Resident Evil 6: An Explanation for my lack of Coverage…

Darkstalkers Franchise gets the WUB WUB Treatment with Darkstalkers Resurrection!

  I have to say early 2013 is a LONG TIME to wait for this!

And now Pandas! (World of Warcraft)

 

   And that my friends is the most your going to get from me on the new Expansion for WoW.

Tag me IN! (Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Review)(PS3)

       With some exception I tend to not review fighting games until they have been out for a while(sometimes as much as 3 months).  I tend to believe that both community and developers need time with the game in the wild to determine how good or bad a game is.  But Tekken Tag Tournament 2 was the type of game I could have reviewed the first week it came out.  I was never more impressed by so many things in a fighting game.  Except perhaps the original Street Fighter IV.  Which blew my doors off like nothing has since.  But that was more of a case of the perfect storm rather than a game that was so above and beyond that it was amazing.  Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is my fighting game of this generation.  And here is why.

       TTT2 a fast paced fighting style that makes sure that everyone is always awake and paying attention.  Blocking will get you thrown or just struck by getting hit by a sweep or an overhead.  All the moves are responsive and don’t have too much animation priority.  The game never feels cheap or convoluted.  There are breakable walls and floors that open up stages similarly to those in Tekken 6.  Every hit has a kind of impact that I rarely feel in fighting games.  Much like Street Fighter this fighter makes the player feel involved in the fight with excellent animations and good feedback.  The tag system is responsive and is useful.  In fact, in most cases the game is made a little easier using the tag system as opposed to complicating things..  Tag Assaults and Tag Throws both have impact and can be done pretty much immediately.  There were only a few times where I thought the system wasn’t responding to my commands in clutch situations.  As you play Tekken Tag Tournament 2 you will definitely find yourself in clutch situations.  The game moves very fast and moves do a descent amount of damage.  If I had to compare I would say that this game has Marvel versus Capcom 3’s pace with the move set of something like Virtua Fighter 5.

       Series staples are here like shared health bars and a huge cast of characters.  The graphics and production values in the game are first rate.  The developers obviously went all out to make sure this game looked amazing and had the flashiness to get people’s attention.  There is no Story mode, falling to the end movies in the Arcade mode to show the series hallmark CGI end movies for each character.  All modes in the game can be taken on in either Solo or Tag formats.  Playing Solo makes your damage increase and your red health SLOWLY recharge.  Tag may give you another character to share health with but your health recovers when that character isn’t playing and it recovers more quickly than in Solo format.  The offline single player has Arcade, Time Attack, Survival, and the excellent Ghost Battle Mode.  To choose from along with the Training and Practice modes. 

       Training mode takes a unique track where you play the character, Combot.  Who is created by Violet to be the ultimate fighting machine.  The challenges here are goofy and for the most part fun.  It makes practicing annoying mechanics more palatable.  But the mode is far shorter and less complicated than I expected. If Tekken Tag Tournament 2 has a failing it’s this mode.  It just isn’t enough and the lack of pick up and play aspect due to the terrible checkpointing in the mode make it even less appealing for folks just trying to drop in and then drop out.  The mode DOES allow you to customize Combot’s moveset to eventually get a unique character having only the moves you like.  Which is a fun distraction.  But I can’t really see anyone being that interested in this sort of thing.  But as I said, it is an excellent introduction for the new systems in TTT2 as well as a good practice for the more annoying to practice actions.  Practice mode is great, with features allowing you to record moves and combos and then fight against those moves or combos to your hearts content.  It’s definitely a huge step for fighting games.

        Overall, I found playing a Tag Team tended to be easier than playing Solo. But this depends greatly on your character or characters and your opponent. Tekken Tag Tournament 2 features over 50 characters and it appears that by the end of the year the game may have close to 60 characters. This could be viewed as too many characters to learn but this is also what gives Tekken Tag Tournament 2 all most unlimited depth. And finding the right Tag Team for you can be a VERY LONG process of experimenting with many combinations until you get it right. In total I’ve played close to 400 matches of TTT2 and still haven’t found my perfect team

      Throughout all most every mode in the game you are given money to go to the customize area’s store and purchase items, costume pieces, etc… To customize the look of your character.  You can change the colors of these items and even add items to your characters that might add a move to their move set.  This part of the game is one of the areas that keeps me playing and I know that Namco is going to be putting out some additional DLC for this area soon.  So it will keep me playing long into the future.  This very mode is what kept me playing Tekken 6.  What I never understood is what I like about this mode in Tekken that I don’t in SoulCalibur.  What I can say is that this mode has the worst menus in the entire game.  Too many layers, too much loading, too many button presses.  But after a while you get used to it.  But it definitely could use an overall, if that’s even possible at this point. 

    Online has the standard modes for lobbies, ranked matches, and player matches.  But with the addition of the free World Tekken Federation that allows a kind of stat tracking found only in services like Call of Duty Elite.  The online definitely shines.  As well as, at least same region games(that’s all I played). Being completely lag free.  I couldn’t have asked for too much more from the Online except maybe the system they have for Soul Calibur V.  Except, SCV doesn’t have the World Tekken Federation which definitely makes up for it.  If I have any criticism it’s for Namco to drop the Online Pass.  But considering the developers have made the World Tekken Federation and promised that all game downloadable content will be free.  I can’t complain too much. 

    Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is a deep, complete fighting game that makes no shortcuts.  There is definitely some nod to the button mashers of the world but this is a serious fighting game with an eye on competition above all else.  The people that will get the most out of Tekken Tag Tournament 2 are those who put in the time.  Since I’ve had the game 9/11/12, I’ve put in around 40 hours.  While this is not a lot of time; that is only because I had other games to play and review.  I would imagine the average player has all most twice that invested all ready.  I love the game and I know I will be playing long into next year and probably the following year.  Not only is Tekken Tag Tournament my fighting game of 2012.  It is my fighting game of the XBOX360/PS3 generation.  No matter what Capcom has in store for us next year it won’t be able to touch this package.  If you love fighting games, you NEED to play Tekken Tag Tournament 2: 9.8/10.

Definitely Not a Power Blow! (Dead or Alive 5 Review)(Xbox360)

  The first time I’d played a Dead or Alive fighting game was way back on the XBOX.  It was Dead or Alive 2 and I thought the game was pretty good.  Not as good as say, Mortal Kombat or Tekken.  But good.  With this recent episode I have to admit I was more skeptical than usual.  The game seemed to be focused on “fighting entertainment” which I guess means flashy crap that doesn’t really do much for the mechanics of the game.  Which is more or less what I was afraid of.  Most of my experience steams from Dead or Alive 4 and the MANY MANY hours I spent online.  I believe that game was held back by many of the same things that are holding this one back. But in addition this game seems to have picked up a few bad habits of it’s own.

            First and foremost. It must be gotten out of the way that this game does look great and does animate very well.  With the exception of the breasts of course, which are more alien than anything I’ve ever seen in a modern video game.  Whatever they are made of it seems to have a very fluid quality that is both strange and gravity defying.  I don’t know what the problem was here, but it distracting at best and disgusting at worst.

           All right now that we have that out of the way.  The mechanics of Dead or Alive 5 seem to be a little confused.  The blocking mechanic is terrible, because there is no feedback.  The blocking character doesn’t have impact and the striking character certainly doesn’t have any.  The little sweat drops that come off of the blocking character, are completely useless as they are usually practically invisible in every stage.  Throws are also terrible, as normally if you are standing on top of a character and you throw them; you are either being teched(your throw has been blocked) or you do a throw.  Not in Dead or Alive 5; all characters seem to be able escape throws so seamlessly that the animation is simply you missing the throw.  It makes no sense.  You can’t duck my throw if you have no frames to do so.  I’ve watched on multiple occasions my characters being struck after they finish their throwing animation by a character who is using a mid-strike.  How are they not being thrown?  Low throws have the very same problem.  I’ve been hit during my low throw animation by a low strike.  Also, in previous Dead or Alive games there was some stun on all of counters.  So that if you countered someone they couldn’t just get directly up and hit you.  But not in Dead or Alive 5.  Almost every time I counter held a character, they simple went into a combo directly after.  Completely negating my counter hold and what damage it did.  What convoluted tech roll, the game has never works and you are all most all ways hit on exit of the roll or even during the roll which kind of negates the having the roll completely.  Too many characters have one hit, uncounterable strikes that send their opponent flying across the screen for 20-40% damage.  This is too much.  Tekken has similar moves but they are more reset moves than spammable counter hits.

           DOA 5 doesn’t seem to be the least bit interested in balance or fairness.  The danger zones in the different stages where the character shot into them incur extra damage is often done from a “Power Blow” which is a charge move that can shoot the character into a danger zone(which itself does extra damage).  These Power Blows are like super moves.  The problem with them is that for the amount of damage they do(50-75%) they have a very wonky hit box on them.  So much so, that you can be doing a mid-combo and be just far enough away from the character performing the move to just whiff the whole thing.  I suppose this is something one could get used to.  But each character seems to have a different power blow animation and therefore a different wonky hit box while doing it.

           Dead of Alive 5 has a tag mode.  Which can be used in Arcade, Survival, Time Attack, and of course Online.  The tag system is awful.  Most of the time the tag ins are so late, that I often found the character that I needed to tag out had all ready lost all their remaining life by the time the move went through.  The tandem moves, like Tag throw and Tag assault are also a hit and miss affair.  Often, I just hit the buttons and hoped for the best.  This is definitely the weakest part of the game, mechanics wise.  A final bit on the mechanics.  I have found two different infinites on two different characters.  Completely by accident.  They are both wall ground hits.  But they seem to be pretty obvious to anyone using Christie or Mila.  Usually infinites are EXTREMELY hard to find.  But I found them while playing the Story mode.

           The Story mode is a loosely collected group of fights that last an incredibly long time.  Each Story fight has a bonus mission which if the player completes they get a reward.  A title usually, sometimes a new costume for the character performing the move.  The Story mode is SO BAD, that there is an Achievement for not skipping any cutscenes.  The difficulty has a pretty steady slope and normally the player will be fine with it by the time they reach the end.  However, considering how often they use different characters having a default one round fight is kind of a mistake.  Also, having unskippable intros is absolutely ridiculous.  I have NEVER played a fighting game with unskippable intros for each character.

                   The arcade mode is simply a collection of 8 fights and the prize for winning is simply a new costume for your fighter.  There is no boss, even though the final character is skewed a bit more difficult than the others fighters.  The Time Attack mode is the arcade mode where time getting from beginning to end is important.  Survival mode is where you must fight ten fighters back to back with only one round each and no breaks, intros, or much of a health reset(although there is some).  Training mode offers some good options with command training, and the ability to setup lots of situations.  But overall it is no better or worse than most of the other training modes out there.

             Online is the normal offering of Ranked, Player, or Lobby matches.  There wasn’t any lag in the 10-15 online games I played.  But I found that it takes too long to up your rank so many people who were the lowest rank had in fact played many games.  This was not only deceptive for the new player but probably maddening to anyone looking for descent matchmaking.  Considering the paltry offering the online pass seemed all most insulting.  But I suppose that is the way of things these days.  The last Ninja Gaiden had an awful online mode and it too had an online pass.  Perhaps if these modes were WORTH paying for, the pass would no longer be necessary.

            Dead or Alive 5 overall is a descent fighting game; and fun button masher for the casual player.  But for anyone who is taking fighting games seriously this game’s mawkish mechanics and complete lack of mechanical polish will drive anyone serious about fighting games away quickly.  It can be argued that the same mechanics that make the game fun to play for casual players are the very same mechanics that will make the serious player feel unfairly beaten or in an all or nothing situation far too often.

             Perhaps after patching and balancing the game could be worth playing.  But I’m not sure there will be anyone left playing it for such changes to matter or even be worth implementing.  I had some fun with Dead or Alive 5, but fighting games have definitely passed this game by. 7/10.

 

Update: the Infinite I was talking about:

Oh just in Case you missed it! BORDERLANDS 2 is OUT!

Just wanted to Thank my Community! You know who you are!

 

        Hey everyone just wanted to thank you for all your views and support.  I know I don’t say nearly enough but we just hit over 55,000 hits since the site opened a couple of years ago.  And while in the grand scheme of things this is a VERY small amount.  I am thrilled that I have been able to touch so many people in this period of time.  So for all of you that have been with me since the beginning and for all of those who have just looked into one post or one series of posts.  THANK YOU.

       Please free to hit me up on Twitter: @timothpecoraro or just write a comment on this post if there is anything you would like to see more of.  I will do my best to do it.  I know text sites are dying and everyone is moving to video.  So thanks for being interested enough to ACTUALLY read my articles and reviews.

          Thanks Again, can’t wait for the next 55,000.  Hopefully it won’t take another 3 years.

Why I Love/Hate Diablo 3

        There are, I’m sure people who have put in many more hours into Diablo 3 than I have.  In fact, due to my complete lack of play since all of the hacks; I’m sure there are probably more people than ever, that have more time invested.  But considering Diablo 3 is the first game that I have put in over 100 hours into I feel like I need to say a few things about it.  Diablo 3 was my most anticipated game of 2012.  And since the beta I was able to play, I was even more excited.  I hadn’t played too much of the previous installments and was waiting for the third to get really engrossed.  I was fine with the all ways on DRM, because as most people tend to gloss over Starcraft 2 has an all ways on DRM.  So I was not really thrown off by Diablo 3 having it.

         Things changed a little the day that Diablo 3 came out.  I was out of work so I stayed up late and spent four hours trying to get connected and finally being able to play a little bit at 4 AM on launch day.  Which was fine.  I played for two hours and then went to bed.  I was in love.  There was nothing more interesting to me than just busting through the campaign the first time.  But I didn’t know which character I wanted to play.  So I started one campaign for each.  Yes, I did what most people said what exactly not to do.  Many of my game journalist friends in fact are now in Inferno with the character they created on day 1.  And haven’t touched any of the other characters at all.  I felt this was a big loss.  Why not beat the game at least once with every character.  I had no problem going through the story five times.  No problem at all.  I was able to share gear and gold throughout my account and made good use of rare drops and legendaries on my all of my characters.  But this WAS in fact, the wrong decision.

        By the time my favorite character, the Wizard got about half way through Nightmare.  The Auction House was a mess.  Anything worthwhile for her or any of my other characters cost around 100,000 gold.  Where it used to only cost around 20-30,000.  This was an insane price jump and one that didn’t jive with the rest the rate of gold my characters were earning.  I’m certainly over-geared at this point.  But I LIKE being over-geared.  And I know that I will hit a hard stop around the end of Hell or so.  Also, the real gold Auction House was useless to me s people were only buying Inferno level gear and nothing else.  So, until the prices dropped I decided I would stop playing.  Most of my characters were around level 35-39 so I figured I’d just come back for PVP.  But this was not to be.

       When the cheats, hacks, etc… Began being reported was near the tail end of my overall playtime.  I had gotten a second job, so I didn’t have time to play anything except that which was for work.  So Diablo 3 had taken a backseat.  When I heard about the hacks, I knew that the auction house prices would be even more ridiculous and not to bother even logging in until all this was patched and straightened out.  And for the most part Diablo 3 had completely gone out of my mind.  This game that I really loved, was just a memory and even though I occasionally saw it on my desktop I didn’t have any desire to play it at all.

        Recently, Patch 1.0.4 came out and there were lots of balance changes, new Paragon system, etc…   All of this was just what I needed to log back into Diablo 3(besides another Battle.net hack that required me to change my password).  I played for about 2 hours last night with my Wizard and was just about to snag another new level when I decided to stop and watch some Fringe on DVD instead.  Yes, Diablo 3 has been relegated to a tier below old television.    I’m afraid this means that I will probably never see Inferno difficulty and my copy of Darksiders 2 is still calling to me as I write this.  My September will be a balancing act between Guild Wars 2 and Borderlands 2.  Do I ACTUALLY think I’m going to have time to play Diablo 3? No… I won’t…

        Blizzard had their shot.  It came out 2 days after my Birthday when I was out of work and I played it for a solid month all most every single night for at least 5-7 hours.  But that was it.  Sorry guys…  A linear story, a terribly balanced economy, and a difficulty system that should have been rebalanced the moment it was considered.  But with all this I have to say that Diablo 3 is in my Top 10 games of the year for 2012 for sure.  Why?  Because with the exception of what I just mentioned it was a good enough game, with good enough systems for me to play longer than any other game I’ve ever played in life with the exception of World of Warcraft.  Which doesn’t count.  So if there was so much wrong with Diablo 3 why did I play for so long when other games of “supposed” superior quality have fallen by the wayside and even if I ever pick them up again I would never invest that kind of time in them; even if I could.  I usually have a hard time beating games and I’ve beaten Diablo 3, SIX TIMES.  Believe it or not, I put this to the incredible amount of polish that this game has.  The character models, the environments, the leveling system, and the bosses.  There is no where in Diablo 3 in the Normal or Nightmare difficulty where the player can get stuck.  Yes, there was never a point where I didn’t know what to do or got worried about getting lost.  These things seem like no big deal.  But they ARE the reason this game does design better than anyone out there.  Yes, the game is relatively simplistic.  But the point is that it isn’t TOO SIMPLISTIC.  It’s just simple enough to draw people in and keep them there.  Other games all ways have SOMETHING wrong with them.  Something that a person who isn’t “dedicated” to finishing the game will make them just drop the game and go do something else never to pick it up again.

       Some of my favorite games of all time do this.  Assassins Creed Franchise, Shadows of the Damned, Lollipop Chainsaw, Bayonetta, Elder Scrolls Oblivion, Elder Scrolls Skyrim, etc… Except of course, for my favorite games of all time Journey and Bastion.  They too know how design works.  But they are both very short experiences compared to Diablo 3.  I’m talking about two games that take less than 10 hours to beat and comparing them to a game that to finish completely would probably take over 200 hours.  This is an accomplishment that I think has been made too little of; by the press, by the designers, and even by players.  Everyone takes Diablo 2 as the comparison for Diablo 3.  But that is not a fair comparison, it is wrapped up in nostalgia and a familiarity that requires Diablo 3 to be a REVOLUTION rather than an EVOLUTION.  Games have changed SO MUCH in the past 10 years.  Hell, games have changed a lot in the past 5 years.  Diablo 3 is an incredible achievement.  And while many people look at it as more of the same.  I think most people who play Diablo 2 and then play Diablo 3 will find there is a significant difference between the two and in more than graphical quality.  Also, Diablo 2 has had over 10 years to get patched and changed.  I can only dream what Diablo 3 will look like in ten years.  All I know is that it won’t look anything like it does now.

Replay a show from Gameinformer. Oh and Warren Spector is on the show talking about Deus Ex.

  Yes, they are playing Deus Ex and Warren Spector the Creator of Deus Ex is on talking about it. No big…

(Public Service Announcement) To All my Friends on the Forums!

            Go on any major video game media site or YouTube and you will find a group of anonymous crazy immature overly aggressive nutcases.  These people act like they are 13 years old and have parents that have taught them that they are the greatest thing in the world.  Most of them can’t spell and have the grammatical ability of someone who learned English from drug dealers.  They will jump on anyone who doesn’t agree with the narrow short sighted opinion with everything from racist epitaphs to personal acts about your mother.    Yes, ladies and gentlemen, people on forums are awful.  This certainly isn’t just when it comes to video games but just about everything else as well.  But as time has gone on, (It wasn’t a bed of roses in 2004 either), rather than getting better it has actually gotten worse.  The more people who are using the internet it seems the worse it is getting.  I’m just getting so tired of it.  Every developer I’ve talked to who gets bombarded online finds that when he meets people in real life most people are kind, friendly, and incredibly grateful for the work the developer is doing.  What can we attribute all this craziness to then?  I see it as two big things and every site on the internet with forums must take some responsibility for this.  Journalists who have of late been complaining about it must also take some responsibility because they may have a part to play in this as well.

        The biggest problem on every forum site is the absolute anonymity people are afforded.  What is the deal?  It isn’t 1993, we don’t need to worry that someone is going to hack us if we use our real names.  With Facebook and all the other social media sites everyone is everywhere on the internet.  But forums are still the bastions of the ignorant and the stupid because there are no names.  People who are ACTUALLY trying to have a conversation cannot over the din created by these racist halfwits.  Forum moderators should find their site accounts and ban them for life not for 30 days.  These are not people you want in your community and it isn’t a matter of freedom of speech.  It’s a matter of being a racist, narrow minded, psychopath that just wants to cause trouble and cyber bully people.  If your big company owns a website with forums it’s in the best interest of the company to keep people from acting this way on your forums.  Otherwise, you are not only enabling these people but you are; by doing nothing agreeing with the behavior.  There are lots of people out there reading this right now saying that well who decides these things.  After all, there were people banned on LucasArts forums for saying they hated the game the company was making at the time.  Well, lets see… People who spew racist, sexist, pornographic, or abusive language constantly are people I’m talking about.  People who purposely and consistently take the opposite opinion of everyone else just to make other people angry.  You know, TROLLS.  In 2012, there is absolutely no accuse for this behavior or the absolute inability of every site on the internet with a comments/forums section to deal with it.

       The other big problem here are the game journalists who constantly goad people into acting in this manner by creating stories purely to rile people up to get more hits.  Stories with titles like, “Developer X says gamers are idiots.” Or “Developer X has decided that game consoles are completely irrelevant and instead of making their AAA game they are going to make iOS games instead.”  Or my favorite,”Is the Console War Over?”   The last one is the best because journalists are the ones who created the Console War to begin with.  The actual console war ended way back when both Atari and Intellivision tanked after long life cycles.  There is no real story in any of these things and developers are often not only misquoted but simply taken completely out of context.  I’ve heard developers jokingly say something that is taken as a serious statement 48 hours later.  Its all to get hits and that’s fine for the site but the “community” around these topics just gets riled up and decides to go on a rant that this both ill informed and totally irrelevant.  The best part of all this for the website is that the more stories like this they run the more developers don’t want to talk to them at all and have PR speak instead.  Then the website complains that they have no access to developers.  “No kidding,” I wouldn’t want to talk to you either.

       Finally, as I said earlier things are getting worse, not better.  I think this summarizes the reaction of most normal people this days,

“Something slightly negative is discussed or is reported on dealing with the game industry,

  A bunch of site write stories about it,

  The internet goes CRAZY!”

       That’s about how it goes.  People get whipped up into a frenzy about practically nothing these days. 

      “My favorite dropped the multiplayer mode I didn’t want or ask for!”

      “Oh NO!“

      Start a petition to put it back in.

     It is completely short lived and completely unnecessary.  Developers usually ignore it and shake it off as most normal people do.  But when Bioware,, a company that was up to that point very well loved; decided to “change” the ending to Mass Effect 3 because of the public outcry about their “bad” ending.  It seemed like perhaps the mob had won for once.  But then the very worst part of all of this was that once they put out their new ending.  Nothing happened!  Their sales didn’t increase, public opinion didn’t shift their way.  Everyone had forgotten about it.  It no longer mattered.

    But the precedent it set, offered a legitimacy to this stupid and ridiculous behavior.  If these are things in life you are worried about you either live in a fantasy land or are 12 years old.  There is a crippling repression going on, no jobs, and military conflict on multiple fronts and you fools are worried about the ending to a video game.  Grow UP!  But I guess this is the same racist, sexist, minority that is so vocal on the forums of all these sites.  Which I guess makes sense; considering if you consistently act like your 12 years old, the concerns of adults fail to matter after a while.  I wouldn’t really know.  When I was 12, all I worried about was going outside to play with my friends and trying to date girls that were a year older than me.  The only video games I played were at arcades….

 

            A few things to consider if you are part of a video game website or company that provides forums for your fans, or perhaps the owners of a service like Twitch.tv, Ustream, etc and have a streaming chat.

1. Have a policy against profanity and player bullying and here is the hard part ENFORCE IT!
2. Remove all avatars and usernames, instead use the person’s real name as it appears on their form of payment or application when they signed up for your site or service.
3. As a user of any of these services please TRY to simply ignore these people and carry on.  Another words, “DON’T FEED THE TROLL”
4. Also as a user of these services remember just because you PERSONALLY might think something is funny when you are writing in a forum, social media, etc… That everyone else might not and might have a less than sterling opinion of you because of it.
5. Remember that the users of your service/website are ultimately a reflection of your website/service to EVERYONE who uses it.
6. Finally and most importantly, at the end of the day everything in this article is a prime example of not taking REAL WORLD issues seriously enough.  Things like racism, sexism, civil rights, war, etc… Are far more important and should be taken far more seriously than ANYTHING that happens on the internet.

Over the Line! (Spec Ops the Line Review)(PS3)

        In the game industry these days there are lots of f shooters.  Some would argue too many.  I probably would agree with that statement.  But when friends began telling me how great Spec Ops the Line was; I really had a hard time taking it seriously.  I had played Spec Ops the Line way back at the first E3 that it was announced for and while it looked amazing and looked like it was doing some interesting things with sand.  I was less than thrilled at another military based third person shooter.  In fact, the modern military aspect of the game was my least favorite aspect of it going in.  With Modern Warfare, Battlefield, Sniper Elite, Arma, Medal of Honor, etc… I’m filled up on my modern military shooters, whether they come in the first or third person variety.  But that was way back in 2007.  The game has changed a lot since then.  I believe it has changed SO MUCH that if you go back and check out the footage from back then, other than art assets the game is completely different.  This is not a game about getting headshots or kill streaks.  It’s a game about conflict, military conflict and what can happen to people who are involved in such conflicts.  The game riffs off movies like Apocalypse Now and Platoon.   Joseph Conrad’s book Heart of Darkness was also an inspiration.  It takes all these themes and puts them into a modern package that is no less disturbing than those modern classics and maybe even more so.

       I played Spec Ops the Line in the worst way possible.  All in one sitting and entirely in the very early morning.  By the end I was shell shocked and even if you find this a positive review; realize that I never want to even touch this game again.  If they put out downloadable content I will not be playing it.  So, take that for what it’s worth; perhaps a slight warning.  It is very difficult to talk too much about Spec Ops the Line’s campaign without giving too much away.  But I will give it a shot.

        You play Adam Walker who is voiced with a career ultimate performance by Nolan North, the voice of Nathan Drake and many others.  Nolan North has been in many games; but this was the performance of his career.  There isn’t anything I can tell you about the performance without giving anything away except that if he doesn’t make you FEEL SOMETHING by the end.  You are well and truly dead.  Adam is the leader of a small Delta Squad who is going into a sand storm torn up future Dubai to  find a Colonel who has gone off the grid with a battalion of soldiers.  In the current US military I think if a battalion of soldiers went missing the Army might send in more than three guys to find out why.  But that’s neither here nor there.  It is important as the player that you pay a great deal of attention to the beginning of the game even though it is by far the weakest part of the whole.  Here the ground work is laid for what is to come.

         As the player you have a descent interaction with your squad, you can give them fire commands and they can pretty much take care of themselves.  Unless of course one bugs out and runs at a turret.  Which did happen to me twice in the game.  The game checkpoints you often so starting over really isn’t THAT big of a deal.  Even on the easiest setting this game is difficult.  If you want to get through it you must all ways be aware of your environment and stay in cover.  There are certainly times where you can be overrun and only realize it when the enemy is bashing you in the head.  The enemies range from insurgents to American Soldiers who have gone rogue.  Just by me telling you that I’ve probably said too much so I’ll leave it there.

        As a whole Spec Ops the Line is the best and worst possible third person shooter.  I love the story in its daring and the feats of development strength it pulls off.  As a third person cover based third person shooter it is middling at best, terrible at worst.  It’s difficulty swings even on the easiest settings are pretty severe.  This mostly has to do with controls and their lack of precision.  Perhaps putting the vault and run commands on different buttons wasn’t the way to go.  Also, some flat surfaces that should be able to be used as cover cannot be sometimes.  Also, shooting out windows should not take hundreds of shots and when those shots come from a 50 cal. probably even fewer.  I could get through even the strongest bullet proof glass with just a few shots from such a gun.  In the game I overheated the gun twice while trying to do this.  Probably fired more than 200 rounds.  I assume this was done for dramatic tension; but it was terrible.  By the end of the game you have enemy fatigue and while this DOES play into the story.  The player’s frustration/annoyance with it probably will overshadow the minimal story reason for it’s existence.

         The real star of Spec Ops the Line was the message it was trying to send.  Not only about war, conflict, killing, and psychology.  But also about what the difference is between right and wrong.  How these kinds of matters are never black and white.  And finally that there are NO real heroes in war.  Just survivors.  The game makes much about the modern military war game and some of things that are wrong with it.  Not normally directly but indirectly.  The game is very intelligent throughout.  At least when it isn’t trying to sell you on how good of a shooter it is.  I truly enjoyed this game.  But I think it should have been half as long and probably a downloadable game for PSN/XBLA with around 10 trophies/achievements that covered just getting through the campaign.

         I did play several hours of the multiplayer for Spec Ops the Line and found it a very serviceable multiplayer game with some fun stuff taken from the campaign.  However, the disconnect from single player to multiplayer is SO STARK that they could be different games.  The multiplayer’s graphics aren’t nearly as good.  The tones of the two modes don’t fit at all and the idea of progressing to get perks and new weapons all most spits in the face of what the campaign is trying to achieve.  The multiplayer may be in there to extend the life of the game.  But on the consoles I think only the hardest of the hardcore are going to be picking this up and they are playing Modern Warfare 3 or Battlefield.  So I don’t really think this was a good decision by 2K.  I would have just put out the game in the form I mentioned above.  It probably would have sold several million copies at $15-$20.  They could have positioned it as the Anti-Journey.  But my revisionist opinion aside I don’t think this game works as a multiplayer game and can’t imagine that it will have a console audience in that space by the time the game is three or more months old.

       Finally, I would like to say that I really applaud the developers of Spec Ops the Line for making such a risky game.  I think they did an excellent job overall and while many of their choices I didn’t agree with.  I think what they did do was top notch.  If not for those design choices and the choice to put in multiplayer Spec Ops the Line would probably have gotten a VERY high score.  As it stands I have to give it a 8/10 and caution to anyone who purchases this game that it has virtually no replay value and you might not feel like your getting your money’s worth from the multiplayer.  So unless you’re a PC player getting this for $25 or less, I would probably pass on buying it and rent it instead.  It is probably the high watermark for stories in games thus far this year; so you WILL want to play it.  But given it’s visceral nature, you will probably not want to play it again.

Exclusive Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Trailer! Featuring some of the Excellent Cosplay Pros of Tekken.

Tekken Tag Tournament 2

         Big props to all the ladies especially Corissa Furr who turned me on to this whole phenomenon in the first place.  Thank you for making what you do look SO EASY and cool.

Max, your such a Payne!(Max Payne 3 Review)(XBOX360)

        I want to say right out of the gate a few things about this review.  First and foremost, I did not play any of the multiplayer in Max Payne 3 in this retail version of the game.  I had a limited time with the game and was unable to have the time to complete the campaign and play Multiplayer.  Also, my comments about the game are based on the Very Easy setting in the general difficulty and the Hard Lock setting for aiming.  I did this, not because I’m a noob, but again; I had limited time with the game and I wanted to get through it as fast and as easily as I could.  In the review you will see that this was all to no avail in the end.

 

         Max Payne is one of my favorite old timey games.  Yes old timey being 2001.  It feels like a million years ago, but it was only about 11.  I was always blown away by the style of the bullet time and film noire story.  Bad stuff all ways happened to Max and that was kind of cool; because he just dealt with it and moved on.  Sure he drank too much and he was always popping pills but hey if you everyone you loved turned up dead one day and you couldn’t do anything about it, you would probably do some bad things too.  Max Payne 3 has been talked about all most since the current generation consoles had their launches way back in 2005/2006.  Many people thought that this game would never get made.  That it was just a project that would end up getting canceled after too many years in development.  There are certainly many things different about this new Max Payne.  Some good, some not so good.  But I think Rockstar definitely did right by the franchise.  Even if they probably could have made a little bit better game.

       Max Payne 3 has some excellent things going for it.  In the opening moments of the game’s campaign which are cinematics, I was blown away by and continued to be blown away by James McCaffrey as Max Payne(even if he sounds like Kiefer Sutherland).  But the voice acting in general was pretty excellent; there were a few minor annoyances but in general everyone was excellent.  I mention this right off the bat, because the game can be summed up pretty much in the same way.  Max Payne 3 is NOT an excellent game.  It is a good game with some EXCELLENT ideas.  The idea, for instance, that the main character is so toasted most of the time he can’t tell up from down; is great.  The bad part is that, the same guy can kill 5 enemies with a handgun in less than a minute.  But there is no really good way to explain bullet time and Max Payne 3 doesn’t even try.  That doesn’t really bother me that much.  But what did bother me is how “gamey” Max Payne 3 was throughout.  Sure we have some wonderful story scenes where Max contemplates suicide or the meaning of life.  But then we just fall into playing whack a mole with the bad guys as fast as we can so they don’t come around from behind and start shooting us in the back.  For a game set on it’s easiest most casual settings Max Payne 3 is a pretty hard game.  I’ve played plenty of shooters and I’ve beaten many on their hardest settings.  But this game just seems like it’s more interested in wearing you out or frustrating you than actually challenging you.  Another words, its difficult for difficulty’s sake; not because it makes sense or because it makes it challenging.  I’m not saying Max Payne 3 is a bad game, no not at all.  But if they had just toned down the number of guys in each area and maybe cut the game’s length a little.  The game would have been AMAZING.

       The biggest testimony to this is that probably by the end of Chapter 3(about a half hour or so into the game).   I was really interested in the story; but the more combat sequences they threw at me the more I just wanted to give up.  I hated the fact that I had to know where all the enemy A.I. were in every area; even with bullet time.  I did like the scaled down HUD, but I think some players might have trouble knowing when they can use bullet time or how many bullets they have left or how many shots they can take.  Most of this was fine for me, but I can see someone who isn’t as familiar with shooters having some trouble.  Also, every now and then having a guy come up behind you and spray you with a shotgun, is just not cool.  Sorry…  And then, the thing that got me the most, the one thing that the more I go over it in my head the less sense it makes comes from one particular scene about 4 hours or so into the game.  Where Max Payne and Passos are dropping a ransom off at a stadium.  They are alone and under siege by paramilitary guys.  This scene begins when Passos runs out of sniper rifle ammo and Max, on the other side of the stadium must cover him so he can escape.  Problem is that with every guy Max shoots Passos gets more agitated that there is this endless streams of guys coming from all angles.

         He even points out, “Where are all these guys coming from?”

         “NO shit!” The player wants to cry out.

        This fact alone is enough to break a suspension of disbelief; I have thought that perhaps this was done in a satirical way or perhaps to break the third wall, because Passos was that kind of character.  So I could give it that; but THEN you notice that with every guy Max shoots, the enemies drop their guns.  So the unarmed Passos could simply pick up a gun and shoot these guys himself.  Passos is a badass ex-cop who has been doing bodyguard work for years; so he can take care of himself.  Except when the game wants you to play a sniper scene that is.  The whole scene is WAY TOO LONG and made me wish that Passos would just shut up and pick a gun all ready.  I do have to say however, that in the scenes where Max and Passos are talking back and forth; usually in the same place or near each other there is some gold.  I really loved just about all their actual one on one interactions.  But most of the stuff over radios could have been completely gutted.  All most all of it just served to annoy the player further in what was usually an incredibly annoying situation to begin with.  Although in the beginning of the game Max DOES kind of infer that Passos is a bossy and annoying guy.  So maybe that was their point, well made Rockstar. I guess…

       The sound and graphics throughout the game were pretty descent and while on the XBOX 360 the game didn’t look great; and in some cases some of the character models looked terrible(see anywhere in the beginning of the game where there are more than 3 people in the room).  I felt the overall story made up for this.  Based on the single player game alone it is very hard for me to recommend this game to anyone.  It has a lot of issues and unless you like your third person shooters with a sprinkle of Call of Duty you will probably want to avoid this game completely.  I’ve seen the multiplayer at events and have certainly been impressed by its different modes and interesting choices.  But at least for the console game this one is a pretty hard sale to me.  I did really love the story and voice acting, which for some people will probably make this game a “must buy”or a “must rent”  But if I had to give an opinion, I would have to say to wait for some price cuts.  $60 is just a little too much to pay for this game as is.  6.5/10….

 

      

Okami HD Coming Exclusively to PSN this Fall!

“Grab your Celestial Brush! I’m pleased to confirm that this fall, gamers will be able to return to the land of Nippon in Okami HD, exclusively on the PS3 with PlayStation Move support. Initially released to critical acclaim on the PS2, Okami HD has the player take on the role of Amaterasu, the Japanese sun goddess, who inhabits the form of a wolf. After a tyrannical monster, Orochi, turns the world into a ruined, colorless wasteland, Amaterasu must use her magical abilities to restore the land to its previous glory and defeat the demon in charge of the destruction.

Okami HD brings Amaterasu’s epic tale to the PS3 with fully integrated HD graphics and widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio. I did not think it was possible to make the game look even better, but when I saw it for myself, I was a believer. The trademark sumi-e ink art style lends itself perfectly to HD, allowing players to experience more of the awe-inspiring world displayed in more detail than ever before.

To create an even more immersive experience, you can take your PlayStation Move motion controller and use it as your own Celestial Brush and naturally make brush strokes to defeat enemies and solve puzzles. That said, if you’re just in the mood to relive Okami in HD with the same controls as you had on your PS2, you can also play with your traditional PS3 controllers.

To top things off, we know everyone loves Trophies, so Okami HD will support PS3 Trophies, (including a Platinum) giving you new challenges to face and feats to complete. Okami HD will be available for download exclusively on PS3 in North America and Europe this fall.”Playstationblog…

       Wonderful news for anyone wanting to replay this classic or finally try it for the first time in HD!

Lollipop Chainsaw Review(PS3)

         There are plenty of things about Lollipop Chainsaw that are obvious to the casual observer.  The game is a third person action game that has some provocative elements in it.  This is a fine description and probably one that could be found on the Metacritic description line for the game.  But Lollipop Chainsaw is a little more than that.  This is a game for the hardcore gamer in a way that not that many games are now a days.  When I say that I’m not referring to the overt sexual themes or the violence.  No, neither one are very much like the typical games you might find in this genre.  When Juliet, the main character, decapitates a zombie it explodes into sparkles, rainbows, and a star that adds to your meter.  The amount of blood and gore is kept to a strict minimum.  The sexual themes, for as much as they have been beaten to death these past few months in anticiaption for the games launch are pretty light.  Juliet will wear some slightly provocative clothes and many characters will speak in innuendoes.  But I’ve seen PG-13 movies with more sexual content than this game.  These things aren’t meant to be taken anymore seriously than a Saturday Morning Cartoon for Adults.  Lollipop Chainsaw wants to be a Grindhouse game and it tries very hard to do so.  But ultimately it fails in that regard.  It certainly has some Grindhouse style but nothing like games such as House of the Dead or even Shadows of the Damned.  Perhaps this was all in the name of appealing to a broader market but as the reviews come around for this game; few people understood what the game was trying to do and even fewer even liked it.  I think this probably had to do with Lollipop Chainsaw not having a clear vision of what it was.  Just being funny, a little gory, a tad crude are just not enough here.  I tried as best I could to divine meaning from the game and certainly finally had an idea of what it PROBABLY was going for.  But only SUDA 51 himself knows for sure.

        Juliet Starling is the main character, she is a cheerleader and a zombie hunter.  Her parallels to Buffy the Vampire Slayer are apparent.  But they stop at the door of appearances.  Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the movie version; was a terrible comedy/horror romp and had the main heroine learning of her destined powers to be a vampire hunter and world savior.  She was a vapid teen that was only interested in boys and being prom queen.  The revelation of her do or die destiny was more of a burden than a self defining feature and in the movie she was really only slaying vampires for the last  20 minutes or so and then not very well.  Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the television show, featured a Buffy that was also a cheerleader; although this aspect was played down a lot from the movie version.   Also as someone who was reasonably intelligent.  But she all ways felt like an outsider and even though she had SOME friends she usually felt like everything wasn’t as important as everyone made out.  She was a pretty tough chick to begin with, at least emotionally.  She also had immense strength and agility for all of her life, unlike the movie Buffy.  But when she found out she was a vampire slayer and destined to save the world she tried to balance normal life and the life of a slayer and usually ended up just being a slayer.  The television Buffy was incredibly deep and conflicted;  which is why Sarah Michelle Gellar won numerous awards for playing her and Joss Whedon is probably one of the best directors that television has ever had.  So it would be nigh to impossible to convey this kind of thing in a Grindhouse style video game.  Nor was that what Lollipop Chainsaw was trying to do.

     All of this teen turmoil and overdone comedy is mostly lacking from Lollipop Chainsaw and Juliet Starling is really neither of these women or perhaps both.  She is at once determined to save the world and Nick(her boyfriend who she beheads in the beginning of game to save him from turning completely into a zombie.  He spends the rest of the game on her hip), has a strong family bond with because her whole family are Zombie Hunters, and she loses all of her friends, except for Nick at the very beginning of the game.  Juliet also seems relatively well adjusted to the facts of her life and only really sees to explain them logically to Nick rather than trying to prove something to herself about it.  So Juliet may seem vapid, like the movie Buffy; but determined, like the TV Buffy.  Don’t confuse them, because she both and neither.  Which is probably what made some players annoyed at her right at the start.  When you’re a tough girl and someone calls you a whore, you say something back.  When your Juliet Starling you either ignore them or cut off their freaking head.  She has nothing to prove to anyone about her promiscuity or her way of dressing.  She just doesn’t care.  This fact being further muddled by her “dirty old man” mentor, who was obviously put in for sight gags and comic relief.  Which would have probably been fine had it been handled better.  Over the course of the game the story itself continues to be handled badly.  I all ways found myself wondering why the Juliet Starling at the games beginning wasn’t really the same one at the game’s end.  Perhaps it was the constant introduction of new family members and game mechanics.  I’m not sure.  But I can say that overall the story of the game was handled pretty badly.  I’m not saying that for a Grindhouse style story you need to be complex or emotionally deep.  But what you do need, is to be consistent.  Even consistently inconsistent would be fine.  Which Lollipop Chainsaw borders on.

      The gameplay in Lollipop Chainsaw is definitely the shining crown on top of this game.  The game is basically a third person action arcade shooter.  Meaning that there is a lot of emphasis placed on time and score.   There are some attempts in this very music themed game to have some rhythm challenges and such but most are very lackluster and uninteresting.  Once you’ve beaten the game once, going back through in Ranking Mode, ranks you on everything from the medals you collect to the time it takes you to complete the level.  Once you get past the basic story mode and get into the Ranking Mode the game changes significantly.  I would all most venture to say that the game is actually two games.  One with a story, pacing, and some sense of trying to be funny.  The other simply a game about getting the best score in the fastest time the most complicated way possible.  Beating the top score will get you on to the online leaderboards where again, you compete to see who is the best Zombie Hunter.  There is a huge upgrade system in the game for everything from attributes like Health and Strength to combos that you also need to unlock.  All this done through medals that you earn from killing zombies or you find in the levels.  Also there are areas that require the use of some of the special transformation that you get through the story progression and have hard locks to that progression even with new Game Plus and/or Ranking Mode.  I’m guessing because one in particular could be game breaking otherwise.

         These transformations are actually the part of Lollipop Chainsaw that brought down the game as a whole.  I think they are basically what could be called out as being what’s ultimately wrong with the game.  The “Chainsaw Blaster",”  which is a basically an assault rifle, is a transformation you get about half way through the game.  It turns some portions of the game into third person shooter, which would be fine, but it’s available all the time. As long as you have bullets for it(you can buy them if want).  The game could be virtually a third person shooter.  The Chainsaw Blaster is SO powerful that it will usually take down enemies in one or two hits.  Which is a lot different from chain-sawing them.  The only slightly less game breaking transformation of the “Chainsaw Dash,” which allows to Juliet to simply run over zombies while she is moving at top speed looked like it was originally used for the travel mechanic of getting her from one large area  to the next.  This is less of an issue because even with picking up oil cans to keep you going, the player will not be able to use this much outside of the areas it was made for; however, since you can get bonuses and bonus awards for using it.  I can see it getting spammed all most as much as Chainsaw Blaster.

      The hardest part of Lollipop Chainsaw are not the multistage uncheckpointed boss battles.  No, the hardest part are skill challenges.  Games like Zombie Basketball, or a keep away game with fiery zombies running toward your Birthday Cake of Dynamite.  These are one fail affairs and every time you lose the challenge, you die.  In doing so, you use a continue which takes off points your final score and off your overall rank.  This would be all fine in Ranked Mode.  But in Story Mode, it is more than a little annoying.  Especially because as the game progresses these challenges get longer and longer and they too are not checkpointed in ANY WAY.  If nothing else what could have been used as a change of pace mechanic ends up bogging down the flow of the game.

       Anyone’s biggest take away from Lollipop Chainsaw and this can be said of about any game that SUDA 51 has a hand in, are the BOSS BATTLES.  They are normally very inventive and different.  Usually requiring the player to experiment a little with different strategies before finding the boss’s weakness.  Lollipop Chainsaw does have SOME of this.  But, mostly due to the Chainsaw Blaster, the later level bosses are just not as difficult as the earlier ones.  In fact, TWO of the bosses seem to have been designed specifically with the Chainsaw Blaster in mind.  Which is great!  But the ones that don’t really aren’t very impressive due to it.  Fortunately or unfortunately for me; I refused to buy ammo for the Chainsaw Blaster.  So I usually had to ACTUALLY work to beat some of these bosses.  If you really NEEDED the Chainsaw Blaster to defeat a boss, bullets for it would spawn around the level as you used them.  Otherwise it was just a possible option if you had bullets.  I really did love the bosses in this game but they certainly weren’t of the caliber that have appeared in other SUDA 51 games.  While this might have had to do with James Gunn writing the story or perhaps the fact that Grasshopper had decided to try and make this game more, “Western friendly.”  Which sounds awful; I don’t know.

      

         I suppose if I had to sum up my feelings about Lollipop Chainsaw they would be, “Excitedly disappointed.”  I really enjoyed most of the game from a gameplay perspective.  Some of the parts of the game were absolutely brilliant and anyone who doesn’t have the entire soundtrack stuck in their head; word for word by the time they are done playing had the sound turned off.  But I have to say that it wasn’t what I was expecting.  With all the hype and madness surrounding this game I was expecting a more crazy version of Saints Row the Third thematically.  A story somewhat similar to Shadows of the Damned.  And probably most importantly a main character that I would really understand by the end of the game.  None of this really happened.  Lollipop Chainsaw came very close to living up to it’s potential but it just doesn’t quite make it.  The other problem is that I have a hard time recommending it to anyone but fans of SUDA 51.  Which is a pretty hard sell to most people. Mainly due to the fact that if you really like SUDA 51 you probably own a copy the of the game all ready and have played through it at least once.  So even though I really loved you Lollipop Chainsaw, I’m going to have to make a WTD? Move(you will get that if you play the game) and give it a 8/10…