Posts Tagged ‘video game review’
7 items.
Video Game Review: Valkyria Chronicles (2008)
Publisher: Sega
Systems: PS3
Official Website
Plot: Set in a fantasy world very similar to our own, you play as a young commanding officer enlisted in the militia when your country is invaded by a super power wanting to conquer your country for minerals. Out of over 100 recruits, you build and train your squad. Throughout play, you learn more and more about each of the characters you’ve selected – which makes this game unique because you do learn about even the supporting characters, and there are real consequences if you fail. Your characters can die. It’s a great experience, but I digress.
The game is played by selecting your team to meet the mission objectives, and positioning them on the game board. From there you spend CP points to perform actions – moving characters, and taking out enemies. Once all of your CP has been spent, the enemy gets to take their turn and so on. Ultimately you have about 20 turns to complete your objectives – but it usually takes less time than that.
There are several classifications of soldiers, each with their own strengths and weaknesses:
Tanks – Strong and good cover for your soldiers
Scouts – Able to travel great distances
Shocktroopers – Short distance traveling, but able to fire assault rifes
Lancers – Anti-tank soldiers that fire rockets
Snipers – Little movement, but able to shoot from great distances
Engineers – Restore ammo and able to travel good distances
It’s difficult to describe the game and give it the credit it deserves. This game is flat out amazing – especially if, like me, you enjoy a good story and a strategy game. You only play missions, so the rest of the game is in-engine cut scenes (mostly talking heads, unfortunately) rendered in a unique way. Just like you see in the images in this blog post, the game has an anime style but is rendered in a color pencil texture. It’s difficult to get into the story too much, as there are a lot of twists and turns through (main characters die, battles are won or lost, and many secrets get revealed throughout).
The game is gorgeous, the gameplay is excellent, and it’s been out for a while now – so you’re probably going to find it for cheap. Buy it. Buy it and love every second of it.
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Video Game Review: Heavy Rain (2010)
Platform: PS3
Developer: Quantic Dream
Official Website: www.heavyrainps3.com
Plot: Ethan Mars is an architect with two sons, a pretty wife, and the perfect life. But when taking his family shopping at the mall a horrible accident happens: one of Ethan’s sons is hit by a car. Ethan had jumped out to try to save the boy, but wasn’t able to do so.
Two years later, Ethan is divorced, lives with his other kid, suffers from depression, and experiences blackouts. During one such blackout, Ethan’s other son disappears – kidnapped by the Origami Killer. This serial killer kidnaps children and their bodies are found drowned 6 days later. The clock is ticking, and the hunt is on to find the killer and save the boy!
Enter your cast of characters:
1) Ethan Mars has been contacted by the Origami Killer and has to undergo a series of trials to test his resolve and motivation to save his son. At the same time, he believes that he may be the Origami Killer.
2) Madison Paige is a photo journalist who suffers from insomnia (and terrible dreams when she does sleep). The only time she can really find peace is when she stays at a hotel – which is where she encounters Ethan, while he’s on the run.
3) Norman Jayden is an FBI agent with special sunglasses (and a glove) that allows him to instantly analyze and document crime scene evidence. However, there’s a special drug associated with it that cause hallucinations and pretty serious withdrawal symptoms.
4) Scott Shelby is a former police officer and current private investigator hired by the families of the victims of the Origami Killer. Because he was on the beat for so long, he knows a lot of good contacts and people on the force.
The gameplay is quite different from what you would find in a typical video game. The game is really more of an interactive movie where scenes play out, and you interact with the world by performing contextual actions – but your success (or failure) in performing the actions in time can determine the success of the action, and / or the scene that’s playing out.
For example, there’s a fight scene early in the game between Scott and a hooker’s John. The John is beating on her pretty badly, and if you decide to intervene (you can just walk away), you enter contextual combat. If you miss actions during the fight, Scott receives more noticeable damage (broken nose, bloody lip, etc). If he receives too much damage, the fight is over and Scott walks away limping…and you’ve potentially lost out on a story point of the game. If Scott kicks the snot out of the other guy, then another storyline pops up.
Some of the sequences can even result in a character’s death, but that doesn’t necessarily mean “Game Over.” It means that they’re just not in the rest of the game. Which, as the stories start to converge, would be interesting to see how they play out differently with or without certain characters. It also adds to the replay value of the game, since you get very invested in these characters and their journey – and if that journey could change due to the death of another character or a decision that drastically changes the outcome (like a character not tagging along with you), then that’s something worth checking out.
However, this kind of gameplay can be a little frustrating. My friends came over with a Move Controller (PS3′s version of the Wii controller), which you don’t have to play the game with. However, I had a lot of difficulty using the controller and doing the various movements and motions to successfully complete sections of the game. Eventually towards the end of the game when things pick up and the actions become more complex (and quicker), I had to switch to the controller. Suddenly I was doing much better. Not perfect, mind you, but at least I stopped killing the characters and having to restart chapters.
The story suffers from a few noticeable plot holes, which is disappointing. You’ve so engaged with these characters, their world, and their personal stories that anything that takes away from it sticks out like a sore thumb. Also the characters are very much like digital actors – but sometimes there’s some graphical errors or no facial animations that make the characters look like lifeless models. It’s rare, but when it happens you’ll notice and it’ll take you out of the gaming experience.
Overall the game is gorgeous, however. The graphics and music perfectly set the Hitchockian-esque thriller tone, and the sequences are down right tense – especially if you’re swinging that Move controller, fighting off an assailant…and losing! The voice acting is a low point for the game, unfortunately, as most of the voice actors have a noticeable accent that doesn’t quite fit. The developer is located in France, and many of the actors sound like they have a French accent. Plus, some of the lines sound less natural and more translated. You’ll notice a few dry bits of dialogue where you’ll think to yourself, “No one talks that way.” Again, these only stick out because the rest of the game is so perfect.
Madison and Scott have, by far, the best voice acting in the game. Which is sad, because I feel like I didn’t get to spend enough time with them. Especially Madison, who’s story kind of takes a back drop to Ethan’s in his search for his son. One of my endings implied that she could play a larger role in a sequel, but who knows if they’ll make another one. I hear there was downloadable content scheduled for this game, but they only released one chapter of it. Which, of course, is a Madison prequel chapter.
If you like a game with a great engaging story, unique gameplay elements (especially with the Move controller, which you may be better at using than I am), and some great replay value, then I highly recommend Heavy Rain.
Video Game Review: Assassins Creed 2 (2009)
Platforms: PS3, Xbox 360
Developer: Ubisoft
Plot: Assassin’s Creed takes place in a near future where you play a character named Desmond Miles, who’s the long decedent in a long line of assassins. In the first game, you are taken by a corporation and put into a machine called The Animus, which can read history through your genes. In the first game we learned about the war between the assassins and the Templars, and their quest to find the missing pieces of Eden.
In Assassin’s Creed 2, you break out of the corporation and are whisked away by the assassins to a hidden location where there is another Animus. With it, they hope to train you to become an assassin in the modern day. You mostly play as your ancestor, Ezio, and as he learns how to be an assassin so do you. With Ezio, you discover a conspiracy throughout Italy of the Templars trying to find the missing pieces of Eden, and the power that these mystical objects holds.
It’s difficult to get into the plot of Assassin’s Creed because there’s a lot going on in the game – certainly more than the first game. A lot more missions and more variety to the quests, and some fantastic revelations that lead to another cliffhanger of an ending. But a much more satisfying one than from the previous game.
With better game mechanics and more variety, there’s no reason not to play this game. It’s fun, it’s full of stealth and action, and the two-handed hidden blades are absolutely AWESOME!
It may take a while to play through, especially if you’re trying to collect everything and get the hidden videos, so renting may be difficult (unless you have nothing else to do). But it’s certainly worth the price tag for owning.
Either way, be sure to check it out. The third one is rumored to finish off the story of Desmond, and I can’t wait to play him in some modern settings doing assassin missions!
Video Game Review: InFamous
Platform: PS3
Developer: Sucker Punch!
Official Website
Plot: You play as Cole, a delivery guy in Empire City. When a package that you’re delivering (The Ray Sphere) explodes and destroys most of the city and all of the power, you begin to develop electrical powers. Your girlfriend leaves your side, and your best friend Zeke wants to capitalize on your newfound abilities. Meanwhile, the city is under quarantine by the United States government because a plague has broken out among the populace. Able to chose your path (redemption or revenge), you go on various missions around the city either liberating or conquering all in an effort to find the criminal mastermind behind it all, the mysterious figure known only as Kessler.
The gameplay is free-form, not unlike a Grand Theft Auto (only instead of driving cars, you can climb buildings and ride along electrical wires and train rails), with an upgrade system similar to most modern action games. As you progress through the game, you unlock new abilities that will help you reach new areas or defeat new enemies. You gain experience points by completing missions (good, evil, or neutral) and savings / killing enemies or citizens.
There’s a moral barometer (called “Karma”) in the game that allows you to be the hero or the villain. Unfortunately this mechanic isn’t very sophisticated like you would expect to find in an RPG game, usually something similar and more blatant. You’re usually faced with a moral dilemma (“Do I save this guy, or do I kill him and take his stuff) which usually results in the same outcome either way. There are some powers and trophies for Karma Good or Karma Evil, so there’s some replay value in there to try the game again playing the polar opposite.
Exploring the city is fun, especially since you can’t take any damage from falling. You can climb to the highest point in the town and just jump straight down (or you will later unlock a glide ability). Going through the city and liberating or conquering the various sections from the gangs that have taken over is a great mechanics, and gives you a very realistic feeling of accomplishment when you control an island (of which there are three in the game). The landscape even changes as you make a difference.
The cutscenes are an exciting motion comic with some terrific voice acting (although I question why a delivery guy sounds like Solid Snake from Metal Gear), and you’re generally interested to know what’s going to happen next and how you fit into this vast conspiracy surrounding the Ray Sphere. With a (predictable) cliffhanger twist ending, it wouldn’t surprise me if we see a few more games with Cole coming in the near future.
The game is totally worth buying, but don’t take my word for it: there’s a free downloadable demo that allows you to explore some parts of the city, as well as undertake three missions.
Video Game Review: Uncharted 2 – Among Thieves multiplayer beta demo
October 8th, 2009 |Posted In: Uncategorized
Video Game Review: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves multiplayer demo
Platform: PS3
Developer: Naughty Dog
Official Website
Plot: The multiplayer has no plot, but I’m sure the game does. The first Uncharted was a ton of fun to play, and I’m eagerly awaiting this title when it’s released on October 13.
The Multiplayer beta for Uncharted 2 came out this week, and I was able to sit down with some of my good web comic friends and blow through several hours of what should have been spent working on our comics, but was instead spent shooting each other’s digital avatars. The players were Steve Wallace, Phil Chan, Joe Dun, and myself. We started out in Plunder mode, which has you gathering a treasure and taking it from it’s spawn point to a chest on your team’s side. Trying to figure out the controls while someone is shooting you in the face gets old quick, but thankfully the level was large enough to be able to run around and figure out what you were doing while dodging bullets all the while.
For those unfamiliar with the Uncharted play mechanic, the bulk of the combat is focused on a duck-and-cover system that allows you to shoot blindly (with some surprising accuracy), or by exposing yourself for better aiming. You are incredibly agile, so you can jump and climb and roll all over the place. Also, your character has the ability to enter into melee combat when up close in the single player game, but in the multiplayer game they replace this with a single swing of your fist (no combos). It’s a devastating move, to be sure, and a useful tactic when up close to your enemy. You are only allowed to carry two weapons at a time: a pistol and a rifle of some kind. You also have a supply of grenades, but it appeared that the multiplayer limited you to a single grenade…at least to start out.
After the first round, we chose teams and played a deathmatch. This is a pretty standard run-and-gun situation, but the level designs make for some very interesting play depending on how you want to take out your opponents. We played to 20 kills (total for the team, not individuals), and Phil was an adamant sniper. Steve was a fan of the mini-gun, which is powerful as hell but also slows you down considerably. Joe and I were always at arms to get our hands on the grenade launcher, which is fun for the 6 or so shots that it has.
We then changed things up and went into a temple level and altered the weapons to only be RPGs. This became an interesting battle for higher ground, and really required use of strategy on the lower team’s part to gain the upper hand. The RPGs don’t require as much accuracy, but they do take time to reload.
The final match that we played was a co-op mode which had characters playing through a scenario from the game. This was incredibly difficult, as bad guys were spawning from all sides and the cover mechanic became somewhat cumbersome to use because you constantly had to flip from one side of cover to another. And some cover is destructible, so when the stronger bad guys came out (or started throwing grenades), you would have to run quickly for new cover.
When one of your friends goes down there’s a timer that pops up over their head. When the timer runs out, that character dies. But if you’re able to get to them before, you can revive them – but the longer you take to get there, the longer it takes to revive them. This means that your characters should stay relatively close to make sure that no one character is too far away or too deep in the thick of it to be saved.
There were some fun moments where team dynamics came into play. For example, after a round of baddies came in we were prompted to gather around a light post in the street. Once two characters were there, one was able to boost me up onto the sign dangling from the light post. While I was climbing along the sides of buildings trying to figure out how our team could advance, more baddies showed up and the group was forced to continue the firefight sans one more player. My ultimate destination was an open window, which I climbed in and pushed a bookshelf out of the window (which we would later use as a make-shift ladder to climb over a tipped bus). Several team dynamic situations like this followed, until we eventually ran out of time and the demo ended.
Uncharted 2 multiplayer was a lot of fun to play, and I don’t consider myself a multiplayer fan. Sure, playing it with your friends instead of against some faceless online opponent helps, and the fact that we were all on the same learning curved helped as well. I’m looking forward to the release of Uncharted 2 (October 13), and being able to play the full online multiplayer with my friends again. Be sure to check out the beta in the meantime, available for free on the Playstation Network (PSN).
Video Games Review: Dead Space (2008)
Platforms: PS3, Xbox360, PC
Developer: EA
Plot: A planet-mining spaceship has lost contact with Earth and disappeared. You play an astronaut on a rescue mission to fix the ship and find out what happened – but something’s gone horribly wrong. When your ship is on approach, the gravity wells kick in and your ship crashes into theirs and is heavily damaged. Your few crew members board the derelict ship, and are attacked by strange creatures that can only be killed by dismembering their body parts. In an attempt to fix the ship and finish your mission, you are separated from your other crew members and forced to fight your way through this survival horror in space.
What makes this game unique, however, is the lack of any HUD (Head’s Up Display). Your life bar is a light on the back of your character’s suit. Your energy is a half-circle on your back. And your ammo is displayed whenever you raise your gun to fire. Even checking your inventory doesn’t pause the game, it just shows a hologram in front of you.
The game is immersive, and other than the few loads between levels / missions, there’s really no time that you’re not playing this game. This heightened the fear and threat levels in the game for me, as in a game like Resident Evil I can pause the game by accessing my inventory to switch out a gun when my current weapon is running low on ammo, or to give myself a breather. Not in this game.
There was one time where I was searching bodies, some of which I had just slain myself, and when listening to an audio log I was attacked by half a body on the floor! It was intense!
The level of customization in the game is also a fantastic part of it. You’re able to upgrade just about everything: your weapons, your suit, your abilities, etc.
Everything in this game is badass, and it’s frightening as hell. The best way I can describe the game is to call it an “experience.” You’re less of a casual observer of the events, but fully integrated into this world with frightening things happening all around you.
The game also has a high level of gore, with the only way to defeat the bad guys being dismembering their limbs. Once your Plasma Cutter weapon is upgraded enough, this becomes rather easy for some of the earlier villains, but they keep throwing more and more challenging baddies your way throughout the entire game. I won’t spoil it for you, but you’ll be hungry for ammo towards the end, and you’ll have to make tough decisions about what items you keep or sell to try to get more money for more ammo.
I’d call this one of the best survival horror games to date, and I seriously hope they make another one or something similar to it. Sure the plot is riddled with holes and is somewhat cliche, but the game is fun to play. But I don’t recommend playing it alone in the dark….
Video Game Review: Turtles in Time Re-Shelled (2009)
September 15th, 2009 |Posted In: Uncategorized
Game Review: Turtles in Time Re-Shelled (2009)
Platforms: PS3, Xbox360
Developer: Konami
Plot: The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are on a quest to stop the evil Shredder after his latest heist, which sees Lord Krang stealing the Statue of Liberty. However, when they go to confront the Shredder, he sends them back in time to literally make them history. Fighting your way through the various times (stoneage, wild west, and even the far future), you take control of your favorite Turtle (Leonard, Michelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael), each with their own strengths and limitations.
This remake is of the classic arcade game, and not the much more played (for me, anyway) SNES game of the same name, which contains more levels and a lot more time playing. My brother and I would spend hours on this title, trying to beat our best times and scores (18 minutes with Leo and Raph). My brother prefers Raph because of his speed, but Leo’s always been my favorite character. The new game certainly has some new and awesome graphics (see the screen shot of the original arcade game, below), but it also has a smaller screen which means that Raph’s speed is no longer an advantage (much to my brother’s disappointment). The big disappointment for me was that it wasn’t based on the SNES version, and therefore was lacking a lot of the very fun levels (like the Technodrome). My hope is that they will add in some additional downloadable levels in the future, perhaps as a free add-on, where you can chose between the arcade and SNES versions. Wishful thinking, I know, but one can always hope.
As it stands, the game is a fun beat-’em-up, but it’s hardly worth the $10 price tag. Sure the graphics are nice, but you’ll beat the game in about 10 minutes and you’ll often wonder why it went by so quickly. And, if you’re like me and have played the SNES version of the game more often or more recently, you’ll wonder where a bunch of your favorite levels went. And why it’s so damn difficult to throw Footsoldiers at the screen (which is how you defeat Shredder the first time in the SNES version).
The 3-D graphics are a nice touch, and it’s nice to be able to attack in 360 degrees, instead of being stuck on a 2-D playing field. The advantage here in the new Re-Shelled game is that the bad guys ARE limited by a 2-D playing field, especially the bosses. This makes the game easier once you figure out the bosses patterns and when to best take advantage of the fact that they can’t touch you if you’re above or below them. Especially if you’re Leo or Don, who have the longest reaching weapons.
Don’t get me wrong here, the game’s tons of fun – but extremely brief. By the time it’s over, you’ll feel like you just hit your groove. Sure you can replay it and try to get some trophies or achievements (most of which involve player 1 getting squished or frozen…or not frozen…but any other player doesn’t count towards these awards), but after years of playing the SNES version it just feels so…short.
I recommend the game if they drop the price down to $5, or if they add in the functionality to play both versions of the game, but until that time there’s just not enough content there to justify the $10 price tag. Maybe I value the almighty dollar differently than others, but my money’s better spent somewhere else. I am holding out for that SNES remake version, however….
