Posts Tagged ‘video game’
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Video Game Review: Enslaved (2010)
Platforms: PS3, Xbox 360
Developer:
Official Webiste
Plot: Based on the Chinese story “Journey to the West,” you play as Monkey – an escaped slave in the distant future who has to keep a girl named Trip safe. You see, Trip broke out of the slave ship and upon exiting, fashioned a slavers headband on your head. You have to follow her commands, or you feel pain. If you stray from her too far or she dies, you die. But she says if you get her home then she’ll set you free, so that’s what you go do.
Along the way, however, you have to fend off giant robots (called “mechs”) that are trying to recapture you. What follows is a series of platform “puzzle-solving” (I put this in quotes because it’s not exactly difficult at all, since they highlight everywhere you can go and everything you can interact with), some action, and some fantastic worlds and characters as you both Journey to the West.
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There are a few things to keep in mind about this game. First off, the visuals are gorgeous. Absolutely excellent world creation and good character design. The voice acting is top notch, and the music is, well – I hope the next time I go see Video Games Live they perform something from it.
The downside is that the controls are a little tricky sometimes (it wants to be an action platformer, but it plays like an adventure game – limiting your actions in certain areas and making it difficult to play. More on that, later), and the camera can be a pain in the butt. There’s also quite a bit of texture popping throughout the game, which doesn’t ruin anything per se, but it’s very noticeable because the game is otherwise so gorgeous.
So let’s talk about gameplay for a moment. You spend most of the game jumping around (like a Monkey…see what I did there?) and getting from point A to point B, but there’s also a level of interaction with the NPC (that’s non-player character, for anyone who doesn’t play RPGs) Trip. You spend a lot of time distracting robo-turrets from shooting her, or asking her to distract them so you can sneak up and take them out.
There’s also some combat, as you have an electric staff of sorts that allows you to beat up robots and also shoots energy blasts, either to stun or destroy. This is good for distance enemies and some bosses, as the bulk of the baddies you can just perform moves on and beat them with little effort.
The camera during combat does tend to get a little too close, and when fighting multiple enemies this can be a little difficult. While beating on one guy, you may not be aware that another is charging up to stun you – or about to clobber you from behind – or calling for reinforcements. However, the combat animation is pretty awesome, and you do unlock moves as the game progresses to help keep things a little fresh.
Combat is not the focus on the game, however. Sneaking past turrets and platforming are at the forefront of this game. But don’t let that discourage you if you’re easily frustrated by platforming like in Tomb Raider or Uncharted – this is much much easier.
Which isn’t to say it’s boring or dull. The environments more than keep things fresh and interesting. You’re just not going to find much challenge here, as the game only lets you do certain things at certain times.
As I mentioned above, the game plays more like an adventure game. If you’re unfamiliar with the genre, they tend to keep things pretty straight forward by only letting you climb when you have a place that the game developers want you to climb. Or swim. Or interact with in any way. In this regard, Enslaved is a little frustrating. I want the game to play like Uncharted – where I can interact with more, but never feel lost of lead astray from where I’m supposed to go, but given the freedom to explore this world.
For a game where one of the most gorgeous characters is their environment, there’s not a lot of opportunity to explore it. You only really get to do what the developers want you to do. This isn’t exactly a bad thing – it just felt a little limiting to me, and I was a bit disappointed.
What wasn’t disappointing was the story, which is very character driven and full of twists – however predictable they may have been from time to time. There’s a reason this ancient tale has survived all these centuries, and it shows in this game as well. There are a lot of cut scenes, just to warn you gamers who prefer to “play first,” and they’re not really skippable. But again, they do show off the great character designs, incredible environment, and fantastic animation and voice work.
Enslaved is certainly worth owning, but be sure to find it on sale or used. The game is on the shorter side, and experienced gamers can breeze through most of the chapters in a few hours each. I found a pretty good deal on Amazon.com for it – but you can also check gamefly or another site.
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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….
