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I’m playing Bayonetta right now, so expect a full review of that soon. Also, I’ll be getting the Halo: Reach Beta soon, probably midnight on the 3rd, and I’ll get my initial impressions out there as soon as possible. School is almost over, so I should be able to update more regularly. However, the wasteland of gaming releases known as Summer is nearly upon us, so if you have any games you want reviewed, let me know.

 

Triple Threat Video Game Review Super Fun-Time Blowout!!!! Bioshock 2/Castle Crashers/Battlefield: Bad Company 2!!!!!!!!

     Okay, so the last month has been ridiculously busy, and papers are due in profusion this week. Also, finals are next week and work is insane. So I have definitely let the reviews slip. I know both of you that are faithfully reading the first paragraph of my reviews are crying every night that I don’t post, so I’ll throw you a bone.

     So here we have the first ever Triple Threat Video Game Review Super-Post!!! But seriously, I’m going to review three of the games that I promised review for, in a slightly abbreviated form perhaps, and give you the critical goodness you’ve all (by all I mean my mom and one random guy on the internets) been longing for.

   Review 1: Bioshock 2

   Developer: 2k Marin, Digital Extremes, etc.

   Publisher: 2k Games

   Genre: First Person Shooter/RPG/blahblahblah

   Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3, PC

   Score: Pretty Good

          I realize “pretty good” is not a very specific score, but you’ll get over it. I don’t feel like agonizing today over what score the game merits. So pretty good is what you get. And that’s really what Bioshock 2 is. Pretty Good. Now, if I had been asked to give the first Bioshock a similarly vague and meaningless rating, it probably would have been something like, “Ground Breaking”, or “Innovative”, or “Pretty Stinking Awesome”. That is, I would have said one of those things, If you could have peeled  my eyeballs from the awesomeness that was Bioshock long enough to get a quote. It was a really great game. It was truly atmospheric, and the story nearly made me crap myself more that once.

     So, that brings us to Bioshock 2. Pretty Good. You know, I really think that if Bioshock 1 had never been made, I would probably think that Bioshock 2 was one of the best games of last year. It still has the same great gameplay, the same awesome setting, the same plasmids. But that’s the big problem. It’s more of the same in most places, and a little less in others. Sure the gameplay is pretty much the same, but the whole thing just smacks of the countless cash in sequels that game developers and movie studios have been subjecting us to for years. It’s like the Matrix sequels. Sure, technically the production values are better, and there’s definitely been more money spent on it, but it just doesn’t have the same soul that the first one did. It didn’t really need a sequel. It doesn’t have the same newness.

      The story has some pretty serious holes in it, and it just feels like a retread. Rapture’s still around, it’s still falling apart, everybody is still crazy, and somebody with a very extreme socio-economic ideology is still trying to run everything. It’s hard for me to explain my dissatisfaction with Bioshock 2, and I’m not even saying you shouldn’t play it. You should. It’s still a good game, and it’s definitely worth a go. Just don’t expect to have your mind blown. Also, the multiplayer is pretty mediocre.

   Review 2: Castle Crashers

   Developer: The Behemoth

   Publisher: Microsoft, Sony

   Genre: Side Scrolling Multiplayer Online Action/RPG Madness, or SSMOARPGM

   Platforms: Xbox Live Arcade, Playstation Network

   Rating: A Pile of Steaming Awesome

          For those of you who have been living in a hole in an asteroid in the Andromeda Galaxy for the last couple of years, or for my Mom and my Wife, who don’t know anything about games, but are probably the only people who read these things, Castle Crashers is a game by the in the developer The Behemoth, who are the guys behind the breakout flash hit Alien Hominid. The game is offered as a download on the Xbox Live Arcade, or as I like to call it, the XBLA. The gameplay is a mix of frantic sidescrolling beat-em-up action (tl;dr- lots of button mashing) with some RPG elements. The game is definitely best played with four player over Xbox Live, or all on one screen even, and with that many players the action gets positively bewildering. But in a good way.  The art style is quirky and funny, and the story (What little there is anyway) is told through genuinely hilarious cutscenes and in-game events. The game is addictive, with lots of extra characters, weapons, and animal orbs (little floating ball like animals that help in various ways, like boosting XP gains, stunning or damaging enemies, or Buffing player stats). Castle Crashers is everything that a pick up and play game should be, with character stats and unlockables carrying over from online to single player, and easy party and Xbox Live matchmaking. If you have some friends willing to play with you, Castle Crashers is a fun, hilarious game with surprisingly deep gameplay. So you should definitely play it. Seriously.

 

   Review 3: Battlefield: Bad Company 2

   Developer: DICE   Publisher: EA

   Genre: Modern Warfa…I mean, FPS.

   Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3, PC

   Rating: 3 out of 5 Modern Warfares

          Okay, so I’m probably gonna catch a lot of flak for this, but I don’t really like Bad Company 2. I played the first Bad Company a while after it came out and was really underwhelmed, but I had heard that BC2 had really improved on the formula. I had even heard that it was good enough to give Modern Warfare a run for its money. And it is. If the competition they’re in is a “Which game is more like Modern Warfare” competition. But as far as gameplay, or story especially, go there is no comparison. Now I’m not one of those guys that gets really bent out of shape when one game is similar to another, or when companies start using a concept or idea from a game to incorporate into their own. My problem comes when something is a rip-off and it is STILL inferior. That’s the feeling that I got from BC2.

          So, some of my concrete complaints about the game.

1. Enemies are invisible – Look, I understand the concept of “camouflage”, but there is such a thing as being too realistic. Then again, the maps are all so dang dusty that the enemies could all be wearing clown suits and I still wouldn’t be able to find them until they were shooting me.

2. Dust – Okay, I realize that the first two times a building collapses in a billow of smoke and dust, it looks cool. Then it’s just annoying. Add this to the consistently khaki colored landscapes and the khaki colored bad guys, and it’s a recipe for eyestrain and frustration. Also, there is dust, or smoke, or fog, or haze, or snow in nearly every level. Seriously, can’t at least on level be in a clean environment so that I can see more that ten feet in any direction?

3. Rocket Launchers – They’re annoying enough in MW2 when just a few guys have them, but it seems like every freaking dude in Bad Company 2 has a RPG in his back pocket. Combine this with the fact that you never know where anybody is until they’ve shot you, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. Or at least, a recipe for repeated cheap deaths, until you finally figure out where every single enemy spawns.

4. Dust – Seriously, it’s really hard to see anybody. I think the protagonist of BC2 needs to get his eyes checked.

5. Story – Tries to be cheeky and light, and serious all at the same time. It succeeds at exactly none of them.

         I know people are probably going to say, “But what about the multiplayer!?!” Or at least, they would if they were reading this, but I’m going to say it for them. But what about the multiplayer!??

    It’s okay…

Not great though.

 

Sorry

Sorry folks, things have been absolutely crazy for me the last month or so. Eventually I’ll get around to writing up my Bioshock 2 review, and I’m playing Battlefield: Bad Company 2 right now, although I’ve got a million things to do, so there’s no telling when I’ll be finished.

 

Mass Effect

     Game: Mass Effect 2

     Developer: BioWare

     Publisher: Electronic Arts

     Genre: Third-Person Shooter/RPG

     Platforms: Xbox 360, PC

     Score: 9.0

          This has been a really hard review for me to write, and I’ve finally just decided to just start and see what comes out. First off, let me just say that Mass Effect 2 is a really good game. It is not, however, a flawless game. But first, for any of you who have been living under a metaphorical rock, I’ll do the obligatory game description and plot summary.

     Mass Effect 2 is a RPG/Third-Person Shooter hybrid by BioWare, who are known for Star Wars RPG Knights of the Old Republic. The first Mass Effect was BioWare’s effort to create their own Sci-Fi universe to play around with, and they were VERY succesful at it. Mass Effect’s universe is one of the most immersive and original that I’ve come across in a good while, and I think that it has as many possibilities as the Star Wars universe, except that BioWare won’t have to deal with LucasArts whenever they want to do anything (bring it on, Star Wars nerds). Mass Effect 2 picks up where the first entry left off, which will be different depending on whether you choose to import your character and save from the first game, or start with the default story in ME2. I won’t go into much detail about the story, because there is a pretty significant surprise right at the beginning, if you haven’t already had it spoiled for you. Just take my word for it that ME2′s story is definately on par with the first. The story is certainly one of the great strengths of Mass Effect, and the dialogue is especially well written, with a lot of options and different conversation trees. The voice acting is REALLY good all around, and there are some VERY funny background conversations that will have you standing in one place for ten minutes just to hear the whole thing.

     The gameplay of Mass Effect 2 is a little less top of the line. It is certainly not bad, and the game controls better than many, but it doesn’t stand out on its own. The gameplay is pretty straighforward Third-Person Shooter fare, with solid cover mechanics and RPG elements. You choose a class in the beginning of the game, and you are able to allot skill points in certain skills throughout the game, as you level up. There is also a Morality system, which rewards you with Renegade or Paragon points, depending on your decisions and conversation choices. You can also upgrade weapons, etc, etc. Really nothing special in this department, although I did have some complaints.

     Ah, and here we are. The complaints. This is the part of the review that I’ve really been wrestling with for the last week, because there are a lot of really small complaints that I have about this game. They don’t really take away much from the overall greatness of the game, but they keep it from being as epic as it could be. Also, some of the complaints that I have are about changes from the first game, so you may have totally different feelings about some of this, and that’s okay because I’m writing this review, not you. Go get your own blog… Anyway, I’ll get started with my list of (mostly) petty complaints about Mass Effect 2. First, I have a not so petty complaint about the weapons in this game. In the first Mass Effect, I remember there being TONS of weapons. You found them all the time, and you could add all sorts of mods to all of them, and your armor as well. Now, I love games with lots of weapons (I REALLY loved Borderlands). I like picking up tons of guns and sorting though them to see if any of them are better than the one I’ve got. I love selling 30 random weapons that are of NO use to me back to a store, and getting money for a slightly better gun. Maybe I’m just a packrat, or maybe I’m crazy. I don’t know. But I liked all of the different weapon types and brands in Mass Effect 1. However, there were a lot of (perfectly understandable) complaints about the menus being slow and clunky(and generally frustrating) in the first Mass Effect. BioWare’s answer to these complaints, however, was not to streamline the menus and weapon management. Instead, they just took out the whole loot system completely. No more finding weapons dropped by dead enemies or in random boxes. In Mass Effect 2, you get (maybe) three or four different weapons in each weapon type throughout the entire game. Now you may not care about this, but it was a real disappointment for me.

     Another pretty major complaint I had is about the game’s font size. I realize that a lot of people have HDTV’s but I don’t, and I know I’m not the only one. However, Mass Effect 2 joins the ranks of games with tiny, miniscule, indecipherable text on anything other than an HDTV (I’m looking at you, Dead Rising). I actually had to play the whole game sitting in a chair about three feet from my tv, just so I could read the subtitles, mission text, and pretty much any other text in the game. This is incredibly frustrating! I’m sure that the developers and testers were playing Mass Effect in HD, and I don’t blame them. The game was gorgeous even in standard def. But get a clue! Not every gamer can shell out the money for an HDTV, and those of us who can’t would really like to be able to play games without going blind from eyestrain…

       I also really missed the MAKO vehicle from the first game. Now I have a feeling I really am alone there, but I actually enjoyed the vehicle sections in Mass Effect 1, and although there certainly were problems that needed to be addressed, completely doing away with that part of the game seems like a strange solution. My last real complaint about the game has to do with the game’s most important feature - the dialogue. Mass Effect (and BioWare games in general) are known for their excellent dialogue system. In Mass Effect 2, you can skip to the next part of a dialogue scene with the X button. This might not matter, but I always, always, ALWAYS have subtitles on (unless I’m playing Army of Two), especially in games with as much emphasis on dialogue, and I am a very quick reader. So I’ve usually finished reading the line the character is saying a good while before they finish saying it, so I used that skip button a lot to speed things up. The problem is, the X button also picks the default answer during conversations, or exits the conversation altogether. I can’t tell you how many times I accidentally picked the wrong response with an ill timed press of the X button, and a few times, mostly in conversations where I wanted to get the most Renegade points possible, I had to restart from my last save…

     Even with these complaints, however, Mass Effect 2 is a VERY good game. It has an epic storyline and some of the best dialogue in the industry. The gameplay really is very solid, and there is a lot of opportunity for replay value, with branching storylines and Paragon and Renegade choices. I know I complained a lot about this game, but this is only because I enjoyed it so much that the few flaws it had really stuck with me. In the end, despite my complaints, Mass Effect is another excellent installment in an epic series from BioWare.

(Thanks for reading, please feel free to comment and let me know what you think. I realized when I started writing this, that all three of the games I’ve reviewed so far have been EA games. Therefore, I would like to assure everyone reading this that I am NOT being paid by EA, and that it isn’t my fault that they put out all of the games I’ve played so far this year. If it makes you feel any better, my next review will be on Bioshock 2, which is published by 2k Games.)

 

Upcoming…

Hey guys,

Sorry it’s been a while since I’ve posted. I’ve had midterms and it’s been a little crazy. I’m done with Mass Effect, and I should be getting a review up soon. Also, I’ll be posting a guest review of Dante’s Inferno by Leon sometime in the next couple of weeks.

 

Poll Position

 

The Saboteur

     Game: The Saboteur

     Developer: Pandemic Studios

     Publisher: Electronic Arts

     Genre: Third-Person Shooter, Action/Adventure, Sandbox

     Platforms: Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Microsoft Windows

     Score: 9.5

          Okay, let me start out by getting one thing out of the way. Yes, The Saboteur is a little like Grand Theft Auto: Occupation France. Sorta. The comparison is, I guess, inevitable but to say that Saboteur is like GTA is a bit like saying that Halo 3 is just like Wolfenstein. Sure, they fall into the same genre, and share a lot of characteristics, but one is by no means a clone of the other. Saboteur is most definitely a distinct and original game.

          The Saboteur is set in, if you haven’t guessed already, Nazi occupied France. The story follows irish race-car driver and all around scalawag Sean Devlin, who is trapped in France after the Nazi invasion. I’m not going to spoil it for you, but some bad stuff goes down and Devlin sets out to get revenge on the Nazi’s by blowing up everything. Soon Sean is mixed up in the French Resistance, and awesomeness ensues. The story is extremely well written, rarely descending into cliché, and is genuinely entertaining and even at times moving. The voice acting is also another area where the game shines. Devlin’s actor is spot-on, and the supporting cast is excellent as well. The soundtrack is very good, but gets a little repetitive by the end of the game, especially during driving sections.

          The graphics in The Saboteur are very good, though not mind-blowing, but it is the art style that really impressed me. At the beginning of the game, most of the world is black and white, with only a few primary colors showing (mostly Nazi red). As the game progresses, the actions of the player will inspire the residents of Paris and the surrounding countryside to fight back against their oppressors. When a particular area is inspired enough, usually the result of a particular mission or sabotage, the surroundings will change to full color. The art direction is excellent in both modes, but the noir feel of the black and white areas is particularly cool, especially with the startlingly bright reds in contrast. This is one of the few games that I’ve played where I felt that the graphics and art direction really made a statement about the story and the atmosphere. In more heavily occupied and oppressed territories, the atmosphere is dark and oppressing, with the glaring and threatening red highlights of Nazi installations and soldiers. But once the people have been enboldened, the landscape changes into a colorful and inspiring panorama. I was continually impressed by the impact that this simple mechanic had on the story, atmosphere, and emotion of The Saboteur.

          The Saboteur is also one of the few games that I have played that pulls together so many diverse elements, and still makes them work. The controls are excellent, and I very rarely had any trouble with them, except one or two times when making tricky jumps at odd angles. The shooting and cover mechanics are excellent, with the movement control switching seamlessly between one stick when just running around, to two when shooting. The cover system requires almost no effort on the player’s part, and most of the game’s movement feels very natural. The stealth and disguise aspect of the game is also very well implemented. The player can kill Nazi soldiers and take their uniforms to blend in, and gain access to restricted areas. However, when in disguise, the player can’t just run around and plant bombs willy-nilly. If you get too close for too long to a nazi, or do anything like climb, run, or plant explosives within view of a soldier, they will become suspicious and sound an alarm. This works excellently within the mission structure, allowing you to use a wide variety of strategies to carry out objectives. The driving in The Saboteur is also well done, and it is the only sandbox game I’ve played where I didn’t feel completely out of control every time I got in a vehicle. (I’m looking at you, GTA) Overall, I had no real complaints about the mechanics of The Saboteur, and most of the time, the controls and gameplay felt so natural that I hardly had to think.

          The mission structure doesn’t deviate much from the typical sandbox formula, with fairly linear story missions, and side missions that can be done at your leisure. There are a lot of missions, and I didn’t finish all of the side missions, but this game is definitely one that you can spend a lot of time with. One of the best things about the game are the ambient freeplay missions. These are small objectives that are scattered all over the map which can be accomplished whenever and however you like. Most of these are things you can blow up, such as AA guns, guard towers, fuel depots, and searchlights that are stationary objects on the map. There are also a few moving objectives, like Nazi generals, and resistance captives. These mini-missions are surprisingly fun, and can be done at pretty much any time, including the middle of a story mission. I can’t tell you how many hours I wasted blowing up Nazis and their crap, or sneaking up behind Nazi generals and snapping their necks. Also, you can accomplish these missions in a surprisingly large number of ways, leading to some pretty inventive Nazi killing. And really, what’s more fun that blowing things up?

          Overall, The Saboteur is an extremely well executed game. It pulls together a lot of diverse elements, and melds them together into a compelling, and most of all fun, game.

          Also, it has subtitles…

(Please comment and let me know what you think. I played the Xbox 360 version of The Saboteur, so if there are any differences in the PS3 version, I apologize. My next review will be Mass Effect 2.)

 

Coming Soon

Hey guys, I should have that Saboteur review up by the end of the week. I should be getting Mass Effect 2 this week as well, and I’ll try to have a review for that out the door as soon as possible. Also, If anybody has any new or older games that you’d like to see me review, let me know!

 

Army of Two: The 40th Day

 

      Game: Army of Two: The 40th Day

     Developer: EA Montreal

     Publisher: Electronic Arts

     Genre: Third Person Co-op Shooter

     Platforms: XB360, PS3, PSP

     Score: 8.0

          Army of Two: The 40th Day is a sequel to the popular game Army of Two. Obviously…The action picks up some time after the first game, with the two protagonists Rios and Salem off doing missions for their own company, appropriately named T.W.O.  The partners are in Shanghai for a seemingly routine mission, when “A group of PMCs work together to attack the city, causing mayhem, destruction and threatening Rios and Salem’s survival.” However, the only reason I know this is because I read it on Wikipedia. You see, Army of Two: The 40th Day (hereafter referred to as: Ao240D…or just 40th day maybe) has a couple of flaws that really, as the brits say, got up my nose.

          Firstly, the game has no option to turn on subtitles. I’ll say that again. The game. Has no. Subtitles. Now I’m not deaf. I don’t have to have subtitles. But I am married and living with another human being who doesn’t always want to hear gunshots and explosions turned all the way up to eleven just so I can hear occasional (and very quiet)  mission and story dialogue. The first thing I ALWAYS do when I’m playing a game is turn on subtitles, just in case some loud noise interrupts my gaming at a critical moment in the story, or my wife falls asleep on the couch. So if you don’t care about subtitles, feel free to ignore this whole paragraph

          Secondly, when I was able to hear it, 40th day‘s story was absolutely awful. I have seen better stories plotted out on bathroom stalls. And I am only exaggerating a little there. Really the only thing you know for most of the game is that things are blowing up, and people are trying to shoot you. Which would be fine if the game didn’t act like it was supposed to have this deep, epic storyline. If the story was “The President has been kidnapped by the ninjas. Are you a bad enough dude to rescue him?”, then I wouldn’t be so hard on it. After all, not every shooter has to have a deep plotline which explores morality and cause and effect. But if you attempt a story like that, you’d better be able to pull it off. 40th day, however, does not. My biggest complaint here were the scenes where you had to make some choice between a “good” and “bad” action. You and your partner rationally discuss the pros and cons, and the ethical considerations, and make an informed decision on your course of action. Or you can just spam the A button until the choice comes up, and try to beat your partner to it. The game then shows a cut scene detailing the consequences of your decision, which, except for a couple of instances, are always horrible. You get more money for the “bad” choice, and screwed for the “good” choice. You do unlock one weapon caches if you make “good” choices, but it is hardly worth it, since you are practically wading in weapons and weapon parts by then. In fact, the only reason I can see to choose the “good” choices is to get the achievement. There’s not even any reason to choose “good” for your own conscience, since most of the “good” choices still end badly for everybody, and you still feel like crap. Another problem is the completely non existant character development, and the anemic plot. In fact, you don’t know who the “Bad Guy” is until three-fourths of the way into the game, when one of the characters says, “Hey, I wanna kill that guy.” Finally, the biggest disappointment is the ending. I won’t give anything away, but it is entirely disappointing.

          Now you may think after reading the paragraph above that I really hated 40th day. If you are thinking that now, then stop it. I don’t hate this game. If the story is lacking, it is made up for by the excellent gameplay. Army of Two is, at its heart, an interactive buddy movie, and its co-op campaign is where the game really shines. The controls are much improved since the first game, and the cover system especially seems much more polished. Sliding into cover is much easier and less glitchy, and in my opinion, the game actually improves over some third person shooters (I’m looking at you Gears of War) in that the cover mechanics are not so sticky, allowing you to pop in and out of cover very naturally. The shooting mechanics are also much improved. Blind fire is no longer pinpoint accurate, and lacks a reticule, so that you can’t kill every enemy in the game while sitting safe behind your concrete barrier. The aggro system is also much better. “Aggro” measures how threatening a player is to enemies. The more aggro one player has, the more enemies concentrate on that player, allowing his parter to maneuver with little risk. In the first Army of Two, a player with no aggro would literally run from enemy to enemy, punching them in the face while they blindly ignored him, concentrating their fire on the high aggro player instead. This has been corrected in 40th day, and while low aggro players can still flank enemies with relative ease, standing in the open in front of baddies is no longer advised. Additionally, the weapon customisation has been greatly expanded, offering more weapons, as well as interchangeable weapon parts, and more custom paint jobs than ever. You can also, thankfully, still plate your AK-47 with solid gold.

          40th day also has several online multiplayer modes, including co-op deathmatches and a horde clone called extraction. However, my experience with the versus modes was fairly buggy, and suffered some lag as well. Some players might find that they enjoy these modes, but they’re not much spectacular, and aren’t a compelling reason by themselves to buy the game.

          The voice acting is fairly bland, and occasionally annoying, and there are fewer funny lines between Rios and Salem than in the last game. The sound is pretty typical, and the music is pretty much forgettable. The graphics are pretty good, and the level design is excellent, with plenty of options for flanking and maneuvering around enemies.

          Overall, Army of Two: The 40th Day is a fun co-op game to play with a good buddy, with a completely ridiculous plot. It is definitely a fun experience, and much of the gameplay is improved from the previous installment. If you don’t mind the ludicrous plotline and the stupid morality choices, and you have a good buddy to play splitsceen or online co-op with, then 40th day is a solid choice. Just turn up the volume so you don’t miss anything.

 

 

          (Thanks to Juston for playing through the Co-op with me, and if you have any questions or comments, feel free to post them here. Also, the version I played was for Xbox360. Next up is my review of “The Saboteur”. Thanks for reading!)

 

World 1-1

     I’ve said for years that I was going to get into this whole blogging thing, and cast my thoughts out in to the void we call the internet, where crowds of at least two or three people will hear them! Probably. (Hi mom!) Anyway, I finally decided that if I was ever going to start, now was as good a time as any. And as I know more about video games that most things, I figured that game reviews and such would be as good a place as any to start. Now I’m definitely not a pro gamer, or even a very good one, but maybe my perspective will help some folks out there who also aren’t pro gamers or professional critics.

     For those who don’t know, my name is Russ, and I’m an English major at a small college in Montgomery, Alabama. I’m married, and continually amazed at it. My wife is really cool, and even puts up with my constant gaming. I love all kinds of games, but mostly these days I’m playing Shooters and Action/Adventure. I don’t mind an occasional RPG, if I think it’ll be worth the time investment, and I almost never play Sports or Racing games.

     My gamertag on XBlive is kaiser1245, so feel free to hit me up if you want. That’s all I’ve got at the moment, but stay tuned for more, and I’ll try to keep this at least reasonably well updated. Also, look for a review of Army of Two: The Fortieth Day coming in the few days.