Happy Halloween! Lollipop Chainsaw Trailer!

Skylanders are Just for Kids! ;)

Mark of the Assassin Gets High Marks. (Dragon Age 2)

         After the last bit of DLC, I was reticent to give the latest expansion to Dragon Age 2 a chance.  But Tallis, the new character in the expansion is modeled after and voiced by Felicia Day(of the Guild, Dragon Age Redemption, Dollhouse, and Sarah Connor Chronicles fame.)  Whom I love.  So I figured I’d at least give it a chance.  So I loaded up my main save, where Hawke is level 21 and jumped in; using the now standard system of clicking on a monument in your house.

         The beginning of the expansion is great, you are able to pick whom ever you choose to play with as long as you have Tallis in your party.  Which is good, considering even with respeccing Tallis there are moments where things can get a little crazy when fighting one of the new monster types.  But the combat is the combat.  It appears that the expansion scales to whatever level your at in the beginning.  And if you are high level, your probably only going to get one or two levels of experience.

         The entire expansion is very story driven and while some of it can seem a little madcap.  I won’t go through the whole plot of the story here, because it is very important to your enjoyment of the expansion that you don’t know what happens.  Unlike in the last expansion where so little happened I could have explained it  inelegantly in one sentence.  Tirelessly fighting through the same sets of corridors isn’t my favorite thing, especially when they are the same enemies.  What I did like was that there was all ways a story beat.  The close interaction between Tallis and Hawke makes the expansion seem very cinematic in the way that it is presented.  Removing some of the weirdness that comes from having four people together all the time.

        I wasn’t a big fan of the stealth section that occurs 3 quarters of the way through.  While the castle, does get a bit annoying after a while, it’s not too bad.  The new environments in the game are wonderful and I’m glad they didn’t recycle anything from the main game or last expansion.  There is a mini-boss fight toward the beginning and then toward the end there is a very good boss fight that has some smart design.  Much less esoteric than the last expansion.

         As a whole the the expansion is great albeit a bit short at around(2-4 hours on Normal) and while I would have really loved to retain Tallis as a permanent member of my party in the rest of  the game.  I might have even played through the entire game again if there was more I could have learned about her.   But as implied in the story a couple of times; I doubt this is the last we will see of Tallis.  This is a story driven character vehicle.  If you haven’t seen Dragon Age Redemption, go see it on Youtube.  If you don’t like Felicia Day or Tallis your not going to like this.  For around $10, you get a good story, a few new pieces of gear, 2 new types of monsters, and probably around 2 levels of experience.  With all this in mind I give Mark of the Assassin a 8.5/10.

Nightwing DLC Hits Nov 1st(Batman Arkham City)

Forza Motorsport 4 Review (XBOX 360)

         Forza Motorsport 4 is one of the best racing games I've ever played. The game isn't perfect, but no other title out this generation is as amazing as a total package as Forza 4. Racing games usually boil down to numbers. Like features, number of cars, graphics, sound, etc... But there is really more to a racing game than this. Let's start with that though...

         Forza Motorsport 4 has more than 500 cars, 25 tracks, and some amazing features.  Among these a Rivals mode that works similarly to the EA Autolog. Here times in certain events are taken from your friends and Car Club members and you try and beat them.
The main feature that has been stressed by the developers of Forza Motorsport 4 is the Autovista Mode.  This allows the player to examine a car in depth with both visual and audio commentary on each piece of the car.  The doors open, the engine reeves, the player can examine parts of the dashboard, etc...  The commentary is provided by the folks at the popular television show Top Gear.   Each car is rendered down to the most intricate detail.  The cars in this game are ALL rendered perfectly.  But the cars in Autowista are modeled in ways that would be invisible in the other cars in the game.  All of this is wonderful and it DOES kind of remind me of some of the segments on Top Gear.  But this mode is barely necessary and frankly seems to be the only real black mark on what is an amazing package. The time spent in Autovista should have gone into upgrading some of the other parts of the main game that are lacking when compared to similarly simulated experiences.
          The Career Mode has two modes; the World Tour where you play through a different events that seem to be randomly generated for you based somewhat on what car your in and what level of driver experience you have at the time.  As you go through six driver championships there are increases in difficulty as you progress.  Mostly this is represented in smarter driver A.I.  And fewer rewinds. Until you reach the final World Tour championship level where the rewinds are not available and the A.I. Can be sporadically very difficult.  The other option in the Career Mode is to play through Events manually in the Event List area.  This allows you to choose the events yourself.  But there are no championships or championship progression.
        The Career Mode is also where the player is going to be customizing and upgrading your cars.  This is also where your going to be creating design and tuning packages.
The other main area is the Community Mode.  Here you will find the online racing area, the Rivals Events, Car Clubs, Auction House, and Storefront. These features are all expanded and wonderful from Forza Motorsport 3.  There are more online race types like Virus and Cat and Mouse.  While I really did enjoy the online area.  There is certainly some streamlining that could have been done.  There is still a lot of loading, waiting, and menus that have to be gone through before you can actually race.  
        The Car Clubs area is new and this is where you can join or create a car club and share your cars.  There are some limitations here however, cars cannot be shared if they are downloadable content and the person who is sharing the content doesn't have the car.  Which seems silly.  Shared cars can only be used online.  Which usually gives the participant a wide variety of cars to choose from.  So unless you are tuning or upgrading a car in a special way.  There isn't much reason to use these.  Cars shared won't necessarily have the design you put on it, as if the design is locked; it too will be unavailable for the person borrowing the car.  This too seems silly as, wouldn't a locked design be good advertising for the designer?  So more cars that the design is on, the better. 
       The Auction House and Storefronts are improved menu design wise.  But there are still too many menus.  When you bid on a car you can't bid more until you go through a few menus.  And then there is the silly receive credits/resolve auction menus.  You have to go through additional menus to finish out your auction whether to get your money back or the car you won.  Just send it to my account automatically.  Why the extra steps?  Throughout all this there is waiting, loading, etc..  I definitely, as all ways really love the Auction House and Storefront features.  I wish there was even more to them than there is.
While there are some great extra features in this game.  The main thing your going to be doing in this game is racing.  While Forza 4 isn't perfect in this regard it is still the best game out on any console right now for racing.  Every car feels different,  every interior is rendered perfectly, and the audio model for each car is awesome.  Each car can be upgraded and doing these upgrades makes an impact on speed, handling, etc..  Unlike other customization centered car games, there is no instance where upgrading a car destroys the performance of the car. Which even Forza 3 made this mistake.  Of course, if you want your Mini to be a Supercar, you might be dreaming.  Because cars that don't have 12 cylinders to begin with, usually don't have the wheel base to support high speed and high speed turning.  So while you will definitely be able to pimp your ride; just don't expect a Lamborghini for the price of a Datsun.
        There are short comings however; There are no weather effects, no night races, and the tracks themselves can sometimes amount to virtually the track itself.  There are certainly some limited terrain effects on the tracks.  But this is mostly done to slow down cars not change their handling.  But even with all this taken into consideration Turn 10 has made and is still making some of the best racing content to ever grace a console.
Every car in the game makes you want to play longer. I completed this game's career mode incredibly fast.  In just twelve days, I finished the World Tour mode and I hit Driver Level 59.  This is far higher than I hit in the entire course of time playing Forza 3.  Which I played a great deal.  While some of this is due to the revamped Driver Level system where you get experience for doing everything from Online Races to Rivals Races to the Main Career Mode Races. But it is still a testament to how wonderful the game is, and how much the actual work has been done from one game to the next.
For sixty dollars, this is a huge package with more than 30+ hours of gameplay.  If you even like racing games you will love this one.  Especially if you've played Forza 3, you really need to play Forza 4.  9/10.

Online Passes: The Splintering of an Already Splintered Market

 

   When the Cerberus Network debuted a couple of years ago I was one of those people who smiled nodded and didn't think much about it. I was thinking, “Well, it's EA what do you expect. They will figure out that this pass stuff is just not worth the effort and move on.” Boy, was I wrong...

  Every publisher out there now seems so interested in this online pass system that there even different versions of it based on what game you get. Some limit you to a number of hours online, number of levels, some games just drop a bunch of stuff behind the pay wall of the online pass like it was extra DLC. There seems like a theory within the publishing community that this will guarantee that people not sell back their games or somehow prevent piracy? Which if I'm getting the game for free, I'm probably not all that interested in the online anyway. But who knows, I might be wrong.

  The real problem with all this is not the problem of significantly driving down the prices for games on the secondary market. Whether your selling on Ebay or at Gamestop; if you don't have your unused online pass your game is worth not just $10 less but probably more like half price.

The real problem is that most of the games that have online passes right now, are not big multiplayer games to begin with. If your not Call of Duty, Halo, or Gears of War; Your online is struggling simply to exist. And then you have the audacity to actually limit the number of people playing? This applies to everyone playing online. Whether you are level 1 without an online pass or level 25 who has either redeemed your pass or paid for one. You are significantly impacted by the online pass system. Why? Because people who play the single player of most of these games won't even try the online if they don't have the online pass or don't understand how this system works.

  I think publishers were thinking about existing players when they came up with this system. But what are the existing players for a game like Warhammer 40K Space Marine? None... By the end of the first week that the game was out; it was incredibly hard to find a match. This is because the pool of people needs to be very large in order to provide a descent experience.

Matchmaking takes a big pool of people. At least in it's current form. When developers talk about TruSkill matchmaking; it all sounds wonderful. But TruSkill NEEDS a VERY LARGE group of people to work effectively. Call of Duty Black Ops even has matchmaking issues and they are the biggest multiplayer game out there. The idea that a new IP is going to be able to survive with an online pass is insane. A non-AAA franchise like FEAR or even a new to online franchise like Dead Space is not going to be helped by an online pass.

The stated reason for the Online Pass system is to prevent people from reselling their game. What REALLY prevents people from reselling their game is compelling multiplayer and single player content with consistent downloadable content that makes the game worth keeping. While an Online Pass is a cheap way to try and fix a very expensive problem. All the Pass System really does is discourage people who didn't buy your game new from even trying the online multiplayer which when games are struggling to keep online communities to begin with; ends up hurting everyone. The alternative, of course, is to drop online multiplayer in ALL CASES where it doesn't provide a unique experience. Of course, a completely digital distributed system would completely prevent issues of reselling and online passes. But that is even more expensive and complicated issue than making a good game with good multiplayer. But this is probably the only future that makes sense for everyone in the end.

Battlefield 3 Beta Impressions (XBOX 360)

       Aiming through the holographic scope, I check my corners again as I fiddle with the zoom button. Up, down, up, damn... I fire a bunch of erratic shots narrowly escaping death; presumably killing my target only because he didn't see me prone. As he fired a wild spray of shots himself every which way before he went down.

       A sniper shot whips by my head, knocking out my hearing and I run toward the bridge I was covering only to have the second shot, hit me square in the head killing me. The dying animation comes up, which is my hand rising futility for a second. Almost trying to fight back with the last little bit of effort or reaching for some invisible salvation. It's hard to say, but the first few times you see it, it is definitely moving in a strange, subtle way.

      This is not some dream or excerpt from a novel. It's a typical episode one might encounter in the Battlefield 3 Beta for the XBOX 360, PS3, and PC. For full disclosure I was in the Battlefield 3 PC Alpha. But I haven't pre-ordered and I have no other link to the game or it's developers.

     Most people, the developer included, would probably say that this multiplayer flavor of Battlefield is extremely challenging. I would say it's very difficult. It's not Bad Company 2, it's not Modern Warfare 2, no it's harder than that. What makes it so hard? Well, bullets do a realistic job of killing you. If the player gets shot more than 3 times, they are dead. The weapons have appropriate kick; the heavier your gun the more recoil there is. There are bipods, steadying devices for lighter weight guns, and a whole slew of different scopes. All of this help you aim and shoot better. But you NEED to get incredibly used to playing with your gun in order to use it accurately.

     There is terrain deformation; which means that if you stand behind a glass or wooden barrier. Your going to die. If an RPG hits the wall that you happen to be hiding behind; you are probably going to die as well. You can crawl, go prone, and of course crouch. If you don't do these things your also going to die. In some FPS games you can run around stabbing people, and narrowly escape death, if you are lucky enough or skilled enough to do so. This WILL NOT work in Battlefield 3. Mostly because people see you coming and their squad sees you coming and they shoot you before you can get anywhere close to stabbing distance.

     In fact, in the mode we were playing, Rush (Where one team must defend computers from being destroyed while another team tries to destroy those computers by planting C4 on them. It is a classic Battlefield mode.) I've seen guys run toward one of the computers only to be literally mowed down by the hail of bullets flying through them.

    There were a few small problems with the Beta. Firstly, during one match some of my progress wasn't saved from one round to the next. Which was a small thing, but a little annoying. There were a couple of cases where once the sound was interrupted due to environmental reasons; it didn't come back in an appropriate amount of time. Again, this was a small thing. Finally, the water effects in the game where it comes to a small pond in one area of one of the maps, seemed static and unmoving. Certainly this was probably an area that simply needed more polish. But again, not a big deal. I've been playing the XBOX 360 version of the Beta since it went wide and other than some annoying matchmaking issues when connecting to servers I never experienced any truly serious bugs. The game was playable and fun. Even if it took quite a while to get used to.

   While not currently having access to vehicles is annoying; it might have been a way for players to get used to the new controls and game mechanics in this new Battlefield; before throwing even more complexity at them with the learning to use the vehicles. I can only wonder if the vehicles will be an absolutely essential part of Battlefield the way they are in Bad Company 2 . Tanks, planes, and helicopters win matches. No matter how good an engineer or group of engineers are it usually boils down to who has the most armor and the ability to use it in the end.

  Here's hoping the next phase of the Beta has vehicles. If not, I'll be there the first week to give you the lowdown on the final version. For right, other than some network issues(EA please, just across the board, fix that stuff will you!). Battlefield 3 is looking like an excellent game and one certainly equipped to compete with the a little more arcade-like Modern Warfare 3.

Themes of Gears of War!

        War is a pretty obvious theme of Gears of War. After all, it's in the title. But this is more of the essence of war than the kind that any one in the West has ever experienced. Because the wars of Sera have lasted hundreds of years. There are people who's whole lives they have known nothing but war. Women don't work because they are needed to bare children because so many people have died in war. Food is rationed to the degree that the civilian population is starving in order to keep the army going. The COG is also part of this War theme. COGs and gears, these two things go together as pieces of a machine. This is the machine of war or by the Stranded's standard's the machine of oppression. This brings us to the next major theme in Gears of War.

      Freedom isn't what people are fighting for in Gears of War. They are fighting for survival. While COGs know that the Locust take people hostage or kill them. Most others believe that the Locust just kill people. This is what the player believes in Gears of War, then in Gears of War 2 the Locusts were shown using humans for experiments and in work camps. Seemed to be a call back to the Holocaust and the Nazis. But similarly to some insurgents or conquered peoples in our world; most Stranded blame the COG for all the troubles of the world. But there is also the element an element of Stalinism to the COG. Either a person is with them or against them. While Stranded are usually tolerated; they are all ways considered as the other, the people who don't fit into what the life and the state require of them. It isn't a matter of freedom of choice; it's a matter of whether or not you are part of the problem or part of the solution. Its an extreme version of emergency procedures.

      Brotherhood is the glue that holds the COG together. Without it, there is no respect and no sense of order within the COG. They have lost everything, their families, many of the friends, and in some cases any sense of normality that most of us would recognize. At one point in Jacinto's Remnant Cole realizes that he had only seen what most would consider normal life in paintings in the COG's capital building. This is the kind of thing that Brotherhood helps; it's easier to deal with a severely terrible life with the help of people you trust. Considering trust, usually comes with watching each others backs this means Brotherhood. This sense of comradeship may seem foreign to us or even comedic. But one must remember that if you lived in New York and then watched it sink into the ocean only to then live in a war torn ruin of a city; perhaps sticking together to the end with some friends might not be a bad idea.

     Destoryed Beauty is also something that many people bring up about Gears of War. This is the idea that a beautiful place is destroyed and its remains are still beautiful. While some people would argue with the word beautiful here, I think I would perhaps replace it with compelling.

     Destroyed Beauty runs through the entire series and can even be seen in the characters themselves. They are scarred, haggard, but in most cases beautiful. Not because of their physical beauty but because of their unshakable determination to survive. While this might not seem beautiful to some people; I think it is THIS that makes Gears of War so attractive to SO many different people. There are plenty of other reasons; but I think this is one subconscious theme, that makes us all really love Gears of War.

    Finally, in the Gears of War series the main theme of course is that of Fathers and Sons. Marcus and Dominic have lost everything; until Marcus realizes his Father may still live at the end of Gears of War 2 and then again at the beginning of Gears of War 3. Dominic has lost his wife and family. Which is all about the other side of the loss Marcus is feeling. They are in many ways mirrors of each other. Marcus the Rock and Dominic the emotional wreck. There is much more to both of them than that, of course; but these are the themes that run through their characters.

Tokyo Game Show: Why are we interested in this again?

Tokyo Game Show 2011 just wrapped. I wasn't in Tokyo, not that I wouldn't have liked to be. But seeing all the coverage that came out of Tokyo, I have to say that I'm more underwhelmed than ever.       Every year since 2007 it seems like the show has gotten more and more derivative. Perhaps, the close proximity in time to PAX or Gamescom might be the reason. With the exception of Capcom and Namco. This year's show seemed lackluster to say the least.

       Sony was completely consumed by Playstation Vita and as predicted Nintendo was showing off 3DS games that probably should have been there for launch. It is hard to get excited about new 3DS games when the games that have come out have been so horribly done.  Even ports, seem like major issues for these developers.  So how much faith do I have in new games? None to very little...

      In a year that seems to be self explanatory that the handheld platform is an aging dinosaur both companies are holding on to their investments for dear life. There hasn't been a single 3DS release this year that has been worth the price of admission for the system or the game. Playstation Vita while looking pretty also is saddled with memory card, battery life, and hardware quality issues. Sounds like the PSP all over again.

       I certainly loved all the features about Dark Souls, Persona's fighting game, Street Fighter x Tekken, Soul Calibur V, and of course the Ultimate Marvel versus Capcom 3 stuff.

      So that was my impression of Tokyo Game Show. What did I miss? Let me know in the comments section or on Facebook…

Dead Island: A Study in Terror!

    Standing by a pool you are surrounded by zombies. Some shambling, some running at you. They make a gutteral groaning noise and then you are thrown into action. Not because you are ready to fight but because your foes have reached the length of the bloody oar you hold. One swipe across your field of view leads to the zombie dropping. But another is already on you. You kick it away and try an overhead strike with your blood cake oar. While doing this you are backing up, because you don't want to get surrounded or cornered. That can only mean death. The zombies are on their feet again, and as the first one begins to come toward you, you strike again, having your oar snap. You grab the broomstick near you and hurl it into the skull of the other zombie just as it is beginning to rise again. You are panting and covered in blood.

   This is a relatively typical encounter in Dead Island...

  When I heard about Dead Island for the first time, I was completely unimpressed. To me it was just another zombie game. Even seeing the much hyped trailer seemed to just be a form of misdirection rather than an actual advertisement for the game.

  The impressive thing about Dead Island is not the story, or the graphics, or even the mechanical systems. It is visceral combat, mixed with the design of this open world. I'm usually not much of an open world game player. I enjoyed Red Dead Redemption and Infamous. But that's about the extent of it. I hated that L.A.Noire was open world and I've never touched a GTA for more than a few minutes. It's just not my thing.

  Dead Island however, provides something I felt sorely lacking in just about every other video game except perhaps the original Bioshock. A sense of fear. What was around the next corner? How many zombies would there be? Would they be infected just regular zombies? What would happen next?

  When Dead Island did this right, it did it VERY RIGHT! But there were plenty of problems, bugs, etc... That would keep the player from getting into the game in this visceral way. Dead Island isn't Dead Space. But it is head and shoulders above something like Left 4 Dead. But only as a single player experience. If you are with others, you feel powerful; unstoppable even. My very few sessions with others were fun; but all of the danger was removed from the game. Except maybe, losing my progress due to a game crashing bug.

  I really liked putting points into my skill tree and seeing what happened. I was thrilled when I was able to build or upgrade weapons. Even if early on in the game this seems a bit limited.

While the initial commercial may have generated huge hype for this game. I can't say Deep Silver made any big mistakes with Dead Island except maybe in the area of not making a compelling story. Zombie stories are pretty much dime a dozen simplistic fair. So creating something unique here probably would have been difficult. But failing to include something compelling was probably more of a factor of time, budget, and design concerns than being uncreative. Perhaps they will have enough cash to do it right in Dead Island 2, I just hope there will be enough gamers left to take another chance on yet another zombie game.

Space Marine Warhammer 40K “This is NOT a Review!”(X360)

      Just so we get this out of the way right off; I am a big fan of Warhammer 40K’s video games.  I’ve played every Warhammer RTS that’s come out and I love them the way that some girls love chocolate.  They can’t get enough and they eat it slowly; sensually even.   So when I say that there are things I don’t like about this latest of games from Relic and THQ.  It’s not because I either don’t understand or don’t appreciate the material.  In fact, it’s because of this that I have some problems.

      I certainly love the feel of the game’s controls.  Every movement makes the player feel like a badass Space Marine.  A seven foot titan of man who knows no fear and is filled with the power of the Emperor.  Rushing into a horde of Orks with only your chain sword and bolter is no problem at all.  Even the silly system of getting health from execution moves, once gotten used to, is a pretty good system.  But I STILL would have preferred recharging health.  Mostly because it would fit.  Nanomachines within each Marine repairs their damage.  So, really, the current system is just an excuse to do execution moves all the time.  Not that, that’s a bad thing, these moves are cool and fun; even if their animation priorities can kill you if you do them at an inopportune time.

     The variety of weapons in the game is vast and probably more than the average Marine would have on a mission.  But it’s fun to play with all the different effects; and yes, some weapons work better in some situations than others.  But I would have been happy to carry the war hammer and plasma bolter the whole game, but that doesn’t necessarily work in every situation the game puts in. Sadly…

       Unfortunately this arsenal is the first thing that begins to chip away at Space Marine’s glossy armor.  First, the game really never requires the player to use one weapon over another.  So why have them in there?  Also, the amount of cannon fodder in Parts 1-3 of the game can get really old unless the player is simply playing with different weapons.  I would have liked to see more Chaos Marines and different daemons earlier in the game to make the game not only a little more varied but reduce the amount of battle fatigue that some of the sections can create.  Chaos Marines are smart and more deadly than Orks.  Which would have really changed the early game.  Not that the final boss is anything to go crazy over.

     I did really like, the mid-boss Ork battle.  It was hard without being stupid.  Also, I did like how it required the player to change up his tactics.  That is what a boss battle should be.  As much as I liked the fury meter in the game, I also felt that this was a weak way of handling crowd control.  In the RTS games, the Marines have different equipment and powers they can activate; it would have been a lot of fun to explore these in a third person shooter.  They have barely scratched the surface of this breath of choices in this game.

   The rest of the game is great.  Graphics, sound, even a descent story with likable characters.  Especially Captain Titus.  He is unwavering, he is a man who gets things done.  The perfect UltraMarine.  But he still puts people over mission, which is a nice touch to the game.  The way, it is the game’s length is about right at around 6-9 hours depending on difficulty and how good the player is at the game.  I died often, mostly from stupid mistakes I made.

       Multiplayer…  I loved it and hated it.  The player is able to unlock different armors, that do nothing special, different perks(that unlock too slowly), some different weapons(that mostly do what your weapons do in single player), and the player gets three different classes of Marine.  No Librarians, no TechPriests, and no crazy powers.  Especially from the Chaos side of things, a Sorcerer would have made quite a difference.  I like the modes (Team Deathmatch, and Capture and Hold).  But it all ways seemed like the games devolved into one team standing on one side of the map shooting the other.  The single player is all about melee and the multiplayer seems to be all about gun play.  It is a very startling break.  The melee in multiplayer exists and it can be good in some cases.  But for the most part, it devolves into two guys mashing buttons until one guy wins or some one comes from behind and starts shooting.  Having so few maps certainly makes it easy for new players to get into the game, but players will tire of them quickly.  This could certainly be solved with some DLC.  But I was playing in the launch week for the game, and it was already starting to become difficult to find games.  Matchmaking had to put higher level players into lower level games just to fill up teams.  Which created the problem that because so much is behind XP unlock walls, the lower level character the player has the weaker they are.  One or two high level characters can completely destroy the balance between teams.

        Probably more health would help to make multiplayer more interesting; but creating character classes around weapons seems limiting.  I certainly would have liked to see a Librarian like in the XBLA game Kill Team.  Which seems to be a much better representation of the Warhammer Universe.  But has it’s own problems.  I think a game that was a cross between Space Marine and Kill Team probably would have been the best way to go.

     Would I buy Space Marine?  No, but I would rent it.  But if you find the multiplayer more compelling than I do; you would probably do well buying it.  The multiplayer could easily occupy someone for a couple dozen hours at least.  But, again, this isn’t a review…

   

    

    

Deus Ex Human Revolution “This is not a Review”

“

     While I never played the original Deus Ex games.  I do know a fair amount about them and certainly have watched others play portions of them.  I wasn’t very impressed; I found them a little more than a little out of date.  When people start playing around with floppy disks in the future, my suspension of disbelief begins to melt away.  But those games aside, none of that suspension needs to be worried too much about in the latest game Deus Ex Human Revolution which is supposed to be the prequel to the series.  How, I’m not quite sure; but hey, I’m not an authority on the universe.

    The game is kind of a hybrid; it’s a shooter, RPG, and a stealth action game.  The main theme of the game, is having CHOICE.  Well, that’s great; but most of the time, even playing on the lowest difficulty, your main choice is to whether or not you’d like to proceed with the game.  Making an improper choice, usually putting your PRAXIS points in the wrong place, can impede your game progress.  I’ve talked to friends who are also playing the game, and people who play the game as basically a hacking/stealth game.  Usually find the game enjoyable and fun.  But that doesn’t seem like much of a choice to me.

    Of course, all of these people had the problem that the boss battles; were very difficult for the people who didn’t add at least one offensive augment to their arsenal.  Which, goes against the whole rest of what the game had been telling them.

      I found numerous bugs in the game.  For instance, during a sequence at the beginning of the game.  You are supposed to be able to disable a turret, that there is no way to disable.  Even with the code to the security network, you are unable to do so.  Also, in the first boss battle in the game; I shot him with two rockets and he simply shrugged it off like I shot him with the handgun.  I guess there was a particular way I HAD to kill that boss; not much choice there either.  Along with that, I had many instances of enemies detecting my presence without seeing me.  Once I was around the corner from some enemies and they all of a sudden went on high alert and ran around the corner to start shooting me.  Finally, for all the games bluster about talking your way out of situations.  Not one policeman ever questioned me before just starting to shoot me.

      None of my comments above, really take away too much from the playability of the game.  As long as you know that in Deus Ex Human Revolution you MUST: focus on hacking, stealth, and finally take one offensive augment like the Typhoon weapon system.  Otherwise, you will have a very hard time, even on the lowest difficulty setting.  Also, unlike all most every shooter in the world, you can take around 7 bullets before you are dead. 15 bullets with full armor.  So, if for some reason you don’t take my advice about the stealth; your going to need to play the game as a third person shooter and stick to cover.  Which is also fine, but it wasn’t my choice.  Maybe it’s yours…

The El Shaddai “This is NOT a Review,,,”

  El Shaddai Ascension of the Metatron is a wonderful game.  That being said, it has some SERIOUS problems.  But first, I will discuss what I love about the game.  The beginning of El Shaddai starts with you as Enoch.  You are trying to shackle and purify fallen angels in order to prevent the Great Flood.

      The wonderful part of the game is the way it slowly and airily builds up in both tone and difficulty.  El Shaddai is a game about beauty and style.  Every part of the game seems handcrafted to make the player appreciate some form of aesthetic.  Even the the fact that the player can just mash a couple of buttons and come back to life; makes the player believe initially that the game is more about the journey than the destination.  There is a wonderful lack of HUD.  The game shows the player all they need to know with visual cues like armor breaking as the main character loses health.  The whole game is a kind of anime inspired Bible story.  Which the subject matter of the game is based on the Book of Enoch.  An omitted book from the Bible.  This is pretty cool, but most players won’t need this basis for enjoying the game.

      The combat which takes place in arena style areas; with the ability to use only one weapon at a time and not be able to switch weapons except when the player steals the weapon of their enemy.  Soon, the player learns how to rotate from one weapon to another to get the best effect.  Most of the bosses in the game are more vulnerable to one weapon or another; and in these cases you are allowed a limited window to pick the weapon of the player’s choosing to defeat the boss.  The combat is pretty mashy but it is also very tactile and satisfying.  I also, love the fact that not every boss battle is winnable.  For story reasons, the game sometimes makes some boss battles unwinnable.  Which is unique and cool.

      There is a lot of variety  in the environments and gameplay in the El Shaddai.  Everything from a light cycle sequence to platforming through sidescrolling moving vistas.  Unlike most games these days El Shaddai allows to player to experience a varied experience with all most every part of the game, making every area a joy to play through.  This is mainly because, if the player doesn’t like an area they know that the next area will be different.  As I can remember only Uncharted as done a similar or better job of achieving this.

    The difficulty of the game can only be set as to how hard the enemies are but not how hard the platforming puzzles are.  Which makes the enjoyment of the actual story hinge on how good of a platformer the player is.  Which unless the player is a Super Mario Galaxy profession you might have some trouble.  By the time the player is just a few hours into the game.  The platforming in the game which was originally a fun distraction takes center stage.  The platforming in the game is too floaty and inaccurate to take that kind of leading roll in a game that really seems more about story, style, and combat rather than jumping from here to there in 2D or 3D.  The platforming made me stop playing the game many times; whereas in earlier sections it was difficult for me to stop playing.  But in these later sequences I kept wanting to stop playing because the difficulty had spiked SO severely.  In a game with no manual camera control, that much platforming is really too punishing for even the most experienced player.

    In a game that does everything else SO WELL, it is really disappointing that it’s perfection is held back so severely by unreasonable platforming.  This game is manageable as a platformer as long as it sticks to the 2D plane.  But when it tries to be tricky and go for a fully three dimensional view, it shows its deficiencies completely.  As much as I love what El Shaddai is trying to do, it just fails to deliver a game the average gamer would or should want to finish.  While I’m certainly not saying that no one should play this game.  I am saying that before you pick up the game you should know what your getting.  An action platformer and not an especially good one; at least on the platforming side anyway.

Looks like the Best Thing Ever!

Excellent Chinatown Fair Documentary

Chinatown Fair: a documentary from Mark Hayes on Vimeo.