lozengez's GameSpot Friend's Reviews lozengez's GameSpot Friend's Reviews lozengez's GameSpot Friend's Reviews en-us Copyright (c)1995-2013 CBS Interactive. All rights reserved. http://www.gamespot.com 20 Tue, 21 May 2013 09:52:05 -0700 GameSpot lozengez's GameSpot Friend's Reviews http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/shared/promos/misc/gs_logo.gif http://www.gamespot.com 135 40 Mon, 29 Apr 2013 13:21:57 -0700 jg4xchamp reviewed BioShock Infinite for the PC... http://www.gamespot.com/bioshock-infinite/user-reviews/810834/platform/pc/ ...and gave it a 8.0.

The thing that stuck with me most about Bioshock Infinite was that I wanted to replay the game instantly after being finished with it. It's rare that a game causes this kind of reaction, and it's even rarer for that game to be a big triple-A blockbuster. Yet here I am, and I can't just go through it once. Even after trying to explore every little nook, alley, or trash can, I need to find the stuff I overlooked. After taking as much of the atmosphere and narrative in as I could, I still needed to go back to see what I missed. For the first time in a long time, a big triple-A game genuinely made me wonder what was coming up next.

Bioshock Infinite starts a lot like the original Bioshock did. A man named Booker Dewitt who travels to a lighthouse. This lighthouse contains some cryptic writing, and before long he's well on his way to a city unlike anything he could have imagined. Only this time you're ascending high into the sky and entering the world of Columbia, not sinking down into the depths to find Rapture. Whereas the original Bioshock was about discovering a city that was already in ruins, Infinite is about a city that is still going strong.

Columbia isn't a haunting city in ruins as much as it's something almost awe-inspiring. This sense of old American nationalist pride permeates the city as it is decked out in the colors of old glory. Where Rapture was built on science, Columbia is built on faith. It's fitting for a city high enough to be in the heavens, and for those opening moments you're just taking it all in: the raw vertigo that comes from being that high in the air, the incredibly well-done production values, the prayers of the priests in the opening church, the white supremacist nature of this society, and even aspects of the city that just feel wrong.

The game is set in 1912, but there is an uncanny anachronistic aspect to this opening, aside from the the fact that Columbia is a city in the sky. Early on, there is a quartet of singers sharing a piece of music that has no business being in 1912. You're playing a character who has no idea this city even existed, and yet the city already knows him as a anti-Christ known as the False Shepard because of the mark on his right hand. On top of that you're here to capture a girl (Elizabeth) who is so valuable she can wipe away Booker's debt from men who you don't want to owe money to. It's a city that can be as uncomfortable as it is inviting, and it's a feeling that stays strong through out the majority of the experience.

Before our two leads ever meet, we first get a glimpse of the game's main antagonist: Zachary Hale Comstock. He is to Columbia what Andrew Ryan was to Rapture, but he is more a man driven by faith, and presents himself as a prophet to a society that is blindly willing to follow him. He is a well-meaning man that can be downright frightening because what his ideologies drive him to do. He truly believes in what he is doing no matter how flawed his actions seem when compared to what he is preaching. Like Ryan was an example of the potential dangers of Objectivism, he is a take on the potential flaws of religion when taken to extremes.

Religion isn't the only theme at play in the early going. The game also wants to handle racism. It won't be long before you also start dealing with the Vox Populi, the rebel force that is trying to save the non-white members of this society, who are living life at the bottom of the barrel. It gives you the impression of a game (like the original Bioshock) willing to make a statement on these real-life themes by showing us extremist interpretations of them. Sadly, it never quite takes these themes as far as it could as the narrative is about the mystery behind the girl.

Who is she really? And why is she capable of doing the things she does? Elizabeth isn't a normal damsel in distress. She is capable of opening things called "tears" that are like windows to other worlds. But their exact nature is unclear, and the game will make you, and the characters, wonder what they are? The future? Another spin on that time-line, or something else entirely? In search of a way out of the city, Elizabeth and the player go on the run and start getting their answers along the way. And as they go further down the rabbit hole and begin to unravel Colmubia's mysteries, they also see the unraveling of Columbia, and the game world changes to reflect this. What was once a calming blue sky is now a thunderous group of storm clouds creating an ominous darkness over the city. A bustling street and fair now lay in ruins that evoke some of the more terrifying imagery found in the original Bioshock. All this deconstruction and destruction builds up to a fever pitch before you get to the game's conclusion, which is so compelling that it demands another run through, and you'll find yourself viewing what once seemed minor scenes with no real importance now feel like important tidbits that were foreshadowing the grand conclusion all along.

A lot of the story is also conveyed through environmental discoveries by the player. There are secret codes by the rebels that the player must solve to earn gameplay rewards. There are voxophones that give you further insight into the many characters and story beats at play the same way the audio logs did in the original Bioshock. In most cases, they can explain certain tidbits about the city or provide context for gameplay elements, but there is far more interesting stuff as well. For instance, the true story about what happened to Lady Comstock, and her actual feelings in the final few moments of her life may very well be one of the best aspects of the game, and are only available to the player through voxophones.

All of this makes Columbia a city worth exploring, even if you're going to feel that, at times, there just isn't enough of it to actually explore. A lot of the progression in the game is linear, and takes place in straightforward narrow paths. You get some boardwalks, beaches, and the like to explore, but more often than not you get funneled into combat zones.

Which means there also happens to be an action game tied to the story. Bioshock Infinite plays much like the previous Bioshock games. You have your basic weaponry which ranges from pistols, rifles, and shotguns, to heavy weapons, and then you have the Plasmid like powers of Columbia: Vigors. At the press of a button, you can unleash a bolt of lightning, release a flock of crows for crowd control, or deliver a furious bull rush, which provides a more visceral thrill compared to the other powers.

Charging these powers can create other abilities as well, which essentially allow you to set up traps. One such trap can detonate fire bombs, while another can provide an electric barrier if you need to protect something. There are also skylines, which happens to be a form of traversal in the city that also play a role in major set pieces. It provides a vertical dynamic to the combat that just wasn't there in the original Bioshock and makes it possible to escape combat zones more quickly, as well as bring death from higher vantage points.

It all comes together to create this powerful action game that feels far more fluid than the original Bioshock. Where the original felt clunky and almost lacked impact, Infinite genuinely wants you to feel strong. Even the more spongy enemies sell the notion that you can do serious damage, and the entire balance of the game is built with the idea that you play with some offensive latitude as opposed to a more laid-back, strategic approach.

The upgrading system is also a little familiar to Bioshock in that you do a lot of your upgrading at vending machines. With the right amount of money you can either upgrade your powers or your weaponry. These can range from damage boosts to quicker reload times for guns. For Vigors, the upgrades add bonuses effects, such as allowing your charge move to replenish your shield after every direct hit. There is a gear system that allows you to deck out Booker with other advantages as well. The player can wear up to four of these at a time, and they can do anything from increasing ammo capacity or adding effects to actions done while on a skyline.

All of this delivers a combat experience that is far more invigorating than the original Bioshock. Weapons feel stronger, set pieces feel larger, and environments are just big enough to allow proper experimentation with the multiple powers you have. All of this is welcome. The drawbacks come from some potential gameplay elements not found in the game.

If you're wondering if there are any scenarios where the player has the option to avoid combat, there really aren't, outside of one forced stealth scenario. While the original Bioshock allowed for a more "plan it out" approach, Infinite is about pure offense. The weapon wheel is gone and replaced with the often abused two-weapon system found in most FPS games. The addition of a shield also allows the player to play a bit more recklessly without any real drawbacks.

On top of that, you have the addition of Elizabeth who essentially cripples any real chance of a challenge in the game outside of 1999 mode, which gives you limited resources, removes quick revivals, and features more spongy enemies. She is constantly roaming the battlefield and is quickly there to resupply you, making sure the player is in no real threat of running out of ammo for their weapons or salts for using Vigors. Her tears provide some excellent combat options including added cover, automated allies, or even weapon dumps. However, they come with no real penalty. You can just spam them at will, and it creates a combat experience where, on top of all the power you have, you aren't ever really threatened by your enemies.

There is this familiarity to Bioshock Infinite that makes it feel like a game in which Irrational focused more on fixing the combat of the original Bioshock, and less on creating something that was new and belonged entirely to Infinite. On top of that, aspects of the game just feel stripped down or even further simplified. The hacking mini-game from the previous games is now replaced with a simple lock picking mechanic that just requires you to scavenge a certain amount of lock picks. Upgrade paths are more straightforward and limited, and the Vigors can be borderline game-breaking with the right upgrades. It's not anywhere near the thinking man's shooter Irrational hinted at as much as it's right in line with the many adrenaline fused action games on the market.

So, of course, there are some drawbacks along the way. The final combat sections aren't nearly as strong as some of the more intense shoot-outs in the middle of the game. The final stretch of gameplay is a tedious endeavor that is drawn out far longer than it should have been. You have to deal with the disappointment that the Songbird is a potential gameplay obstacle the player never has to deal with. There are story elements that just don't gel with the rest of the game or feel like outright filler. Plot swings sometimes make very little sense, and other major characters come off a little underdeveloped given their importance. Columbia never lives up to Rapture in terms of exploration, and Comstock never quite delivers monologues on the same level as Andrew Ryan.

The game misfires more than a truly great game should. Instead of being graceful all the way to its conclusion, it gets there stumbling, tripping over itself, and at times falling flat on its face. Yet, it won't be those moments that stick with you as much as the moments where the game completely knocks it out of the park. It's going to be the part where the city drew you in immediately with it's absurd and almost majestic nature. It's going to be the combat that, while never challenging, makes you feel powerful in ways most standard triple-A action games rarely ever do. It's going to be an ending that changes the way you look at entire scenes throughout the game. It's a conclusion worth thinking about, and one that is effective enough to make you want to go just one more round to see what you missed.

Bioshock Infinite isn't as deep as it could be, or as concise as it needs to be to be truly effective. It doesn't live up to all the ambition that was shown in its many previews before it released, and it doesn't provide anywhere near the same commentary the original Bioshock did. What it does succeed at is showing you that there is still some wonder and excitement to be found in the triple-A action game. And that makes it an experience worth playing, warts and all.

Get the full article at GameSpot

"jg4xchamp reviewed BioShock Infinite for the PC..." was posted by jg4xchamp on Mon, 29 Apr 2013 13:21:57 -0700
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/bioshock-infinite/user-reviews/810834/platform/pc/ Wed, 20 Mar 2013 21:49:19 -0700 VictorReviews reviewed Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance for the GameCube... http://www.gamespot.com/fire-emblem-path-of-radiance/user-reviews/809134/platform/gamecube/ ...and gave it a 9.0!

Localized in America back in 2005, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance used to be one of Nintendo's least popular games for the Nintendo Gamecube, due to being from a relatively unknown franchise and having a rather limited release. However, interest in the series has grown greatly since the release of its latest entry, Fire Emblem: Awakening, which made demand go up for previous Fire Emblem games. This game in particular comes as expensive due to the limited number of copies, so if you're just recently interested in the series you might be wondering whether it's worth playing. Keep reading to find if this game is the right match for you

Gameplay:

Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance is a strategy role-playing game where you command a group of mercenaries in an attempt to save a country. During your journey, you'll be able to recruit different units with different stats and abilities to help you win the battles ahead of you. You can choose from multiple equipment and skills for your units, so there's a lot of variety among the game's characters. Every time one of your units engages in a battle, it earns experience, which helps it level up and earn stats. The stats you gain after leveling up are decided by a random generator the first time you play through the game, which can make a unit either really good or really bad. The second time you play the game, you can choose from random gains or fixed gains. There are also some items throughout the game that can boost stats, but since they are limited, you have to use them carefully.

Each unit has a class, like archer or thief, and once they reach level 21, they automatically change class and become more powerful, though there are some units that can't change class and there are other methods to change class.

Like every traditional SRPG, the game is divided in chapters, which have different goals and requirements. Sometimes, you'll be required to dispatch certain units, or you'll be asked not to kill a specific type of enemy.

This game is known for being difficult, but it can in fact be one of the easiest Fire Emblem games as long as you don't use too many units. The game has no form of grinding, so you have to be careful not to waste experience in units that you don't plan on using too much. This can come as rather unfortunate for people who like to use every character in an RPG, but it also makes playing the game many times more interesting, since you can experiment with different party combinations.

What sets this game apart from others in the genre is permadeath, which means that once a unit dies, you can't bring it back unless you restart the chapter. This can be quite frustrating, especially with how difficult and long some of the maps can be, but it forces the player to create better strategies and adds a lot of challenge to the game.

Once you beat the game, you unlock trial maps, which are basically a form of quick play in which you just choose from a number of maps and start playing. If you connect your GBA with a Fire Emblem or Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones game, you can unlock extra trial maps, and if you beat the game multiple times, you can unlock special characters for trial maps.

Overall, the gameplay comes as perfect. The game has a good amount of challenge for experienced players, and newcomers can always play in the easy difficulty. The permadeath mechanic makes the player feel more attached to the characters, and it also adds a lot to the strategy.

10/10

Presentation:

The presentation in Path of Radiance is a mixed bag. The music is pretty cool, with most tracks being quite enjoyable. However, some of the themes repeat too much and others appear very little. The battle themes got slightly annoying sometimes, because they didn't change much.

The graphics on the other hand are quite disappointing. During battles, the character models look a little choppy and bland, and definitely do not push the Gamecube to its maximum capacity.

While most of the game's story is told with dialogue boxes, the game does includes a few cutscenes. These cutscenes have cel-shaded characters and look pretty nice as far as graphics go. The voice acting in the cutscenes is most of the time terrible, and there's no voice acting in the rest of the game.

Still, the quality of the cutscenes and the enjoyable soundtrack make the game's presentation worthy of an:

8/10

Story:

The game's story is similar to other games in the series in the sense that you have to save a country in war. You play as Ike, a novice mercenary who travels with his father's group. After the group is hired by the princess of a country in war, it is up to Ike and friends to help her save her homeland.

The story doesn't have multiple plot twists and is quite predictable. However, it still has depth because of all the different playable characters, since it is really interesting to see each character's background. Since the story isn't anything special but still serves its purpose, it deserves a score of:

7/10

Replay Value:

This game is very replayable despite having only two modes of play. The large number of playable characters makes for almost endless possibilities to replay the story. The only flaw that I can find is that battles can be slow because you have to see every enemy make a move, so the game can be boring to replay for impatient players. The dialogue and cutscenes are fortunately skippable, but the battle animations aren't unless you select not to view them in the options menu. What I mean with this is: you can't skip them with Start like in other Fire Emblem games.

Other things you can do inlcude seeing images of the characters and hearing the game's musical tracks in the extra menu. This is pretty cool, but unlikely to be entertaining for a long time.

The game's replayability relies solely on the endless combinations since you can change your party to any way that suits you and you can also assign different skills to your units. Overall, the replay value is good enough to get a score of:

10/10

Fun:

This game was pretty fun to play, but I've got to admit that it isn't perfect. At a lot of times, the game frustrated me to death, but it taught me how to be a better strategist. However, frustration will not be an issue for gamers who play on easy or normal.

Most of the game's fun comes from trying multiple strategies with your units and finding unique ways to use their different abilities.

This game was one of the most fun Gamecube games I've ever played, but it isn't perfect because of the frustration that comes with it, especially the one that comes from losing a unit deep into a battle. The game's fun factor deserves a score of:

9/10

Overall:

The game is a great experience for RPG fans. Even if you can't find a cheap copy, I definitely recommend buying it. The game has its pros and cons, but the pros clearly outweigh the cons, making it one of the best Gamecube games ever and a must have for every decent collector.

8.8/10

Get the full article at GameSpot

]]> http://www.gamespot.com/fire-emblem-path-of-radiance/user-reviews/809134/platform/gamecube/ Wed, 13 Feb 2013 22:38:42 -0800 jg4xchamp reviewed Anarchy Reigns for the Xbox 360... http://www.gamespot.com/anarchy-reigns/user-reviews/807472/platform/xbox360/ ...and gave it a 6.0.

If I was trying to sum up all the brilliance Anarchy Reigns would have to offer it comes down to one simple statement: you punch people and they explode. This level of over the type action has become synonymous with Platinum Games. Anarchy Reigns certainly delivers for the most part in that regard, but this is the first time they've taken their act into the multi-player space. To say their first experiment in this space is completely successful would be misleading but what they do have here is a great foundation.

The core combat of Anarchy Reigns does your standard beat-em-up normal attack and strong attack routine. Your character will also have a "killer weapon" which is tied to an energy gauge that fills up based on how much of a beating you dish out. These attacks can all be used in conjunction with each other with the right opening and the game rewards players enough for playing with some finesse. A brief pause between strikes can change the entire animation routine of your strikes setting up a different combo entirely. There is also a rage meter which acts as a safety net for the player for a quick turnaround. When activated your character can go berserk and then hit your enemy with a myriad of strikes.

All of these attack combinations are fluid, responsive, and most importantly, brutally satisfying. Each strike has a high level of impact that will make you feel power. The fact that there is more depth there for a player willing to learn its nuances is also a rewarding feel. Sadly, this level of depth is also poorly presented to the player. There really isn't a move/command list for the many characters in this game, and the in game training options only teach you the basics. With recent fighting games having more advanced training techniques, this feels half-baked by comparison.

This learn-as-you-go approach also shows up in the multiplayer. The initial learning curve is going to take some time to get used to, but once you get a handle of your character, you'll be able to play at a more competitive level. As it stands Anarchy Reigns' modes are varied from the likes of team deathmatch, free for all for up to 16 players, a wicked version of soccer, and even shooter main stays like capture the flag. The multiplayer has a level of randomness to it that can make any match thrilling on what can happen in the environment alone. In one second you can have the entire arena lit up by an airstrike to another moment where a key part of the map has a black hole. It all creates an exciting brand of chaos that just isn't the norm with what's currently out on the market.

Unfortunately, this chaos also presents some of the multiplayer's biggest issues. While 2v2 and 4v4 modes are well thought out and fun to play due to easier communication; the free for all modes all are far too messy. Platinum Games has always had a penchant for chaos, but this is the first time navigating it has become an issue (albeit not an issue with the solo play). There is just far too much going on in these matches, and the poor lock on makes it difficult sometimes to be able to juggle multiple adversaries. A lot of your kills, and the general scoring in these games will be a product of "kill stealing". As a whole it lacks the competitive consistency to play with the big boys, but it's certainly fun in its own right as a celebration of chaos.

There are 17 characters in the game (18 if you have the Bayonetta DLC) and the vast majority of them have to be unlocked either through single player or multiplayer. It's worth mentioning that you can unlock every character without ever touching the story mode, however, this can take an extremely long time, making playing the story mode almost mandatory. This is unfortunate as the story mode is by far the weakest aspect of Anarchy Reigns.

The game is split into two story campaigns: one starring Madworld protagonist Jack Cayman and the other starring newcomer Leo. Both sides will also give you options to play as other characters in the story mode, but you don't necessarily have to play as anyone but our two main characters. While the two sides do present different angles of the plot they ultimately feel like carbon copy of each other. It makes the mode feel incredibly repetitive as every mission comes down to you needing to do some mass killings. A lot of your missions just come down to straight up killing a set amount of enemies. The game has makes a decent attempt at being varied with boss fights, shooting segments, and even vehicle segments. Sadly this format is rinsed and repeated through both campaigns so in a sense you go through the campaign twice.

The hub world doesn't help matters either. You're dropped into very bland environments with little to do but kill enemies and go to mission points. If you don't earn enough points in the missions you end up having to replay some of them, adding to the repetitive nature of the campaign. Boss fights and combat are executed well enough to be satisfying but the routine nature of the campaign leaves quite a bit to be desired.

The story itself isn't much to write home about either. Both Leo and Jack are looking for a Maximillion Caxton who has recently gone insane. In Leo's case, Max is a mentor figure who he is trying to save, and because Max killed his daughter, Jack is out for blood. The story itself is told through some cheesy flashbacks, a litany of poorly done character introductions and a number of clichéd elements found in most power fantasy stories. And it doesn't help that most of the dialogue is just far too nonsensical to be taken seriously. This brand of cheese has usually been entertaining in previous Platinum Games, but only because they seem intentionally cheesy. Because Anarchy Reigns sets itself up as a game that takes itself more seriously, it ends up falling flat.

Anarchy Reigns' inconsistent design flows into the presentation as well. Anarchy Reigns has an excellent soundtrack, especially if you were a fan of Madworld. Once again, Platinum uses hip-hop music to give Anarchy Reigns its own characteristic. A good portion of the music is about fighting and earning money so it gels well with the cast of characters. Unfortunately, the visual design is underwhelming, especially this late into a console generation. The environment designs are far too bland considering how often they appear and the color palette is far too washed out. Given this title's Madworld roots, it's rather disappointing that they didn't choose to use that sort of stylized visual aesthetic.

Taken as a whole, Anarchy Reigns isn't completely successful. The repetitive nature of the story mode is certainly disappointing yet the multiplayer modes can make up for a lot of its shortcomings. It's chaotic, messy, and seemingly half-baked at times but also unlike anything else on the market. At its budget price this is far from an awful game but Anarchy Reigns isn't quite ready for a primetime prize fight.

Get the full article at GameSpot

"jg4xchamp reviewed Anarchy Reigns for the Xbox 360..." was posted by jg4xchamp on Wed, 13 Feb 2013 22:38:42 -0800
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/anarchy-reigns/user-reviews/807472/platform/xbox360/ Sun, 03 Feb 2013 09:35:56 -0800 VictorReviews reviewed Corpse Party: Book of Shadows for the PSP... http://www.gamespot.com/corpse-party-book-of-shadows/user-reviews/807045/platform/psp/ ...and gave it a 7.5.

Corpse Party, released in 2011 as a downloadable title for the PSP, was a surprising localization in the West. The game was a 16-bit like adventure where you played as a group of students who got caught in Heavenly Host, a haunted school full of threats, and tried to find a way out of it. Despite its looks, the game had a terrifying atmosphere, mainly due to the incredible soundtrack and voice acting with binaural sound. This, together with the intriguing storyline, earned the game a fan base big enough to ensure localization of the second entry in the series: Corpse Party: Book of Shadows.

This time around however, the game doesn't follow the gameplay style from its predecessor, but rather makes a leap toward the visual novel field, making its localization in the West even more surprising than the first game's.

Is this second installment as scary as the first game? Is it worth playing if you played the first one? And if you didn't? Keep reading to find the answers to this questions and more.


Gameplay:

As I mentioned earlier, this game plays very differently from Corpse Party. Players will spend most of their time reading, but there are also some sections where you walk around the school and search different places inside of it. Make no mistake though, you can't actually control your character, but rather choose where to go, and search in a point-and-click like interface.

Sometimes, you're given choices during conversations. Similarly to the first game, a bad choice may trigger a Wrong End, which is basically a game over with a storyline. Usually, Wrong Ends are just gruesome ways in which your character dies.

There are other ways to trigger Wrong Ends. For example: walking into the wrong place, doing certain tasks, and getting your darkening meter to 100%. The darkening meter is a bar that plays like hit points do in a regular game; if you get the darkening meter to 100%, you lose and get either a Game Over screen or a Wrong End depending on the chapter and in-game location you're playing at. The darkening meter goes up every time you examine a corpse or do other certain actions.

This game is considerably easier than its predecessor. The point-and-click interface makes it faster and less of a chore to look around the school.

As with any good visual novel, there's an option to fast-forward the text, and you can save anywhere, which takes away the fear of getting a Wrong End and having to replay long sections like in the first game. This, unfortunately, makes this game less scary than the first one.

In the first game, some of the most terrifying parts were the ones in which you had to run away from someone, and sadly, those are gone in this game.

The new gameplay has its pros and cons. While it is disappointing to have some of the fear from the first game gone, some new additions like the ability to save anywhere make the game less tedious. Overall, the gameplay deserves a score of:

6/10


Presentation:

The game manages to take the top-notch presentation that now characterizes the series.

The graphics in this game are basically anime-like CG still images. There are no cutscenes, which is a disappointment but is understandable, since the game's file size is pretty big due to so many voice acting lines and music tracks, and this is a downloadable game.

The game's graphics help convey a sense of fear. However, what really makes this game like no other is the voice acting. The game has binaural sound, so, as long as you wear headphones, you're bound to get a scary experience, with voices coming from many unexpected places.

The game's voice acting is in Japanese. This however, is not a bad thing, because all the voice actors do an amazing job, and the game is subtitled.

Most of the game's gory scenes are not visually shown; you only hear them. This talks about how much effort was put in the voice acting, special effects, and music, because the game manages to scare the player without much visual support.

Some of the musical tracks in this game are from the first game, but some others are completely new. The choices are very varied, from happy songs to others that make you completely freak out to others that just stick in your head, helping give the game the atmosphere it requires.

The game does an amazing job in terms of presentation. I found the atmosphere to be really creepy and similar to the first game, despite the change of gameplay. With a combination of amazing voice acting, awesome soundtrack, creepy sound effects, and great graphics (despite being still images), the game's presentation deserves a score of:

10/10


Story:

In contrast to the first game, this one doesn't have a linear storyline. Instead, the game is divided in eight chapters, each one with a different, mostly unrelated story.

Some chapters are based off Wrong Ends from the first game, other are prequels, other are events that took place at the same time of the first game's events, and the last chapter is a direct sequel to Corpse Party.

Something to note about the story, is that it will only be understood by people who played Corpse Party, since it contains more than simple references to said game.

The story this time is not as great as in the first game. I found that, in some chapters, the story really dragged and felt like filler, making beating the game a chore sometimes, especially because most of the gameplay is reading text.

A good thing about the story is that there is a lot of character development for some characters that didn't get it in the first game, making the story of richer.

Some players will find that playing the game is a chore. While some people will enjoy the story, others will find themselves going through the game only to get to the last chapter, which is without a doubt the most interesting part of the game. Overall, the story deserves a score of :

8/10


Replay Value:

Surprisingly for a visual novel, this game has a lot of things to do besides getting all the different endings.

You can collect name tags from dead corpses in Heavenly Host. Once you collect a name tag, some information like name, school, and cause of death of the person will appear on a menu.

Other collectibles include CG images (these can be exported to the memory stick), the game's soundtrack, and comments from the voice actors. Also, if you have a save file from Corpse Party, more CG images are automatically unlocked.

Unfortunately, most collectibles are automatically obtained as the story progresses, so if you beat the game once, it is unlikely for you to be missing more than a few things.

Another feature that the game includes is the EVP Machine, which is basically an option to create your own conversations between characters using the lines said throughout the game. This allows for a lot of creativity. The EVP Machine is unlocked after you beat the game.

Many different collectibles, the EVP machine, and the multiple Wrong Ends make this game's replay value worthy of a:

7/10


Fun:

As I mentioned earlier, this game was a chore to play sometimes. I found chapters to be either boring or a blast.

Fans of Corpse Party will definitely find some enjoyment in this game. Even though the game is nowhere near its predecessor in terms of fun, it is still fun enough to deserve a score of:

7/10


Overall:

While the game can be a chore sometimes, and certainly doesn't compare to its predecessor, the amazing atmosphere and new storyline , combined with the surprising amount of replayability and bonus features, make the game worth a buy for fans of Corpse Party. Overall, the game deserves a score of:

7.6/10

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"VictorReviews reviewed Corpse Party: Book of Shadows for the PSP..." was posted by VictorReviews on Sun, 03 Feb 2013 09:35:56 -0800
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/corpse-party-book-of-shadows/user-reviews/807045/platform/psp/ Fri, 18 Jan 2013 02:29:07 -0800 jg4xchamp reviewed Shadows of the Damned for the Xbox 360... http://www.gamespot.com/shadows-of-the-damned/user-reviews/806412/platform/xbox360/ ...and gave it a 6.0.

When the super duo of Shinji Mikami(Resident Evil creator) and Suda51(No More Heroes) hooked up back in 2005 gamers were given Killer 7. An absurd cel-shaded on rails gaming experience that had style in spades. So when you heard this team was making another game about a demon hunter in Hell, and the composer of this game would be Akira Yamoaka(Silent Hill) how could you not be interested?

Sure Shadows of the Damned still ends up an experience you might not have expected, but not necessarily in the best way. For one it's a third person action game in the vein of well most third person action games post Resident Evil 4. You have over the shoulder shooting, demons, and a linear level design structure. On the flip side you have a Hell unlike any other before it. This Hell has doors blocked off by demon baby heads who need strawberries. This hell is a constant struggle against the darkness where one must find goat heads, and shoot them to light up the place for safety. This hell has a sex hot line that turns your gun into The Big Boner. Yeah, it's that kind of hell.

Shadows of the Damned isn't going to be some revolutionary experience, but the ride it puts you through is an adventure worth taking. It's a game that doesn't take itself too seriously as you play as Garcia F*cking Hotspur: a top notch demon hunter. His desire to essentially kick every demon's ass is what eventually pisses off one of Hell's more perverted demons Flemming. Flemming kid naps Garcia's woman, sends her directly to hell for eternal torture, and to boot threatens to defile her while he's at it.

It's an opening that sets the tone perfectly. This game is obsessed with throwing out some innuendos, making d*ck jokes, being vulgar, and violent while it's at it. But it's not done in a way that would make you think the experience tries too hard to be edgy. It'll certainly be divisive, but it feels more silly and endearing. Garcia is a one liner spewing and bravado driven man who's only real desire to keep Paula is to hit it. His companion through this adventure is a talking torch named Johnson. Who just happens to be able to turn into a motorcycle and the weapons you'll need to slaughter the enemies you will deal with in hell.

What makes the story side of the adventure so entertaining is the chemistry between the two leads. This chemistry happens to play a large role why many of the innuendos in the game work so well. It also makes reading through the story books that give the back story on the boss demons a satisfying pit stop in between the action. The campy voice acting, and odd creatures such as the game's salesmen who sounds absurdly southern really sell this vision of hell. Yamoaka's soundwork is a nice mix of cheese, punk, and a spanish guitar solo to boot gives the game a sound track that is nothing short of excellent. It all adds up to a fun adventure worth finish, and part of that is because the standard action is serviceable.

Shadows of the Damned plays like any modern third person action game, and you'll spend most of your time shooting your enemies with an over the shoulder view. The weapons at your disposal is a pistol(named the boner no less), a shotgun, and a rifle. Your guns also have a light shot which is necessary for ridding some enemies of the darkness that protects them from any damage. It's disappointing to only have three weapon options, and they aren't exactly the most clever of weapons either. However the damage they cause is thoroughly gratifying as it only takes a few shots usually to have blood and guts flying everywhere. It's a level of grotesque action that makes shooting even the more standard enemies fun all the way through.

The game progression constantly moves you forward with minor stops in between. In these stretches you may need to find an item that opens a door, requiring you to do some backtracking here and there. When the game is really hitting on all cylinders it's a blast to play through. The best moments usually have you being bombarded with the different types of enemies, and using your full arsenal becomes paramount in those situations. Also the ability to upgrade these weapons into stronger versions gives the player a sense of progression. You will be a far more powerful person by the end of the experience.

What doesn't work very well in the game is usually any time the game tries to mix it up and be varied. While the moment to moment action is good it's the attempts at having big moments that fall flat. Boss fights are predictable and formulaic in nature. They are pattern driven fights that require you to hit the glowing weak spot. While the fights can be well paced, and against rather absurd creatures they ultimately lack the thrill of a truly great boss fight.

Other scenarios such as the darkness mechanic don't really help matters either. Hell will sometimes be completely covered in a darkish blue hue of darkness that is a poison to Garcia. To fix this the player will have to find goat heads or in some cases demonic hands that are the source for the darkness. Rarely are these hidden far out of sight, and in most cases it's more of a chore than a moment that raises the intensity.

There are also major change of pace scenarios that overstay their welcome. One scenario in the game transforms your pistol in The Big Boner and is basically a shooting gallery as you shoot this gun at oncoming demons. After every shot Garcia says "taste my big boner". Admittedly funny the first few times, but it's a routine that gets very old after you already shot down twenty demons. And the side scrolling chapters in the game are easily the weakest moments in the game.
When Shadows of the Damned is just run-and-gun splattering of the demonic "hell monkeys" that Garcia hates so much it can be entertaining. It's not a bright nor a particularly challenging experience, but it's one that satisfies one's urge to just let loose and mow down some demons. The fact that it couldn't maintain something with a sense of variety or book end it with some stronger gameplay moments is disappointing. The lack of a new game plus also kills any replayability the experience might have. Yet the adventure is funny and crazy enough to want to see through till the very end.

Shadows of the Damned doesn't reinvigorate the genre with new game design ideas. It doesn't even take existing ideas and execute them at a high level. One where each moment is a carefully executed sequence of action gaming bliss. No in fact it's just good fundamental mechanics surrounded by some average action game design. But the silly adaptation of hell, genuinely funny innuendos, and excellent audio work makes it an experience worth finishing. It's one you'll have fun with. Even if it'll leave you thinking this game could have been so much more.

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"jg4xchamp reviewed Shadows of the Damned for the Xbox 360..." was posted by jg4xchamp on Fri, 18 Jan 2013 02:29:07 -0800
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/shadows-of-the-damned/user-reviews/806412/platform/xbox360/ Mon, 21 May 2012 17:56:43 -0700 Big_Evil666 reviewed Angry Birds Space HD for the iPhone/iPod... http://www.gamespot.com/angry-birds-space-hd/user-reviews/794360/platform/iphone/ ...and gave it a 8.0.

And I mean that in a positive way, cause I do enjoy this game but c'mon sometimes it's just plain cheap as hell! And i think the creater's did that intentionally. The f'n Space Eagles are usless as sh*t and don't work nearly as well as they've worked in past Angry Birds and Angry Birds Seasons, which is a shame considering they are handy if u get stuck. That seems like a bug to me that got over looked and kinda takes away from the fun. I'd hope a patch will come with a future update that improves the Space Eagles. Also, why is not enough of the game available? WTF?! I should'nt have to buy levels they should unlock after beating previous levels of the game. Overall it's a fine game and if you're like me and love the Angry Birds franchise then by all means pick this up, but just be prepared for a major frustration at times

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"Big_Evil666 reviewed Angry Birds Space HD for the iPhone/iPod..." was posted by Big_Evil666 on Mon, 21 May 2012 17:56:43 -0700
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/angry-birds-space-hd/user-reviews/794360/platform/iphone/ Wed, 08 Feb 2012 01:53:40 -0800 jg4xchamp reviewed Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception for the PlayStation 3... http://www.gamespot.com/uncharted-3-drakes-deception/user-reviews/787301/platform/ps3/ ...and gave it a 7.0.

One of the more difficult things in sports is following up a championship season. Everything the champs do is put under a larger microscope, and the expectations may be too much given how good the competition actually is. Sure repeats have happened, but most of the time the champions just aren't as good as they were the last time they were out on the field. Sometimes they go from winning it all to being a one and done in the playoffs. That's the fate a lot of videogame sequels face when they have to follow up an esteemed predecessor. That's the fate that Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception ultimately ends up having to accept.

The game picks up some time after Uncharted 2, and picks up in a London Bar. Nate and Sully are up to their old tricks of setting up a score for themselves, all the while being fooled by the people they are well: trying to fool. The game doesn't pick up with a shootout against pirates, or even another stealth run through a museum. Instead the game aims for a straight up bar fight with henchmen. Pool cues, beer bottles, and chairs included. All of it with Uncharted's meticulous crafting of cinematic action. It sets the tone for the rest of the game. It's more Uncharted, and in a lot of ways, an even more cinematic Uncharted.

It all opens the door for a new villain and a more personal plot for Nathan Drake. Uncharted 2 gave us a globe-trotting romp with an adventurer searching for gold, all the while trying to stay not too far behind a madman. Uncharted 3 gives us a globetrotting romp with an adventurer searching for treasure, all the while trying to not be too far behind an insane rich woman. Okay maybe the central plot is very much the same, but the game puts more of a focus on the internal turmoil of Nathan Drake. We're given a different side of Nate, one that honestly could make the player question exactly what makes Nathan tick. Is it all for pride or is it some sort of a turn on for him to just cheat death left, right, and center?

I digress though, and admit Uncharted 3 continues the most basic trend of the series. It's not a very original tale, at many times full of clichés. Yet the characters are always entertaining enough, and the banter between them makes for an enjoyable experience. and as always, the gameplay ends up holding its own. Uncharted 3 is very much the "Tomb Raider meets Gears of War" experience it has been since its inception (albeit with very few of the drawbacks from the original game), and that ****of play still yields fun results.

The game is tightly paced from one spectacular set-piece to the next, and the shooting action in between is satisfying, all things considered. Uncharted 2 delivered an engaging spectacle like few other games, and Uncharted 3 isn't too shabby on its own merits. Whether it's trying to escape a burning castle, or hanging for dear life on a hanging ramp of a flying cargo plane. Oh and yes, the sinking ship is every bit as intense as you would expect it to be. There are also plenty of smaller shootouts so it never ends up feeling like the game is just bombarding you with cheap thrills every five seconds. It is however still a little too scripted, and shootouts really only play out one way in most cases. The enemy AI isn't necessarily bright, but that's only a minor drawback on what is some damn good third person action.

Where the game continues to fall flat is in other facets of its gameplay. Puzzles are more frequent this time, and some of them are genuinely clever. Even if it means the answers are always there by just opening up your journal. However, the linear nature of the platforming just isn't excusable the third time out. What amplifies it even more are chase sequences that are frequent in this game. On more than one occasion you will be forced to either run away from adversaries, or chase one down. These sequences are also heavily scripted, and in a lot of cases present you only one way of progression. Even going as far as to denying you the ability to climb a structure you were able to climb at other points in the game. Nathan Drake comes off as someone who should easily be able to climb a fence, and when he can't it's definitely jarring in a game so focused on its presentation. Sure, this linear nature was apparent in the original and Uncharted 2 but the chase sequences just put this annoyance front and center. It also doesn't help that there are some cinematic moments in the game that become a bit intrusive on the gameplay. As the only purpose they serve is to slow you down, force you to go from A to B with nothing else to do but listen to some chatter between characters. You may still be in control, but for extended periods you aren't really doing anything.

Uncharted 3 has its own offerings in terms of multiplayer between 3 player coop modes, and a more traditional 5 v 5 competitive multiplayer. If Gears of War is the yang with its heavy focus on map control and power weapons. Uncharted 3 is the yin with its focus on player progression, and customization for personal load outs and specific attributes. This styIe of play can be plenty addictive as you're always working for unlocks but it also gives more of an edge to those who play more rather than those who play well. Being a lower-leveled player puts you at a major disadvantage as some of the later power ups, modifications and starting weapons are game-changing enough to be a significant edge. One of those being weapon accuracy boosters that aren't accessible until you level up to the mid-20s.

Given how the matchmaking can match you with just about any one at any level it can be steeper climb than it should be for some players. Also, while a bonus that gives the losing team a quick perk isn't game breaking by any means, the addition of power boosts for piling up styIe points does give you a rich-get-richer scenario, making early leads a premium.

The multiplayer's best aspects are the cooperative modes. A new co-op adventure mode gives you a more story centric cooperative experience through five playable scenarios. Complete with set pieces galore and your typical Uncharted action but with some buddies. The Hunters mode delivers you a 2 v 2 mode where one team is handicapped in terms of their own abilities, but they get the boost of having enemy AI on their side to help them out. Think Left 4 Dead without the zombies. Then there is Uncharted's own survival mode called Arena. With the twist here being that every wave has its own rule set. One wave can require you to kill everyone on the map, and another wave can require you to find some treasure and bring it to a specific point on the map.

The multiplayer is solid across the board, but the real star of this game is the single player. And yes the action is still very fun, and few games are in the same league on a presentation standpoint (especially on consoles). It's just plenty of Uncharted's elements have gotten a little stale with this being the third game. Sure the game continues to bring the same bravado to its set pieces, but not once did it bring it with the same moxie. Uncharted 3 is like a big prime time regular season game at Cowboys Stadium. The spectacle is there, the lights are bright, and yes the game is fun. But it's just the regular season. Uncharted 2 was more like a great Super Bowl. The lights are brighter, the stakes couldn't be higher, and the big plays are simply electrifying.

Uncharted 3 is a good game, but the playing-it-safe attitude and a superb predecessor might leave people wanting more if they were hoping for greatness. But hey, Naughty Dog got their ring already and a good regular season isn't anything to scoff at.

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]]> http://www.gamespot.com/uncharted-3-drakes-deception/user-reviews/787301/platform/ps3/ Wed, 08 Feb 2012 01:49:29 -0800 jg4xchamp reviewed Gears of War 3 for the Xbox 360... http://www.gamespot.com/gears-of-war-3/user-reviews/787299/platform/xbox360/ ...and gave it a 8.0.

Five years ago the original Gears of War released to commercial and critical success. It was a game that tasked the player with shooting through hordes of enemies in a game world known as Sera where humanity was pretty much screwed. That game would go on to become the blue print of how a cover-based third person shooter was supposed to work. It's been 5 years since and the third game in the series portrays a game world where humanity is still quite screwed. You still shoot your way through hordes of enemies while taking cover, and what was once the trendsetter is now just more of the trend.

Gears of War 3 is the third game in one of this generations more influential franchises and, for better or worse, it's a familiar experience. The stop-and-pop gameplay that put the series on the map is still in place. With only some new additions to the weapons list as well as new foes being the significant changes to the action. Yet this is also the first time the series can lay claim to being a more complete package. Besides delivering the franchise a final act (from a story standpoint) Gears of War 3 also delivers the franchises best multiplayer simply on the premise that it actually works this time.

The multiplayer ships with 10 maps, and 6 multiplayer modes. Including franchise staples such as Execution-where the player has to get up close to get kills, and Wingman (2v2v2v2). Newcomers include a Team Deathmatch mode with a Gears of War twist. Both teams share a pool of 15 extra lives, and when that number depletes the remaining members of the team all have one life each. It makes coordinating as a team a premium, as you just won't be allowed to let one or two people cost you lives. It all amounts to a team oriented shooter with some strong close quarters action. The addition of dedicated servers in public and ranked matches eliminates old franchise skeletons such as host advantage, and provides the series the smoothest net code it has ever had.

Some multiplayer annoyances are still there. Such as how it's still focused on close quarters combat, and the shotgun still reigns supreme. Ranged weapons like the Lancer and Hammer burst just aren't as effective as trying to get close and obliterating them point black with the Shotgun. The game also brings some newer annoyances such as the balancing of two key weapons. The new sawed off shotgun is almost too effective as even a blind fire shot at close range can kill an enemy, and the rocket launcher known as the Boomshot is far too accurate. Yes a lot shooters have powerful and accurate rocket launchers, but most of them let you get away with killing your enemies from a distance. In Gears of War all the dirty work is done in close quarters. It makes picking up the Boomshot almost a priority on some maps, and in the elimination modes(Warzone and Execution) it makes it the most important pick up on the map.

The competitive multiplayer is by far the game's best asset, but that's not to say the campaign is slouching. With the addition of four player co-op this can easily make a claim to being the best campaign the franchise has had. The campaign picks up after Gears of War 2 as humanity has sunk its last sanctuary known as Jacinto to flood the Locust out of their homes beneath the surface. While this action crippled the flood it ended up opening the door for a new enemy in The Lambent. With their ability to explode, and mutate into even more deadly creatures they liven up the Gears of War action. As well as providing a nice change of pace from the traditional Locust of series past. It is however disappointing that you are not given many scenarios where you fight both of these enemy types at once.

The campaign is a five act romp of going from one environment to the next where you take cover, and shoot everything in sight. With on rail segments and the new mech-suit the Silverback being the change of pace moments in the game. It's all entirely satisfying due to some pretty good level design which has a nice mixture of more claustrophobic closed areas where the enemies are funneled in right at you to more open spaces to give you more breathing room to coordinate with your allies.

Ultimately the game is very similar to its predecessors. The basic formula of cover, shoot, and move forward that the series kicked off with is still the primary formula for success here. You are still progressing in a linear fashion with only one real way to progress through each act. From a combat standpoint you don't have many options, and it doesn't help by the end of the third act you've seen all the games major gameplay ideas. Boss fights such as the Lambent Berserker are far too drawn out to be satisfying, and a later segment that has you fighting a more drone-like enemy over stays its welcome. It all makes the campaign a solid experience, but one you're going to want to end already by the time you hit the final stretch in the game.

Don't expect much from the story as it's still as much of a meat head centric series as it has always been. The attempts at trying to tug at your heart strings are however, better done here. As even characters like the Cole train get some added layers when he visits his old stomping grounds. The plot focuses on Marcus Felix trying to find his father, and ultimately with how the human side needs to find a way to stop the lament. The climax of the game does provide some closure on the Gears of War storyline, but the story still continues to be the weakest element in the Gears of War series.

If you're looking for a less plot centric cooperative experience, and more survival you have Horde 2. The biggest new additions are fortifications. These can range from fences to turrets or even decoys. Each kill and each round nets your group some cash which you can spend on building your defenses. Given how enemies become stronger every 10 waves it provides a new layer of strategy. A lot of times it's better to save your money, and build your defenses for the later waves. Especially considering now on the 10th wave you have a boss fight wave. These can range from something like the Lambent Berserker to even more deadly beasts like the Brumak. There is also a new beast mode that lets you control the Locust, but that's a significantly shorter mode (12 waves), and simply isn't as fun or satisfying as horde.

All things considered Gears of War 3 is a damn good multiplayer package, but it's hard not to fault the game for playing it too safe. Given the numerous cover based shooters released in the 5 year span between Gears of War releases it's easy to see how the series went from being King of the Mountain to being more in the same field as its competition. I digress however, and can easily say this is the best competitive MP experience in the genre. As always the visceral action of the franchise can carry this game even through the most formulaic of scenarios, and chainsawing your foes hasn't gotten old since 2006. Because when it really comes down to it, chainsawing your enemies is worth it, always.

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"jg4xchamp reviewed Gears of War 3 for the Xbox 360..." was posted by jg4xchamp on Wed, 08 Feb 2012 01:49:29 -0800
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/gears-of-war-3/user-reviews/787299/platform/xbox360/ Mon, 04 Apr 2011 05:35:31 -0700 Foolz3h reviewed Klonoa for the Wii... http://www.gamespot.com/klonoa/user-reviews/761108/platform/wii/ ...and gave it a 7.5.

Klonoa is a "Dream Traveller". What this means is he's sort of like a cat with long ears which he uses to fly short distances. Which means he's something like a chicken. A cute, cartoon chicken that looks nothing like a chicken. He has a Pac-Man baseball cap and is really quite adorable.

His companion is a floating water balloon called Hewpoe who talks like a desperately adorable Macaulay Culkin when he still had some innocence about him, and plays with Klonoa when you stand around doing nothing. It's only a few hours into the game before Klonoa's grandfather is killed in brutal fashion by Joker (not from Batman) in a violent terrorist bombing. He should surely have been vaporised, but luckily he's still alive.

In great pain; slowly dying, but alive. He survives just long enough for the clichéd last words. Klonoa is in tears. Adorable, GameCubey tears. Hewpoe apologises in his childish voice, and then it's back on the road again, and it won't be long before the story becomes even more insane. It's a wonderful mixture of cutesy graphics and absurd, hilarious and totally out of place darkness. All set to upbeat electronic tunes that set the mood nicely; or do the opposite! Either way, really. It works.

This is lucky because the game starts off slow. The level design is very by the numbers, though it's always engaging due to the pseudo-3D which later on in the game leads to large, expansive levels where in the background you can see where you have been, or where you are going. It works wonderfully as an aesthetic, but as a gameplay mechanic it is never fully explored.

In fact the best designed levels towards the end of the game feature it the least, instead focusing on accurate and tense jumping puzzles where you might find yourself jumping to and from platforms just small enough for Klonoa to stand on, while several enemies are converging on you-but that can be used to your advantage for another way that Klonoa sets itself apart is that Hewpoe (or Klonoa's ring depending on your perspective) sucks up enemies and fills them with air. He can then use the puffy enemy as a jumping pad to execute a double jump which can of course be followed by Klonoa flying with his ears.

It's a simple three step program that'll have you drunk with fun when it's taken advantage of, but this is far too infrequent. The game's difficulty curve is so lethargic that by the time you do reach the challenge of the last few levels you may well not be prepared! Okay, that's something of an exaggeration, but the rest of the game does almost feel like a tutorial for the climax of events. If there were another five hours of gameplay on the level of the last few levels then Klonoa would probably be regarded as a classic rather than a cult classic.

However all is forgiven when one plays the bonus level. It takes the excellent mechanic of sucking in enemies and uses it every way it possibly can. You'll be jumping from formation of flying enemy to formation of flying enemy and all done in a life or death situation above pits of seething lava. One missed jump, or one missed enemies and you'll be restarting from the previous checkpoint. It's head and shoulders above everything else in the game, and does in a way rub in the lack of ambition present elsewhere.

Sometimes the controls don't feel entirely responsive; but it's somewhat hard to tell whether that's the fault of the game or the Wii-remote. When executing a jump, sucking in an enemy then jumping again and gliding you're pressing a, b, a, then holding a and it just doesn't feel fantastic on the Wii-remote if you're playing with the Nunchuk. This is probably somewhat due to the fault of the controller; if these were on face buttons it'd probably be a lot harder to mess up, but now and again you do feel as if you're not getting the timing you should.
Of course you can play with a classic or GameCube controller, or with the Wii-remote held SNES style. But because I'm cheap the classic controller is out of the question, plus the length of GameCube controllers make them rather impractical, especially now that everything is cordless so you may well not have your Wii set up close to the TV, and I don't want to develop arthritis so I'm afraid I was stuck with the Wii-remote/Nunchuk combo.

Oh, and the voice actingéif you've got a sense of humour you'll love it. Its ridiculousness fits perfectly with the story, but if you're one of those cold hearted bastards who hates everything corny and over the top then you'll probably want to cut off your ears. I, on the other hand turned the volume up.

My condolences to Balue. Lephise is cold.

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"Foolz3h reviewed Klonoa for the Wii..." was posted by Foolz3h on Mon, 04 Apr 2011 05:35:31 -0700
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/klonoa/user-reviews/761108/platform/wii/ Sun, 02 Jan 2011 03:29:58 -0800 jg4xchamp reviewed Vanquish for the Xbox 360... http://www.gamespot.com/vanquish/user-reviews/750589/platform/xbox360/ ...and gave it a 7.0.

Vanquish is gaming proof that the old adage "speed kills" holds strong. Vanquish is a third-person cover-based shooter that relies on speed and styIe to entertain its players. In an instant the battlefield in Vanquish can be choatic, messy, and over flowing with massive robots just itching to put you six feet under. It'll be a unique combination of gunfire, super speed, and the ability to go into slow motion that help you topple these mechanical beasts and complete your objectives. While it's monotone nature holds the gameplay experience from true excellence; it's high speed action makes it a refreshing experience in a genre filled with far too many doppelgangers.

Vanquish kicks off with a futuristic revival of the cold war. Russia invades an orbital space station that is armed with a highly destructive death ray, and uses it to obliterate the city of San Francisco. At the center of this conflict is Sam Gideon an agent of DARPA fitted with a new piece of super soldier armor. A wise cracking, one liner spewing, cigarette smoking badass going out to serve his country. The story essentially covers every action movie cliche you could possible come up with in a 5 Act span, and has the cheesy dialogue to go along with it. Though the game gives you enough reasons to believe it doesn't take itself seriously it does run a fine line with the melodrama that just comes off cringe worthy. The story also never really wraps up all the loose ends and sets up for an innevitable sequel.

What the story does do well is tie in all the action together to give you some context, and provide an excuse to kick some serious ass. The real star of the game is not Sam Gideon, but the armor he's wearing. Like most cover shooters you'll be advancing forward fighting hordes of enemies while hiding behind cover to avoid failure. The kicker here is Sam's suit is also equiped with boosters on the knees to help him move across the field at a faster pace. Sliding across from cover to cover, dodging gunfire and explosions, or closing the gap between you and your enemies to dish out the damage up close and personal. The other advantage to Sam's armor is his AR mode which is his abilitity to slow down time around him. Both mechanics as well as powerful melee attacks are linked to a heat guage. If it overheats you become incapable of using either of the three abilities and need to wait for the suit to cooldown. Using these three in unision can have exciting results where you can boost towards enemies, go for a dropkick, and while in mid air go into AR mode and gundown the other enemies before you even hit the ground. There are also weapon upgrades on the field which the player picks up to improve their arsenal on the fly. Using these combination of abilities changes the general ebb and flow of Vanquish compared to other modern action games.

To avoid being a cake walk the game is constantly moving forward at a relentless pace. Choatic battlefield conditions are meant to force the player to stay on the move instead of holding their grownd behind cover for extended periods of time. Standard enemies will try to flank while others will be fitted with jet packs to take you down from the air. Other foes may be massive and have the ability to destroy whatever cover you take refuge behind. Russia's vast array of enemy robots also has armored vehicles equiped with enough firepower to put you down quickly. This all compliments a nice selection of boss fights. Ranging from titanic machines with enough firepower to level armies to another one that shows an interesting take on recycling. All of this is finely tuned from beginning to end to make an action experience that is exciting and high spirited. That's not to say there aren't some slower moments to keep the pace in check. There is a nice escort segment in the game where you have to move across a dimely lit tunnel that slows down the pace. To another situation where you snipe out guards and spotlights to avoid detection. The game also has some noteable boss battles that could match some of the best stuff in the genre. With the finale sequence being an exciting note for the game to end on.

While all of this prevents the game from becomming repeptitive the game does tend to have moments where it starts to become stale for other reasons. The Agis Core boss battle is used far too often, and the tension of "hit the glowing weak spot" loses all of its appeal on just the second time you battle a similar boss. Much less being able to sustain multiple runs. A lack of upgrades is also disheartening given the developers previous works. It gives the impression that you've done all the improving you're going to do very early in the game. With the only significant armor upgrade happening far too late into the game to be meaningful. The weapon variety is nicely balanced with shooter mainstays such as Shotguns, assault rifles, rocketlaunchers, etc but other weapons such as the Disc Gun hardly hold their appeal through out the experience. You're better off sticking to the more typical shooter weapons. The other major annoyance is the final stretch of the game becomes far too monotone for a game that ends rather quickly, and abruptly. Though what the final segments lack in variety they more than make up for in intensity.

From a technical standpoint the game is a solid graphical work. While the art direction is rather lacking all the character models are nicely done. The animations are nicely done from Sam's morphing gun to his standard action. The effects are superb with each machine having a rather dramatic explosion to the standard kill a machine and watch it explode routine. With the amount of enemies constantly being bombarded at you it's impressive that the game maintains such a fluid framerate. Audio wise the sound effects are as good as most modern action game with the slow motion audio work being the best parts of the game. It's a shame the soundtrack nor voice acting never matches this same standard.

Vanquish is a speedy action game that ends far too quickly. Challenge modes provide enough incentives for return visits to test your skills, but at the end your left wanting more. Part of this is because of some major missed opportunites. The other is because the action is just so finely tuned. It's speedier pace, and multiple abilities give the combat a refreshing feel not found in other cover based shooters.It may be over in a flash, but Vanquish is a fast paced ballet of ass kickery that is incredibly fun to play. You'll be sliding across the battle field at a break neck pace, and dishing out massive damage to a large group of foes. Causing a large quantity of explosions and a firework show all over the battlefield. It all adds up to an action game that has sublime core action, but just falls a few notches short of true excellence.

Get the full article at GameSpot

"jg4xchamp reviewed Vanquish for the Xbox 360..." was posted by jg4xchamp on Sun, 02 Jan 2011 03:29:58 -0800
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/vanquish/user-reviews/750589/platform/xbox360/ Tue, 19 Oct 2010 05:19:10 -0700 Foolz3h reviewed Yakuza 3 for the PlayStation 3... http://www.gamespot.com/yakuza-3/user-reviews/741408/platform/ps3/ ...and gave it a 8.0.

Yakuza 3 is a Japanese video game. Japan is a country in Asia, which is the world's largest and most populous continent. Therefore the game's voice actors are Japanese, but luckily SEGA (the publisher of the game) had the foresight to translate the text and menus into English for its European and American release, even though some European countries do not speak English as their first language, it is understood that many speak it as a second. The fruits of globalisation. There are English subtitles for the Japanese vocals so that you can understand them, if you have not been globalised as much as SEGA has.
Not wanting expose Japanese culture SEGA such as hostess bars and mahjong, a game virtually unheard of outside of Japan, content such as this has been cut. Many people have compared it to the cult classic Shenmue, but it is nothing like Shenmue. It is a commercially successful franchise and a big title in Japan. It is their GTA. People have also compared it to GTA, but it is not like GTA. Yakuza 3 is an action RPG, not a sand box.
There are no random encounters, but you gain EXP and money or items from each fight you win, which can be used to upgrade Kazama Kiryu, the main character. For each fight you lose you win a game over screen, from which you can conveniently retry, reload, or quit. Kazama is a former member of the yakuza. Yakuza is the Japanese equivalent of the Mafia, but being Japanese they are obviously much cooler. Though The Sopranoes is a good show, and The Godfather and Scarface are classics of cinema.
Nevertheless Kazama is no longer in the Yakuza. Instead he has started running an orphanage with Haruka (a young girl; nothing suss) who has appeared in previous games. Where the other orphans have come from I am not sure. Naturally he gets called back to the Yakuza and the story begins. The story is very well told with great cutscenes and excellent voice acting and writing. It is very dark and funny. The story is one of the best parts of the game. Another great part of the game is the graphics. They are represented in full HD and are technically of high quality with sharp textures, and a wonderfully accurate city of Tokyo. Okinawa does not seem as accurate, but I have not been. Nor have I been to Tokyo. Nevertheless it appears to be accurate, as being a gamer I have intimate knowledge of Japan. I was practically in Shibuya when I played TWEWY, which is another Japanese RPG.
The gameplay consists of RPG style fights, only instead of selecting actions from a menu, it plays out like an action game. You press square for a normal attack, triangle for a special attack, x to dodge, and circle to throw someone. L1 defends, R1 locks onto your opponent. The left analogue stick controls Kazama's movements, and R1 the camera. It functions well. You learn different moves as you progress through the game, including special ones that require the "heat" bar to be partially, or completely filled.
The soundtrack is minimal in its approach without much background music. This works well in creating the realistic atmosphere in Tokyo, because there is no background music in Tokyo in real life, or so I am told. It is very realistic. The game must be played with a PS3 control, and supports the vibration function of the Dualshock 3.
While playing through the main story you can do side-quests. As I said, it is an RPG. For doing these side quests you gain experience and money or items meaning that they are much like the fights in the game, though they are also not of a random nature. They are amusing. They often conclude with fights.
In summary, Yakuza 3 is a great game, as indicated from my score of 8.0 which according to GameSpot means the game is great. The gameplay is good, as are the graphics and the sound. But special mention to the story, that is very entertaining. You will be playing to find out what happens next. I highly recommend that you buy Yakuza 3 if you enjoy video games, because it a video game of the highest order.

Get the full article at GameSpot

"Foolz3h reviewed Yakuza 3 for the PlayStation 3..." was posted by Foolz3h on Tue, 19 Oct 2010 05:19:10 -0700
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/yakuza-3/user-reviews/741408/platform/ps3/ Wed, 15 Sep 2010 00:32:57 -0700 jg4xchamp reviewed Mafia II for the Xbox 360... http://www.gamespot.com/mafia-ii/user-reviews/737163/platform/xbox360/ ...and gave it a 1.0.

POTENTIAL SPOILER WARNING. DO NOT SAY I DID NOT WARN YOU!

Mafia 2 is a difficult game to recommend. On one hand, its top notch production value, quality voice work, and authenticity of the mobster lifestyIe combined with its 1940s/50s aesthetic would give a great first impression. Sadly, as a game trying to weave a great plot through a great game it fails to deliver. It's attempt to create a strong cinematic experience falls short on being a great game, and it doesn't help the narrative is centered around an uninspiring leading man.

Arguably the strongest point of the game, and what will be the driving force of this experience, is the story. As stated earlier, the game has some top notch production values. Visually speaking, Empire City is breath taking, and its inhabitants boast character models that are extremely well done. All the voice actors do a great job of delivering their dialogue, and soundtrack is only part of the reason how the developers captured the atmosphere of that era perfectly. So exactly what holds this narrative back from being one of gaming's best? Vito Scaleta.

Where as Tommy Angelo demanded the audience's attention in the first Mafia, his successor is nothing more than a tool. Vito doesn't show any real humanity as a person throughout the majority of this game. He comes back from war and is almost immediately willing to get back into the bad habbits that he supposedly tried to leave behind in the first place. He shows no real guilt or remorse for his actions. If someone points a finger and says "shoot"; he will shoot. If his best friend Joe says this is a brilliant idea(when Vito can flat out see it'll end up going wrong) he'll go through with it. We don't get to really get into the mind set of Vito Scaleta outside of "I don't want to be poor like my father". It makes him a character that is hard to connect to or feel for, whereas Tommy Angelo in the original showed some genuine human emotion. Plus with the way Vito's story ends it makes him a very hard character to like because of his final decision. If you think that's bad though, wait till you hear this game's excuse for a sandbox.

Now I know everyone is going to through the "but champ it isn't a real sandbox game" excuse at me when I knock this hub world, but let me ask you something first. What god damned purpose does this hub world serve if it isn't trying to deliver a sandbox experience? Empire Bay is a pretty city, but there is nothing interesting to do outside of missions. Mission progression isn't open world, it's extremely linear with very little room for flexibility for the player. Where as other sandbox games provide enough activities to entertain the player if he goes off the beaten path Mafia 2 is stuck on just this one path. In reality the biggest use for this hubworld in the game is the following: Drive from point A to point B. Most of it is just tedious and needless driving, and feels like padding in other situations. It's cinematic nature and linear structure is better suited for a more traditional linear experience.

Sadly, the core mechanics are just as sloppy. Mafia 2 at its heart is a half-rate third person action game. When you actually end up in a mission where you could find some intensity, you will essentially play it like any other modern day third person action game with a cover system. Like almost every sandbox game using a cover system, Mafia 2 also delivers with another clunky mess. No matter what platform you play on, moving from cover to cover in this game will not be as smooth as Uncharted or Gears of War. It feels restrictive, sluggish, slow, and just not as tight as it needs to be in the more elaborate shoot outs. It's 2010, and Gears of War came out in 2006. Dear Developers, STOP ****ing THIS UP!

The gunplay, which is the heart and soul of any third person action game, is absolute garbage on consoles(PC users shouldn't be bothered by this complaint). The aiming is far too loose and wonky to get a hand of, and overall the gunplay really just lacks that punch that is found in the more linear action games or even the likes of Red Dead Redemption. I like that it's not as aim assist abusive as RDR, but RDR made it fun to shoot a mother****er. This game? Not so much.

The melee system you will have to part take in is just far too simple to ever really be engaging. Even on the hardest difficulty, the simple act of hold the dodge button all day and than mash the light punch button will get you a quick victory in no time. It makes brawls rather uneventful, and it doesn't help that they show up far more often than they should through contrived means.

Now let us get to the number one reason why Mafia 2 is basically garbage as a video game - the horrendously unfun way mission scenarios are handled. I don't even know where to begin to describe how many mundane tasks this game will throw your way before finally giving you some decent shoot outs to work with. For instance, there is an elaborate prison sequence where you spend most of your time either following a police guard who's bossing you around, or running around the prison to kick start the next big cutscene of exposition needed to further the rest of the story. They throw in a few of those melee driving prison fights, but as stated earlier the melee stuff is just far too simple to ever really be enjoyable. I understand that making Vito clean the toilets is suppose to set the tone that it's a prison, but that entire chapter drags on far longer than it needs to.

Then there is the over reliance on driving for the missions. You will drive a lot in this game from point A to point B like any other sandbox game, but with none of the pay off. You want to end the chapter and move on to the next bit of the story? Well guess what now you have to go drive from where you are to home to go to sleep and end the chapter(I can not stress how contrived that is, and how you end up doing that for most of the chapters). Then there is the cookie cutter stuff like "tail a guy until he takes you to his hiding spot with a bunch of dudes in side" or what was now a personal new hated set of vehicle oriented missions where you drive your drunk dirt bag friends home so you can be done with them. There is an entire sequence dedicated to burying a dude that is summed up perfectly as - drive to point B, watch cutscene, drive from B to point C, listen to some genuine funny dialogue, drive home and onto the next day to see where you drive to next.

The mundane scenarios don't end with just driving, oh god no. Please enjoy having to go around a dock talking to people and working them over for money(upon which you only really beat up one guy), or the soon to be fan favorite that was selling cigarettes out to people. If making me suffer some mundane tasks wasn't enough for this game, it also forces me to go through a random robbing spree later on in the game to build up money for a loan shark. Didn't I suffer enough boring crap already, 2k Czech?

Oh if you're wondering if the other missions are this bad? Well it's kind of a mixed bag. There are some genuine fun mission scenarios such as an early jewelry store heist, planting explosives into a meeting room at one of the city's finest hotels, and the final mission before the games conclusion. The problem is they are too far and few in between mundane Grand Theft Auto reject missions. You'll follow a bunch of dudes to abandoned building from one dull corridor shoot out to another. A forced stealth scenario that lacks any real tension found in much better stealth games, and the shootouts being so corridor driven make them a bland game of "hold your ground, wait till your enemy pops out for a sec, blow his head off". The enemy AI just doesn't engage or put pressure on the player outside of being extremely accurate on the harder difficulty setting.

Mafia 2 tried to deliver intense and brutal mafia action with a sophisticated mob plot for fans of stuff like The Godfather and The Sopranos. In the end Mafia 2 is simply a bummer, drag, dead, dull, drudging, flat, arid, ho hum, lifeless, irksome, insipid, interminable, monotonous, mundane, platitudinous, repetitious, routine, spiritless, stale, stodgy, stupid, tedious, trite, tiresome, threadbare, unexciting, uninteresting, unvaried, wearisome, vapid, and an exceptionally boring game. More or less it's a sixty dollar sleeping pill; 50 if you buy it on PC.

BUY ANYTHING ELSE BECAUSE IT'S BETTER THAN THIS BORING PIECE OF **** out of 10

Get the full article at GameSpot

"jg4xchamp reviewed Mafia II for the Xbox 360..." was posted by jg4xchamp on Wed, 15 Sep 2010 00:32:57 -0700
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/mafia-ii/user-reviews/737163/platform/xbox360/ Sat, 12 Jun 2010 13:00:18 -0700 rragnaar reviewed Red Dead Redemption for the PlayStation 3... http://www.gamespot.com/red-dead-redemption/user-reviews/724323/platform/ps3/ ...and gave it a 9.5!

For as long as I've known about them, I've been a huge fan of Rockstar Games. I feel as though Red Dead Redemption is their best game to date. It may not be a Grand Theft Auto game, but it certainly stands on the shoulders of the series and achieves new heights. A lot of the time when a developer makes the claim that they've made a world that 'feels alive', I dismiss it as hyperbole. Red Dead Redemption is an exception to that rule, and an exceptional game in general.

I suppose the best place to start is to talk about the world they've built. The fictional territories of New Austin, Nuevo Paraiso and West Elizabeth are stunning. As someone who grew up in the mountains of northern Idaho, I'm particularly fond of West Elizabeth. The draw distance is incredible, and everywhere you go there is something to see, something to do, and often times something to kill. Whether you are just being attacked by coyotes, wolves, cougars bears and boars, or stumbling across random events that the game generates, exploring Red Dead Redemption is never dull.

The music is also fantastic. It adapts to whatever you do as you play the game. You'll get subtle whistles and guitars playing when things are calm, and dramatic music during gun battles and chases. It all blends together seamlessly. I wasn't a huge fan of some of the songs with vocals that play during certain key sections of the game. It didn't seem consistent with the world, or with the rest of the score, but that is just my opinion. All in all, the music of RDR is top notch.

The combat in the game is an evolution of what Rockstar did in GTA4. When you are on foot, you'll probably spend a lot of time behind cover, leaning out to take shots when you can. The horseback combat is a mixed bag. It can be very satisfying to shoot a man off his horse, or for the less 'peta-minded' of us to shoot the horse and watch it and the rider collapse to the ground in a heap. The problem with horse combat can be that the game has a certain amount of 'rubberband' ai for horse riders when they are trying to catch up to you, which means that they can move at unrealistically high speeds to catch up to you. This makes them harder to hit than they should be. It isn't a problem most of the time, but it can lead to an overreliance on the game's Dead Eye mode in which you slow down time to shoot your enemies. Dead Eye is satisfying, but it can start to feel cheap. Some missions feel as though you are all but required to use Dead Eye to succeed due to the sheer number of enemies they throw at you. This gets you in the habit of using it all the time, and from there, the game can become too easy. This is a small complaint, and one that is easily fixed by the player choosing not relying on Dead Eye so much. As is, the game is a little easy. I don't recall any mission giving me trouble. A higher difficulty would have been nice.

As great as the other elements are, the characters and stories of RDR are what makes it shine. John Marston is a great anti-hero. A former criminal that is pressed into service by the government to hunt down his old gang. John is very much a reluctant hero, and often times, the only thing keeping him going is the chance to see his wife and son again. The overall story is fantastic, particularly the ending. I feel like Rockstar took some brave chances and broke some new ground with the game's resolution. That being said, I've got some complaints about how some of the missions tie into the overall story. John ends up being a doormat for pretty much every sheriff, sleazeball, freedom fighter and corrupt government official along the course of the game. His reluctance can be a little hard to believe at times. He will say 'After this you better tell me what I need to know' to whoever he is working for, and then he'll proceed to do four or five more missions for this person. That pattern repeats itself throughout the game, and is one that was also used in GTA4 and The Ballad of Gay Tony. I'd like to see Rockstar find a way for their main characters to be more assertive in driving their stories forward, rather than just being the reluctant lackey for a diverse cast of dirtbags.

Once you are done with the great singleplayer campaign there is still a lot to do in both the singleplayer and multiplayer. As for singleplayer, RDR has a lot of challenges and sidestories to complete. There are hunting, shooting and survival challenges that test your skills, and the sidestories show you glimpses into the lives of various people in the west. Typically they are very simple missions with poignant stories. They play out like little mini-episodes in the game and they break up the pace nicely. I haven't put a lot of time into MP, but I have had a lot of fun with Free Roam cruising around with friends and getting into big gang shootouts. The competitive multiplayer doesn't seem nearly as fun as the more co-op aspects of Free Roam.

The overall experience of RDR is fantastic. The game manages to always present you with something to do. It is marred somewhat by glitches, and streaming errors where the game doesn't load the faces of poker players and whatnot. The game isn't perfect, but it comes closer than anything I've played in a while. John Marston's world feels very real and very alive, and it is an experience I won't soon forget.

9.5/10

Get the full article at GameSpot

"rragnaar reviewed Red Dead Redemption for the PlayStation 3..." was posted by rragnaar on Sat, 12 Jun 2010 13:00:18 -0700
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/red-dead-redemption/user-reviews/724323/platform/ps3/ Sat, 10 Apr 2010 00:11:46 -0700 Foolz3h reviewed Batman: Arkham Asylum for the PlayStation 3... http://www.gamespot.com/batman-arkham-asylum/user-reviews/716526/platform/ps3/ ...and gave it a 8.5.

Batman battlesémans

I am not a fan of Batman. I have not even seen the Dark Knight. The only Batman comic I have read was a recent one involving a penguin, a hypocritical policeman-and not Batman. Well maybe he was there hanging upside down in someone's closet, but I didn't really notice him. It wasn't very enjoyable. It was very gruff, but not very noir. However because I am a modern gamer and I saw that Batman was scoring 10s everywhere so I had to get it. That and the fact it was $30. Australian dollars. Which is about $10 American dollars so it was really cheap!

I was expecting it to be another GTAIV. Great production values, crap game. At first it seemed like it might be. There was some very well produced, but long winded introduction doing Half-Life 2 cutscenes better than Half-Life 2. (Which admittedly isn't hard.) Joker wasn't as likeable as Jack Nicholson. Then all of a sudden Joker esc apes (what a surprise) and Batman jumps through a window to chase after him. You might think jumping through windows is one of Bat's superpowers, but considering he never does it again I'll call it a fluke.

The combat began. Press square. And sometimes triangle. That's all there is to it! The combo system is pretty much useless early on to, as timing your attacks is not very useful when you can do a similar amount of damage by button mashing. Which is what the whole system is based around. Oh, but sometimes there are more advanced enemies where you have to press another button once before you start button mashing, so it's not all bad. And to be fair, it's kinda fun, but such a simple system really bit the game in the Batcave in terms of set pieces and bosses. As awesome as it would in theory be to beat up one of the many supervillains you're chasing after, the simple fact is it would suck in practice. Hit square in time-game goes into slow motion-maybe hit circle if necessary; doesn't sound like much of a boss battle does it? And when you are carefully timing your attacks the slo-mo can be very disorientating; thus ruining your timing if you don't want to button mash.

So maybe it's understandable that 90% of all the boss battles consist of you fighting against some body builder with his spine coming out of his back. Sometimes you get to fight two at once! Talk about variety! Yes, that is as awesome as it sounds. Which is not very awesome-though it does sound awesome what with the fantastic sound effects and music. Looks great too. Except for the pustules. That's just unnecessary detail.

Hell the first boss you fight ends with the poor guy having a migraine attack and fainting. Speaking of fainting; what with Batman being a gallant hero and all he cannot kill anyone. But on the bright side he can give them brain damage, make them paralytics, and lock them up in a hell hole for the rest of their lives. But maybe he's just not capable of killing them. Batman's super powers consist of staring coldly, and shouting "WHERE ARE THE DRUGS?!" in a deep voice. Which disappointingly he never shouted.

Okay this sounds really negative-but hell the start of the game was really negative. It was kinda fun, but never really hit its stride. Then I saw a sculpture. Batman likes to shoot sculptures then sit on top of them, biding time before he floats down booting a henchman in their face then suffocating them in a matter of milliseconds before he flies away again. Oh yeah, stealth baby! All of a sudden instead of button mashing I was flying around kicking people, planting explosive traps (I thought shrapnel could kill people even if it is a small explosion! But maybe Batman is using super explosiveséwhich should logically kill more people!) and setting up traps as elaborate as the joker's whole persona. You thought that simile was bad? Play the game.

The stealth is wonderful, and just gets better and better as you go along. There's just one problem with it. There's just not enough. The game seems to like its variety. One moment you're ridding a room of 10 henchmen through stealth, then next you're beating them all up, and the next you're fighting some poor schizophrenic who just wants you to hug him or give him some Prozac. Maybe both. I'm all for variety, but except for the stealth, none of the other aspects quite go far enough to do anything but remind you that you could be profanity stealthing people to dea---err---unconsciousness.

Which leaves the game with one other major thing it got absolutely right, and never deviated from: exploration and detail. There are riddles to solve (which aren't really riddles) trophies to find (which you wouldn't want to add to your cabinet) and messages left by a deranged fat man (not from Thomas the Tank Engine). And finding them is a blast. You'll enjoy scouring every little patch of the game for these prizes because it's also pretty and atmospheric, and there's a real sense of satisfaction in tracking them all down. Well, there would be if you didn't accidentally pick up an item that revealed where all of them are on the map that you cannot turn off so that you immediately know where everything is! Ugh. Oh, and if you die, they also like to tell you while Joker mocks you, exactly why you did and how to not die. Now, this seems a little patronizing. Especially when Batman is the world's greatest detective.

Then again, he quips at one point that: 'it pays to be prepared'. It sure does! Imagine how much time he would have saved if he'd actually taken all his gadgets with him when he first got to the Batcave. He could have stopped Joker in a matter of seconds! So many less people would have died. Well at least when he flies off at the end after another supervillain he'll have everything he needs.

WHERE IS THE SPECTACLE???

It's quite clear that the devs are huge fans of Metroid and Metal Gear Solid. The item collecting, and upgrade progression follows the Metroid path. It doesn't quite do it as well, though. In Metroid you have to find your equipment. Sure it's kinda silly in and of itself (and makes no sense), but it's a much better gameplay mechanic and gives you more satisfaction than "I advanced the plot far enough to be given this item so that I can advance it further." As for Metal Gear Solid two words: Scarecrow. They're not quite as good as Metal Gear Solid's moments of madness, but boy are they pretty! Pretty, fun and overall nicely paced. I won't say anything more because that'll ruin the surprise. Oh, and they also like The Darkness. There's a famous scene in the Scarecrow parts that is much like a famous scene in The Darkness. And like that famous scene in the darkness it's really not all that great. And unlike The Darkness instead of repeating graffiti, they repeat Easter eggs. It might have been nicer to the dev team include photos of more than a few people. Egotistical bastards!

But as I said earlier, once you've made your way through an area and built up a nice bit of momentum and you've psyched yourself up for a boss battle you don't want to fight a bunch of henchmen instead. Once again, though, I understand this is the fault of the battle system-but it just makes its flaws all the more annoying. Hell a stealth boss battle would have been FREAKING awesome! And no, scarecrow doesn't count. What were the lights about by the way? Seriously.

Maybe it makes sense, but as I said I wasn't a batman fan. Now I almost am! They nailed the atmosphere of Batman wonderfully. Well, as far as I'm aware. But going by Batman films and other comic books, they did a wonderful job. At first I didn't like the hammy voice acting, and the stupid and offensive morality-but then I realised something. The supervillains were all sympathetic characters! They were all a bunch of mentally ill people who couldn't cope with the world, and became supervillains so that they could, just as Batman became a superhero. Hell, most of them seem like a bunch of nice guys! Even Zsasz who would be right at home in something like I Heart Huckabees. And that would've made the film so much more awesome. He'd slit their throats and they'd bleed to death wondering if they were actually dying. So cool!

All the non-super characters seemed quite unsympathetic to me. They were all vengeful (and without as much reason as the super-characters) egotistical, selfish and un-empathetic douchebags. And of course the game dealt swiftly in the easiest way possible with any moral dilemmas. There are some normal people doing bad things in the game, but very luckily they are killed off so Batman doesn't have to make any tough judgments. Except for that Arkham guy which the game leaves hanging (not literally, which would've been a good way to kill him off!) and once again drops the ball when there could be an awesome climax. I ran all the way to where the guy should've run off to try and make me join him in his conquest, hoping that there'd be some awesome confrontation. There was not. I was just meant to scan something and get a trophy.

But you know what? I think I could get into this whole comic book thing. Unless like Blackhawks it's really just a well put together propaganda piece encouraging children to join the military, or help coerce their older brothers into doing so. God that comic makes me so angry! Where's that damn Titan? I'm coming for you Obama!

I understand you probably want a satisfying climax to this review, but I'm gonna make like a Batman and not give you one.

é.

é


WHERE ARE THE DRUGS???

Fine, there you go. Looks like I'm a better person than he is (probably a better superhero too!). Oh, and there's like a bunch of fan service consisting of profiles and interviews (which could have been better used to build up a battle with each of the characters-but considering there was never really a battle-their not always great placement wasn't too bad) and on top of that on the menu screen you can perv on Bat's manly pectorals.

Now excuse me while I go ruin a criminal's life in the name of justice. Or just have sex with Robin. (Where the hell was he? No wonder Bats acted so cold and lonely.)

N.B. I know I have not mentioned the challenge mode. This is because I have not yet played it. The internet was out, and Sony wanted to brick---I mean update my phat PS3 so I've had to postpone playing it for the moment. This is why you shouldn't make it compulsory to sign in to play a single player mode! It sounds pretty awesome by most accounts, and maybe exactly what I felt was lacking! Still, I liked it a lot all the same.

Get the full article at GameSpot

"Foolz3h reviewed Batman: Arkham Asylum for the PlayStation 3..." was posted by Foolz3h on Sat, 10 Apr 2010 00:11:46 -0700
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/batman-arkham-asylum/user-reviews/716526/platform/ps3/ Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:17:05 -0800 rragnaar reviewed Heavy Rain for the PlayStation 3... http://www.gamespot.com/heavy-rain/user-reviews/709917/platform/ps3/ ...and gave it a 8.5.

I had the pleasure of playing through Heavy Rain a few days back, and I've sat and thought about it for a while, and I think I'm ready to do a review. I loved the game, but I feel it has a lot of little issues that detract from it. I'm going to get the negatives out of the way before discussing the game overall.

For everything that Heavy Rain gets right, there is a minor flaw that is there to remind you that it isn't perfect. I frequently ran into little sound glitches where entire lines of dialog would be missing, and there were a few spots where I'd move my character around a room and the screen would go completely black, and my speakers would erupt with white noise. Technical glitches aside, I really feel like a game with this much dialog needs to have consistent quality from the voice actors. Most of the main characters pull off an American accent very well, but the supporting cast, especially the children in the game, are obviously French. It sounds a little weird to here so many accents from people who are supposed to be American. My other complaint, even though I'm sure we all saw it coming and knew it would be there, is that the game relies too heavily on cutscenes and QTE's. My favorite moments in the game were when I had downtime to explore environments and interact with the people and things within those environments. I feel like it could have used more of those moments throughout the game.

As for the QTE's, they really are well done for the most part. I may have wanted fewer, but they really did allow you to control a wide variety of scenes. I do feel like a better implementation of the sixaxis controls are in order, because most of the time when it was used, you were just supposed to shake the controller up and down as fast as you can. Towards the end of my game, there were things rattling in my controller that weren't rattling before. I'm also someone who has never been too fond of the 'mash the 'x' button as fast as you can' school of game design. It kinda sucked in MGS1's torture scene, and it hasn't gotten much better since.

As has been mentioned in other reviews, I feel like the 'tank' controls for moving your character could have been axed for something more user friendly. It mostly feels like an oddball and stubborn design decision, as there is no real reason I can think of to limit a player's movement through shoddy controls.

*deep breath*

Ok... I've gotten the bad stuff out of the way.:P

There are moments in this game that are like no other. I love the opening of this game. Spending a quiet morning at Ethan's home while you wait for your wife and children to come home is one of the more impressive bits of gaming I've played. They set the scene so well, and the sound design and phenomenal graphics all come together to make you feel like you are really there, doing these seemingly mundane tasks that are somehow very satisfying. I wish there were more moments like this, and like the evening you spend with your son Shaun. There is a complete freedom there that I haven't seen in other games. In that particular scene, your son doesn't really want to talk to you. I had the freedom to let him watch TV, force him to do his homework, make him a snack, or ignore him completely. After I'd tried to talk to him, and been more or less rejected by my own son, I went outside to play basketball in the rain. It was very powerful. In real life, I don't have kids, but for that moment, I felt like I understood the pain that fathers have to go through in trying to relate to their kids. Heavy Rain is at its strongest when going for these sorts emotions.

I felt like Ethan and Scott's storylines were the best out of the game. Norman Jayden didn't have much of a personality, and I feel like Madison was almost there for gratuitous nudity more than anything. In comparison to other games, sexuality is handled in a tasteful and mature way, but so many of her scenes seemed only to exist to give players some eye candy. She seemed to be the least developed of the main characters.

From a gameplay standpoint, I feel that Ethan and Jayden steal the show. Ethan goes through some horrible trials in this game to find his son, and his chapters are easily the strongest from both a gameplay and story standpoint. Jayden gets some of the meatiest scenes from a gameplay standpoint, although I feel like there were some missed opportunities with him. In the course of your investigations, you find that there is only one origami shop in town, but Jayden never goes to investigate. That doesn't seem like something an FBI agent would miss out on.

The story as a whole is fantastic. It took me around 9 hours to beat and I'm eager to go back and see how some of the scenes play out had I done things a little differently at key moments in the game. The mystery is rather well done, and there are lots of red herrings along the way.

I criticized the game for being a little on the unstable side, but all in all, it is one of the most beautiful games I've ever played, and when the sound isn't cutting out, it does sound amazing, especially the little things. I remember standing in Shaun's room looking at drawings he'd made in school and listening to him brushing his teeth in the next room. The great graphics and sound combined to make it all feel so real.

All things considered, this game really delivers. There are some missteps along the way, and it could have been more polished, but I don't think you could ask for a more impressive piece of interactive cinema. As an experience, I'd say this is something that no one with the means to play it should miss. As a game, I feel like it falls just short of greatness.

8.5/10

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"rragnaar reviewed Heavy Rain for the PlayStation 3..." was posted by rragnaar on Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:17:05 -0800
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/heavy-rain/user-reviews/709917/platform/ps3/ Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:27:04 -0800 TwarBlackshire reviewed The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring for the Xbox... http://www.gamespot.com/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-fellowship-of-the-ring/user-reviews/703551/platform/xbox/ ...and gave it a 7.0.

The game is pretty basic. You play as either Frodo, Aragorn, or Gandalf and each character has his own perks: be it the use of the One Ring, the use of sword/bow, or the use of wizard's magic. All in all the combat part of it would have been ok, not great, but definitely ok if it wasn't for how buggy the enemies were due to bad coding. Often a boss fight could be fought without any fear of being hit if you were to stand on a certain section of ground. Usually in games these types of bugs are hard to find, but the AI is really simple and easy to outsmart in almost any situation or fight. This takes the games rating down a few notches. Boss fights were mostly a breeze. Only a few fights were difficult, and usually that difficulty came because of the camera angle that you might get stuck on which could hinder your ability to act quickly when in combat. Sometimes (like the last boss fight in Moria) the fighting area itself is too small to maneuver which can cause further problems when your character is getting snagged on graphical borders which are not really visible or invisible walls that keep you from areas that look like you should be able to get to. Most fights didn't have these problems, but the ones that did were definitely irritating.
I did manage to enjoy some aspects of the game. Graphically some of the areas look great and were very much like I would think Middle-earth would look. The Shire looked pretty good, as did Moria's entrance area and most of the mines. The game's puzzle element was there but for the most part it was trivial in difficulty and not very memorable. Many of the cut scenes were amusing, and some were just not necessary. However, I'm sure for the Tolkien fan these would increase interest in the game. Not a great game in itself, but still fun if you like all things Tolkien.

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]]> http://www.gamespot.com/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-fellowship-of-the-ring/user-reviews/703551/platform/xbox/ Sat, 21 Nov 2009 02:30:22 -0800 Foolz3h reviewed Metroid Prime for the GameCube... http://www.gamespot.com/metroid-prime/user-reviews/693759/platform/gamecube/ ...and gave it a 9.6!

Years have past since I last played Metroid Prime, despite it being one of my favourite games of all time. Years have past since last I read Fahrenheit 451 despite it being one of my favourite books of all time. So why on earth would I be silly enough to try and compare the two? Well, I don't really have an answer. But I'm going to try anyway!

Both Metroid Prime and Fahrenheit 451 start off with an alien and uncomfortable encounter. Samus' ship crashes and she is trapped on a hostile world, while Guy Montag meets a girl unlike any he's seen before and leaves him feeling lost and alone. From this point on both Metroid Prime and Fahrenheit 451 unravel at a fast pace.

Samus must escape the planet, while Guy must escape society-but come on, this is a rather flimsy similarity as far as plot goes. However it is still valid. What is important, though, is storytelling and pacing. As I said before both are fast paced, with Fahrenheit 451 lurching through the pages with thick language and poetic sentence structure where in some places the writing could virtually be split up into lines-wait, did I just say thick language? That can't be fast! And it's not, in fact the mood is one of a slow death on a hot humid day where everyone is dripping with sweat and without the energy to move. Yet somehow through this intrusive atmosphere it moves quickly, because it forces you to keep reading with totalitarian determination.

In Metroid Prime you feel the need to rocket through the levels, but the lush scenery and ancient architecture will slow you down just so you can take in, and then you'll move back and forth through it as you search ever nook and cranny for something you've missed. Hell, Samus' slow walking speed forces you to move slowly, so that you have no excuse but to take anything in, even if the urge to rush became too great.

The characters in Metroid Prime are dead. They're long gone and remembered only through ancient writings and the effect they've had on the environment, through their buildings, or the way they've survived the many predatory animals and even plants. Yet they all fit in this world safely; they're a part of it: they're aliens on an alien world. Yet Samus is just an intruder; another uninvited guest.

After the realisation Clarisse gives Montag (the previously mentioned girl) suddenly he too is an intruder and he moves about the suddenly alien world with caution and not just the intention to survive it; but to somehow find happiness there too, or perhaps, escape it.

And just as things are looking up for Samus she finds another group of intruders: the space pirates. They, like her, are uninvited guests, only they don't want to leave, they want to stay and pillage the world, and probably create a few metroids in the process! So suddenly she has a reason to stay.

But once again, we're getting a little bugged down in the narratives. This shouldn't be what this is about. Metroid Prime and Fahrenheit 451 are both told through their environment. In Fahrenheit 451 the harshest places of all are those that should be the safest; houses, with wall-sized televisions playing soap operas, and the constant paranoia of having hidden something in what should be a sanctuary pushes it even further away from being one-or perhaps makes it all the more important to hold on to.

Then he meets Faber who invites him into his house, which is safe, which is a sanctuary-but there's still fear. All the paintings and books and sculptures can't be hidden forever, and there's always a sense that no matter what, no matter how hard they fight, they cannot win.

In Metroid Prime the more you explore the lush natural world, the more you come across the relics of the long dead chozo world, and the deeper you venture into the space pirate's phazon mine, the more similarities you can draw between the two; both perhaps should never have been here in the first place; and both will never be here forever. And Shutting down a mine is one thing, but how could you ever win against the space pirates?

But still, there is no safety in the phazon mines, with every grey, depressing metal wall hiding behind it danger so that you don't even quite feel like an intruder; no you're a fugitive-it's you who should be here, not them! But they'll try and run you out of town anyway.

But in the ruins the opposite is true where you are an intruder that shouldn't be there, but you are not being ruthlessly hunted. But still there isn't quite safety like there should be amongst ancient carved stone. You're there because you have to be, and the sooner you're gone the better.

And both narratives end with destruction. In Fahrenheit 451 his fears are realised and everything is destroyed, in Metroid Prime the mining operation is shut down, and the Chozo are already dead. Yet both narratives end with hope. In Fahrenheit 451 it is for art and for humanity, but in Metroid prime, ironically, it is for the space pirates.

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"Foolz3h reviewed Metroid Prime for the GameCube..." was posted by Foolz3h on Sat, 21 Nov 2009 02:30:22 -0800
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/metroid-prime/user-reviews/693759/platform/gamecube/ Mon, 18 May 2009 13:56:39 -0700 rragnaar reviewed Demon's Souls for the PlayStation 3... http://www.gamespot.com/demons-souls/user-reviews/659633/platform/ps3/ ...and gave it a 9.0!

Over the past few months I've had the pleasure of playing Demon's Souls. I've beaten it twice, and have loaned it to a friend. This is a hard game for me to review. There are some flaws in the game that will be major annoyances to some people, and there is the game's crushing difficulty that will turn off others. The score I attach to this game is reflective of my own experience with the game. This is not a game for everyone. First and foremost, Demon's Souls is a game that requires you to put in a lot of effort. You get out of it what you put into it. Every thing you accomplish in this game will be something you fought hard for, and that is why I love it. There is a sense of accomplishment provided by this game that is matched by few others.

Before I talk about what the game is, I'll talk about what it isn't. When the first screen shots showed up for the game, several people around the internet were billing Demon's Souls as an Oblivion styIe game with Japanese art direction. As appealing as that description is, it doesn't describe Demon's Souls. This isn't a sandbox styIe RPG in the vein of the Elder Scrolls games, and in the end, there isn't anything about the game that is comparable to JRPG design either. The bosses are gigantic, and the character designs are fantastic, but they don't seem to be at all similar to what you see in most Japanese games.

Demon's Souls is, at its heart, a pure action RPG. There isn't much of a story in Demon's Souls, and for the most part you will either experience the game by yourself, or with the help of other players that you can summon into your game. There is no voice chat with your co-op partner, which may be seen as an annoyance by some people, but for me it only served to preserve the game's sense of isolation. There are some NPCs that you will run into in the game as you explore new areas, but most of your NPC interactions will be done in the game's hub world, The Nexus. The Nexus is a place that traps your soul at the beginning of the game. Within it are 5 archstones that serve as portals to varied regions in the Kingdom of Boletaria. Each area has unique enemies, huge bosses and incredible level design. Whether you are exploring the crumbling walls of Boletaria Palace, the depths of the Stonefang Mines, the Shrine of Storms, or either of the other fantastic levels in the game, you will always be up against a challenge, and you will continue to run into new enemy types and be forced to develop new strategies for dealing with them.

This game is difficult, but not cheap. There is no pause button, and the game does not let you manually save.(although it autosaves very frequently) Fighting enemies and killing bosses earns you soul points that are simultaneously the currency of Demon's Souls, and the experience points. Buying an item with souls can be a hard choice when you know that you can also use the same souls to level up. When you die in the game, you lose your souls. You must make it back to the spot where you lost them without dying in order to regain your lost souls. This can make for some tense moments. The other thing about dying is that you lose your body, and you awaken at the start of the level in Soul Form. This means that your health bar is cut in half, and it is easier for you to be killed while in Soul Form.

There are four ways to regain your physical form in Demon's Souls. The most common ways are to either beat a boss demon, or use one of the rare Stone of Ephemeral Eyes items that will resurrect you. The more interesting ways to regain your physical form are to either let yourself be summoned into someone else's game to help them beat a boss, or to invade their game as a Black Phantom in hopes of killing them. Playing the game in co-op is a lot of fun, and while it was frustrating at the beginning, as I got better at the combat in the game, I began to look forward to Black Phantom invasions. As challenging as the game's enemies are, there is nothing like going toe to toe with a human opponent who is as smart as you are. The PvP in this game is a phenomenal game of cat and mouse. They invade your game and if you have time, you can conceal yourself and choose to confront them when you have the upper hand. There is nothing like getting the drop on a Black Phantom invader and turning them from hunter to hunted.

The real standout element of the game is easily the various enemies and demons that you fight. They all require different strategies to take on. The game is a learning experience, and sometimes the most valuable lesson is learning when to run away. There are enemies in this game that can kill you in one hit. You always have to be on your guard and take every encounter seriously if you want to survive. Fortunately the combat system is very deep, and there is a wide variety of weapons, spells and miracles to aid you on your way. The combat system is flexible enough to accommodate a variety of playing styIes. If you want to play as a nimble mage that focuses on ranged combat you aren't at a disadvantage compared to an iron clad knight swinging a sword bigger than he is as long as you know how to adapt. Some bosses are weaker against ranged combat, and others are weak against melee attacks. Knowing how to exploit their weaknesses is often more important than being leveled up. The sense of accomplishment you get when you beat a boss demon after a long hard fight is fantastic. This game presents some truly epic fights with some bosses being on the scale of something you'd see in Shadow of the Colossus.

My only major complaint regarding the game is something that most people aren't going to know about, or care about. There is a system called World Tendency in the game where the enemies you run into in an area, and the difficulty of said enemies, can change depending on your actions in the world. The rules governing world tendency are way over my head, and in the end, while there are certain things you won't see in the game without manipulating the World Tendency, you can experience all of the bosses and beat the game without every needing to understand it.

On a technical level, the game's graphics aren't perfect. There are framerate issues in certain areas, and in general the graphics look a little dated for a game that came out in 2009. I should also point out that while the game uses the Havok physics engine, the fallen corpses of your enemies behave very oddly, as though the don't weigh anything at all. That being said, the game is still very appealing visually thanks to great character and level design.

There is a barebones story in Demon's Souls that involves restoring the kingdom of Boletaria and defeating the Demon's that have taken over the land. There are some minor elements of choice in the game, but the game never explicitly lets you know that killing a certain NPC or saving them will have an effect on the story. Things are much more grey and mysterious than something as overt as, say, choosing whether or not to harvest a Little Sister in Bioshock.

When you beat the game you will wake up back in The Nexus where you are free to start all over and play through the game at an even higher difficulty. This is the only way that you will be able to obtain every spell and weapon in the game, as you will need to use the souls of various demons to make new spells and weapons. I imagine most people will be content with beating the game and moving on, but it is nice to know there is an even greater challenge awaiting you after the credits roll.

In the end, this game has been the most unique experience I've had in years, and it is something that I can easily recommend to anyone looking to play one of the most challenging games ever made.

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"rragnaar reviewed Demon's Souls for the PlayStation 3..." was posted by rragnaar on Mon, 18 May 2009 13:56:39 -0700
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/demons-souls/user-reviews/659633/platform/ps3/ Fri, 02 Jan 2009 23:40:18 -0800 Foolz3h reviewed Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones for the PC... http://www.gamespot.com/prince-of-persia-the-two-thrones/user-reviews/636219/platform/pc/ ...and gave it a 8.0.

I received Prince of Persia: the Two Thrones for free thanks to the good people at Next Publishing. I wasn't looking forward to playing it, but when my World of Warcraft subscription ran out I thought, what the hell. As the intro rolled my scepticism grew. The story sucked, the voice acting sucked, and then, as the actual game began, the gameplay sucked. But then at some point it hit me like an epileptic fit: the story and the voice acting were suddenly so bad they were good-listening to the Prince's emotional rants about his destroyed city and his father was hilarious, and so was watching him transform into the Dark Prince, which in its effort to be dramatic, ended up looking like an orgasm and an epileptic fit rolled into one. In fact, now that I think about it, it was soon after he first transformed that it hit me-soon after the twist (and I use the term loosely) that revealed what the Dark Prince really was, I realised how absolutely hilarious the game was. And that made the inner-dialogue between the two all the better.
I must admit I warmed to the gameplay a little quicker. It's linear, it doesn't require much thought, but there's a strong sense of exhilaration and thrill to it. Sure I thought it was a little un-inspired and boring to begin with, but soon after combat was introduced I was having a lot of fun. There was a nostalgic thrill to making my way through traps-traps like nothing I'd seen since Tomb Raider on the original Playstation. And while you can't deviate from the path through each level, the thrill of exploration is still there, because you have to work out how to get through the level.
I must commend Ubisoft on two things. The first is that they actually managed to make a game like this work well with a keyboard and mouse, and the second is that they also made sure the game looked good on lower settings. It's not every day you find a console to PC port that has fared so well, and while I suffered two fatal crashes, bad lip-synching, and sound effects being repeated, they can probably be put down to my PC. Though considering how bad Assassin's Creed's port was it might not be. All in all though, credit where credit is due.
I know I'm repeating myself, but it really was a monumental change in opinion. In fact I hated everything about the game to begin with. Shall I add something else to the list? Well, all the Persians looked and sounded decidedly American. Sure it's nitpicking, but for a game that desperately wants to feel like a tale from the One Thousand and One Nights, it's somewhat important. Yet at the end of the day if it had actually felt like that I probably wouldn't have ended up liking it; at the very I certainly wouldn't have liked it as much as I did.
I'm personally not a huge fan of that type of story-something about it just doesn't click with me-yet I would certainly have commended Ubisoft for putting it into a video game. But I'm a huge sucker for B-Grade shows and films, and there really aren't enough games B-Grade games, which is probably because there isn't much ambition story and character wise in video games. The Two Thrones had ambition, and because it had ambition and could fail, it could be B-Grade.
But I didn't love everything about it. The combat-oh god the combat! Maybe this was the failing in their keyboard/mouse control scheme? Maybe this was why they said you needed a gamepad for optimal experience? I doubt it. Even if I had taken the combo system seriously for more than five minutes, (after which I realised repeatedly pressing E got the combat out of the way a hell of a lot quicker) except for the boss battles, almost all combat felt like an annoying obstacle. I'm in the middle of streaking across roof tops, running along walls, and then I have to stop for thirty seconds just to kill some bloody sand monsters? Oh come on! Talk about a pace killer. And being unable to change secondary attack to the right mouse button without changing wall run is sheer lunacy. That's how it should be in the first place! After such an otherwise successful control scheme you really have to wonder what the hell they were thinking.
Still they managed to pull off the boss fights well enough. It was just a pity there weren't more of them. In fact if there were, and most confrontations with sand monsters were removed, the pacing and flow of the game would probably have been greatly improved. Here is where I would complain about the control in the boss fights, but I won't because short of offering different camera angles depending on your control scheme, there isn't really a way around it-wait, why the hell didn't they just add in a new camera angle for those that used a keyboard and a mouse?!
But one thing Ubisoft have no excuse for is some of the save point positions. For the most part they're well placed, but some have been placed seemingly at random with absolutely no thought for how long the player has been playing or what their frustration level might be. The best example of this is late on in the game. After a lengthy chariot chase (which was a pain in the arse) you are then pushed head first into a boss battle. Surely after a frustrating section that many people probably took awhile to complete, it would have been wise to give you the option to save? It is just before a god damn boss battle after all!
Another is the result of the linearity: due to the fact that you have to figure out where to and how to get where you need to go, the linearity doesn't make the core gameplay boring. It does however make it frustrating. You can never be sure which crevasses you can grab onto, and which protruding beams of wood you can drop down to. This is especially annoying because it will mean that you will probably miss some health upgrades because you'll never quite be sure if you can drop down to that cave to check if there's an upgrade inside it é Then again maybe I'm just a wuss. I mean with sand tanks it doesn't matter too much if you fall to your death because you can just rewind. (Did you just see how seamless that segue was?) Actually, at first I thought that this got rid of the consequences of falling, but they managed to balance the number of sand tanks you have perfectly, so that it did give you some leeway for trial and error, but it didn't mean that there were no consequences for dieing; there's only so many times you can rewind before your sand tanks run out!
I think I'm still surprised at how much I ended up enjoying it. I really did think I would absolutely hate it, but due to the corn and nostalgia factor it will probably go down as one of my favourites. I know what you're thinking, repeating yourself twice is indulgent, but repeating yourself three times is lame. Well it's because that's what The Two Thrones is to me. It's indulgent, it's stupid, and I loved every second of it because it was. I hope you came into the review with even lower expectations than I did with the game, as otherwise I'm in trouble.

NOTE:
I should probably clarify that my use of B-Grade here is not referring to low-budget films, as Prince of Persia certainly isn't low budget. It's in reference to films that are so bad that they are good, but I couldn't really be bothered typing that out several times. :P

Get the full article at GameSpot

"Foolz3h reviewed Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones for the PC..." was posted by Foolz3h on Fri, 02 Jan 2009 23:40:18 -0800
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/prince-of-persia-the-two-thrones/user-reviews/636219/platform/pc/ Sat, 18 Oct 2008 21:10:37 -0700 Foolz3h reviewed Outcast for the PC... http://www.gamespot.com/outcast/user-reviews/615469/platform/pc/ ...and gave it a 7.0.


The US government sends a probe into an alien parallel universe, but naturally things go wrong. An alien damages the probe resulting in the impending destruction of the universe if the probe can not be recovered. Step in Cutter Slade, a wise-cracking hard arse former navy SEAL who you have the honour of playing. Slade is ordered to escort three scientists into the parallel universe, but once again things don't go so well as Slade is separated from the scientists-losing most of his equipment in the process-and so an epic adventure of seemingly simple tasks that never quite go to plan begins.
Slade wakes up in a small village draped in beautiful white snow. He makes first contact with the aliens, and much to his dismay they tell him he is the Ulukai who is the prophesised being who will save the world from Fae Rhan, the evil dictator that rules Adelpha. What did I tell you about things not going to plan?
One of the first things you'll notice about Outcast is the interface and presentation. At a time when widescreen monitors were not readily available, Outcast is played at the highest resolution of 512x384, this means that you're playing in widescreen! Across the bottom of the screen there is a black bar, and while this cuts down on your vision, it adds to the cinematic feel of the game. While there is a HUD, many steps are taken to keep you immerse in the beautiful world of Adelpha. To bring up the map you hit tab, and when you do Slade has a pair of futuristic goggles descend over his eyes, and the map comes up. To further immerse you in the world, early on you are given the Gamsaav, a mystical item, that when squeezed, saves your life essence (in other words it saves the game). However, as you squeeze it, it glows and makes a noise, so if you try and save near an enemy they will investigate. It's the small details like this that were ahead of its time, you see games like Dead Space praised for integrating the HUD into the back of the protagonists suit, but Outcast had already been there and done that almost ten years earlier!
Upon completing a few tasks around Ranzaar (the snowy starting area), you're told that the Ulukai must collect five Mons before he can stop Fae Rhan. When you leave Ranzaar, you come across another very progressive feature. Outcast is completely non-linear! The Mons can be recovered in any order! While the quests themselves are quite linear (though a few do give you a choice or two here and there), you can play them in any order you like. I know games like the Elder Scrolls were around before Outcast, but I'm having trouble thinking of an action adventure as old as Outcast that is as non-linear.
But this is where we discover that Outcast has aged a little less than gracefully in certain areas. Shamazaar is a lush land of green riss (the most popular food in Adelpha) fields populated by Gandha talan (the working class), Fae talan (soldiers), and Twon-Ha (bird-like creatures that you can ride). When you mount a Twon-Ha you'll find you can't move, and when you walk through riss you'll find you move incredibly slowly. Problems like these are to be expected with old games, and can actually be fixed with CPU-Grabber, but it's annoying nonetheless. However, I suffered a far worse problem when I was about half way through, when the game suffered multiple fatal crashes, but thankfully this was fixed with a third party mod. The last problem-and perhaps the biggest-is not fixable by anything but a time machine and a memory wipe.
You see certain aspects of Oucast's gameplay has not aged particularly well. Most side-quests consist of going between quest vendor and quest vendor (A fact that Slade himself makes light of!), and while the dialogue and voice acting has high production values, and is deliciously cheesy, it's not exactly engaging. Especially when a seemingly simple task turns into a long trek across Adelpha. Ten years ago, exploring the world itself as you did the quest was probably engaging enough, and while the graphics have aged remarkably well (thanks to the unique smooth look of the voxel engine), it's just not as big of an attraction as it would have been ten years ago.
As well as the dialogue and story, the combat itself has aged very well. While it's an action adventure, you move with WSAD, and aim and shoot with the mouse. You can even go into first person mode for better aiming. Apart from your human pistol, you will get a multitude of alien weapons-from mortars to sniper rifles-and you'll need them, you see there isn't exactly a lack of Fae Talan aroundé though there will be by the time you're finished! I believe at one point near the end I was fighting 20+ Fae Talan, which is quite an impressive achievement for a game so old.
While there are a lot of enemies, there can be large gaps between them. So when you're not fighting, it simply feels like you're walking around talking to peopleé which is pretty much the case. To make matters worse, you can weaken soldiers, and lower their numbers by doing resource quests. These generally involve convincing the leaders of the different regions of Adelpha to stop giving supplies to Fae Rhan. In the desert region of Motazaar this would mean they would stop mining metal for the soldiers' weapons, which would make the soldiers' weapons weaker, in the marshy region of Okasankaar this would mean they would stop supplying the soldiers with Sankaar (fish) which would make them physically weaker and therefore easier to kill. There are four resource quests in total, and by the time you're finished you will kill the soldiers in two or three shots, and they will do very little damage, making the game incredibly easy.
There is however, are several aspects of Outcast that time will never diminish: the story, the well realised and in-depth world, the dialogue and voice acting, but most of all, the delicious sci-fi sense of humour and references. For a start the different nations of Adelpha are accessed through Daokas, that look almost identical to Stargates from Stargate, and in the city of Motazaar there are buskers playing music from Star Wars. If you have a long attention span you should definitely give Outcast a try, it might be slow at times, but listening to the Star Wars theme as Slade is sent on yet another seemingly simple task that turns into something much harder will ease the pain.

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"Foolz3h reviewed Outcast for the PC..." was posted by Foolz3h on Sat, 18 Oct 2008 21:10:37 -0700
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