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!
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Monday, March 8, 2010
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.
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.
Friday, March 5, 2010
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.
"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.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
"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.
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.
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