A couple years ago I abandoned Naruto on account of it being elevated to Dragonball Z levels of irritation by the mainstream anime fanbase (read: children), but I been hungry for a new game lately and it seemed like a nice segue. Now a new game came out for 360 a few months ago, Broken Bond, and the reviewers are giving it fair marks, but it costs 60 bucks and it jumps into the series plot further down the line than I can remember. It seemed to me that its predecessor, Rise of a Ninja, priced at 15 bucks, similarly rated, and starting at the beginning of the series was a win win, even if it sucked.
Now I've turned my back on Gamestop entirely, but Best Buy and BlockBuster don't carry anything older than a couple months unless its hot and Circuit City is dead, so for a 2 year old licensed game with a brand new sequel, I was stuck. Gamestops website said the Gamestop closest to me had none, so I stepped into one on the other side of town. The idiots inside were too busy talking about how awesome Transformers 2 and G.I. Joe are going to be to help me, so I found a $15 used Rise of a Ninja case on the shelf and brought it up.
At this point let me remind you that Gamestop has this dumb policy where anything that isn't the sales hotness gets its disc unwrapped, decased, and stored in a paper sleeve in a drawer. The dumber extension of this policy is that store employees get to take said games home and preview them for days at a time and scratch the hell out of them, potentially fucking customers who pay actual money, but thats another story for another day. "New" games (it's not really new once you take it out the box, assholes) a lone box remains on the shelf as representative. Used games get these awful generic black cases that are simply recycled as are needed.
Point is, the "case" for Rise of a Ninja is destroyed. Warped, cracked, and broken to the point where I'd be embarrased to have it sitting on my shelf. I wade through their dumb conversation and request another case. The employee facilitates me, swapping it with a less broken case. I pay, I leave, I get in my car. Now The Stranglehold Incident and The 300 Incident have taught me to check every cd/dvd/game case before leaving the parking lot, and its a good thing I did because my less broken (but still lame) case was totally empty. Granted, I didn't expect an instruction booklet or map or registration card, but I at least expected a game.
So I go back into the store and interrupt another highly stimulating conversation (this time about the merits of Star Wars Episode 1) to present my predicament. After an apology and a moment of shuffling the employee draws a cd from the counter into the case and hands it back to me. I leave again, but seconds later in the parking lot, I realize he didn't even look at the game he shoved in the case, and when I'd seen it, it was face down. I decided maybe I should check.
I am now the owner of a "brand new" copy of Naruto: Broken Bond that I only paid 15 dollars for.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
listen up goddamnit.
I don't ask for much from the gaming industry. I sat through the death of the arcades, I endure the unending popularity of the wii, I drown in scores of pompous adolecents gumming up online play, and I've accepted the fact that a truly creative game only comes along once a year. It all paints an elaborate picture of the entropic suck thats consuming my beloved hobby and by some herculean effort I've learned to live with it. But goddamnit; If this game sucks, someone is going to have to pay.
I implore you Eidos / DC / Rocksteady / any god that will listen. Hulk did it. Spiderman did it twice. The Xmen? They've done it a couple times. This is Batman's chance. All Batman's done right in 30 years of digital game development is some crummy beat'm ups, crap fatalities and a playful romp through legoland. Please please please please please let this game be good.
Please?!
-F.
I implore you Eidos / DC / Rocksteady / any god that will listen. Hulk did it. Spiderman did it twice. The Xmen? They've done it a couple times. This is Batman's chance. All Batman's done right in 30 years of digital game development is some crummy beat'm ups, crap fatalities and a playful romp through legoland. Please please please please please let this game be good.
Please?!
-F.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
This whole Battlefront III thing.
First off, digest this;
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/946/946024p1.html
Long story short, the third row iphone blurry cam footage circulated the net about a week ago and was championed by fans of the Battlefront series. Shortly thereafter, Star Wars fans in general got a chubby because apparently we just can't get enough of having our hopes and dreams and fond memories of the series shit upon. Now the entire internet community is up in arms because the EVIL CORPORATE GAMES INDUSTRY HATE MACHINE put a bullet in the brainpan of the developer who made it all happen.
Now, I'm a little bit late to the party. I remember reading something about a Battlefront III footage last week on some site or blog or twitter or something, but I passed over it. Why? Because the Battlefront series is so so at best. I don't think there's a Star Wars fanboy in the world that wouldn't admit that star wars as a whole is tired, but a series of half cooked over the shoulder shooters that do nothing but retread the same tired territory that other games have done far better has never been the solution.
You see, a new game, with a new story, with new characters (See: The Force Unleashed) is interesting, even if a little flawed. Mowing down storm troopers with rebels, jedi, clones, or even other storm troopers for the thousandth time is not. Who cares about a game that just barely pulls together the shootey, adventurey, flyey, forcey excitement of Star Wars when so many others have done it so much better, lately? X-Wing? Rogue Anything? Dark Forces? KOTOR? Any of these games ring a bell?
So you can understand how I may have glossed over the news that there was some footage of yet another shoulder mounted trip down desert ice planet coruscant memory lane. But then a trusted associate of mine pointed me to said footage and said I had to look at it, and so I did. And you know what? I'm not impressed. I've jumped around the net now a couple times, read a few impressions of it, and the only thing it appears to do that hasn't been done before (outside of allow people to play as Jar Jar and an Ewok, for some reason) is the ground to space to orbit free form thing. Now, don't get me wrong. That is in fact awesome. But does it change the fact that the rest of the trailer looks as boring as that series has led us to be?
Mindless running around in open spaces shooting / forcing at whatever with a variety identically playing characters. Boring ship to ship combat that makes Star Fox all range mode look like . . well, Star Wars oughta look. And a really well laid out jedi fight segment that looks like a cinema at best, and a quick time event at worst. I mean honestly people. These are the guys who made HAZE. You could argue in favor of Timesplitters. Those are actually moderately entertaining, but HAZE. . . really.
Don't get me wrong. I love hating the machine, I especially like fighting for games that get killed by "the man." But this wasn't going to be some grand redemption for a metric truckload of terrible Star Wars games. This was going to be another reminder that Vista sucks a big one because you can't run real dos games (X-Wing series) or N64 emulators (Rogue Squadron) on it.
You want to know what really excited me about this footage? This;
I am evil obi wan!
I am evil obi wan!
Sure, it wasn't going to be the main plot of the thing. Hell it was probably just going to be an extra that got chucked on the obligatory behind the scenes dvd of cutting room crap you would have much rather played than what was actually in the game, but at least it was something interesting. And thats a sad thing to say, considering its just the old "take a real good guy, and make him bad play". I don't care. Thats how lame star wars was.
You want to know what the best part about Force Unleashed was? Being able to run around the star wars planets, using star wars powers, with star wars music, without running into Han Solo or Chewie or goddamned Yoda for the seven hundredth time. I mean, does the entire Long Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far Far Away revolve around the action of a group of about 10 people?
Bah, I digress. The point is. Don't cry for this game, because it was going to disappoint you anyway.
-F.
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/946/946024p1.html
Long story short, the third row iphone blurry cam footage circulated the net about a week ago and was championed by fans of the Battlefront series. Shortly thereafter, Star Wars fans in general got a chubby because apparently we just can't get enough of having our hopes and dreams and fond memories of the series shit upon. Now the entire internet community is up in arms because the EVIL CORPORATE GAMES INDUSTRY HATE MACHINE put a bullet in the brainpan of the developer who made it all happen.
Now, I'm a little bit late to the party. I remember reading something about a Battlefront III footage last week on some site or blog or twitter or something, but I passed over it. Why? Because the Battlefront series is so so at best. I don't think there's a Star Wars fanboy in the world that wouldn't admit that star wars as a whole is tired, but a series of half cooked over the shoulder shooters that do nothing but retread the same tired territory that other games have done far better has never been the solution.
You see, a new game, with a new story, with new characters (See: The Force Unleashed) is interesting, even if a little flawed. Mowing down storm troopers with rebels, jedi, clones, or even other storm troopers for the thousandth time is not. Who cares about a game that just barely pulls together the shootey, adventurey, flyey, forcey excitement of Star Wars when so many others have done it so much better, lately? X-Wing? Rogue Anything? Dark Forces? KOTOR? Any of these games ring a bell?
So you can understand how I may have glossed over the news that there was some footage of yet another shoulder mounted trip down desert ice planet coruscant memory lane. But then a trusted associate of mine pointed me to said footage and said I had to look at it, and so I did. And you know what? I'm not impressed. I've jumped around the net now a couple times, read a few impressions of it, and the only thing it appears to do that hasn't been done before (outside of allow people to play as Jar Jar and an Ewok, for some reason) is the ground to space to orbit free form thing. Now, don't get me wrong. That is in fact awesome. But does it change the fact that the rest of the trailer looks as boring as that series has led us to be?
Mindless running around in open spaces shooting / forcing at whatever with a variety identically playing characters. Boring ship to ship combat that makes Star Fox all range mode look like . . well, Star Wars oughta look. And a really well laid out jedi fight segment that looks like a cinema at best, and a quick time event at worst. I mean honestly people. These are the guys who made HAZE. You could argue in favor of Timesplitters. Those are actually moderately entertaining, but HAZE. . . really.
Don't get me wrong. I love hating the machine, I especially like fighting for games that get killed by "the man." But this wasn't going to be some grand redemption for a metric truckload of terrible Star Wars games. This was going to be another reminder that Vista sucks a big one because you can't run real dos games (X-Wing series) or N64 emulators (Rogue Squadron) on it.
You want to know what really excited me about this footage? This;
I am evil obi wan!
I am evil obi wan!
Sure, it wasn't going to be the main plot of the thing. Hell it was probably just going to be an extra that got chucked on the obligatory behind the scenes dvd of cutting room crap you would have much rather played than what was actually in the game, but at least it was something interesting. And thats a sad thing to say, considering its just the old "take a real good guy, and make him bad play". I don't care. Thats how lame star wars was.
You want to know what the best part about Force Unleashed was? Being able to run around the star wars planets, using star wars powers, with star wars music, without running into Han Solo or Chewie or goddamned Yoda for the seven hundredth time. I mean, does the entire Long Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far Far Away revolve around the action of a group of about 10 people?
Bah, I digress. The point is. Don't cry for this game, because it was going to disappoint you anyway.
-F.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
The Good News!
Well, the good news is a red ringed Xbox 360 can still charge a Zune thats hooked up via USB. Which is great except for the fact that it can't play any video games, which is its fucking primary purpose.
Yes, that right. I am now a card carrying member of the 3MMRR (Multiple Red Rings within 3 months of each other) Club and entitled to all expressed rights. Unfortunately, most of those rights are sitting idly by while my friends gamerscores climb and taking losses for free in my Culdcept League.
It turns out that as long as you do the replacement online, the option to have a fully paid box sent to you is still on the table. I suspect its also available if you call, but who the hell wants to argue with overseas "Stan" or "Jill" or whoever picks up.
The real good news is that for the next 3 to 4 business weeks (an impossible measurement) I'll have nothing but anger in my heart when I think about gaming and it will be easy to tear into all these games that I've been playing and share my bile with you. Granted, a great majority of them are fantastic games that will be tough to tear down, but for you gentle readers, I will find a way to hate Fallout or die trying.
Okay, Fallout may be a stretch, but Silent Hill Origins, you're in for it!
-F.
Yes, that right. I am now a card carrying member of the 3MMRR (Multiple Red Rings within 3 months of each other) Club and entitled to all expressed rights. Unfortunately, most of those rights are sitting idly by while my friends gamerscores climb and taking losses for free in my Culdcept League.
It turns out that as long as you do the replacement online, the option to have a fully paid box sent to you is still on the table. I suspect its also available if you call, but who the hell wants to argue with overseas "Stan" or "Jill" or whoever picks up.
The real good news is that for the next 3 to 4 business weeks (an impossible measurement) I'll have nothing but anger in my heart when I think about gaming and it will be easy to tear into all these games that I've been playing and share my bile with you. Granted, a great majority of them are fantastic games that will be tough to tear down, but for you gentle readers, I will find a way to hate Fallout or die trying.
Okay, Fallout may be a stretch, but Silent Hill Origins, you're in for it!
-F.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
First Impressions: Fallout 3
It appears that Blogger and Firefox have decided I'm making this post wether I want to or not, so here goes.
The 10/10, 95%, 5 star reviews would have you believe that Fallout is perfect, but its not. (yes, I said it). Its good, VERY good, but like all good games (especially rpgs), it has some dumb problems. The trick here is that the parts that are good are SO good, the sub par parts are easily forgotten or ignored. This sort of review / reception dichotomy is usually reserved for painfully average games that try desperately to achieve greatness with a few innovative ideas (can't wait to write this Conan review!), but somehow Fallout 3 is this kind of magnificent game that inexplicably makes a half-hearted effort to be mediocre.
For instance, from first person view you can run, jump, fight, talk, and everything just fine, but they also included a clunky pointless 3rd person camera. It's obvious the gameplay was designed with first person in mind, but somewhere along the lines a 3rd person view was shoehorned in, probably to make the clothing guys stop cutting themselves. Seriously. If all you want to do is stand there in the sun, pan the camera 'round, and check out the clever hats and shirts you pick up off of corpses, fine. Otherwise, leave the Left Bumper alone. In third person, jumping, manipulating objects, and (realtime) combat are horrendous. The camera could give a damn what you want to look at (much less what you're shooting or swinging at) and all your animations are just terrible. By constrast, playing this game in first person (like Bioshock) gives you the impression you're actually there, in the wasteland, fighting hell and high water for your survival. Third person reminds you constantly that this is just a video game, and your character is just some blue screened puppet on a map, barely responding to your button presses.
Then there's the Pipboy 3000 / menuing system (and this probably has a lot to do with trimming keyboard PC controls down to joystick face buttons and triggers). The Pipboy 3k is a one stop shop for mapping, questing, equipping, you name it. But you wouldn't believe the number of times I've dropped a gun or important food because the buttons are stupid, or how many times I've accidentally rested for an hour instead of reading my map because its press B, then Right Trigger twice, then left analog once, then right analog stick to zoom out just to see where you're at in the wasteland.
Last but not least, there's the whole "this is still a c rpg underneath all the console fluff" learning curve. All the boring character creation stuff is presented during the games opening chapter, with a nice little narrative and some interesting sequences wrapped around it to keep you entertained, but all the stuff you really want to know (how to converse, get quests, equip things, heal yourself, read maps) is presented by cold text crawls that pop up one time when circumstance happens upon them, then never return. The reality is, you're going to have 20 opportunities (experience levels) to undo your poor understanding of the Agility or Perception attributes, but if you weren't paying attention to the random on screen text during that one radroach segment in the vault basement, may god have mercy on your soul because they are never going to explain how to use a gun again.
That said, it is a safe estimation (even at only a couple hours in) that a shitty third person cam, crappy menus, and a constant need for the instruction manual are the worst sins this game is going to commit. The design of the thing is dynamite, the aesthetic appeal is immaculate, and outside of its throw you to the wolves tutorial mentality, the gameplay systems work like charms once you wrap your head around them. Last night I wasted 3 or 4 hours of my life, just wandering around the desolation, shooting people in the face and hitting dogs with a baseball bat. There were some quests done here and there, some small purposes to all the wandering, but it all boiled down to one trepidatious man, one hostile untapped world, and a ton of bullets. At this point, I wouldn't have it any other way.
-F.
The 10/10, 95%, 5 star reviews would have you believe that Fallout is perfect, but its not. (yes, I said it). Its good, VERY good, but like all good games (especially rpgs), it has some dumb problems. The trick here is that the parts that are good are SO good, the sub par parts are easily forgotten or ignored. This sort of review / reception dichotomy is usually reserved for painfully average games that try desperately to achieve greatness with a few innovative ideas (can't wait to write this Conan review!), but somehow Fallout 3 is this kind of magnificent game that inexplicably makes a half-hearted effort to be mediocre.
For instance, from first person view you can run, jump, fight, talk, and everything just fine, but they also included a clunky pointless 3rd person camera. It's obvious the gameplay was designed with first person in mind, but somewhere along the lines a 3rd person view was shoehorned in, probably to make the clothing guys stop cutting themselves. Seriously. If all you want to do is stand there in the sun, pan the camera 'round, and check out the clever hats and shirts you pick up off of corpses, fine. Otherwise, leave the Left Bumper alone. In third person, jumping, manipulating objects, and (realtime) combat are horrendous. The camera could give a damn what you want to look at (much less what you're shooting or swinging at) and all your animations are just terrible. By constrast, playing this game in first person (like Bioshock) gives you the impression you're actually there, in the wasteland, fighting hell and high water for your survival. Third person reminds you constantly that this is just a video game, and your character is just some blue screened puppet on a map, barely responding to your button presses.
Then there's the Pipboy 3000 / menuing system (and this probably has a lot to do with trimming keyboard PC controls down to joystick face buttons and triggers). The Pipboy 3k is a one stop shop for mapping, questing, equipping, you name it. But you wouldn't believe the number of times I've dropped a gun or important food because the buttons are stupid, or how many times I've accidentally rested for an hour instead of reading my map because its press B, then Right Trigger twice, then left analog once, then right analog stick to zoom out just to see where you're at in the wasteland.
Last but not least, there's the whole "this is still a c rpg underneath all the console fluff" learning curve. All the boring character creation stuff is presented during the games opening chapter, with a nice little narrative and some interesting sequences wrapped around it to keep you entertained, but all the stuff you really want to know (how to converse, get quests, equip things, heal yourself, read maps) is presented by cold text crawls that pop up one time when circumstance happens upon them, then never return. The reality is, you're going to have 20 opportunities (experience levels) to undo your poor understanding of the Agility or Perception attributes, but if you weren't paying attention to the random on screen text during that one radroach segment in the vault basement, may god have mercy on your soul because they are never going to explain how to use a gun again.
That said, it is a safe estimation (even at only a couple hours in) that a shitty third person cam, crappy menus, and a constant need for the instruction manual are the worst sins this game is going to commit. The design of the thing is dynamite, the aesthetic appeal is immaculate, and outside of its throw you to the wolves tutorial mentality, the gameplay systems work like charms once you wrap your head around them. Last night I wasted 3 or 4 hours of my life, just wandering around the desolation, shooting people in the face and hitting dogs with a baseball bat. There were some quests done here and there, some small purposes to all the wandering, but it all boiled down to one trepidatious man, one hostile untapped world, and a ton of bullets. At this point, I wouldn't have it any other way.
-F.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Dead Space
Let me preface this review with a sentence:
I love to shoot stuff.
There's no shortage of stuff to shoot in Dead Space. Mostly what you shoot are these strange mutant alien guys that die much more quickly if you aim for their limbs. This is one of the innovations that Dead Space brags about on the back of their box. They also brag about an intricate story filled with twists and turns.
Let's talk about the strategic dismemberment first. This is a novel approach to a shooter, considering that's I've been taught by video games since I was five to aim for the head or chest. It took a while to get used to shooting for the limbs, but it was fun and I hope like hell that i can deprogram myself from aiming for the limbs before Resident Evil 5 comes out.
The fact that I'm already talking RE5 should probably give you a hint that this is part where I'm going trash Dead Space, and you're right. While the controls are tight and the game play is solid, It's nothing we haven't seen done already or done better in games like Doom 3 or RE4. This could have all been fixed with the intricate story promised on the back of the box... However, the back of the box was lying about that... oh my God it was lying to me about that.
The story is non-existent at best. At the beginning you find out that you're an engineer sent to fix a broken space ship floating around a planet where people are disappearing and doing other random spooky things. (The animated comics that you can see on YouTube are great at setting this up and they basically fooled me into buying a game where I thought I was going to get a great narrative. Good job EA, you got me.) So knowing this the game starts. Your crew consists of two guys that are alien meat (yeah killed in the first five seconds) and two bitchy imbeciles that you just keep wishing would die... seriously you wish it. You want it. After the two pieces of meat kick the bucket the story stops. Immediately. There is no more story until mission 7... for me that was about six and a half hours into the game. Yeah mission 7happens but then it goes into lull mode until the end where you have a couple of plot twists that are obvious and overdone, and one plot twist that you get at the very end of the game that makes absolutely no fucking sense and it just in there for a cheap scare. Once the plot actually surfaces it's just a bland mix of Event Horizon, Alien, and Fight Club. So what do you get in the place of plot during all this?
Cheap scares. Things that make you jump the first two times, but seriously, you and I both know that the monster lying there isn't dead after the 27th time, and that when you get off the tram, you'll immediately be startled by tweeddle dee or tweeddle dumbass trying communicate via a loud and staticy comlink.
The other thing you get? Orders. You get two different supporting characters telling you what to do while hiding in separate closets shitting their pants throughout the whole fucking game. So let me get this straight, I get follow idiotic repair quests from assholes while getting randomly attacked by mindless monsters for no apparent reason other than I'm there. Wait a minute... I work in IT... THIS GAME IS MY FUCKING LIFE!!! Gaaaaah!
Weapons: The first gun in the game is the best on you'll get. The line gun and the ripper aren't bad either (who doesn't like shooting saw blades?) but most of the weapons suffer from Turok syndrome. Seriously a force gun that slightly nudges the enemy back as if to say, "Please good sir, you're encroaching my personal space, could you take two steps back?" Fuck you force gun. The upgrade system is needlessly complicated. Seriously that's all you need to know.
The lack of a HUD is actually pretty cool and I like the way your menus are handled by holographic projections from your suit. That's pretty sweet.
Zero G combat is fun at first but its novelty wears thin real quick. Trust me, get hit by enemies you can't turn to see is no fun.
So yeah, I pretty much just tore this game apart, but like I said earlier, I like to shoot stuff, and that's probably why I'm currently on mission five of my second round through this game. Either that or I'm an achievement whore. Or I like to come home and play my job after living it all fucking day. Or I'm just killing time until MK Vs DCU. (ED BOON DON'T YOU DARE BREAK MY HEART AGAIN LIKE YOU DID WITH MKA!!!!)
Seriously Who knows?
-M
I love to shoot stuff.
There's no shortage of stuff to shoot in Dead Space. Mostly what you shoot are these strange mutant alien guys that die much more quickly if you aim for their limbs. This is one of the innovations that Dead Space brags about on the back of their box. They also brag about an intricate story filled with twists and turns.
Let's talk about the strategic dismemberment first. This is a novel approach to a shooter, considering that's I've been taught by video games since I was five to aim for the head or chest. It took a while to get used to shooting for the limbs, but it was fun and I hope like hell that i can deprogram myself from aiming for the limbs before Resident Evil 5 comes out.
The fact that I'm already talking RE5 should probably give you a hint that this is part where I'm going trash Dead Space, and you're right. While the controls are tight and the game play is solid, It's nothing we haven't seen done already or done better in games like Doom 3 or RE4. This could have all been fixed with the intricate story promised on the back of the box... However, the back of the box was lying about that... oh my God it was lying to me about that.
The story is non-existent at best. At the beginning you find out that you're an engineer sent to fix a broken space ship floating around a planet where people are disappearing and doing other random spooky things. (The animated comics that you can see on YouTube are great at setting this up and they basically fooled me into buying a game where I thought I was going to get a great narrative. Good job EA, you got me.) So knowing this the game starts. Your crew consists of two guys that are alien meat (yeah killed in the first five seconds) and two bitchy imbeciles that you just keep wishing would die... seriously you wish it. You want it. After the two pieces of meat kick the bucket the story stops. Immediately. There is no more story until mission 7... for me that was about six and a half hours into the game. Yeah mission 7happens but then it goes into lull mode until the end where you have a couple of plot twists that are obvious and overdone, and one plot twist that you get at the very end of the game that makes absolutely no fucking sense and it just in there for a cheap scare. Once the plot actually surfaces it's just a bland mix of Event Horizon, Alien, and Fight Club. So what do you get in the place of plot during all this?
Cheap scares. Things that make you jump the first two times, but seriously, you and I both know that the monster lying there isn't dead after the 27th time, and that when you get off the tram, you'll immediately be startled by tweeddle dee or tweeddle dumbass trying communicate via a loud and staticy comlink.
The other thing you get? Orders. You get two different supporting characters telling you what to do while hiding in separate closets shitting their pants throughout the whole fucking game. So let me get this straight, I get follow idiotic repair quests from assholes while getting randomly attacked by mindless monsters for no apparent reason other than I'm there. Wait a minute... I work in IT... THIS GAME IS MY FUCKING LIFE!!! Gaaaaah!
Weapons: The first gun in the game is the best on you'll get. The line gun and the ripper aren't bad either (who doesn't like shooting saw blades?) but most of the weapons suffer from Turok syndrome. Seriously a force gun that slightly nudges the enemy back as if to say, "Please good sir, you're encroaching my personal space, could you take two steps back?" Fuck you force gun. The upgrade system is needlessly complicated. Seriously that's all you need to know.
The lack of a HUD is actually pretty cool and I like the way your menus are handled by holographic projections from your suit. That's pretty sweet.
Zero G combat is fun at first but its novelty wears thin real quick. Trust me, get hit by enemies you can't turn to see is no fun.
So yeah, I pretty much just tore this game apart, but like I said earlier, I like to shoot stuff, and that's probably why I'm currently on mission five of my second round through this game. Either that or I'm an achievement whore. Or I like to come home and play my job after living it all fucking day. Or I'm just killing time until MK Vs DCU. (ED BOON DON'T YOU DARE BREAK MY HEART AGAIN LIKE YOU DID WITH MKA!!!!)
Seriously Who knows?
-M
First Impressions: Spiderman "Web of Shadows"
Is there anyone out there who can tell me the proper usage of colons, semi colons, hyphens, and parantheseses (?!) when it comes to titles of things? Because Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix is practically a sentence, but Super Street Fighter 2: Turbo "HD Remix" just looks gay.
ANYWAYS.
I asked myself this morning if I really wanted to move everything I did (or rather, intended to do) on that other gaming blog I started over here, or if I wanted to try and keep them separate or if I just wanted to give some of this shit up entirely because it was inappropriate or not per-brand (thank you, John Edwards) or some-other-meaningless-literary-construct to this blog. In the end, I decided; Fuck it, I'll write whatever I want. I'm doing this collaboration with my friend and that gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside which makes honesty a little more forth coming. Plus the cleverness of our subtitle is sure to draw a few more random internet searches so somebody might actually read them here. So, with that said, guess what game I got to pop my new (read: refurbished) 360s cherry with last night?
Now I'm not going to bore you with the typical Spiderman 2 vs Spiderman 3 vs Ultimate Spiderman vs Spiderman Friend or Foe rhetoric, because its tired and everybody already knows that Spiderman 2 is the best spiderman game ever made and Spiderman 3 was a trainwreck and anyone who disagrees is wrong. If you really want the gritty details, go read any other spiderman video game related article on the internet anywhere, seriously. We can't get enough of it.
So Web of Shadows is the latest and is trying desperately to be the greatest. From where I sat (with a pounding headache and healthy amount of angst towards the Cleveland Browns, so excuse the lack of enthusiasm) it seems Shaba Games have taken great lengths to infuse the game with something new and not just make Spiderman 2 again which sadly, is what the fanboys (myself included) have been clammoring for the hardest. Honestly, I applaud it, but the hour or so I put into it last night was not enough to decide if it will pay off.
The so far so good of the thing is this. The game appears to have a story, which is important to me, and not just a bad guy shows up spider-man beats him, then bigger bad guy shows up and spider-man beats him one either. This one starts with a taste of a chaotic New York with spider-man hinted as both cause (by way of the black suit) and solution (by way of being spider-man) then Tarantino's its way back to days before when Spidey first gets the suit and things are still normal. It wets the appetite for whats coming and serves as a decent vehicle for the 'this button punches, this button swings, and this button throws fucking cars at people' tutorial that it bookends.
Which is important because that is the meat and potatoes of the thing. The fighting, I mean. Spider-man has perpetual access to both suits from the beginning and for once actual appear to function differently. Not to the point where one can swing and one can't, but their differences in combat are obvious even at this early stage. Best of all, the on the fly switching is so well integrated that you can actually switch suits in between individual hits of your canned combos. At this point I don't have the upgrades necessary to really call one better or worse and it will probably boil down to use this suit for the following enemies and use this one for others, but the tailoring and application of them to your playstyle is obviously going to be a big part of this.
The mission structure I am less thrilled about as so far it used GTA style "Mr. Johnson hunts" and akward dialogue trees to get a reason to fight and then go and fight. Granted, 'fight' means use your tendril arm to yank people off the top of buildings or throw a car down the street, but every time I beat up a bunch of guys for Luke Cage, he simply asks me to do it again, only do it twice as much. Why not just tell me to beat up 200 guys to start with, Luke? Why 15, then 30, then 150? The reality is these dumb missions say [OPTIONAL] in big bold letters next to the conversation selections, and I could probably just ignore them and advance the story, but the old school gamer in me knows (or at least has been deluded in to believing) that nothing is truly optional when you're trying desperately to justify the $70 you just spent on something. We both know that if I don't see every single ounce of content this game has to offer then Activision wins.
At this point, one can only hope the awesome move list can keep up with the tedious optional missions and that the main story can cash the check its opening has written. The current presentation and promise have already projected its quality light years beyond Ultimate and 3, but that will be meaningless if its way too short or face plants on these [OPTIONAL] missions. Even then, if all goes as I hope, it will still take some serious direction to top the rose tinted bias aura that Spider-man 2 still projects in my heart.
-F.
ANYWAYS.
I asked myself this morning if I really wanted to move everything I did (or rather, intended to do) on that other gaming blog I started over here, or if I wanted to try and keep them separate or if I just wanted to give some of this shit up entirely because it was inappropriate or not per-brand (thank you, John Edwards) or some-other-meaningless-literary-construct to this blog. In the end, I decided; Fuck it, I'll write whatever I want. I'm doing this collaboration with my friend and that gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside which makes honesty a little more forth coming. Plus the cleverness of our subtitle is sure to draw a few more random internet searches so somebody might actually read them here. So, with that said, guess what game I got to pop my new (read: refurbished) 360s cherry with last night?
Now I'm not going to bore you with the typical Spiderman 2 vs Spiderman 3 vs Ultimate Spiderman vs Spiderman Friend or Foe rhetoric, because its tired and everybody already knows that Spiderman 2 is the best spiderman game ever made and Spiderman 3 was a trainwreck and anyone who disagrees is wrong. If you really want the gritty details, go read any other spiderman video game related article on the internet anywhere, seriously. We can't get enough of it.
So Web of Shadows is the latest and is trying desperately to be the greatest. From where I sat (with a pounding headache and healthy amount of angst towards the Cleveland Browns, so excuse the lack of enthusiasm) it seems Shaba Games have taken great lengths to infuse the game with something new and not just make Spiderman 2 again which sadly, is what the fanboys (myself included) have been clammoring for the hardest. Honestly, I applaud it, but the hour or so I put into it last night was not enough to decide if it will pay off.
The so far so good of the thing is this. The game appears to have a story, which is important to me, and not just a bad guy shows up spider-man beats him, then bigger bad guy shows up and spider-man beats him one either. This one starts with a taste of a chaotic New York with spider-man hinted as both cause (by way of the black suit) and solution (by way of being spider-man) then Tarantino's its way back to days before when Spidey first gets the suit and things are still normal. It wets the appetite for whats coming and serves as a decent vehicle for the 'this button punches, this button swings, and this button throws fucking cars at people' tutorial that it bookends.
Which is important because that is the meat and potatoes of the thing. The fighting, I mean. Spider-man has perpetual access to both suits from the beginning and for once actual appear to function differently. Not to the point where one can swing and one can't, but their differences in combat are obvious even at this early stage. Best of all, the on the fly switching is so well integrated that you can actually switch suits in between individual hits of your canned combos. At this point I don't have the upgrades necessary to really call one better or worse and it will probably boil down to use this suit for the following enemies and use this one for others, but the tailoring and application of them to your playstyle is obviously going to be a big part of this.
The mission structure I am less thrilled about as so far it used GTA style "Mr. Johnson hunts" and akward dialogue trees to get a reason to fight and then go and fight. Granted, 'fight' means use your tendril arm to yank people off the top of buildings or throw a car down the street, but every time I beat up a bunch of guys for Luke Cage, he simply asks me to do it again, only do it twice as much. Why not just tell me to beat up 200 guys to start with, Luke? Why 15, then 30, then 150? The reality is these dumb missions say [OPTIONAL] in big bold letters next to the conversation selections, and I could probably just ignore them and advance the story, but the old school gamer in me knows (or at least has been deluded in to believing) that nothing is truly optional when you're trying desperately to justify the $70 you just spent on something. We both know that if I don't see every single ounce of content this game has to offer then Activision wins.
At this point, one can only hope the awesome move list can keep up with the tedious optional missions and that the main story can cash the check its opening has written. The current presentation and promise have already projected its quality light years beyond Ultimate and 3, but that will be meaningless if its way too short or face plants on these [OPTIONAL] missions. Even then, if all goes as I hope, it will still take some serious direction to top the rose tinted bias aura that Spider-man 2 still projects in my heart.
-F.
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