun shots, and dialogue trees in the world can't hold a candle to Liberty Prime bringing justice and hyperbole to the Capital Wasteland in F3.
Still, I hold no grudge against New Vegas (save the bugs). The gameplay is tight, the story is well knit, and the characters are very relevant. Sadly, the best complaint I can make is that there is simply too much to do in the game. Too many avenues to take through every scenario, and just too much content to squeeze into 30 experience levels. I guess this is a marvelous selling point for younger players with more time on their hands, but I've got this big dumb game guide staring me in the face, reminding me at all times just how much game I missed out on while I was enjoying all the other shit I did. There is definately at least one more playthrough in me, but I'll be using it to mop up achievements and exploit the game design not explore and be enthralled.

That said my next conquest will be Enslaved, which I played only for a moment before the guilt of having friends further than me in Fallout drew me back. It'll be interesting to see if it can maintain its momentum, or if I'll just have to restart the 10-15% of the game I started to get back into it.

In other news, those new characters FINALLY got released for Castlevania HoD, the better part of 4 months later. Seriously. 3 months after everybody lost faith, and 2 months after everybody stopped caring, Konami drops content that should've been ready at launch. Let this be a lesson. If you are going to promise dlc, fucking deliver it. And if you need more time, take the goddamned "download content" button of your main menu. Now, this isn't a shot at HoD for being shortsighted, or DLC for being (or not being) a rip off, its a shot at Konami for getting us salivating, and then keeping us waiting until we literally died of starvation. The only people enjoying Julius and Yoko are people who just bought the game last week.

Dont Hate Black Ops because Treyarch made it

Hate TreyArch for making BlackOps. I haven't even finished the campaign , mostly because the camera shakes like you're playing the role of Michael J Fox and the story couldn't be less interesting. I actually cared about Soap, Ghost, and Roach and what happened to them.... it shows because I can remember their names and I haven't played MW2 since January of this year and I finished the story mode in December of last year. I played CoD:BO last night and cant remember my guy's name. MW1 and MW2 both had a really nice flow to the story, Black Ops is just a series of flashbacks and a buncha flashing numbers on the screen.

Enough harping on the campaign mode, COD is supposed to be all about the online. The only thing worse then the campaign IS the multiplayer. Now I'm not going to pretend that I'm the best or even really good at FPS games, because I'm not. As bad/good as I am I actually had FUN playing MW2 online. Again, I'm not gonna gush on MW2's multiplayer, it was not without its faults but I never had worry about turning the corner and getting killed by a damn remote controlled car! How bad is it? This game is single handedly ruining my childhood memories of playing RC Pro-Am on my NES. I'd rather be tactically nuked.

I was in mid post with this when Tru Fenix and I were discussing, and Im not entirely sure I could have stated what I think about the game any better then this (and he didnt even have to play it!)

"no see, thats all activisions genius plan idiots will buy it as long as it sas CoD on it

so while they wait for IW to make a good game, they have treyarch fill in the blanks with whatever bullshit they can so now we have JFK and Castro killing zombies playing L4D in the whitehouse despite the fact it has dick to do with anything else at all....and dont forget the fact they pretty much fired IW"
~TruFenix

I personally am hoping to rush through the campaign so I can trade it back in for $20 and get a good game, like Fall Out: New Vegas. I can only hope that when I pick up Assassin's Creed:Brotherhood tomorrow it'll help me wash the taste of BO out of my mouth /pun

PS:Also, you're an idiot with too much money if you bothered spending the extra $90 for the hardened Edition

Random gaming thoughts (11910)

New Vegas - Continues to impress. Stumbled upon a tangentical link to Fallout 2 last night that gave me warm fuzzy feelings inside.

Minecraft - I'd like to know what the fuss is all about, I really would. But paying 10 dollars for an alpha product with no release date and no clear direction can go to hell. Seriously. If an indy wants to put up a donation box for me to slip'm a few dollars after their half baked cookies impress me, fine. But don't charge me an entry fee to enter an amusement park thats just blue prints and steel girders.

Darksiders 2 - Just read this; http://www.joystiq.com/2010/11/08/darksiders-2-will-star-new-character-take-place-alongside-event/ which goes a long way towards reminding me THQ has never had a clear idea what they are doing. Could it be an awesome game? Sure, but wasting the opportunity to bring the four horsemen of the apocalypse together for an action adventure orgy in favor of squeezing a few more dollars out of the same engine is just a traveshamockery.

Oh Raziel and Kain, where are you when we need you?

Welcome to 9 months ago.

Its it still February? No? Well it will be in 3 months! Where was I going with this? I don't know either. Oh yeah, that's right, I finally picked up Dante's Inferno.

I finally broke down and went into my local Gamestop and picked it up. I can admit its totally created in the vein of God Of War. Rip off? No, not really. Noting to do with Greeks, doesn't use swords on chains, heck the main guy isnt even bald or painted up. Kratos would be more bad ass if he stitched that red area into his skin with a needle in thread though. The gameplay is very similar and there's quick time events, thankfully not as many and they aren't as long. I started to hate the "demondoors" about an hour in, and 5 hours later I despise them.

Honestly, I'm kinda flying through it on normal and odds are I'm going to take it back before the weeks up and get my money back. Its not that the game isn't worth $25, its that its not worth keeping if I can get 750(ish) gamer score out of it and put $25 more onto Assassins Creed Brotherhood.

In other "Old News" I finally broke down and finished off Red Dead Redemption. The ending of the narrative was a bit of a let down and while others said it was a surprise, I sorta saw it coming from the start. My only major gripe with the game, despite the ending, is that there is simply too much to do. Odd complaint huh? I had planned on finishing all the side stuff before completing the story but I just couldn't, even though I'm a self confessed achievement whore. I got up to level 6 or 7 on all the 4 "bonus" things to do but I just dont feel like going and killing 2 more bears with 1 shot, or picking 10 more plants where the cougars and bears roam. I didn't even realize how close I was to finishing the game until I ran the last 5 missions in 35 minutes, and most of that was riding my horse from one end of the map to the other.

One more thing about Red Dead before I go....I see they have an undead zombie expansion, and I hear its amazing. Maybe I'll find out next august (that's my running 9 months ago joke)

Waking up in Vegas

It's kind of shocking how much better Obsidian's Fallout 3 is than Bethesda's. Which is additionally shocking because Bethesda's F3 was one of the best games I've ever played. There's a line in there about Obsidian having an extra 2 years and all the successes / mistakes of F3 to build upon, but its not just the raw execution, its the actual design. New Vegas is not just Fallout 3 redux, its Fallout 3 revised. With all the Fallout 3 faults turned into something you can excuse or outright enjoy.

The catch, of course, is that Fallout: New Vegas is riddled with bugs, glitches, and other dumb nuances that serve no purpose but to remind you it's never safe to go more than 5 - 10 minutes without saving. Regardless, the pure character driven RPG genre is pretty starved these days, unless you're looking for something overly pretentious, overly complicated, or overly simplistic. F:NV's narrative and gameplay seem to land that sweet spot where despite the obvious room for improvement, you're perfectly happy with what you got.

I am, anyway.

You maniacs, you blew it up! (Crackdown 2)

If nothing else, Crackdown 2 speaks to the strength of the original Crackdown formula. Collecting orbs, Hulk-jumping rooftops, firing absurd ordinance, and generally acting like a wreckless super freak has never been funner. The problem is, every new decision Ruffian Games has made is shortsighted, ineffectual and in many cases outright dumb. You could probably say this is our fault for putting Crackdown 1's pedigree on such a shameless pedestal, but that'd be like blaming the weather man for predicting lightning would strike twice.

The open world formula has never been facilitative to a scripted narrative, and the original Crackdown took a beating for having almost none whatsoever. CD2 takes that failure to the next level by not only sidestepping narrative, but concealing what little back-story it has into 40 or so audio logs randomly strewn about the map. The only story you'll be spoon fed is the incessant orders from The Agency about murdering everything in sight and not asking questions. Near the end some rogue transmissions make it seem like maybe there's some sort of good / bad ending choice coming up, but it never pans out and the game always ends the same way. They did have the decency to tack on an ending cinematic, but its just a needless and unsatisfactory lead in to an unlikely sequel. And we all know, seeding your next effort is the best way to reward people for supporting your current effort.

Unfortunately, progressing through said non-existent narrative is an equally uninspired affair. Your virtually directionless objective is to eradicate the mindless zombie menace that plagues the city, and stop the terrorists who are getting in your way. It seems the only way Ruffian could come up with to present this act is with two of the industries worst gameplay mechanics; mob hunts and escort missions. Every one of the games "missions" involves running, climbing or falling into a static area of the city and then hunting down every enemy in the immediate area, protecting a target from every enemy in the immediate area, or worse, both. No real targets, no story, no planning, no stealth, no strategy. You do have a variety of guns, explosives and even melee options at your disposal, but you're not going to need any of it. Even at game start you're leagues ahead of your opposition in capability and long after you've come up with every way to abuse your enemies, the game will continue to throw them at you over and over again. As though that somehow justifies the general lack of content.

As an additional middle finger to people who bought the first game, the games map is virtually the same as before. Some buildings have been slightly changed in the ten years since the last game, none of it makes a huge amount of difference in play. No effort has been made to make the tedious process of window scaling skyscrapers any easier, and you will still frequently find yourself surrounded by concealed targets with crack shot rocket launcher aim. You may occasionally get a kick out of seeing a classic location slightly changed (the old car sales place is particularly amusing), but whether you've if you've already taken the super human tour in CD1 or not, there's really nothing interesting going on in Pacific City.

Now the tricky part here is that the entire experience, limited and shortsighted though it may be is not entirely unfun. Frequently, its exceedingly fun. Using your super cop powers to establish dominance is awesome, even moreso when accompanied by 2 or 3 other super cops via co-op. But its an awesome every Crackdown 1 player has already experienced, and this time there's no point or payoff to any of it. Without a story, bosses, or even creative locations to explore, there's no motivation to actually participate in the boring activities that make up the games "core" except to perform the extras along the way. Sure, you'll be powering up your agent the entire time, but not because you need them to beat the game, only because it will make life easier when you decide to hunt down all of the games extras.

Extras are of course are the main replay value in any sandbox game, but with Ruffian's poor understanding of what is actually fun it feels like this sandbox has no real toys in it just more chores. Remember those 800 orbs you had to collect in the last game? Now there's even more (the number of collectibles is up over 1000 all said and done), including some that run away from you when you get close to them, and some that are only available within close proximity to other online players. And that's on top of the timed races, the stunt markers, the car collecting, and everything else we already did in Crackdown 1 or Grand Theft Auto or Spider-Man or every other sandbox game. Its not that any of these activities are inherently bad, but there's just way too many of them and way too little motivation unless you have absolutely got to have that 1K on your gamercard.

Sadly, the whole game stinks of some "if it ain't broke don't fix it" logic, but its not like Crackdown 1 was perfect to begin with. Instead of fixing the first games issues and expanding on the gameplay, Ruffian has chosen to simply flip the record over and play it again, twice. Now I like B-sides just as much as the next guy, but mixing comfortable awesome with questionable decisions does very little but tarnish the integrity of the original especially when its so needlessly padded out to fill an entire game. There's no reason the content presented here couldn't have been done as an expansion pack or at least some sort of re-release that includes the original content. Crackdown 2 isn't so much bad as it is unneccessary and kind of insulting to the people whose wallets made it possible by supporting the first. In contrast to the original, CD2 is worthy of a rental at best.

-F.

Return of the Space Cowboy (The Force Unleashed II)

It pleases me immensely to know that The Secret Apprentice / Starkiller / Galen Marek will be (SPOILERS) returning to life (/OH NOES) for another go at Star Wars infamy. The bad news is he'll be doing it using a clone, but then cloning has been the defacto plot device for everything Star Wars for the better part of 10 years. Even before then, fan boys were masturbating over Palpatine, Thrawn and even Vader cloning theories to keep proper villainy in the series canon, but despite less than 10 minutes of film time to its credit, Kamino has practically become the single most important location in the film scope of that entire galaxy far far away.

Which is disappointing because according to all the people who get to make canon Star Wars decisions The Force Unleashed writers are up to snuff. The last time, they let Starkiller's little sojourn stand as its own episode within the otherwise movie only canon, and it worked perfectly. I would think the guys who functionally re-wrote the origins of the Rebellion could come up with something better than "Darth Vader made a clone and the clone went rogue". There's no reason he couldn't have simply barely survived the explosion with The Emperor, and it could've just taken an inordinate amount of time for him to recover or be recovered.

In a better world, they would come up with a story in-between the later movies, involving The Apprentice in some Shadows of the Empire style hijinx during the era of Star Wars history not horribly poisoned by the clone wars. Maybe they could explain how Boba Fett escaped the Sarlacc, or properly explain why Yoda chose to hide in a damned swamp instead of doing anything ever. In a perfect (or at least more awesome) world, they could have him be brought back after the rebellion succeeds, maybe enter into some conflict with Luke and the reborn republic. I know Lucas lacks the balls to actually write his own story, but DLC has already pit The Apprentice against the likes of Ben Kenobi and even Luke Skywalker in simulators and side stories, so why not?

I see in my head a fantastic story where Luke comes across this half-dead relic of the force being kept alive in some secret stasis chamber. Why did Vader keep him? What has he since done to him? Did Palpatine even know? Starkiller's upbringing by Vader is almost like the father-son bond Luke himself never had, while his betrayal and quest for vengeance mirror Luke's own internal struggle with the Dark Lord. Does he rescue and revive The Apprentice, who from a certain point of view, could be called Luke's half brother? And maybe The Apprentice doesn't want to live in a world where Juno Eclipse is long dead, and Luke Skywalker is the leader, if not symbol of a rebellion he started. A rebellion that bears his own family crest.

Both characters are so similar, and they could play so well off one another in a well tempered drama. With Leia doing the family thing with Han, Luke is alone with the weight of being the sole Jedi in the galaxy. Would he reach out to Galen? Would Galen's brutality and "unleashed" mastery over the force turn him off? And who could dare oppose them? What would Leia think of the sudden resurrection of this mysterious figure from her past?

I see a game where you play both of them, enemies at first and then allies, until it finally comes to a head and you have to decide which of them will guide the direction of the Republic and the new Jedi Order. Clearly The Apprentice loses, but does he die? Does he sacrifice himself? Does Luke kill him? There's just so much gold to be mined in this potential property. Its a shame I'm just spit balling here.

Instead, TFUII will be a fairly good game full of dual lightsaber battles and over the top force powers, but unfortunately we already know the story. TFU1 had a nice neat ending for a midquel. Sure, The Apprentice had to die to keep from disrupting canon, but he does so for a meaningful reason. His role in the past is done. Now we have a clone waking up and doing everything he did again. Rebelling, growing more powerful, and then vanishing into obscurity to maintain the canon. Maybe they craft a decent love story throughout, but at this point Juno's 10 years older than him, and he's been "dead" all that time. Is she just going to be that happy to see him? Is he going to kick the shit out of Vader and Palpatine again? Is he just going to "die" again in the end? /sigh. What a waste.

Still, I don't want that rant to come across at tarnishing my horrible excitement for the game, just a general disappointment in its plot. Maybe they'll impress me. I am currently experiencing similar regret over the Mortal Kombat franchises latest iteration, it too being a retread of material already covered, but that doesn't mean I'm not fired up to play it. A good story "helps" a game, but it doesn't "make" a game, and if the guys at LucasArts fix the few problems the first had, I don't care if they want to turn Galen into an Gungan and have the entire game take place in generic deserts fighting sand people so long as I get to lightsaber, lightning, and light . . uh, shove my enemies into oblivion. And the rumor mill says they're gonna get dismemberment going? Count me in.

-F.

I'm on a horse.

It's not Grand Theft Auto on a horse, I'm so tired of hearing that as the description for Red Dead Redemption. Now I can freely admit that this game is in no way a sequel to Red Dead Revolver other then in name and the fact its in the "wild west"; Red is no where to be found. This game is a very plot driven narrative and is as much story as it is game play. It's sooooo much more then a wild west GTA.

The characters in this title are multi-dimensional and very interesting. As you complete mission branches for them, their back story and reasons for doing what they do gets fleshed out. Even the sub-character side stories (not random "stop the horse thief" type ones) actually make you want to go out of your way to see what happens. I'm about 11 hours in, crossed the border to Mexico and the story just gets better and better...... It probably wont take you 12 hours to get this far, but I get distracted hunting animals and selling their meat and hides for profit.

We all know the story is useless if the game play makes you quit trying. Thankfully the controls are tight, the aiming is spot on, and bullet time errrr..... dead eye mode makes getting out of a jam that much easier. Riding a horse has never been this easy, but unfortunately you cant ride them backwards. My only minor gripe is sometimes the horses and the clifs dont get along well. I've gotten stuck and I have had my horse walk over an edge and land in the bottom of a canyon. I survived then skinned the dead horse for his hide and meat before pressing up on the D-pad to get a new one.

Lastly Achievements. I am a former Gamer Score whore, I used to totally flex my E-Peen but it just doesnt mean that much to me anymore. Yeah having a high score was neat, but playing hundred of hours of lame beach volleyball and gift buying in DOAXBV2 wasnt worth the 1k. Much to my relief, the achievements and rewards in RDR are spot on. Theres a mix of single player story , gun usage (X amount of kills per gun), mini games (toss a ringer in horseshoes), multiplayers ones, and a viral one just for good measure. Theres 5 avatar clothing unlocks to boot (2 men, 2 women, and 1 unisex item)

Apparently theres some multiplayer DLC coming soon, in the mean time I've gotta go hogtie a woman and put her on the train tracks for 5 gamer points.

~Malenko

On the subject of bad first impressions (Final Fantasy XIII)

I had originally done away with my intent to give this game an introductory flogging, if only because I'd finally reached the point where it starts to get good and had no desire to relive the horror of Final Fantasy XIII's clumsy opening. Then I played a game that actually has an interesting and fun (gasp) first impression and realized it had to be done. You'll be shocked when you find out just what game that happened to be, but that will be covered in another post, probably.

It should be known that I had no intention of playing XIII, the same way I didn't play XII, the same way I gave up on XI and the same way I suffered through X (I like to pretend X-2 didn't happen). That was before it was given so many accolades by trusted friends. "Simply amazing" they said, "awesome game-play" they said, "best final fantasy in years", they said. "Well alright then, let me play it on your dime." I replied, and resolved to put it to the test.

Unfortunately the game they were talking about kicks in after 7 hours of one of the worst excuses for a "game" I've ever been involved in. All RPGs need a good opening, because they are generally pretty pedestrian gameplay-wise at the start. Win me over with your opening, and you've bought at least a few hours of my time. You've got time to step up the rest of your game. Final Fantasy XIII doesn't do that. Instead of writing a story that actually begins with something interesting, Square went with a story that starts very boring, then just fast forwarded the opening of the game to some point later when something interesting finally happens. Hours later they get around to explaining the set up for what you're watching and doing during this segment, but for now you'll have to be placated with explosions and dialogue. This way, by the time they get around to explaining them, you're already totally disconnected and uninterested in the characters (or rather, the (R)oles you're supposed to (P)lay in the (G)ame) and their motivations.

Questions like; "why are we fighting these people?" "are they bad?" "are we?" are just ignored. They are faceless soldiers, we have fluorescent hair and one liners. We keep tossing around plot words like, rebellion, and purge, and government, but never explain them or any one's connection to them. FFXIII additionally commits the Mass Effect sin of hiding copious amounts of lore in a journal like datalog that you're just supposed to peruse when you have no interest in playing the game, but Mass Effect has the decency to make sure that its all optional. XIII's intro makes no effort to explain the buzz words they throw around outside the datalog. What is a Fal'cie? A l'cie? Pulse? Eden? PSICOM? Focus? What planet are we on? Who are these people? You'll get none of this from the actual game narrative, only; "be these people, kill those people, and enjoy the bright colors."

Which would be fine if every character we're introduced to wasn't a completely blank slate or just devoid of redeeming qualities. The tough girl is supposed to be the leader, but she hates everyone and everything. Even after people start saving her life and asking for her help, she calls them weak and tries to leave them behind. Later on someone will remark that is her way of "crying out for help", as if that somehow excuses her being a bitch all the time. Then there's the black guy with the Chocobo living in his afro. For the record, at this point in the game there are no other a) black people, b) chocobos, c) afros, d) people with pets at all, in the game. During battle, the black guy is the only party member with guns, which he fires (sideways) while dancing. He is supposed to be the comic relief, but he is mostly just the guy who annoys the female lead the most. With other characters sporting names like Lightning, Hope, Snow, and Vanilla, I would not be surprised to learn his development name was Watermelon or even Fried Chicken, but I digress. The male hero, who heroically gets his entire rebellion killed, then abandons the survivors entirely for his own selfish ambition. The remaining two characters are children, or so they act, I'm not even sure anymore. One is always mopey because his mom got killed but he's too whiny to do anything about it, the other is always happy, and has no involvement in the plot whatsoever, save to keep the other one company. Naturally, you spend way more time with the high voiced obnoxious children characters and their boomerangs than with the semi interesting grown characters with swords and knuckles and guns.

Game-play wise, much has been said about the length of XIII's "training" period and the fact it requires the better part of 10 hours to fully dispense with tutorial pop ups and demonstrations before allowing you to fully use and develop your characters as you see fit. The worst part of this is that until they teach you how, you can't actually do any of it, so you begin with next to nothing to do in battle.

You see, in XIII you only control the "leader" of the party actively. The others just back you up according to role-assigned abilities and the AIs best judgement. The problem is, you start the game with neither abilities, or roles, or the means to develop them. So regardless of who you're in control of, your only options is select attack again and again and again. And that's ignoring the fact that even after you get some game to play with, your time in between battles is spent walking linear paths through grandiose non-interactive environments from cinema sequence to cinema sequence, many of which are no more than just the characters reflecting on what they just did or are about to do in casual conversation.

Now its obvious these many pitfalls are the result of trying to scale back their grand design to fit within the confines of an "opening" segment. Before I committed to even playing I demanded my friend show me some of what the "end" of the game look like to seal the deal. But they have scaled the games operations so far back in the beginning, they might as well have made it unplayable. Seriously. Years ago, I trashed Xenosaga for being little more than a silent hallway walking sim in-between cinema scenes, and 10 years later, they've learned very little.

The good news is eventually (8 hours, by my game clock) the game gets good. A couple of times they tricked me into thinking it was getting good, but it wasn't. Now I'm fairly sure it is. I still can't pick my party members or my leader, but there are abilities to unlock, items to craft, equipment to buy, and summon monsters to use. Why they couldn't have made any of this accessible early, I will never know. Game-play privileges are doled out seemingly at random with no bearing on plot or party members, so its just like they actively decided to keep you bored for the first 1/6th (or so I've heard) of the game.

In any event, I'll be sure (maybe) to check back in as I traverse the remaining discs in pursuit of what (most of) Final Fantasy XIII actually has to offer.

-F.

The Legend of God Reaver May Cry if The Cake is a Lie (Darksiders)

It will be my eternal regret that I nearly passed on Darksiders. First it was the THQ logo. Then it was the lack of advertising. Then it was the reviewers. Now that I've played it, though, Darksiders is easily the best games I've played since Batman. Like I did with Dante, I will do it the courtesy of omitting any comparisons to that other game reviewers can't seem to get enough of comparing it to, pretentious as that sounds, if only because at this point that's a like kicking Vigil games when they're down. Do you really think they didn't know that other guy has a hood and hookshot, guys?

So what you need to know is this, Darksiders is a hack and slash action adventure (and you can actually call it adventure, thank god) full of violence and Gothic imagery. The premise was cooked up by Joe Madureira, and even though it has nothing to do with Battle Chasers, the same style permeates the game. Everything is big and exaggerated and jagged and dark, there's no sense of haste or "stylish" to it at all. Just a big guy with a big sword and a big chip on his shoulder. The entire setting is very deliberate and obvious, but compared to all the wishy washy mood swingy nonsense that has cluttered up the industry as of late, its nice to have a world of people you can legitimately get behind or hate.

The story is about War (and only War), one of The Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse. At some point, The Apocalypse happens but only War shows up. Despite his efforts (exactly what he was supposed to do is never really clarified) Hell beats Heaven and humanity gets wiped out. Now The Horsemen are charged with maintaining the balance, so the fact that War was on scene and the balance went kablooey looks real bad for him, specially considering his co-riders aren't answering their phones. So, a hundred years of healing later, War gets a chance to go back to an earth ravaged by hot demon on angel action and figure out just what went wrong, with extreme prejudice. He's got a babysitter holding his leash, and he'll need to run a few favors for the angels and demons along the way, but sooner or later he'll get there. The good news is you get to drive.

Now War is supposed to be one of the biggest bad asses in documented lore, so the fact that you start with nothing but a basic combo and an area effect spell is an early stumbling block. You do get some nifty (QTE-less, thank god) finishing moves to play with but despite a launcher and some aerial options, combat is a pretty bland affair in the beginning. There IS a wealth of stuff to buy even from the first opportunity to do so, but you'll be broke and bored for a while before and after, a factor only frustrated if you don't buy your secondary weapon right off the bat. Thankfully, once the game opens up and you're making currency souls pretty steadily the pace picks up. There's still a lot of room to make poor choices and hate your "build", but the prices and gains are measured such that you're never too far from heading back to ole' Vulgrim for more.

The meat of the game is housed in the five or six dungeons full of enemies and puzzles you'll need to familiarize yourself with as War climbs, kills, and collects his way to justice. Each one is decked out with a shiny new toy, a mini boss or two, and then a big boss encounter that requires more use of said new toy than raw brawn. In-between the dungeons you'll be traipsing about an Overworld-like arrangement of smaller connecting zones that present you with plenty of combat practice and places to use your acquired toys in the hunt for additional power ups. You'll occasionally bump into a surprise boss fight or some other action event in the open areas too, but mostly its just a lot of satisfactory slash and traveling. Best of all, you're never locked out of any of it, even up to the last boss fight, save the limitations of the items in your inventory. You can always go anywhere and do anything you already did, in case you missed something or forgot something. The only thing its really missing in that regard is a Shadow of the Colossus style "Reminiscence" for old boss battles.

What does suck? Well, there's the obligatory end of game busy work treasure hunt. Tiny carrots dangled in front of you throughout the entire game. You can see them, even touch some of them, but you can't have them. Not until the end of the game when they make you go back and get them. Then there's the horse, Ruin. War is constantly referred to as The Horseman and Rider of the Red Horse. But where is his horse for the first 60% of the game? He's not there in the opening before War gets stripped of his powers, and when you do find Ruin, somebody else is riding him. Not somebody important, just a nobody that you promptly dispatch and then forget about. Even once you "have" Ruin, the places you're allowed to ride are limited, so did they just think "moving quickly" would hinder the first half of game? Also, the game is too easy. Figuring out some of the bosses and puzzles will take you a minute, but you are going to sleepwalk 90% of the combat without a second thought. Committing to anything other than basic sword combos often makes life more difficult, so all your toys and bought abilities are pretty superfluous. There is an Apocalyptic difficulty that tunes the numbers to a place where the world is almost dangerous, but even then you just block and dodge more, no real strategy change.

Finally, I had a big problem with War's final power up; the Mask of Shadows. When active, the mask makes the screen looks a little weird and you can see "hidden objects" like treasure chests and grapple points, but you can't open ordinary treasure chests anymore. You can still see them, you just can't open them. Despite the fact that you can still slay monsters, platform, and otherwise interact with the environment (wield cars, smash statues,etc) as necessary. What reason does this serve except to annoy the player? Maybe they thought just making a bunch of stuff appear on the maps at the end was too stupid (and it is), maybe they thought players wouldn't want a permanent yellow haze on their screen (they don't), maybe they just thought Arkham Asylum's "Detective Vision" was a good idea (it wasn't). Maybe if there were enemies more or less vulnerable in Mask of Shadows mode, puzzles that require you to switch back and forth, or at least different moves available, it would be on, but all it really accomplishes is enabling the aforementioned obnoxious treasure hunt.

Still, those are all very niggling complaints in a very solid game whose sins are just as borrowed as its features. Sure, you can legitimately knock it for originality, what with the boomerang and portal gun, but they have done a far better job of borrowing to create a new experience than just ape-ing other formulas and calling it original. Of course, it is entirely possible that I am just being a huge apologist because it reminds me of the Next Gen Legacy of Kain game we are all still desperately waiting to happen, but that's not its only charm. Needless cliffhanger aside, It manages to traverse its entire narrative without tripping over confused plot twisted feet (Bad guys actually get killed when you kill them! Imagine that, Metal Gear!), its not an exercise in boredom or futility achievement-wise and it certainly doesn't hurt to have another functional 3d member of the action-ADVENTURE game family.

Kudos, Vigil.
-F.

Sam the Fisher...Man.

Ahhhhhh the original stealth shooter franchise is back.After the odd story arc of Splinter Cell:Double Agent; everyone's favorite shadow bound marksman is back. Now I could write a VERY long diatribe about what I love and hate about this game, but I'll keep it fairly succinct for both our sakes. I'll address the game play first, story second.

Firstly the game does NOT punish you as bad for being detected and seems to actually let you try to kill/sneak/distract your way back into the shadows and this makes the game MUCH more accessible to the more casual gamer and first time Splinter Cell players. Now please don't misread that last sentence, if you think you are god's gift to video games, jack the difficulty up and you'll be just as frustrated as ever. Its a hell of a lot better then "the guard heard you fart, game over"

There is a pretty good selection of weapons even if you didn't pre-order the game (dont get me started) and you earn what can only be described as "skill points" which you use to upgrade the weapons. Extended magazines, scopes, different stocks, match grade ammo,etc but only 3 upgrades per gun and the upgrade options are pre-determined, ie no scopes on pistols. In addition to the guns you get a small selection of gadgets, from a personal EMP to frag grenades which also can be upgraded; usually its the effective radius that is upgraded.

Earning said skills points is hit or miss, some challenges are far too easy while others are far too difficult. For the most part you can earn enough to upgrade the guns you use most, the rest is just needed for some achievements. Once you get the FiveSe7en pistol its doubtful you'll use any other pistol, so other then the aforementioned achievement, there really is no need to upgrade any other pistol.

My only MAJOR gripe with the game play is as the levels progress the game it self seems to devolve from a stealth oriented game to more of a run of the mill 3rd person shooter. Sam Fisher deserves better then that. There are certain parts of the game where there is no option to sneak by, you must expose yourself (killing an enemy or otherwise) just to get by. When you get to the big red gas truck you'll understand.

Lastly, the story. I will keep this really brief as to avoid any spoilers. The beginning of the story really grabs you and pulls you in, but as you keep going it gets more and more confusing. I'm not a huge fan of "Tarantino-ing" storylines so maybe when all the flashbacks align I'll be on board, but since I haven't finished the game yet I'm still a little lost.

As of this moment, none of my friends have the game, so I cant comment on multi-player. And no, I have no faith in playing with strangers on this type of game.

The game is a solid 9.1 out of 10

Quick tip for you US gamers with cell phones , text the word weapon to 44144 and you'll get a free bonus weapon. No I wont spoil the surprise, and you are welcome.


~Malenko

The Newest Tomb Raiders are REALLY GOOD!

Now I'll be honest I wasn't quite sure how I'd like Lara Croft as a man, but Naughty Dog REALLY pulled it off. I can admit it is weird tomb raiding with a male protagonist but if Lara had to sacrifice her tits for tighter gun play and better controls, then it was well worth it.

Now I don't now why they changed her story line from British to American, probably to get rid of that annoying fucking accent, but the whole retcon thing really works well for this title. The story line so far is really pulling me in. Unlocking bonus materials and other little trinkets for finding glowing white dots aka treasures is a nice touch but I think they forgot a mini map and or compass.

I do like Lara's new womanizing mentality to go along with her shiny new penis, I think it just proves what we all knew all along, Lara was always more into women.

I am presently only a few hours in but I'm hoping to finish this game up cause I hear Tomb Raider Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is even better!

Why Retro is always better

Now some people will tell you its all about the graphics, sounds, cut scenes, and story lines that make games so great. While that sounds so fantastic in theory it just doesn't mean shit in practice. Is all you have ever played been on XBOX (or 360) and playstation (1,2,or 3)? Then you probably don't believe me, read on......

I would sound like a crazy person if I were describing some of my all time favorite games. Those games by today's standards have bad graphics, laughable sounds, little to no cut scenes and for the most part no story at all. Yet they are fantastic and still remain just as great today as they were in the past.

Examples?
You're a frog trying to cross a street then a river but you cant swim. You're a guy running up girders and ladders and you have to jump barrels a gorilla is throwing at you. You're a metal tube bouncing a ball up to break blocks to escape space. You are a yellow circle eating dots and being chased by ghosts! The funniest sounding one? You walk across walkways being chased by eggs, pickles, and hot dogs while trying to make buns, meat patties, and lettuce leaves fall into giant hamburgers!

"Retro" games rely on being accessible, FUN, and very replayable; not on superficial things like pretty graphics, snazzy audio, and 20 minute long CGI rendered cut scenes. Now don't get me wrong, I buy the latest and greatest and for the most part play the ever loving crap out of my games (to the point where I'm getting 1k after the fun as faded), but every time I have to drop $60 on a new title I cringe and pray to God its worth the investment. It's getting harder and harder to justify the hunk of cheddar and Ive gone from buying a title or 2 every month to buying a title every 2 months or so.

So to all you kids out there stuck in your Halo worlds or only play games that have Kratos in them...... give old school a try, you'll probably love it and the games aren't $60 a pop.

Just an FYI, PacMan, Ms.PacMan, Galaga, Contra and many others are about $5 on the PSN/Live! networks; so you can get about 12 retro games for the price of 1 shiny new one.

Old is the new new.

~Malenko

PS, gave up on operation finish all the "need for speeds", they are just too terrible.

Doing The Lord's Work (Dante's Inferno)

The question I've been asking myself since I first picked up the controller is whether Visceral should be (to use the game's jargon) punished or absolved for expertly remaking another game. On the one hand, they could easily be labeled as thieves or copycats or just plain lazy for having no more aspirations than doing what someone else already did. Yet, in this landscape of terrible, terrible sequels, homages, satires, and just plain rip offs, can there be no commendation for a mirroring a game people are literally salivating for sequels to, and doing so exceedingly well? It would be easy to burn paragraphs contrasting Dante and its progenitor, but that seems more like an exhaustive "dig" than a real review to me. So just know that every little thing I highlight (and rip on) here has already been highlighted (and ripped on) in another better known title.

"Based" on the poem of the same name, Inferno documents one man's descent through the 9 Circles of Hell. Being charged with Christian mythology the tale is quite obviously open to interpretation, done so in this case as an action packed tale of revenge (maybe), love (probably) and violence (definately) chronicling one man's quest to rescue his wife. You see its hard to classify Dante as a hero or his task as just in any way, because he is in almost no way a good guy. The gameplay has him brutally and savagely slaughtering everything in his path including former friends and family members, while the plot gradually paints him a sinner by every single definition the canon has to offer. Truth be told I haven't finished the games entire narrative, but it has become increasingly difficult to get behind Dante's whining to Lucifer about how unfair stealing his wife is when he just finished raping someone else after murdering their true love. His brutal single minded sense of valor seems more intune with those demons he seeks to defy than the dainty innocent flower he's so desperately trying to get back to.

The good news is, plot sensibility is not Inferno's business, killing is. And business is good. With a scythe for close up killing, a magic cross to fire from afar, a smattering of increasingly destructive spells, and a massive tree of abilities to unlock for it all, there is no shortage of mayhem at your disposal. You won't need half of it to undo the legions of hell, and you won't really need ANY of it once you discover the brain dead infinite combo that somehow slipped through play testing, but at least the option for varied combat is there. 100+ hit combos, aerial raves, timed counter attacks, quick time event finishing moves, and all the other modern action game cliches are at Dante's disposal and executing them is just as easy and satisfying as they should be. There is of course a catch to all the awesome hyper violent action, and that is the limp wristed attempt to add depth to the ability unlocking system.

Basically, by absolving or punishing enemies when you finish them, you can advance the holy/unholy levels that govern just what you can buy with your kill points. I find it neat that this also governs which stat modifying relics you can equip, but the actual combat abilities are pretty poorly distributed between the two. For instance, the health up unlocks are on the opposite sides of all the scythe power ups and abilities (because health is good and the scythe is evil, I guess), so if you do decide to focus on close combat (which I always do), you're going to do so with either a child sized lifebar or a pathetically weak set of scythe attacks. You can try and mitigate this by spending an equal amount of time being holy / unholy, but even if it were possible to max out both sides by the end of the game (which I doubt), that practice will keep you from unlocking any of the really good abilities until the end of the game when you don't need them or even want them anymore.

The whole Un/Holy thing attempts to permeat the entire thing, but its all executed very flat and superfluous. In addition to most enemies being disposable via punishment/absolution, Dante will occasionally be presented with a prominent character from the poem who can be used similarly for massive points in either direction. Still, outside of the points and note in your "journal", they don't effect the narrative and you never hear about them ever again. I am sure there's some totally black and white good / bad ending selection process at work that will force me to go through the game twice, but the net result of being Holy / Unholy is just whether or not I prefer to use the blue button or the yellow button on my controller while I do it. I'm still going to kill the same procession of "bad guys" in the same ways getting there, and that seems like kind of a waste.

Still, I cannot in good conscience call Dante's Inferno a bad game by any really sense of the term. Its based in a universe you certainly don't see games about every day, it looks, sounds, and plays like someone actually put some thought into it, and its damned fun. Fate has kept me from a complete play through of Visceral's previous effort, Dead Space, but my experience with both has made it clear that they know their way around both game design and execution, even if all they seem to be able to come up with is other peoples ideas. Dante's Inferno is filled with spectacle, style, and above all else violence, so if any of that is your thing, I sincerely recommend you "Go To Hell". And if by some chance you've missed out on that other game series where all the mythology gets brutally murdered by a morally gray anti-hero (or you just don't own a PS3), you pretty much have no excuse.

-F.

"Just Call Me a Bad Video Game. That's What Everyone Calls Me" A Look At Deadly Premonition

Bargain basement games are almost always worth looking at, and as someone who grew up watching Twin Peaks (a show I probably shouldn't have been watching when I was in sixth grade, but that's a subject for an entirely different article), I couldn't pass up Deadly Premonition. Of course being 12 when Twin Peaks was on, I wanted an NES video game for it. I mean they made NES games out of everything else I enjoyed, why not a prime time murder mystery / soap opera? (Admittedly, this question sounded much more rational to a 12 year old D.O.M. than it does to a 30 year old D.O.M.)

The NES game never came though and years later (In 2007) to be exact, I saw an E3 trailer for a game called "Rainy Woods". I was excited. This was it. Finally a Twin Peaks game, or something that was ripping off Twin Peaks, but still it was as close as I was going to get. Finally the game was released as Deadly Premonition in 2010 at the bargain price of $20.00 and with some really terrible reviews.

Much to my detriment, I've never let bad reviews stop me from wanting to play a game, so of course I bought it. Here you have what may be my longest justification buying and actually somewhat enjoying a game that would nicely be described "unpopular", so let's just get to the review.

The plot is the plot of Twin Peaks almost exactly. The main character is Special Agent Francis York Morgan (Just call me York, That's what everyone calls me) who travels to the small town of Greenvale in the Pacific Northwest to solve the brutal murder of a teenage beauty. York is a quirky fun character very reminiscent of Twin Peaks' Agent Cooper in that he has an affinity for coffee, strange dreams, and the small town lifestyle. Also like Cooper speaks to Diane via a small tape recorder, York talks to Zach. Zach isn't a tape recorder though, he's the player. This was a fun way to break the fourth wall as well as including another nod to Twin Peaks. Other Twin Peaks similarities seen in Deadly Premonition include but aren't limited too: Crying Deputies, powder blue waitress uniforms in the diner, large hotels, eccentrics who own greenhouses, gruff sheriffs in cowboy hats, and creepy jazz music.

The graphics are abysmal. They look to be about PS2 level, which is probably the system this game was originally developed for. This really can't be justified in way other than saying Deadly Premonition is, after all, a $20.00 game.

The gameplay was an ambitious undertaking. Elements of Grand Theft Auto, Resident Evil 4, and Silent Hill are all present. The execution, however, is questionable at best. The GTA element would be York's driving from mission to mission. The developers failed miserably in this aspect of the game. The car controls are are jerky and driving is not very steady. The mission points are a long way from each other. Yes there are plenty of interesting places to visit in town, but there never seems to be enough time to do this in between missions. The interesting part about driving is York's monologues about films. These are quite funny and entertaining.

In true Silent Hill style, York will suddenly be in a parallel universe version of Greenvale with zombie like creatures stalking him. Unlike Silent Hill, ammo is infinite for the pistol, so these fights aren't too tough. These are over-the-shoulder Resident Evil 4 style shooting scenes. It's not that the developers have done a terrible job with this, it's just that RE4 has done a much better job with tighter controls.

The rest of the game is talking to the locals to find clues. Gamers have been doing this since The Adventures of Link, so it's a pretty obvious element of the game. The characters are fun and strange though which makes this probably the most entertaining part of the Deadly Premonition experience. Other neat aspects of the game include the fact that York needs to be fed, needs to sleep, needs to shave (or a beard grows), and needs to change clothes (or flies start swarming him). This sounds like it may get tiresome after awhile, but food, beds, razors, and clothes are found everywhere throughout the game, even in hard mode.

Deadly Premonition is a fun game for me probably more because of the Twin Peaks references than any actual aspect of gameplay. Would I recommend to anyone who isn't a huge fan of Twin Peaks? Probably not. But hey, it was after all, only $20.00.

Tatsunoko vs Capcom

It's not every day I get to play a wii game for any length of time, so I figured write ups for Dante and Bioshock could wait a day or two. Almost out of the blue, I was invited to a Tatsunoko vs Capcom tournament at a friend of a friends house, and as a result came into contact with the game having missed out entirely on the bias the gamer web inevitably provides on a game. The result was pleasant, to say the least. Far less tournament than semi-organized get together hinged on a fighting game, I was allowed ample time to play and observe the game being played without the hostile environment true competition usually demands.

In the same vein as Capcom's previous efforts with Marvel, TvC is a totally over the top look at a make believe conflict between martial artists, super heroes, giant robots, succubi, samurai and even a photo journalist. If the game has a plot I don't know it because we only played vs mode, but there is no post fight dialogue, and the instruction booklet includes only basic bios. The games introduction is similarly vague, presenting a bright and colorful mashup of all the characters shouting and posing in front of starburst and hyperspace backgrounds to an infectuous j-pop rhythm that haunts you long after you're done listening to it but little else. This sort of presentation permeats the entire product, with characters flashing and glowing and shouting and posing before even the most simplistic of actions. This manifests most comically in the games combo counter, which often reports a two to three hit combo of jabs has delivered something on the order of 4.76 billion damage.

The gameplay takes a similar "less is more" attitude towards execution with few characters having to execute more than a qcf or dp to accomplish any of their moves. If your character does have a more complex notation in their movelist, its probably some situationally specific or otherwise overpowered technique that they just don't want you whipping out at the drop of a dragon punch motion (i'm looking at you Karas). The knee jerk impression is that the whole game is some sort of MvC2 light because of the big VS in the title, but its far more kin to Rival Schools. That is to say, besides super jumps and dashes, the combat never gets truly bonkers until somebody expels some super meter. There's tagging, partner assists, air combos, and a guilty gear style combo breaker, but its all very low rent in terms of raw devastation.

The super moves, on the other hand, take center stage at all times. Coming in level one and three variations, your single objective in battle is landing any other move and linking it into a super, and then doing it again, and again. Because a great many of them are single hit all or nothing type affairs and even less are safe on block, very few of them have true fire and forget use. If you want to win, you need to learn some combos. The good news is, with the exception of a select few everyone in the game can do a basic weak to hard chain into a super. Once you get that down you can start styling it up with assists to pressure, or mid combo partner swaps, or even Baroque cancelled juggle strings, but none of those mean anything when your opponent pulls a lvl3 combo off a jab and takes 75% of your life away.

Not to say that's a bad thing. There's really no way to highlight the hyper cinematic nature of the Tatsunoko guys combat repetoires without laying it all on bodacious super moves. Projectiles and sword slashes are one thing, but if you want Gold Lightan to pull out somebody's soul and still call it balanced it has to be a glorified cinema. Then once you've got the giant zippo lighter pulling out souls, it only makes sense to have the little maid robot mopping up tsunami sized tidal waves and the vampire firing homing missiles from her wings. And lets be honest, isn't that the sort of absurdity a crossover game like this needs?

In short, TvC is not going to light your world on fire unless you've never played one of Capcom's Marvel games and you have a penchant for 20 year old japanese cartoons. As much of a japanophile as I once was, I can still only say with confidence that I knew maybe half of the Tatsunoko cast. Similarily, the Capcom side is full of guys who aren't exactly classics (The guy from the crappy Onimusha?) or even traditional fighter fare (PTX). But that shouldn't scare you away from it, especially if you own a Wii and love fighting games because there aren't a lot of other options. Extra content wise, the game doesn't seem like it offers a whole lot besides providing a vehicle for these characters to beat the snot out of each other, but that alone should keep you entertained for quite a while.

-F.

PSN vs XBOX Live!

No, no, no, its not that kind of post, this actually has NOTHING to do with online multiplayer. This is my shout out to the masses , to air my complaints about the PSN. I, for once, have some extra cheddar in my pocket and I figured I've thrown so much money at Microsoft and none at Sony that its time to give the PSN a shot. So I power up, sign in , and start browsing.

I go through some of the newer games, but I see theres only a text description; so I back track and go to some games put up a few months ago......same thing. Just to be sure I wasnt completely "dense and retarded" I went into the PSOne classics section, still just text descriptions. Granted there is box art for the various titles but thats it, no screen shots, no trailers, not even a link to a demo (thats in a separate section.) Now if Sony can rip off the Achievement system with trophies, can't they at least steal some ideas from the market place?

Now don't get me wrong, the actual layout of the PSN Marketplace is *MUCH* better then the one on live! but when you get to a game on the live marketplace there are links to download the full version, download the demo, screen shots, down load additional content, and when available trailers! The one thing I love other then the basic layout of the PSN is things cost $4.99 not 400 "points" The Wii uses points as well, but points are a penny a piece so its forgivable.

So After 45 minutes of going through the PSN store, finding a name and description that didnt seem toooooooo stupid, I'd go to google and IGN and look up some info, and move on. And after 45 minutes was up , I decided to write this in leui of buying aything.

For the few of you out there who havent seen both, here are some pix, I picked Iron Man because I watched the movie again the other day and I knew it was on both systems. Please note Iron man DOES NOT SHOW UP IN THE GAME LIST ON PSN, ONLY THE DEMO SECTION /screaming.




So which one looks like it provides more content and info for the selected game?

Also, despite my recent PS3 game play time Sony says I still have ZERO trophies /wrists

~Malenko aka LLiNRAC

Games I might actually buy

I figured on this, the eve of my first video game purchase of the year, I would take a look at what games have actually earned the right to my 60 dollars a pop, and why. This way, at the end of the year I can look back and reflect on what I actually thought I wanted to play, and what I did. You see, for the longest time (all my life) I've been a horrible hoarder of video games, burning countless dollars on games I only enjoyed for a week, a month, and in some cases not at all. About 6 months ago a friend of mine turned me on to Gamefly, and I've never looked back. Post Gamefly subscription, I've bought only 4 games, Bionic Commando, Batman, Tekken, and something else I'm not remembering. Point is, in the 2k10 the increasingly crooked publishers are gonna have to earn my $60 so lets see whose already won my heart.

We can start with the sure things, which are mostly sequels to games that have earned a place in my heart, in order of awesome.
Bioshock 2 - Undoubtedly purchased tomorrow, Bioshock 1 was hands down one of the greatest shooters I've ever played. The new one promises a continued single plot in a setting I love and multiplayer with a plot and advancement options. That is not to say they couldn't blow it spectacularly, but if they don't? Whoo wee.

Batman Arkham Asylum 2 - If it wasn't the best game of last year, Batman certainly was the most suprisingly good game of last year. Why? Well, because batman games suck. Superhero games suck. Somehow Batman Arkham Asylum was a good game, and it was a good batman game, and it had replay value, and it was by a relative unknown. Seriously, Rocksteady could make a game about ponies and I would give it a shot. I still play Arkham 1 to this day, their next trip back to the nut house is a sure buy.

Fallout: New Vegas - Like Arkham, the Fallout followup gets a bye. Not so much because Fallout 3 was so just that awesome (even though it was), I am just a titantic Fallout fanboy. As long as they don't do anything cripplingly stupid with the premise, this is a guaranteed win.

Crackdown 2 - The legends say Crackdown 1 got a raw deal because it got packaged with the Halo 3 multiplayer demo, but I came to the Xbox 360 party late and hate Halo, so all I know is that Crackdown is a horribly shortsighted and awesome game. Even with a new and unproved development studio, more orb hunting, and a stupid mutant zombie plot, CD2 promises more super powered roof top hijinx, structured missions, and four player co-op. What could possibly go wrong?

Dead Rising 2 - Crackdown 2 and Dead Rising 2 are pretty much in the same boat, each were early exclusives in the 360's life, each one presented some new concepts that turned sandbox gaming on its ass, and each one is getting a sequel shoved out this year from a new staff. The difference is, Crackdown had almost nothing but room for improvement, Dead Rising however has a lot more to lose. Its almost guaranteed they are going to "fix" the save mechanic because current generation gamers just can't handle it, and the multiplayer is certainly not going in the direction I'd like it to, but they're promising weapon combination on the fly like motorcycles mounted with chainsaws, so there's going to be some gold to be mined for sure.

And in the runner up category;

Alan Wake - This game looks like everything Alone in the Dark wanted to be, which would be a pretty fantastic deal if they got it right. I'm a sucker for cerebral games, brain over brawn and all that. But the track record is not good. Not since the death of Sierra.

Split Second - Every once in a while a racing game comes along that isn't exactly the same as every other racing game out there. Split Second may be the one. Or it may be as boring as the later burnouts. We'll see.

-F.

"Trouble In Your Digital World?" The No More Heroes 2 Review

About 4 hours into No More Heroes 2, one realizes that this is more than a game, it's a parody of gaming itself. It's not quite as blatant as last summer's Matt Hazard game, but it's there, and it's hilarious.

Again, the player is thrust into the persona of Travis Touchdown, former reigning champion of the United Assassins' Association and resident of Santa Destroy California. However, it's three years later, Travis has lost his rank, and his best friend from the first game and he's ready to do some killing.

The game plays like the original. The player tilts the remote up or down for either high or low attacks. The A button is then pressed to swing the beam katana. This is nice because the player is not left swinging the Wii remote around the with reckless abandon, breaking furniture and maiming spouses. The B button kicks and initiates grappling moves. The analog stick on the nunchuck guides Travis and the Z button locks on to enemies. It's easily the smoothest, most accurately controlled game for Wii.

There are some fundamental difference between NMH 1 and 2. The driving segments are gone now, replaced with a might handy map that lets Travis skip to places of interest. This works very well, as the actual driving in the first one never really contributed to the plot (except for a few key missions) and just took time away from fighting. The job missions are back, but this time, they're all played as 8-bit video games. (The sound of Travis blowing into a cartridge can be heard before Travis starts one of these missions). As you climb the ladder of the U.A.A. again, this time you can be challenged from below. This brings a really interesting dynamic to the game. In the first of these fights, you face off against a school girl who has a crush on Travis. I don't want to give too much away, but it involved deadly bubbles, a two sided beam katana that shoots out of a recorder, and some really really really bad poetry. Needless to say, while making the plot slightly more serious, the game still keeps its sense of humor in tact.

The video game parodies itself and the genre constantly. Aside from the 8-bit mini games, giant chainsaw wielding guys ask "Trouble in your digital world?" sympathetically before taking a big swing at Travis. Travis himself can play a video game on his TV called Bizarre Jerry 5 where scantily dressed anime girls shoot at aliens 1942 style. There's an intro movie for Bizarre Jerry that intentionally makes no sense whatsoever, and by doing this delivers a lot of laughs. In his first interaction with Sylvia (his "love" interest from the first game), Travis and she argue about plot and continuity. Travis of course wants the audience to know what's gone on over the last three years, while Sylvia maintains that most of the audience is playing this as a stand alone game and could care less about what happened in the first game. One thing is certain though, in the three years since NMH 1, Travis's cat Jeanne has gotten fat. Morbidly obese fat. There are a series of mini games that help the cat exercise and lose weight. Could this be a dig at the Wii fit?

No More Heroes 2 does comedy well but also, strangely enough, walks the tightrope into dramatic territory. Moody cinematics of Sylvia explaining the plot between missions set a great tone for game. The music in these scenes recall shades of Angelo Badalamenti's dark score from the old TV show Twin Peaks. Travis conveys his feelings of loss in a quote the both sums up his dark emotions and the silliness of the whole affair: "Everyone deals with grief differently, Some people fuck at funerals, I cut heads off."

First Impressions: Bayonetta

So, it stands to reason that Hideki Kamiya (the father of Devil May Cry) saw what Capcom did with Devil May Cry 4 (or any of them since the original, if you think about it) and decided he knew what was best for that style of game. Lots of people have tried to "fix" dmc before. More weapons, higher combo counts, bigger monsters, you name it. Bayonetta, at first glance anyway, matches all those bets and raises them one gigantic dose of sex appeal.

You see, in the few hours I've had with the game I have pummelled scores of enemies with fists and feet, blasted them apart with pistols and shotguns (somehow) attached to my appendages and even summoned gigantic hair-dog demons to do my bidding but despite the spectacle of it all, it all feels very secondary to the sexy. Cinematically she subdues enemies with leg locked face rides, boob grazes, and spread eagle gunshots, then in gameplay she gets more naked with each combo hit, the final blow often delivered entirely in the nude. She switches her heels with every flick of the analog stick, blows seductive kisses at magical barriers, and kicks her foes right in the balls before strapping them into gigantic iron maidens and guillotines. And that's just within the first three missions.

I'm not some catholic prude or asexual misanthrope who will never know a woman's touch. I've long awaited the day my many perversions and my long term hobby would join forces against the boredom monster (See: Onechanbara), but Bayonetta just goes about it all wrong. Its one thing to just slap an unrealistic set of assets on your heroine (every female lead since Lara Croft), or throw misguided innuendo into an otherwise unrelated affair (GoW, GTA), or even try to pass off a shoddy half developed game as a sexual experience (rrxx, doax), those things are fairly typical these days. Yet no matter how good I feel about tearing bosses in two, finding well hidden secrets, and unleashing new combo strats in Bayonetta, I have to roll my eyes while she strokes her guns across her face, or makes some glib remark about enemies wanting to touch her.

Maybe this would work a lot better if Bayonetta herself didn't look so unattractively ridiculous, even better if there was a plot / premise reason to her acting like a hardass one second and a hoebag the next. Like, if there's a flashback coming up that just says she had to spend the dark ages casting spells on gentlemen in whorehouses, or that being sexy somehow gives her power I'll be fine, but she's decended from a coven of witches who dressed in nothing but habits and hung out in hidden temples. Every other character in the game is conservative and straight laced (to a point), even her evil twin rival sister whatever character (who happens to be a tall leggy blonde), so why is Bayonetta all throwing off her clothes and firing guns between her legs all the time? Is it because she's the ugly sister? Did daddy like her best? So frustrating.

Still, I can't argue gameplay wise that its a perfectly valid member of the DMC wannabe family and its clear Kamiya has a better understanding of it's genetic make up than most. Last night I unlocked a totally unexpected katana to bolster the already over-abundant array of killing techniques, and with all the question marks and things left to kill, it seems like the game is just chock full of content. I just wish I didn't have to wade through so much ineffective sexuality to get to it.

-F.

God Of War III The Demo

Last night I got my hands on the God Of War III demo for the PS3. Here's a quick rundown of what happens in it.

It opens with the familiar GoW title screen: a close up of Kratos's face looking angry as ever. If the title screen sits for a while, he'll bare his teeth and growl. Kratos does not appreciate waiting to kill. There's only one option on the screen: Start Demo.

So I press start and immediately Kratos fighting 5 guys at once. Of course, they're not very tough. The first new move noticed is Kratos's battering ram move. He can pick up an enemy and run him into all of the other ones. I'd be lying if i told you it wasn't extremely fun.

Then it's on to platforming. Kratos can now grab a harpy and have it fly him over to distant platforms. Kratos tips the harpy by stabbing it about five times during the trip. Yikes. After that We get treated to another great outside fight scene with a giant character destroying a city a la God Of War I. Instead of Ares, this time it's a titan that may be Atlas from GoW II. He's getting hassled by Helios, the sun god, and his flaming chariot. Before he can be helped, Kratos has to take out some more sword wielding bad guys and a centaur. No problem.

Kratos runs up the ramp to help Atlas, but there's another problem, the first new villain we get to see from God Of War III: The Chimera. This monster has the body of a lion with goat head above the lion's head, and a snake for a tail. Oh, and if combining three vicious animals (yes goats are vicious, anyone who's been to a petting and is unfortunate enough to be holding feed in the vicinity of one knows this) isn't enough, the Chimera blows fire. The monster is about as big as a standard minotaur from the GoW series. This fight is split in to three segments. First the snake is cut off. Then the Lion's body is stabbed in the chest. After that, Kratos rips off a horn and stabs it through the head. If anything, Kratos is thorough.

After this, Kratos shoots Helios with a nearby harpoon gun. The titan catches him and crushes him. I was a bit disappointed that I didn't get fight Helios, but oh well. Kratos then catches a ride on a harpy and beats up some more low level thugs. He then runs through a building and kills more goons. (This is where the battering ram is formally introduced). There's also some more ledge hanging and creeping. Kratos can speed a long ledges by moving the right analog stick in the same direction as the left. That's very helpful actually. We pass a guy who laments about his lost possessions. He'd probably lament about his crushed skull too, but Kratos throws him off the side of his house very quickly. That's just the way Kratos takes care of business.

After this Kratos lands on a veranda with a very very beat up Helios on the ground. Consider my earlier disappointment gone.

It's not going to be simple though. A group of guys with shields and spears surround Helios. Think 300. And then some sword guys and a Cyclops drop in for a big fight. The cyclops is subdued much easier than expected. Then Kratos gets to ride around him and crush the remaining swordsmen and the shield dome over Helios. The sun god is now prone. Kratos walks over which initiates a mini game that starts with a neck snapping, keeps the pace steady with some head pounding and ends with Helios's head being messily liberated from his shoulders.

This leads to the first new tool in Kratos's God of War III arsenal: The Helios Head. It shines like the Medusa head, but instead of turning enemies into stone, it reveals secret hidden doors. To use the head, the player has to push L2 and R1 at the same, an odd button combination, but I imagine I'll get used to it. Helios's head immediately reveals a hidden door. After going through the door there's a vent of air that uses the Icarus wings from GoW II. Kratos then flies through a maze wood framing avoiding fireballs. It's intense. Even more intense is the way the demo ends.

Once Kratos gets to the top of the vent, we see Atlas again. But Kratos lunges at him like he's about to attack. The screen then goes black. Has Kratos turned on the Titans? Has he struck a secret deal with the Olympians? Or, in typical Kratos fashion, is he just going to kill everyone?

I'm betting on the last option.

Mass Effect

For a change I'm behind the times. With everyone I know wholeheartedly GUSHING about Mass Effect 2, I figured it was time to pick up the original. I can say I am pleasantly surprised so far. I'm only about 90 minutes in but the story has me hooked; not a single cliche` to be found (except maybe that the humans are a blight on the galaxy).

I'm not mad that I only have 1 achievement unlocked either, and I like the game so much I haven't bothered looking at the entire cheevie list. Speaking of, this game better be pretty fucking epic to expect not one, not two, but THREE play-throughs in order to unlock the full 1k, and there better be a new game+ option because you start off pretty crappy at shooting for a marine.

Keeping with the WAY BACK theme, I finally put some hours into Need For Speed: Most Wanted. I am a self admitted gamer score whore and I plan to 1k all the "Need for Speeds", since for some ungodly reason, I have them all. To be honest I don't think its entirely possible, because a few of them require participation in EA's "community race days" so I may have to settle for the high 8 or 9 hundred on those.

Project Need For Speed:
Most Wanted: 9/15 = 165/1000
Carbon 2/50 = 25/1000
Undercover 7/50 = 80/1000
Pro Street 40/50 = 865/1000
Shift: 8/29 = 325/1000

Gamer tag? LLiNRAC

Gamefly + Anxiety = Gamefliety

There's always an akward anxiety for me in between gamefly games. The excitement of playing something new, the worry that it will suck, the fear that some titanic mail screw up will leave me liable for money. The last few games its been particularly brutal as things have seemed to take a little longer than when I first signed up, but how much of that can be laid on the holiday season or my natural impatience is open for debate. Either way, I'm in the lull right now, and that means frequently, often compulsively, I'll log onto gamefly.com and shuffle around a few titles in my queue like i can somehow predict when the mail will get there or what will be "now available" when that happens. Its maddening. Right now it says I have a shot at Borderlands, but failing that I fall nearly 10 games down my queue to Condemned or Rise of the Argonauts. I'm not really in the mood for a garbage game, but there's really no way to guarantee the gamefly game selection machine won't send one along short of taking all the garbage out of my queue and waiting even longer. And how do I feel about waiting longer? Well, see this entire paragraph.

I suppose its just. I'm sure there was some poor soul going through the same rigamarole during the three or four months Prototype sat patiently on my stack of games while I played through Batman and god knows what else. The solution is of course is to upgrade my account to allow more games at a time. A two game rotation would guarantee I always had something not mine to play, but that would also guarantee I had more games lying around my house not being played, which is the habit I'd hoped to skewer in joining gamefly in the first place.

Last time I had a break like this I had Shadow Complex. A gem of a game that turned out to be less of a Super Metroid homage and more of Super Metroid itself, not that there's anything wrong such a thing. Complex's only sin is that it vainly assumes bgm is optional, a demonic trend in gaming I wish I could exorcise. I will agree there are a few situations if not entire genres where the concept of ambient noise as music is passable, but it certainly isn't the 2d adventure genre. Imagine what a game like SOTN, or, in this case Super Metroid would be like without that rich soundtrack lighting the way for you. Kind of loses something, doesn't it? Thankfully, the xbox / zune tag team is adequately equipped to custom soundtrack any game with such an affliction, but that's a crutch not a feature.

This time around I have Mass Effect, which I will freely admit I am finally getting around to soley because of all the ME2 hysteria. Not that I'm much for the gaming "scene" anymore, I just don't want to be so far out of date when people start talking ME3. Nothing against ME of course, I've heard how good it is, first hand from trusted sources in fact. I'm just tired to death of RPGs. RPGs require a mental and often physical commitment I just can't make, not without dragging it out over 100 hours. I don't think there's a script in the world that I could feel good about 100 hours of digestion later. We shall say. Mass Effect makes the bold claim that it is worth not two but THREE playthroughs with its achievements, each time with increasing difficulty. I'm certainly not going to even try, but their hubris says a lot about how good my initial play through oughta be.

In closing, the more I listen to the Afro Samurai Soundtrack, the more I want to say about it. Find a way to defend it, maybe. Sadly, I can't. It's really a bad game. If I had anything interesting to say on the subject, it would be to somehow explain how I can play through Afro twice in pursuit of a 1k, but couldn't even do Mirror's Edge once. Puzzling moreso that when I tried Mirror's Edge, not only was my social circle's gamerscore competition much tighter, I even had a friend who stuck through it for 700 or so points. Maybe I was just in the wrong mood at the time for a crappy game. It was pre baby, and pre a lot of other personal life stresses, so maybe I just had a more discerning mood for what I did with my evenings. Now, burning the 1-2 hours on a crummy game seems perfectly acceptable, the exhaustion of the other 22 somehow numbing the crap.

Afro Samurai

Its truly refreshing to come across a game OST that's worth listening to, much less worth listening to outside the game. Unfortunately, Afro Samurai has one such OST. If you're into beats and hip hop that is. Afro Samurai actually makes a big deal of point out The RZA was involved with the soundtracks conception, but its clear no one was consulted for anything else.

As a result, everything else in the game from story to the gameplay is a mess. Oh sure, the graphics are delightfully cel-shaded, but the characters all betray their beautiful textures with sticky jerky animations. This may be somewhat intentional with the gameplay's focus on preemptive Matrix dodges, parries, and bullet slicing but all the stylish cuts and screen edits in the world don't take away from the fact that you very rarely have any idea if an enemy is attacking, dodging, taunting or recoiling. Not until they fall to pieces and fountain with blood anyway.

And in that regard the game proves itself fairly functional, slicing enemies to pieces is both easy and enjoyable. But Afro's combat options are unlocked almost randomly, and when you get them they're still sticky to execute with collision weirdness all over the place. He's got a ton of moves with posing and bloodletting and style and grace galore, but they all require between four and nine uninterrupted slashes to execute, a feat rarely allowed by enemies and their assortment of dirty ai tricks. Loaded with old school tactics like striking from camera blind spots, hiding beyond movement barriers, recovering spontaneously from stun, and ignoring the invincible properties of your defense altogether, group battles call upon every bad beat'em up memory I have. This isn't so bad most of the time since life is over abundant and easily recovered, but sooner or later you will be killed by the last enemy in a massive checkpointless melee because he ignored your ordinarily safe basic slash animations.

Now just in case you're saying; "All licensed games play like crap, I'm just here for the story" I assure you they've made steps to louse that up pretty good too. Using flowery nonsensical and totally unskippable dialogues between lifeless stationary characters the game poorly illustrates this tale of violence and revenge. When all is said and done you can comfortably say "Afro killed everybody" but the character relationships, even WHY most of them got dead are lost in a sea of flash backs and dream sequences and Ninja Ninja profanity. Oh sure, hearing Samuel Jackson curse at me can be entertaining, but it doesn't make the how and why any easier to follow. To make matters worse, I have since discovered (in desperately trying to reconcile the gaps in my understanding) that most of my confusion resulted from the games plot being outright changed from the canon.

Now I don't think a bunch of suits threw money at game-izing the Afro Samurai property because they thought its story needed work. I don't care what "approvals" were gotten, it takes serious stones to totally 180 key elements of somebody else's work. Granted, some of it makes sense to insert a level here or a boss fight there, but to fundamentally change the ending? There's actually a fairly amusing point in the game where right before something important doesn't happen Ninja Ninja remarks "I know you seen how this is in the TV Show, but this ain't no TV Show" but since at the time I hadn't seen the TV Show, so the significance was totally wasted on me. In fact, it seems as if the entire closing chapter of the story was changed for absolutely no reason.

So, the bottom line is. Afro Samurai is a pretty crappy game with great music. And I'm gonna have to watch the darned series anyway because the good people at Surge couldn't even be bothered to leave the story intact. Hours invested, with all the abilities unlocked and a full understanding of all the combats glitches, you can have a lot of fun precision slicing people to hip hop beats, but that feels more like an apologist attitude than an optimists. At the very least, its a (fairly) easy 1k addition to my gamerscore, but that still wouldn't comfort me 10 hours of my life later if I'd spent a single red cent on the game. It didn't make me physically ill to play like say, Mirror's Edge, but a number of times I did catch myself saying "Why am I still playing this?" So, I'm sorry Samuel Jackson, big thumbs down.