• 7Sep 09

  PAX 2009 The Games Part 2

  Harmonix

  Rock Band Lego (Nov 3) – If you already own Rock Band… why?

  The Beatles Rock Band (Sept 9) – I like RockBand because it's the only game my wife will play with me. So I'll pick this up around Christmas. The three singers thing is actually pretty cool, not just a gimmick. One of my problems with Rockband is when they make really simple songs super hard to play. Like Margaritaville by Jimmy Buffet. That song is like a douchebag fratboy gently strumming his guitar but instead of one button notes they made it 3 button notes constantly changing. It's insanely tough. If a song is easy, make it easy in the game! I have no problem struggling through a crazy Who guitar solo and barely making it to the end because I feel like a rockstar but failing out on sleepy basic songs sucks. Now people will disagree with me but the Beatles (as awesome as there were) weren't very musically complex for the most part. The songs shouldn't be difficult in Rockband and I was concerned there were going to artificially jack up the difficulty so you'd be failing out like Hey Jude. After watching people play several songs on expert, it's a bit of a concern but I'm satisfied enough to buy it.

  Namco Bandai

  Tekken 6 (Oct 27) – I think anyone that's spent five minutes around me know I hate fighting games. So this comment might offend people but it felt like Soul Calibur but a big easier. Again I'm not a big fan so I don't really know what else to say.

  Bethesda

  Wet (Sept 15) – It comes out in a couple days and I see there is a demo up on PSN so you can play it yourself. Me. I hated it. The whole premise is so stupid. You go into a room with like ten enemies and they all just stand there shooting aimlessly at you while you run around like an idiot jumping and sliding to try and trigger the slow motion stuff. Even the car ridding parts don't impress me. Terrible AI. The developers were nice guys but this game was weak. The few moments of slow mo blowing peoples heads off looks okay but the thrill dies minutes later.

  Rogue Warrior (Oct 27) – Really generic, low quality FPS. Why do companies even make games like this?

  Brink (Q3 2010) – I had no idea this game existed before PAX. I'm definitely interested. It was just a live demo and it's being made by Splash Damage. It has like Mirror's Edge running and jumping mechanics so you can move very quickly from a FPS perspective. Fully customizable characters. Two factions on the "Brink" of civil war. It was like a Utopian city that lost contact with the rest of the world. So you're either the security force or the rebel immigrants that have come to the city. Kind of cartoonish characters. Feels a lot like Killzone, In fact the basic gun is perfectly identical (I mean even the zoom in is identical) to the ISA rifle. There is a class system and you can change your class at captured beacons. It will be 8 player co-op or 8v8 multiplayer with tons of objectives. So like you bring up a wheel and it gives you I think like 10 potential objectives with associated XP. So like switch to engineer (100xp), then you get some new ones like create a short cut (150xp) or fix that crane (300xp). Etc. it's kind of tough to explain. In live demo he had to guide a robot to a bomb and so everything you did helped speed up the process. Or you could just escort the vehicle which was an objective (10xp per second). Does that make any sense? It looks like it's trying to do a lot of things at once. Like a complex MAG objective system mixed with Killzone, mixed with Mirror's Edge. Again, definitely interested.

  Ubisoft

  Assassin's Creed 2 (Nov 17) – This was just a huge stage demo in the biggest theatre at the show. Assassin's Creed was for me, like most people, a game that was both excellent and terrible. The graphics, the go anywhere gameplay and story were great but the repetition was ridiculous. So after watching a 40 minute presentation I can't comment on the repetition (the guy assured us it was gone) but it looked like the same great elements of assassin's creed 1. There is a huge portion that takes place underground. Lots of hidden treasure to find (too much). You can pick up enemy weapons. The gun is pretty cool because it gets increasingly accurate when you hold down the button but it reveals you so you can't use it in combat. A lot more platforming which looks identical to PoP. Double knives. The biggest change is that there is now a money system. So you get money for killing guys and you can pickpocket people in the street. You use the money to buy potions. The one he showed us was a potion that made this lord's guard start hallucinating and going crazy. Then he threw money on the ground and people are tried to pick it up while the guard was swinging his axe around all crazy like. Again it feels like I'm forgetting some stuff.

  Splinter Cell (Q1 2010) – I've never played any of these games before but it was the first part of the AC 2 presentation. Umm this game looks really silly. During the question period all the fanboys were furious about the game because it looked really easy and entirely lost it's stealth element. The presenter kept saying the main character was a panther, he was a predator, a puma. It was actually really funny in his Quebecois accent (but he didn't mean it to be, I'm sure). Basically imagine a fast paced Uncharted with **** graphics and this stupid new aiming system. This aiming system involves tagging enemies while hiding behind a corner. Then you jump out and quickly/automatically shoot all the tagged enemies. It looks so easy. Another feature is the last known position. So as soon as you break the line of sight a ghost of you shows up and the enemies head towards that spot. So as long as you are out of sight you can then sneak around them as they head towards that one location. WTF! Does that make sense at all? They could call it the Ubisoft easy button. During the demo he just hung off ledges and enemies walked right up to him so he could grab them. I can see why fans of the game would be angry. Otherwise the game looked pretty rough. Expect a delay for sure.

  Avatar (Nov 24) – Got to watch this in a 3D theatre. Silly. But the game looked decent. It's a third person action game. Really cool night to day environments. Interesting customizable special abilities. You can play as humans or avatars. I guess James Cameron is trying to build like a Star Wars universe and he's had this idea for like 12 years. So this game isn't a movie tie in. It's like a completely separate game set in the movie universe. Some interesting vehicles and big creatures to fight. It looked well polished and unique enough to be given a chance. Personally I kind of like Lost Planet 2 better because the weapons are more interesting and the bosses are bigger, also co-op.

  EA

  Battlefield Bad Company 2 (Q1 2010) – You got to go into 4 squads of 4 and play in a special room. It was pretty neat. Good game. I'm really at a loss of what to say. It felt like a good first person military shooter. Got to ride an ATV and a tank. The destructible environments was pretty cool but didn't make sense sometimes (clearly they're going to work on it). If you're a big fan of the series you can ask me specifics I guess,

  Brutal Legend (Oct 13) – I waited so long and did not get to play this game. Some demos had like organized lines and time limits while others were just clustereffs like Brutal Legend. It was super busy all the time. So I got to watch people play it a lot. Looks pretty basic, attack with the axe, lighting attack called down by the guitar. Driving sequences look fun. The best part was the dialogue. It's genuinely funny and Jack Black does a great job. People were laughing out loud in groups watching this game being played.

  Dead Space Extraction (Sept 29) – Urghh horrible. If you're a fan of light gun shooters on the Wii then you'll probably like this game. But I was a big fan of Deadspace. I think it was really underappreciated. It scared the crap out of me and I still have to go back on Impossible to get my Platinum. It was a thrilling game and to see it dumbed down on the Wii breaks my heart. It's not so much the graphics but like the game wasn't mean to be a light shooter. Creeping around in the dark, moving from shadow to light, with all the strange noises, crazy aliens sneaking up behind you, crawling out of vents, running for your life, getting cornered, zero gravity, aliens coming from all directions. All that reduced to a locked screen and three monsters taking turns running at you. It's dumb.

  Saboteur (Dec – I was interested in this game but it really looks like the **** I talked to Tom French (the lead designer) for a while as I was playing (he was super nice). The game looks really rough. Like dead enemies floating into the sky, the camera moving into objects so you can't see anything, enemies randomly falling into walls. Graphics are not great. Shooting effects are terrible. AI and enemy detection is laughable. I guess ideally it's supposed to be like a sandbox, third person, WW2, stealth game with a lot of driving portions because the main character is a race car driver. You can steal soldier's clothes and walk around but you have a detection meter. Like there's some good ideas here and I was excited about it but the game wasn't very good. Also the fact that the Nazis look like Space Marines and they're apparently marching in groups of 8 around every corner of occupied France in the middle of the night while you're driving through.

  Dante's Inferno (Feb 9) – Another surprise, this game was pretty damn cool. It played exactly like God of War but a lot tougher. Most people couldn't get through the demo on easy (I did of course ) Static camera, same buttons roughly. Same level of graphics although I might give the edge to GoW3, same gory gameplay. Damage bosses until a button press sequence. Epic huge and creative bad guys you're fighting. There is this demon riding a Minotaur (but like a pretty crazy looking Minotaur). You have to rip the demon out of the seat and then take control of the Minotaur to pound and tear apart guys. Meanwhile you're riding on the back of some grotesque human boat. So your Minotaur (which is like five times your size) rips out the eye ball of the giant human boat and the eye ball is like the size of the Minotaur's chest. Then he sticks his hands into the eye socket and tears the head off and throws it away. Crazy stuff like that. There was another fight against a giant Octopus man. A lot of times when you fight giant bosses, they kind of sway back and forth stupidly then every ten second smash a fist down at you. This Octopus man was out to get you! He was pounding fists and dragging his arm across the cage you were in. It didn't feel like it was canned. You end up killing him by dragging his face onto a big wheel and tearing it in half. I'm not a big fan of gore but this game will be the king, and I can appreciate that. They also gave us a comic of the story and it sounds decent. It's a toss up between this and GoW for me. If you're a fan of the genre get both for sure.

  Darksiders (Jan) – As good as Dante's Inferno and GoW3 were, this game was bad. Such a plain, ugly, boring game. The enemies, the environments, your weapon, your special attacks, the platforming parts, all bland and terrible. This is something you'd play on PS2 in the middle of it's cycle. Enemies just slowly hobble towards you and the weapon collision is off entirely. They had a big decorated horse/mechanical bull that you could ride. Easily that will be the high point of Darksiders.

  • Posted Sep 7, 2009 4:46 pm PT
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• 7Sep 09

  PAX 2009 The Games Part 1

  I wanted to write down my thoughts on all the games I saw and played at PAX. Why should you care? You shouldn't really but I wanted to share my experience because it was an unbelievable. Also my reviews are shorter and more honest than like gamespot coverage of the games and I got to ask the developers lots of questions. Plus you can ask me questions. And please feel free to ask me questions because I'm just briefly touching on all the games. I know that there might be some small element that is a huge selling point for you and you need to know about it. (Like Murasame, the sort of sequel to Odin Sphere. The developer assured me there would be no stupid item system and growing plants or item limit.).

  I spent over 12 hours just on the Expo floor (a lot of that was waiting in lines) but I could have easily spent 30 hours and not seen everything. So I didn't play the big Xbox games, the lines were too long, like Halo ODST, Left for Dead 2, Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age Origins (crap I just realized this wasn't an MMORPG and it's on the PS3 as well) and Forza. I also avoided all the PC games, lots of MMORPG but Diablo 2 and Starcraft did peak my interest. I'm also not writing about all the PSP, Wii and DS games I played so if you're really concerned about one coming out then just ask. The big games I missed that I wanted to see were Red Dead Redemption and Scribblenauts, just ran out of time. I also just kind of walked through Nintendo. I wasn't going to wait in a line to play Wii Resort or Metroid Collection. Big disappointments were no Konami, no Activision, and no Square.

  Also when reading my thoughts keep in mind that some of the games were at a very rough stage but I still judged them all as if they were a finished product. Most of them I was using a 360 controller, which screwed me up too.

  Most Surprisingly Good: 1) Borderlands 2) Dante's Inferno 3) Brink

  Must Buys: 1) Heavy Rain 2) Uncharted 2 3) Borderlands/GoW3/Dante's Inferno/White Knight Chronicles (Too many games!)

  Worst Games: 1) Darksiders 2) Deadspace Extraction 3) Saboteur/Wet (but give the edge to Wet because it's actually coming out in a week)

  2k

  Bioshock 2 (Q1 2010) – Very disappointing. You waited to go into a small theatre and all they showed a trailer for the multiplayer and a video walkthrough (that I'd already seen months ago on the internet) of the single player. So there was no playable demo and not even a live demo. So basically nothing new. The multiplayer did show a couple things. Customizable characters. Taking pictures of dead enemies. Looked pretty chaotic. And you could play as a big daddy and clobber people. The maps looked all indoors and really tight. I'm positive the singleplayer is finished completely and they're just working on multiplayer at this point (and I do release it's two different teams working on each).

  Borderlands (Oct 20) – Biggest surprise of the show for me. I waited an hour and a half to play this game and it made me a believer. This game was originally completely off my radar. After playing it and talking to the developers (who were super cool) tomorrow I'm going to pre-order it. It became a must buy for me. Just imagine Fallout 3 without VATS and with an awesome FPS feel (Fallout 3 was great but the FPS parts were pretty clunky, I always fought in VATS). Throw in 4 player co-op. SOLD. It was really really fun. The upgrade tree looks pretty short but a lot of it revolves around the many customizable weapons. The developers were pretty honest and said the guns really won't feel that different but the damage levels and secondary effects will change. There's also sort of a class system with the special abilities your guys have. The feel to the game is pretty light hearted and it's got that cell shading, although went your actually playing I forgot it was even drawn that way.

  Capcom

  Lost Planet 2 (Q4 2009) – Just got to play that part fighting the huge salamander, which I'm sure you've seen videos of. Decent third person action game. The weapons were really cool. Co-op is always cool (I'm a huge fan of co-op if you haven't guessed). I couldn't figure out the stupid grappling hook but I didn't play the first game so maybe it's just me. Decent game.

  Dark Void (Jan 12) – When you take a single element of game X and turn it into the main gimmick element on an entire other game, I think it's a pretty big complement to game X. That being said this game plays just like the flying portions of Warhawk. I usually get really sick and dizzy by game that invert the screen (like that one bloody level in PixelJunk Eden or the zero gravity part of Deadspace) so I wasn't even considering getting this game. But after playing the game it really wasn't half bad and it didn't force you into the inversion parts, you could just fly through them if you wanted. Again it controls like the planes in Warhawks and so it has those frustrating moments of going from flying to hover mode and back again. Kind of generic enemies, and guns and main character but it's not so bad. Probably won't pick this one up but it's okay. I'd rather pull out Warhawk!

  Nintendo

  New Super Mario Bros (Q4 2009) – It was decent. Four player 2D Mario. I didn't actually play it but watch some people for a while.

  Sega (Sega had like a smallest booth of the whole show but the hottest booth babes)

  Bayonetta (Jan) – A lot like DMC4 but a little crazier. In my opinion it can't even be compared to GoW3 or Dante's Inferno. Button mashing, crazy over the top combos. Static screen so right analogue is the doge. It's kind of funny because every attack has like a sexually explicit name and she goes naked for her ultimate attacks and finishing moves. You can pick up enemy weapons. I especially liked the neat, semi-angelic enemies you fight, they look awesome. I don't particularly like this type of game but it seems to me as more fun than DMC4 was.

  Sony

  Pixel Junk Shooter (Q4 2009) – I love the Pixel Junk games and this one seems just as funky. There was no music available but I can only assume it would be awesome. You fly around with left control stick and rotate your ship to shoot with the right. As you can tell by the video it's about breaking walls to release water to cool lava and then break that lava so the water can move through. You also rescue little dudes. I can assume there will be tons of weapons but for now I just had a shoot button that you could hold down for a rocket. You don't really take damage but instead you take "heat" from enemies and being near the lava so you have to jump back in the water to cool down. After playing it I actually might not buy it because I find these top down fliers really tough and frustrating but it seems to have all the Pixeljunk charm.

  MAG (Jan 26) - I'm sure most of you have tried the Beta so there's isn't much to add but I'll just brag about the exclusive MAG Screening or whatever it was that I went to. It was separate from PAX and it was for 256 people. I thought it was going to be like a big LAN party but instead it was this super swanky event. Security in suits and dark glasses. Free booze and awesome food (crab cakes, lobster dishes, mini gourmet burgers etc). They had 8 big screens in a room and there were 3 rooms (one for each faction). So you got to play in the beta while the developers walked around and asked you questions and stuff. It was so amazing. I got to tell a few of them the problems I had with the game and my suggestions. What an experience!

  Heavy Rain (Q1 2010) – Out effing standing! I lined up on Sunday at 8 am (2 hours before the doors opened) just to play this game after having watched it for the first two days. My expectations were super high and it blew those away. The graphics and design are incredible. The characters look amazing, the dialogue was so rich. I was getting pulled into the world while standing up watching someone else play in a crowd of nerds. That's how great this game is. There were two scenarios. One was a dad picking his kid up and making him supper. It was basically just to show you the mechanics. The other one (which everyone played) was the old cop questioning a shop keeper. The shop keeper refuses and you go to buy something. Then a robber comes into the store. You can do nothing. Sneak up on the robber and clobber him. Talk the robber down. Talk to the robber until he is distracted and tackle him. Or get shot. (Those are the only ones I saw.) What impressed me the most was the controls. I knew the game looked incredible but how was the gameplay? It was stellar. You walk by holding R2 and the right stick, then you use the leg stick for a lot of commands. You have the four button mapped to answers you can give when talking. Basically you walk up to things and the commands jump at you. How is this fun you ask? Well imagine sneaking up on the robber. You edge down the isle and you see a bottle. You have to carefully press the left stick to the right to grab the bottle without making a sound (if you don't then you drop it). You then sneak forward and suddenly you bump some boxes so you have to quickly press triangle to grab them. Then you come up behind him and wiggle the remote to bash him in the head. It's actually super intense and fun. Please buy this game! It's something that's actually innovative and creative, don't pour your money into another FPS copycat and let Heavy Rain flop.

  God of War 3 (March 2010) – I waited close to an hour to play 15 minutes of the demo. You start off in a burning city with skeletons attacking people. You fight your way until some harpies that you have to grab onto and beat them with the circle button to make them rise a little and get you over gaps. You then fight a bunch of skeletons with a big centaur. Then you fight a huge chimera. All the while there is an absolutely massive fire titan in the background fighting a flaming guy on a flaming chariot. After you beat the Chimera you actually shoot a giant bolt gun at the flaming chariot guy (who is like smaller than the titan's hand). You hit the chariot and the titan uses the opportunity to grab the chariot and toss it into a mountain. You have the chain blades and then those massive fists that you saw in the first couple trailers. He has the icarus wings. The camera is static like Heavenly Sword and the left analogue is dodge. For the centaur and the Chimera you had to beat them enough to start a button press sequence. The Chimera had three of them. It's super gory. You cut turn the centaur on his side and cut him down the stomach and all his guts spill out. To finish the Chimera you tear out his horn and ram it through his eye. The graphics looked great. The background (looking down on the burning city and the clouds) looks gorgeous. Great game, I'm sure I'm forgetting something I wanted to say about it.

  White Knight Chronicles (Q1 2010) I spent a good deal of time with this exploring the menus and stuff. It looks like an awesome JRPG, the one we've all been waiting for. It feels a lot like FF12, especially the battle system (but a little simpler version of the gambit system). The story seems a little more light hearted than final fantasy, almost a little Japanese silly if you get my drift. The main city you start in is huge just like ff12. Basically just think ff12. But I didn't get my guy to transform. Also it wasn't fully translated. It was strange too because when you pressed triangle it brought up a PSN message screen, I'm sure that has to do with the multiplayer. All around this looks like the solid JRPG we've been waiting for. Oh and the graphics looked pretty good, better than they've looked in the trailers.

  Uncharted 2 (Oct 13) – For anyone that played the beta, this game will be outstanding and there isn't much for me to add. They just had a section of the single player fighting through the same city we've seen in the beta. It's Uncharted, it's awesome. Everything you would expect. The graphics were hands down the best of the entire show. Including the PC stuff. The lighting is outstanding, I don't even remember it being that good in the beta. Killzone for me is GOTY 2009 but this could give it a serious run.

  • Posted Sep 7, 2009 4:45 pm PT
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• 27May 09

  Infamous review

  Disclaimer: If by some absolute fluke someone from Ubisoft is reading this, then I beg you to play infamous and pay attention to two important things. Prince of Persia and Assassins Creed were the two most repetitive games I've played on the next gen consoles, possibly ever. If you want to base your game on repetitive tasks then please use infamous as your template for keeping the tasks relatively fresh, unique and engaging.

  The second thing you should please please please take note of is that a third person platformer can work without having a jump off of the wall you're trying to climb for no reason at all function. This was my number one cause of death by far in PoP and it was my number one frustration in Assassin Creed. You're jumping up a wall and for whatever reason your jump falls just short of the intended ledge, so why in both games does your character always propel himself off the wall at this point in the opposite direction. There is absolutely no purpose whatsoever to putting this in your games you freaking morons. I can't begin to describe how much more fun infamous is to play as a platformer when you miss catching a ledge and your character just slides down the wall.

  So I played infamous with my roommate from 9:00pm until 4:00am last night. I finished the first city and started on the second. I think it's fair to put out my review at this point. Unless the story takes a huge turn or playing the game on hard starts to expose some huge weaknesses in the gameplay (it usually does), I think my review will probably stand.

  I really had my doubts about this game but overall I'm pretty impressed. The story is decent. It's not great but it certainly tries very hard to rise about the average mailed in video game storyline. I'm not a fan of your hick buddy but the dialogue is really solid. I'm always talking about maintaining story throughout gameplay like Bioshock or GTA. Infamous doesn't do a great job of this so in between story missions you really lose the story entirely (aside from the same one liner you hick buddy repeats to you every once in a while). So the game starts to feel lonely, which takes away from the story. But all in all the story isn't bad.

  I'm the pickiest and whiniest gamer when it comes to controls, especially for third person games. But I can't find much to complain about in infamous, which is amazing. He sticks to walls a little too easilly, which makes jumping down from a building slightly annoying. Also some events can interrupt you while you're holding down the R1 button and then you need to press it again, which can be slightly annoying. But that's getting really picky. The fighting and powers parts are absolutely great (I was worried they'd be a little simplistic). In fact I find myself craving more fights and bigger fights during the game because it's so much fun.

  The only place where the game falls flat is graphics, and I don't think I've said that about a game in a long time. After watching the early gameplay videos I made the comment that the graphics looked like a good PS2 game and after having played the game I don't take that statement back. The people look horrible. They move and speak like robots. The textures and details are bad. The art design is boring and uninspired with a lack of detail. All the streets in one area look identical. The physics are bad. The interactions with the environment are bad. (You see a car, you hit it repeatedly with lighting, terrible looking flash, then insert shell of car. No transition or damage whatsoever. That's inexcusable for next-gen games.) There are also a ton of graphics glitches but those are mostly hilarious. Like three cars driving through a turret truck then the fourth car getting stuck inside of it and both exploding a moment later. Or bumping a cop just before he gives you a mission so he falls over. Then he gives you the briefing crumbled up in a corner with his legs coming out of his mid chest.

  One thing I absolutely love about the game is the radar that helps you find the shards and satellite dishes. This is incredible and makes my OCD life much easier. It's still challenging to find the objects and it takes a little work but you can do it without printing off a 45 page guide and playing with it on your lap because there's no way you'd ever find the things on their own.

  I'd give the game an 8.5. It's fun, it's above my expectations and we've been spoiled lately with graphics so I can cut infamous a bit of slack.

  • Posted May 27, 2009 10:44 am PT
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