Gamezelot

2011 Holiday Must Have Games

2011-07-05T23:27:00.000-07:00

Holiday Must Haves by Gamezelot

If you're like me, there are always several games around the holidays on my must have list. Well, this season is no different. There are a several titles heading to the stores this holiday season and here are the Gamezelot picks (in order of expected lowest to highest ratings).

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception
Darksiders II
Star Wars: The Old Republic (MMO)
Batman: Arkham City
Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
The Darkness II
Bioshock: Infinite
Mass Effect 3
Gears of War 3
Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
Assassin's Creed Revelations
The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim

Of all of the most anticipated games for the 2011 Holiday season, I expect Skyrim to be not only the best game, but may even win Game of the Year. Many of these games are offering special editions, so if you want the extra chachke included, then you'll want to reserve your special editions now.

In addition, here are a few games to watch. These are not here as must-haves, but are simply here in that they are new or revamped franchises and may become sleeper hits.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Rage
Tomb Raider

Enjoy and reserve early if you want the special editions.

Xbox 360 - F.3.A.R

2011-07-03T17:11:00.000-07:00

F.3.A.R by WBGames / Day 1 Studios

Type: First Person Shooter
Save Type: Checkpoint

Even though this game (and franchise) is named FEAR, there's really nothing very scary in this game. Yes, there are things that occasionally jump out at you. Most of what is 'scary' here is more the gore factor. There's lots of simulated blood, guts and dead bodies. I have found games like The Darkness, Dead Space 1, Dead Space 2, Chronicles of Riddick and Alan Wake to be more creepy and scary than F.3.A.R (especially Dead Space 2).

F.3.A.R (aka. Fear 3) is a first person shooter that's pretty straightforward. Although this game pulls in some things from F.E.A.R. 2, it doesn't really do it quite as well. At least the game isn't coming from EA, which I know would have ruined the franchise. That said, this franchise is really on its last legs anyway. How many times can you pull the let's-chase-Alma-all-over-hell's-half-acre gameplay?

Story

F.3.A.R starts you off as one of two brothers. As the story unfolds, it becomes apparent that you killed your brother and he's trying to help you get through the game (even in spite of the fact that your character killed him). Yeah, I didn't quite get this part either. While it appears he seems to know what's going on, he doesn't really help you through the game as he only appears during Cinematics and through an occasional voiceover.

You start out roaming each level in search of what's ultimately going on. At first, you're trying to escape a prison. So, you're trying to get out before it explodes and, at the same time, avoid the guards trying to kill you.

Later, you run into various types of zombies that also try to kill you. Some zombies have bombs attached to themselves and they get close and explode, other zombies carry hammers, tire irons or other melee weapons and still others lob projectiles from a distance. Further on, you run into both guards and zombies at the same time.

Finally, there's this creature thing that appears and occasionally sucks you into an alternative reality that shows you things like kids playground rides, baby carriages and other kid related visuals. When the monster presents, you see a halo of black webbing around the edge of the screen. Of course, the game wouldn't be complete without an alternative reality at play. After all, Alma is a ghost.

Gameplay

The gameplay is about standard for a first person shooter. Nothing outstanding or out of the ordinary here. The controller is mapped appropriately (for the most part). The only thing that's troublesome is when you press B for cover. Two problems with cover. First, when you press B to move into cover, the game moves you into a position that can be seen (so you immediately start taking gunfire hits). Second, you can't kneel and be in cover at the same time. Both of these problems reduce the benefits of cover.

Most of the game revolves around protecting yourself from being killed, finding weapons and ammo, finding psychic links on dead bodies, locating Alma dolls and progressing from level to level.

Graphics

In F.3.A.R, they haven't improved the graphics over F.E.A.R 2. That's not to say the graphics look bad. They look slightly above average for this type of game. But, there's nothing new to add wow factor to this game.

Audio

There are some audio issues here. Some of the cinematics volumes are very low requiring you to turn the volume up to hear it. Then, when the game starts up again it just about blasts you out of the room. This may have been in purpose, but it's really a bad bad design.

Overall

This game is fairly one-tracked much like F.E.A.R. 2. Although, when you do get to use the power armor, it's a really small trek and there's not much to it. Rather disappointing actually. The small arms weapons are also straightforward. Ammo is reasonably abundant on levels where you don't need it, but becomes kind of scarce when you do need it. There are also several types of grenades.

One of the main problems I have with this game is that enemies have perfect vision and perfect aim. This means that they'll hit you immediately when they 'see' you and, worse, they will sometimes see you when you can't even see them. So, this game could have done with some work here. Overall, there's nothing outstanding in F.3.A.R. It's an average first person shooter with an okay story. The atmosphere in the game works, but the tricks to try and scare you are way too cliche at this point.

Score

Sound: 4/10 (sound problems)
Graphics: 7/10
Gameplay: 6/10 (enemies have perfect vision and perfect aim)
Story: 6/10 (been there, done that)
Bugginess: N/A
Controls: 8/10
Bang-to-buck: 1/10
Play Value: $4
Overall: 5/10 (nothing outstanding, no wow factor, nothing new)

Xbox 360 - The First Templar

2011-06-25T04:11:00.000-07:00

The First Templar by Kalypso

Type: Third Person Sword Combat
Save Type: Checkpoint

I've been torn about writing a review for this game. I tend to write reviews based on at least some redeeming quality. Unfortunately, I haven't really been able to find many redeeming qualities in The First Templar. I will say that based on the title, this game may appear related to Assassin's Creed. It has nothing to do with Assassin's Creed in any form at all. That said, here's the review.

Story

Actually, I'm really pretty lost with the story here. Basically, you're two Templar Knights (at least in the beginning) wandering the countryside in search of something. I haven't yet determined what that 'something' is nor am I curious enough to really go find out.

As a story author, you really need to make it clear what your player characters are all about and what their motivations are. Just as any good story, this setup is crucial to making a compelling story and a compelling game. Otherwise, the gamer will simply skip all of the setup just to jump into the gaming (as I did with this game).

Gameplay

You're a team of two. You can switch between the characters at will (bumper button). Each character has his/her own health bar, experience, armor, weapons and power ups. So, you get to level up your characters separately.

The game tries to be a dungeon crawler, but doesn't really do much of this. Most of the game is pointless little diversions. For example, you have to mount a trebuchet and lob rocks at the enemy. You do this several times. In fact, this part gets a little tedious after the third time. It was actually kind of fun the first time. But, not after the third time. Or, you might be tasked to break down doors and rescue the inhabitants from being burned to death.

Fighting

Mostly, however, this is a fighting game. You just go in with your sword and use combos to kick butt and take names later. The game likes to throw wave after wave of enemy soldiers at you, so you need to make sure to spend those eXPerience points to expand your health capacity and get better combos.

Leveling Up

To level up, you click the back button and this opens up the level up screen. You can level up your player character right from this screen. There is a very large amount of things you can buy to level up your characters. So, there was a fair amount of thought put into this part of the game. Unfortunately, the rest of the game doesn't really support this level up detail. It's rare that a game company can get all of the pieces of a game to work together cohesively. So far, Bethesda is about the only company who has been able to accomplish it with both Fallout 3 and Elder Scrolls: Oblivion.

Controls

The controls are a bit on the overly sensitive side (specifically the camera). However, this doesn't really hamper the game from working once you're used to it. The control mapping is okay, but I would have preferred something a little more standard.

Sound

The audio works, but not outstanding. The voiceovers aren't bad, but the facial animation is rather weak. The music works, but isn't enough that I would run out and buy the soundtrack. At times, the music can be a little repetitive.

Graphics

Average. The designers decided to use in-game rather than pre-rendered cinematics (by moving the camera close to the game characters) for the transition scenes. While this can sometimes work, it doesn't work for this game. And, unfortunately, it doesn't help make this game any better. The oddness here, additionally, is that the designers decided to overuse the left and right sound effects. So, the voices come out almost entirely left or right when the characters are speaking. Again, while this can sometimes work, it's just odd here.

The textures, lighting and environments are mostly underwhelming. The only exception to this are the Templar outfits. They are actually well done and very detailed. Some of the environments look good, but even as good as they look in places there's so few things that you can interact with in-world that it's mostly a waste.

Overall

Some of this game can be fun. However, most of it is tedious. After you've done the Trebuchet twice, you're kind of tired of it. So, you really don't relish the thought of doing it again. Yet, you do. This game could have been far better if it had tried to do more with the characters and turned it more into an exploring game rather than a fighting game. Rent this one.

Score

Sound: 7/10
Graphics: 5/10
Gameplay: 5/10
Story: 4/10
Bugginess: N/A
Controls: 5/10
Bang-to-buck: 1/10
Play Value: $5
Overall: 4.5/10

Coming Holiday 2012

2011-06-13T00:17:00.000-07:00

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what's a video worth? Without further ado...

Xbox 360 - Hunted: The Demon's Forge

2011-06-01T21:47:00.000-07:00

Hunted: ^The Demon's Forge by Bethesda

Type: Third Person Co-Op Shooter
Save Type: Checkpoint

Hunted: The Demon's Forge is a third person co-op campaign shooter with the second player character played by AI. You can switch between the characters only when you reach certain portals. This is a checkpoint save based game. The trouble with this game isn't the AI or the game itself, it's the graphics. In a word, horrible. If you like game throwbacks to the late 90's (ala Xbox original quality), then you'll probably like this game. If not, you should probably rent this first.

Story

You are a team of two (a human man and an elf.. at least, I think she's an elf). Anyway, you're roaming the countryside when you come upon a woman who appears out of a time distortion portal. She tells you you need to collect death stones and give them to her to gain the power to defeat the enemy. Well, you can see where this is heading. So, you give her the stones and you're taken to a level up menu to equip yourself better (both in spells and in combat).

Gameplay

The controls are a bit overly sensitive, so the tiniest camera movement moves the screen around almost instantly. Other than the sensitivity issue, HDF plays pretty much like any other action third person shooter. You roam the level, kill lots of creatures (skeletons and other dead-ish looking creatures) and collect gold and crystals to buy upgrades. In addition to the standard fare of killing the undead, you are given a bow to shoot at ropes and chains to free people or smash things. As you smash things, like doors, you can enter rooms to gain new weapons or other goodies.

The downside to this game is there's very little to do other than kill, smash and collect. So, don't go into this game thinking you're going to get a very deep gaming experience. No, treat this game as it is, light gaming fare.

Graphics

This is where this game gets its absolute lowest marks. The graphics look no better than a Wii game (and, in some cases) worse. Specifically, the environments look okay, but the characters look amazingly bad. The textures are low res, the movements are strange and the mouths might as well not move at all. The weapons work well enough, but there's just not much here to brag about with the graphics. If you want a much higher res gaming experience, then get Gears of War, Halo 2 or Modern Warfare. These are high quality games given the professional graphics touch. Hunted: The Demon's Forge is so poorly done graphically, I'm surprised Bethesda would even want to release this thing.

Audio

Even though one of the main voice overs is Lucy Lawless, this game doesn't benefit from her work here. The graphics rendering quality is so bad on the characters, even the voice overs don't help.

Overall

This game needs a lot more development time to polish the graphics. In fact, this game looks even worse than Two Worlds and Two Worlds II. Yes, it looks that bad. The game plays better than Two Worlds, though.

Again, this is another disappointing title from Bethesda. It's unusual for Bethesda Softworks to release such underwhelming titles as Brink and now Hunted: The Demon's Forge. However, if you like throwbacks to the 90's, you might enjoy this style of game (ignoring the poor quality graphics, of course). I'm personally not thrilled with AI based forced co-op play. So, this play style doesn't get high marks from me.

This is not a title you're going to play for a long time anyway. So, I'd recommend renting over buying this one. Stick with Redbox or Gamefly to find this game. Don't spend full price.

Score

Sound: 6/10
Graphics: 3.5/10 (amazingly bad character graphics)
Gameplay: 7/10
Story: 6/10
Bugginess: N/A
Controls: 8.5/10
Bang-to-buck: 1/10
Play Value: $5 (rent this one)
Overall: 4/10 (too much of a throwback, game too straightforward, poor graphics)

Xbox 360 - L.A. Noire

2011-05-18T22:11:00.000-07:00

L.A. Noire by Rockstar

I usually like Rockstar games that are even somewhat based on the Grand Theft Auto engine. However, in L.A. Noire's case, I need to make an exception.

Story

You're a soldier turned beat cop in Los Angeles (Cole Phelps) who must solve crimes to move up through the police force ranks (i.e. Beat Cop then Rookie Detective to Detective.. etc). So, as you solve more crimes, you progress through through the ranks of the police force.

At first, you think the story is leading somewhere because you are progressing through the ranks of detective. Yet, your player character (beat cop turned detective) makes an unexpected choice about 3/4 of the way through the game which you have no control over. At first, I thought the choice was something you could control. But, you can't. Worse, it's a questionable moral (and career breaking) choice that just makes no sense. I'm guessing they included this part to put you onto the Arson desk (which is apparently a demotion).

At first, I thought the the choice was part of a bigger cover to entrap the dirty cops in the department into revealing their identities. No, it isn't. Then, at the very end, your player character inexplicably dies.

Before Cole Phelps dies, though, your player character basically enrolls a former army buddy turned life insurance investigator unknowingly into playing detective (though he's not a cop). This puts his life in danger while you now play the game as this character. Which is odd that Rockstar decided to switch your player character here. Anyway, after that, thew new character loses his job from the life insurance company and is courted by the DA to become investigator to uncover all the dirty cops. So, all the way through the game, you're playing as Cole Phelps, but now you are inexplicably playing as a new character.

Also, all throughout the game between each level, you see flashbacks of military actions that have nothing to do with the actual gameplay. It was inevitable that they would roll it together at the end, and they somewhat did in the final scenes of the game. But, there were so many dirty cops left that the ending felt hollow and unsatisfying, especially considering the outcome of Cole Phelps.

Basically, the story is convoluted and disjointed. The ending wraps up one thing, but not the entire game. It also doesn't exonerate Cole Phelps in any way.

Gameplay

Witness Interviews and Interrogations

Here's where the game has failed on two fronts. First, the interview process. As you work through clues while interviewing your witnesses, you have three selections to choose during the interview: Accept the statement as Truth (A), Doubt what they are saying (B) and Tell them they are lying (C). If you decide they are lying, then you have to substantiate it with a piece of evidence. Once you make a choice, you don't know if you have chosen correctly until you finish the interview.

And here's where the first failure lies. If you choose a wrong answer type to the witness statements and you want to try to get all of the answers perfect, you have to completely restart the entire assignment from scratch if you choose 'restart'. That could mean playing another 20 minutes gathering clues, visiting other places, etc to get to the point where the witness line of questioning is. The checkpoints are too far between when you start a level and line of questions. This is, at best, frustrating. I should be able to start over just the line of questioning, not the whole level.

I have found that instead of using 'Restart' on the menu, that you should quit the game right where you are. Don't use restart, just quit to the main menu. When you restart, it will start from the most recent game save and you don't have to restart the entire level. Instead, Rockstar should have made it so that if you choose 'restart' that it goes back to the last save rather than the beginning of the entire assignment.

Driving

The second failure is driving around the city. Clearly in Grand Theft Auto, driving around is a big part playing the game. In L.A. Noire, there is absolutely no point to driving at all, unless you count the pointless street crimes which are mostly worthless. Worse, in most cases, when you hit vehicles, things or people, the game basically penalizes you for doing so. So, there's really no fun in driving inside this game. That said, they do offer to let your companion drive which skips the tedious driving scenes. The only real need to drive is for the side missions (when a call comes in over the radio). Otherwise, it's rather pointless to drive.

After the game ends, you can free roam on each level to gather what amounts of small things there are left to get. Frankly, there's really no fun in it. It's much more fun to take diversions during the stories to get things. Doing it all after the game is over is really no fun. Once I've played the story element all the way through, I don't really feel that I want to explore the rest of the game.

Investigating crime scenes

At crime scenes, you are tasked to locate clues. Unfortunately, the game directs you to the clues using queued music and controller shaking. So, when you're on top of a clue it shakes the controller and plays a piano ditty. On top of this, there's an overall music score that plays as long as clues are available. Unfortunately, this part is so directed that you basically can't miss any clues... especially if you use intuition points. Also, the only thing that clues help you is to nail lies during the evidence phase of catching people in a lie.

Locating suspects

Yet another gameplay problem ends up as chasing suspects (either in a car or on foot). Inevitably, one of the two outcomes after finding a suspect is that they run either by car or on foot. So, you're tasked to chase them down. The main problem I have with this part of LA Noire is that it seems to do it with EVERY suspect. Not only is it just unrealistic, it's just stupid to think that every suspect would run. Worse, it seems that the suspects can run far faster than Phelps in every instance (including the fat ones). Catching running suspects is just an exercise in futility. I'd rather just shoot them and be done with it. Worse, though, it only takes two shots (or in some cases one shot) to kill the suspect. So, you can't do that.

If you're doing a car chase, again, their car is far faster than yours. So, you're always just one step behind. Trying to push the car off the road is near impossible. Trying to ram the car doesn't work and while you're driving you can't shoot. So, you just have to chase them until they run themselves off the road (which they will eventually do).

The chases are incredibly stupid, not fun and border on the edge of tedium.. especially after having done it more than twice. If there were an easy way to push the suspect off the road fast, I'd be all over this part. But, there isn't. Instead, the game would have been far more fun to just skip past the chase scenes from the outset and get right to the capture of the suspect which is going to happy anyway.

Graphics

The one thing that is the most stunning of this game is the facial animations. Rockstar has raised the bar with facial graphics animation. So, instead of trying to animate a mesh by stilted mechanics, they capture facial motions using cameras and apply it right to the mesh. I think I understand what they used to accomplish how it looks, and it is mostly amazing. The trouble isn't the facial features, it's the stilted body movements that make the character animation weak. Part of the reason is that they captured the facial animations separately from the body motions. So, when putting these separate elements together, the walking and talking animations still seem stilted and unnatural.

Sound

Nothing spectacular here as for music or voiceover work. It's definitely serviceable. The soundtracks are mostly from the 40s, though. As far as other incidental music, there's not much. Worse, you can't even change the radio station when driving around in the vehicles. Note that what makes the voiceovers work is not the voiceover itself, it's the facial animation.

Overall

I was hoping for more from this game, but the two failures mentioned above dampened me about this game. Even though they do allow you to skip the driving (most times) by having the partner drive, it's still doesn't really resolve the driving issues. When you do have to drive, it's just wasted.

The cases are ok, but mostly boring. Examining the scenes for clues is almost exactly the same in each case. There's nothing surprising. It would have been more fun to find clues randomly at later parts of the game. Someone throws a gun into a bay and in a later crime you happen to find the gun from a previous case, as an example. The cases are far too cut and dried.

The game is somewhat fun to play. But, playing as a cop has major hurdles that Rockstar wasn't able to overcome. That is, being able to run over pedestrians and things. The cases are far too directed with no free roaming aspects until AFTER the game has completed.

Score

Sound: 6/10
Graphics: 9.5/10
Gameplay: 6/10
Story: 6/10
Bugginess: N/A
Controls: 8.5/10
Bang-to-buck: 4/10
Play Value: $12 (not as fun as GTA)
Overall: 6/10 (some good parts, not nearly as fun as GTA, too directed, too many chases)

Xbox 360 - Portal 2

2011-05-15T13:22:00.000-07:00

Portal 2 by Valve

Portal 2 is the follow up to Portal. Portal is available through the Orange Box game set or via download on Xbox Live. Obviously, it's also available on other platforms (both Portal 1 and Portal 2).

Portal

Mini-review. Portal starts as a unique and fresh take on a shooter. Instead of being a straight first person shooter, it turns the gun into a portal creation device. So, you run around in 'test' chambers creating portals and then running through them to get to other places in the room without walking. So, you can create an orange and blue portal. This creates two doors linked together.

Portals are like mini-rifts in the time fabric that let you walk through the portal and enter one place and exit wherever the other doorway is. Portals can be created on floors, ceilings, walls or wherever a portal surface is. Portals can only be created on special surfaces. Some surfaces cannot create portals (like metal).

In the first Portal, you were a test subject thrown into a series of test rooms to test out the portals and whether you could solve the puzzles using the portal guns. In among all of the tests there are motion sensing shooting robots, a quirky and somewhat insane robotic female computer along with other traps that could kill or maim you. At the end of Portal, your character ends up shutting down the main insane female computer to prevent it from becoming more insane (and, of course, to escape).

To solve many of the puzzles, you are tasked with dropping down long drops into created portals to fling yourself across the room using momentum.

Score for Portal: 8.5/10.

Portal 2 -- story

Portal started this whole new genre of puzzle shooters. This is a unique game with an odd twist on a shooter. It's fresh and unique and sits in its own unique place in the gaming world. Hello other developers, you might want to take notice.

Portal 2 continues with where Portal ended. It's not exactly clear how you get there, but you are now many years in the future. So, you start off with a somewhat odd flying eye bot with a male British or Aussie accent. This bot leads you back into the test chambers again where, eventually, you awaken the insane female robot computer from the first Portal. Now that she's awake, she begins testing you again with various rooms and new trials. Except, now this eye bot is helping you along and the female computer is now seeking revenge (even though she says she isn't). So, you meet up with the insane female robot computer again and things take a turn when you disconnect her and connect up the eye bot to the mainframe. So, now the eye bot is in charge and the insane female robot computer gets shoved into a potato.

As you carry the potato around, she talks to you trying to devise a way to get herself back into the mainframe and get the eye bot out. Worse, the eye bot doesn't seem to understand the system at all and is now leading the entire test facility towards destruction.

So, you are now tasked to work your way back up from the very earliest levels of the facility to the most recent and to the chamber with the eye bot. And, there are some new things you need to do along the way.

Liquid blobs and flinging

As you progress, you will run into holes dropping various colored paint blobs. These liquids do various things. The orange liquid is very slick and makes you slide. The blue liquid makes you bounce. The white liquid lets you 'paint' surfaces to create portals. The clear liquid washes any of it off. The liquids can also be dropped onto things to disturb them (like robots).

Now instead of just trying to figure out how to get out of the room with portals and momentum, you have to use the liquids creatively to coat surfaces. This allows you to create speed and momentum to jump through portals to fling yourself across the room onto a ledge or some other surface. You are tasked with figuring out which surfaces to coat.

Story

The story is mostly reasonable. It takes place many years after the first incident. But, the robot says she doesn't hold a grudge, although it's quite clear she does. Note that the insane female robot computer has some of the best lines in this game (including Portal) and they all happen during the first few test chambers. After she becomes a potato, the one-line zingers basically stop.

Humor

This game relies almost entirely on humor to carry it. While the puzzles can be challenging, it's really the female robotic computer voice that makes this game. Unfortunately, the eye bot is not so much that way. His British or Australian accent is annoying and his lines aren't funny at all. It's a good thing that he disappears for a good bit of this game, otherwise this game wouldn't be nearly as much fun to play.

Overall

This is a good follow-up to Portal. The game is nearly as fun as the first. Portal 2 is a unique game much in the same way as Portal. The only one downside is that I was expecting the campaign to be a lot longer. Instead, the game requires co-op play to get more fun out of it. When you play co-op, though, you play as two robots rather than as the female in the first Portal.

I would also have preferred a completely different character and a different approach to the Portal gun. I was hoping to see more than the test facility, but that's where we're still stuck.

Score

Sound: 9/10
Graphics: 8/10
Gameplay: 7/10
Story: 9/10
Bugginess: N/A
Controls: 9/10
Bang-to-buck: 5/10
Play Value: $30 (if you like puzzle games, worth buying)
Overall: 8.5/10 (a good follow up to Portal)

Xbox 360 - Brink

2011-05-14T23:51:00.000-07:00

Brink by id / Bethesda Softworks

I used to like most Bethesda titles, that is until Bethesda bought id. Now, I'm not so thrilled by the Bethesda's new id games. Unfortunately, this game is not what it could have been. It's really mostly a waste and definitely not worth the $60 that it costs.

Because this game is not very compelling and definitely not something you'd want to play over and over for a long gaming experience, I'll make this review short and to the point.

id games

Way back when, Doom was all the rage. It had some cool new things that hadn't been done in gaming before. Now, it's all been-there-done-that. With Brink, unfortunately , it's all too familiar.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars Clone

Unfortunately, Brink is just a clone of Quake Wars. Quake Wars is a team based objective play first person shooter. Brink is just a rehash of that. If you enjoyed Enemy Territory, you might enjoy Brink assuming you like to play games you've already played before. Otherwise, it's a been-there-done-that moment. Frankly, the campaign part is not very exciting. If you enjoy games where you're constantly being shot and killed by random enemies from all over the place while trying to accomplish a task, then this is the game for you.

On the other hand, if you're looking for something deeper and fresh with a real story involved, this isn't it. It's far too much like other team oriented objective play games.

Enemies

In Brink, it's actually quite hard to distinguish the enemies from the friendlies. So, you're constantly shooting at the wrong people. Worse, you can't even tell that you're doing it. So, it's really badly designed from this perspective.

And it gets worse. There's an annoying Jamaican announcer who's constantly blurting useless information out throughout the entire level. That useless information being constant updates on things that don't even matter to what you're currently trying to do. It's like, "shut-the-f-up. I'm trying to play here."

Guns

Well, once again a game developer decides to break the rules with the controller. See 'Messing with a good thing'. Anyway, they mapped reloading the weapon to the left stick button press. Looking at any other first person shooter, who does this? Get with the program id.

Armor

What armor? The only thing you get is basically nothing. Two shots and you're incapacitated and you have to spawn again. Worse, all of the XP you gain only gets you cosmetic appearance armor. It doesn't give you any real armor to help increase how many shots you can take. No, you have to get other 'points' to buy armor. Worthless system.

Overall

A disappointing romp not worthy of the $60. Perhaps if you enjoy lots of multiplayer action and being constantly shot at while trying to obtain your objectives, you might like this. Instead, for team based play, I'd prefer something like Star Wars: Republic Commando where you actually direct your team members to actual strategic locations and use their skills to handle specific tasks along the way. That's what I want to play.

What I don't want to play are clones of previous games that weren't really very good the first time around. Oh well, maybe id will get their next game right. Maybe not. Although, I won't be buying into many of these id titles unless they are a lot stronger than Brink.

Do yourself a favor, rent Brink first. If, after you've rented it, you actually like the title, then you might consider buying it. But, you can probably get through the game long before the rental period is over. However, if you've already played Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, then you've already played Brink. So, do yourself (and your wallet) a favor and skip this wannabe clone.

Score

Sound: 8/10
Graphics: 7/10
Gameplay: 4/10 (average shooter)
Story: 4/10
Bugginess: N/A
Controls: 6/10
Bang-to-buck: 1/10
Play Value: $5 (rent first, then buy)
Overall: 4.5/10 (poor gameplay, average graphics, poor characters)

Xbox 360 - Crysis 2

2011-03-24T05:37:00.000-07:00

Crysis 2 by Crytek / EA

Format: First Person Shooter
Save Type: Checkpoint only
Rating: Mature

Ever since I'd heard about the Cryengine 3's 'fabulous' rendering capabilities, I'd been anxious to play a game that actually uses this engine on a console. Well, Crysis 2 is finally here. Unfortunately, it's not everything it's cracked up to be. Oh, it's definitely better than many game engines, but I'd say that it's not that much better than the engine driving Halo 3, Gears of War or even what is driving Bioshock.

Graphics

Ok, so let's start out with the best part first. The graphics are very very good, but are by no means perfect. I was actually expecting a lot more out of Cryengine 3. The shadows of objects on the ground is fairly well done. The edges are 'softer' by using very small dots rather than big block to create the shadows. So, while the shadows are better than what's in Halo 3, it's not that much better because the shadows are kind of flickery. Specularity is good, but not great. Sunlight color appears natural.

Although, there are some other problems with the shadow system, too. A big feature of the Nanosuit is that it can be cloaked. However, even though the suit is cloaked, the shadow is still fully dark on the ground. If light were truly penetrating through a transparent surface, the shadow would also become much more faint. This is an issue that should have been addressed and wasn't. So, either the Cryengine 3 doesn't manage this properly or the coders didn't write it correctly. Either way, the shadow needs to reflect the cloaking. Seriously, if there was a solid shadow on the ground moving around, you'd definitely know something was cloaked.

Story

The person operating a Nanosuit (armored biosuit), Prophet, is just about spent due to the suit's symbiotic relationship. So, just as he is about to die, a wounded soldier (you) happens upon him. He takes the opportunity to shed the suit onto you and then he kills himself to sever the link to the symbiote so the suit will accept you as the new host. That's where the story begins.

As you progress, the suit gains strength (and points) from the hard-to-kill alien DNA. As you kill more aliens, you gain more DNA from them. So, it enhances the suit's capabilities.

Physics

This game's physics system is a bit on the weak side. When you kill an enemy, the enemy falls to the ground and stops in an unnatural way... sometimes with their arms or legs straight up in the air. Also, when bullets penetrate a surface, it does nothing to the surface (it doesn't leave a mark, yet the bullets sometimes do hit you). If you're going to spend this much time on realism, please add these small details that really make it seem real. Basically, the physics system should have been tested better.

Bugs as a result of physics

There are times as you are playing where the enemies will randomly kill themselves. I've seen this happen several times. In one case, it was an enemy soldier. He was jumping through a window. The move seemed to work going through the window once. On return jump through the window, the character seemed to get caught on the window frame and then he becomes a projectile who then flies across the room and dies.

The second time I had this happen with a soldier, it was on a level where you are tasked to sneak across an island and disable the power grid. In this case, there is a round staircase that leads to a lookout post. Under certain specific timing conditions, the soldier at the top will do something and then die as a result of some physics glitch. The issue with this particular glitch is that it will trigger your presence if this soldier doesn't respond to a request for status. If he doesn't respond, then the soldiers become alerted to your presence even though you had nothing to do with that soldier's death.

I've also seen this physics bug manifest with the Seth aliens as well, but not as a show stopper as above.

Gameplay

The gameplay is about standard for a first person shooter. You have mostly one-handed weapons that fire a variety of projectiles (bullets, missiles) as well as grenades and C4 explosives. Nothing spectacular here with regards to these weapons. I was hoping for more, but no. The weapons don't even have much in the way of cool factor. But, that goes back to another issue which I'll discuss further down in this review.

As you progress through the levels, you find alien DNA (as you kill each alien) that acts as points to buy upgrades.

Environments

Crysis 2 heavily borrows its look and layouts of some interior and exterior environments from games such as Enslaved, Half Life, Halo 3, Halo 3 ODST, The Darkness, Fallout 3 and F.E.A.R. On the one hand, the environments are familiar, on the other it's a bit too familiar. Whether this was intended as an ode to these games or simply cutting corners is not known. What is certain, I would have preferred to see more original layouts.

Bosses

Repetition here is the key. Once you see the bosses, this is what you have to beat over and over. The AT-ST style walker, which is a nod to Star Wars, is a bit annoying once you understand what you need to do. It's also highly annoying that the bosses always 'see' you whether or not you're cloaked. However, if you get far enough out of their sight box, they will then focus on other threats and leave you alone. That is, until you fire a single bullet. Then they 'see' you again and immediately come after you. So, killing the bosses takes far too long to do as mostly you're just trying to avoid being shot up. This is not challenging, but it is frustrating.

Controls

There are times where the controls and collision detection severely lag. It is especially bad when you're in a battle doing melee hits. So, you know that you've hit and killed the enemy (it has fallen to the ground dead), yet the enemy manages to get one last damage hit into you long after it has hit the ground dead. So, you're standing over the dead alien body and you're being hit by some phantom projectile. In one case, it was enough to kill my character. This is extremely frustrating and enough for me to put this game down. But, I'll work my way through it only because I'm about halfway through this so far.

The first time this phantom projectile happened to me, I thought there was another alien somewhere close hitting me. Yet, I've looked around and there wasn't another on the level. So, the game is definitely glitchy here.

Sound

The sound is average. Nothing spectacular here, but noting horribly wrong either.

Overall

The upside to this game is that the environments are mostly very polished and look great. The 3D look appears solid and has a realistic feel, until you get up close. Then everything breaks down. This game does not use levels of detail for up close viewing. So, if you get close to a sign, everything is extremely pixelated and barely legible. So, this is a disappointment in what should arguably be one of the best looking game engines out there.

The fact that Crytek chose this game to be a first person shooter makes the whole idea of the superb graphics combined with the Nanosuit a frustrating experience. Here you are in this cool looking Nanosuit, yet you get to see only one arm in the view window the entire game. The game never pans away from the suit so you can see the whole suit from a different vantage point. It doesn't even do this in cinematics. This is very disappointing. Since the game is all about the suit, this game should have been a third person shooter (or toggle between first and third) so you get to see the suit.

Unfortunately, this is a drab and uninspired first person shooter wrapped in a nice looking package. The problem is, the developers spent so much time making the graphics engine look good, they forgot all about the gameplay, the physics and the motion capture. So, the characters move in odd stilted ways and the physics of the game is, at times, bad (weights are off, characters don't fall down dead believably, etc). Crytek now needs to take time to mature the physics and collision detection engines. They need to spend as much time on these as they have on the rendering engine. Only then will this game engine rival those of other game campanies.

Score

Sound: 8/10
Graphics: 9.5/10
Gameplay: 5/10 (average shooter)
Story: 6/10
Bugginess: N/A
Controls: 6/10
Bang-to-buck: 2/10
Play Value: $20 (rent first, then buy)
Overall: 5.5/10 (average gameplay overshadows excellent graphics)

Xbox 360 - Dragon Age II

2011-03-09T16:12:00.000-08:00

Dragon Age II by Bioware / EA

In November 2009, Gamezelot reviewed Dragon Age Origins (DAO). Gamezelot gave this game a 6.5 out of 10 rating. It was, by no means, a perfect game. It has its moments, but it also has it share of problems. Fast forward to today. Dragon Age II is now out.. so how is it?

Starting out

The game starts out by allowing you to choose your character's class. While you are stuck being human, you can choose to be a mage, warrior or rogue class (male or female). After choosing the class, you can then choose your cosmetic appearance (mostly facial features). You can't choose a body shape, though. Also, even though there are Dalish, Dwarves and Elves in the game, you cannot choose one of these as your race. You are stuck as human only.

Story

The story picks up pretty much where Dragon Age Origins leaves off. So, you're still running around killing Darkspawn. It almost seems, though, that they ignored the story in Awakenings, but that was more of a side game anyway. So, after battling a bunch of Darkspawn and confronting a Dragon, you're out of Ferelden and off to another city by boat.

The beginning of the story is a bit convoluted and starts out twice, actually. Once, it starts as a fanciful tale and then the person listening doesn't like what she hears and asks the storyteller to tell her the 'real' story. So, he backtracks and tells it all over again. During the storytelling phase, you get to play the game in certain parts to get you familiar with the gameplay as a small tutorial. Unfortunately, that really fails for new users. You really must be familiar with Dragon Age Origins already to understand the controls and the game play. So, if you're new to this game, you might want to read the manual first.

When you arrive at the city gates, your envoy is kept out of the city because there are already too many people trying to immigrate there. So, your first quests are one of two different and you can choose which one to do. The first quest choice is to kill someone as a favor. They will then get you into the city. The second choice is to retrieve money from a local shopkeeper. Either one you choose, you'll get into the city. The easier one, of course, is the one that doesn't involve combat. I'm not sure exactly how it shapes your character overall, but the choices may change how the story progresses. I do know that you will receive individual Xbox achievements for doing each of them. So, save your game right before you choose. You can then do one, get your achievement, save, then load and then do the second and receive that achievement. When you find quests that allow you to do one of two things, save and attempt both because you'll likely get Xbox achievements.

Once in the city, you get access to the map and you can roam the city looking for battles and loot, primarily loot.

Menu System

The interface to the system is still lackluster. To get to the journal (your quest list), you need to press the Start button on the controller. This lea ds to the main menu. Unfortunately, this menu is the wrong place for the the journal. The system needs its own place that's separate for this task and single button press that brings up the top level inventory (to change armor or weapons) rather than multiple button presses Start->Controller Right->A Button. Then B twice t o back out of it all. No, it should be a simple one click in and one click out. When will game designers learn this?

When you click the left trigger controller, it does bring up the fast select menu so you can get to consumables and spells easier. But, you still have to go through the main menu to get to everything else.

Yes, you can map the potion to an easy access key, but getting to them through the main menu method is slow, tedious, interrupting.. and is an incredibly bad design. The only way to get to the journal (and the quests) is through the main menu even though the right trigger allows for easier access to some things.

Gameplay

The gameplay hasn't improved much over DAO. That said, the graphics have improved by a lot. In fact, it looks like the designers have used the Mass Effect 2 engine to drive Dragon Age II. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn't always work in all cases. For example, the menu system above. Also, the talking system is jus t as annoying as Mass Effect II. That is, you have no idea which response will lead to a positive or negative outcome. However, the skin surface textures on the characters are much better than DAO. So, there's pluses and minuses.

However, even though the graphics have changed by a lot, the gameplay itself hasn't. The problems that plagued DAO still plague this title. Na mely, that your main character is extremely weak against opponents. Not so much individual opponents, but that the game constantly throws many opponents at you all at once. However, unlike DAO, where you start with yourself and add characters along the way, Dragon Age II gives you four people in your group right up front. So, your group is a lot stronger than when you start out in DAO. Even still, that doesn't resolve the issue. The game throws exceedingly strong characters at the group which makes it difficult to complete a battle with all four of your team still standing. In fact, you usually have one character left and you have to run them all over the game board just to keep from being pounded to death (and give enough time to drink potions).

This also means, save early and save often. If you don't and all characters in your party die, the game is over.

Battles

This is a sore spot with me here. The battles are all real-time, although that isn't the issue. The issue, as mentioned above, the game throws a large number of mid to higher level opponents at you at a time when they should be far easier than they are. Yes, I could move the mode to 'Casual', but in the beginning, the game shouldn't se nd this high level opponents at you anyway.. and especially at 3-4 times the amount in your party. Worse, it keeps spawning them over and over with more and more.

But, here's the stupid part. Running around the city, people and guards are standing around. So, you are battling right in front of a city guard who stands there motionless. Seriously bad. Every other game would have had the guards join right in and either help you or help the opponent. Either way, the guards need to join in and bystanders need to run away. Where was the thought and design behind this?

Questing

The questing is much the same as DAO. It's improved slightly, but not much. The quests names appear briefly on the screen and then go into your 'Journal'. Although, the journal is more easily laid out from DAO, it's still hard to determine where you need to be to complete a quest. Unlike Fallout 3 that lets you pick the location where

you need to be next, Dragon Age II still doesn't seem do this easily.

Sparse Cities and Loot

While wandering around the cities, you'll notice there are tons of buildings and lots of doors. Yet, none of the doors can be opened. In fact, when you wander the cities in search of treasure, there's very little anywhere. Even after a battle in DAO

, there would be a lot of dead bodies with loot (probably at least half or more of the enemies). In DA2, you might kill 20 enemies and end up with 2 bodies with loot.

For creating such a detailed environment, there's really very little to do in them. It's sad that game developers are producing such detailed environments and so drastically under use them. I just don't get this part of game development. If you add a door to a building, plan to allow the gamer to use it. Don't create buildings with doors that don't open.

Map

The map is pretty much worthless. In fact, it's not really a map at all. It's more a poster on the wall with destination points. So, you really have no idea the relationship between one city and another. I'd rather have a real map that shows me the landscape, terrain and where I'm traveling. Fallout 3 at least has a real terrain map that corresponds one to one to a real place in the environment. Dragon Age II doesn't.

Overall

I'm disappointed in this title. It should have been a drastic improvement over DAO, but isn't. They used the Mass Effect 2 engine, but pulled out the VATS-type targeting system that made ME2 a much better game. Without some kind of targeting system, the real-time battles just end up worthless. Why even have four people in the group? It's easier just to run around avoiding them until you can do them in one at a time.

Granted, some longer ranged weapons do offer targeting, but usually blanket targeting rather than individual targeting or, more specifically, limbs, head or torso. It's these little missing things that make this game less than what it should be. It's these attentions to detail that Bethesda seems to never miss, but Bioware seems to

ignore these details in most of their newer games. That is, especially now that EA owns them.

The Qunari segment ending is complete garbage. Not so much from the story, although that is fairly lame. No, the gameplay is just plain frustrating and lame. Note that I am playing this on 'Casual' mode at this point. First, they throw a small wave at you that's easily defeated. Then they throw a wave of 20-30 enemies at you that en

ds up killing your entire group in less than 2 minutes. The spells they throw at you, you have no defense against (not even the mages). The Qunari commander has a fatality move that there is no way out of. Worse, there is no way to know what Qunari has in store to prepare before you get to this part. Even lamer, targeting is near perfect on you by the enemies. So, if you're standing behind a pole on the level, they can still manage to hit you fully (either spells or melee). Even if you're running away or on the other side of the room, they can still manage to fully stab or hit you with their melee weapon. Was this game even play tested?

This is also yet another game that cheats. This lack of t

hought to the combat is complete garbage. Bioware has completely lost its edge. What's left is a hollow shell of a company. At this point, the only major game companies left are THQ, Ubisoft, Bethesda, Valve and Rockstar. Pretty much every other company has either lost their edge by being gobbled up by larger companies like EA or Atari or they just can't produce solid games anymore. Oh well, this is probably the last Bioware

game that I'll review here on Gamezelot.

Note, I haven't completely finished this game yet. But, I don't have to complete the game to already know the frustrating aspects of Dragon Age II.

And last but not least... at least they could proof the copy

Score

Sound: 8/10
Graphics: 8.5/10
Gameplay: 6/10 (still many fundamental problems)
Story: 6.5/10
Bugginess: N/A
Controls: 8.5/10
Bang-to-buck: 2/10
Play Value: $15 (rent first, then buy)
Overall: 5.5/10 (graphics improvement, gameplay is worse)

Xbox 360 - Two Worlds II

2011-02-05T15:10:00.001-08:00

Two Worlds II by South Peak Games

While I played but never reviewed Two Worlds, I also thought it was unfair to review Two Worlds as it was so unfinished and buggy. In fact, the game was so unfinished, I wasn't even able to complete the game. To be fair, though, I should have at least reviewed that part of Two Worlds here on Gamezelot. So, here's your mini-review of Two Worlds. Overall, Two Worlds is rated 2/10 (Very poor game, very buggy and very unfinished).

With that out of the way, we get to the heart of this review of Two Worlds II, the sequel to Two Worlds.

Story

Well, frankly I haven't been able to make heads or tails of the story. It's a mix-mash of a bunch of RPG ideas, but it's not really that cohesive. Something is definitely going on, but the dialog and voice acting are so bad, I couldn't really keep up nor was it compelling me to watch it. So, while there is a story there of some kind, I really lost interest in finding out what it was. As a storyteller, you have one shot to draw in your audience, Two Worlds II fails miserably at this.

RPG System

So, while Two Worlds failed at just about every aspect of being an RPG game, Two Worlds II has much improved the gaming aspect quite a bit over Two Worlds. That said, the improvements made don't make this a grade A title. No, it's still firmly a grade C game. In fact, the designers should have just skipped the whole lead-in story completely and dropped the gamer right into the character generator. Basically, after the arduous story, you end up in the character builder.

Unfortunately, once in the character builder, the player character is limited to being human (as is nearly every other character in the game, with the exception of the enemies and creatures you can summon). As far as the player character, he's always human and, from what I remember, always male. You can modify your character's looks within limits including height, broad shoulders, and facial features. In fact, most of the alterations deal with facial features and hair and beard shapes and colors. For an RPG, it's really very limited. That is to say, compared with the Elder Scrolls series (Oblivion specifically).

After you create your character, the game begins.

Gameplay

Once the game starts, you will notice several things. First, the controller mapping is completely wonky (see messing with a good thing). South Peak should have looked at other RPGs and decided on a more cohesive button layout. That said, the designers do allow you to remap nearly anything in your inventory to RB, LB, X, Y, A and B buttons. Helpful, but not overly useful. I'd still prefer to have a standard layout with the action keys on the A, B, X and Y buttons rather than using the trigger controllers. Triggers are for cars and guns, not swinging swords and melee weapons. I might accept firing arrows from a trigger, but that's inconsistent when you're already using A or B for melee.

Graphics

To pull no punches here, the graphics are downright awful. But, it's not just the texture mapping that's at issue. Some objects are textured mapped well enough, others textures just don't work at all. It's the inconsistency that's at issue here. For a game to work, all objects have to be consistently texture mapped. For example, you would never use a 1024x1024 texture map for a large surfaced area like the ground. On the other hand, it's pointless to use 4096x4096 pixel maps on tiny objects like vials. Designers need to be cognizant of the when and where to use the right sized maps. Worse, though, is that the ground surface maps look like photographs of real surfaces just plopped onto the ground surface. That doesn't work alone. It takes supporting bump maps to make a surface look realistic. Yet, no bump mapping is here.

Unfortunately, there is no use of specularity maps here. Since I don't know the engine that South Park decided to use for Two Worlds II, I do not know if it's capable of specularity. However, most game engines do support some level of specularity (i.e., shininess vs dullness). Most objects in the game have a single level of dullness that leads the game to look flat and lifeless. We need to see levels of specularity to make the objects appear 3 dimensional.

Programming Issues

Most console games hold the game in a loading screen until everything has been completely loaded and ready to go. Not Two Worlds II. When you teleport, for example, as soon as you appear in the destination teleport, you see the whole world load. That is, building, textures, plants, trees, etc... everything pops up right on the screen. This is a bad technique. A 'loading' screen should be present until the world has fully and completely loaded.

In addition to the popup issue, which I could live with, there is this 'freezing' thing that happens. It doesn't hang the Xbox, instead this appears to be a conscious programming decision. For example, when you land on the destination teleport, the game is frozen. You can see your character, but you can't move. You're stuck until the game decides to finally let the game start. When you're frozen, so are all of the other characters in the world. It's like you pressed the pause button on a remote control, yet the game is not paused. This issue needs to be addressed a lot more elegantly going forward. Most well designed games think this aspect through.

Lighting

Again, to be blunt, the lighting is horrible. The daylight lighting overdoes (and overexposes) the scenes so it's actually hard to see much of the terrain when the sun is blinding the player character. So much of the outdoors scenes are overexposed. Sunlight needs to look realistic, yes. But, it doesn't need to blind the player so they can't see the environment. Basically, the sunlight effects are way overdone and need to be toned way back.

On the flip side, in the dark areas it's too dark. Yes, there is a torch, but as a designer you still need to add key lighting in places (shafts of light from holes in caves) to add mood and give depth to the scene. In most caves, it's just not moody enough, just dark. Caves need dark places and need light places to create a mood, provide a realistic environment and reinforce a convincing 3D aspect of the game experience.

Questing

The lack of a story leads to a convoluted and confusing questing experience. There is a quest log, yes. The quest log does lead the player through where they need to be to get the quest completed, but the quests are trivially easy to complete. For example, there's a follow-someone quest where they tell you not to follow too close. In fact, there is no need for this at all. You can follow as close as you want as there is nothing to 'notice' that you followed them at all. The only aspect here is that you need to hide behind barrels to allow the meeting to take place. Ultimately, though, you still have to fight and kill the meeting people anyway. So, why bother hiding? Just go in with the sword drawn and get it over with. It's not that it's that hard to kill the opponents anyway.

Leveling up

Gaining experience is strange at best. You have no idea how much XP you're gaining by doing any specific thing. Sometimes you'll see '1 XP gained', but other times you see nothing. In fact, most times you see nothing. So, there's no way to quantify how much XP you'll get by doing any specific thing. This part of the game needs a lot of work.

Unfortunately, leveling up is a mixed bag here. Not so much for the player character, but more for the enemies around you. Meaning, you have no idea what level opponent you're about to fight. You only see their health bar, but not their level. With any long-form RPG game, the game needs to level opponents up at near the same rate as the player character. Don't throw level 30 enemies at level 2 player characters. This is completely unfair and unnecessary. The level 30 enemy will simply pummel the player character in one hit of the sword. Not fair and not necessary. Designers need to understand this aspect.

Guilds

Like Oblivion, there are guilds. Unfortunately, this is yet another haphazard element. It's there, but not explained. As you play and finish quests, you will gain points toward guilds. Some of the quests are defined as guild quests, while others aren't. I'm not even sure what happens once you gain favor with a guild (note that I haven't gotten that far yet). Still, even though I haven't gotten far enough to get through obtaining guild favor, I'm not sure that it will even give me much when I do.

Combat

The combat system is about standard. Swing swords or fire arrows. Once you get the hang of where to be, how to stand, how to corner the enemy and all of the other tricks, you can easily defeat just about any enemy in the game.

Game Maps and Travel

The maps seem very large. So, there's lots of running to be had. However, there is also a teleport system. This system allows you to teleport (fast travel) to any other teleport that you've found on the map. As long as you are outdoors (clear sky above), you can teleport. Inside buildings, dungeons and caves, this is not possible. So, exit to outdoors to travel. Horses are also available, like Oblivion, to move from place to place faster. To be honest, I haven't found a horse yet, so I can't speak to how well this part works.

Overall

This game is a mess. However, to its credit I have yet to run into any show-stopper bugs. You know, the kind that lead you into a room that you realize you can't get out of and you have no save to revert back to (so you're stuck having to start over). That's not to say I won't discover one about 75% through the game, but so far I haven't. In Two Worlds, I found bugs (not stuck bugs), but the kind that crash the game dead regularly. Thankfully, Two Worlds II at least doesn't hang the XBox.

That said, the game is designed as though there were multiple teams all completing separate aspects to the game never coming together to create a cohesive whole game. Worse, so many corners were cut to produce the game, the game is missing a cohesive whole story element that draws you in and makes you want to play. So, the lighting guys, texturing guys, coding guys and story guys never seemed to sit in a room and say, "Hey, we want a high quality game". They just all seemed to do their work independently, then put it all together, beta test and then release. Little quality control on the end result seemed to happen.

So, the game's quests are many and take a while to complete, even though they are trivially easy. If you're willing to overlook all of the negative aspects mentioned above, you might find some kind of enjoyable experience from Two Worlds II. That is, if you like to just blindly quest without thought to the story. Granted, I do find myself blindly questing much of the time even in Oblivion. So, in this way, I find myself doing the same thing in Two Worlds II.

Play this game only if you like blind questing. Since there is a drought of major RPG titles, this one will do until Elder Scrolls: Skyrim is released in the fall of 2011. This game is not likely to win Game of the Year from Gamezelot (or any other review site), but it is much better than Two Worlds. I recommend this game only if you are desperate for an RPG and you need something to play. I also only recommend it as a 'buy used'. It's a bit to expensive at $60 with all of its flaws.

Score

Sound: 4/10 (works ok, but needs help, bad voice acting)
Graphics 3.5/10 (bad quality 3D work, textures, lighting, etc)
Story: 2/10 (not engaging)
Bugginess: N/A (no hang bugs found yet, surprisingly)
Controls: 7/10 (reasonable, but could have been better)
Bang-To-Buck: 2/10 (Not really wanting to revisit this world)
Play Value: $5 (play once, but too long to rent, buy used)
Overall: 4/10 (improved from TW, but not great)

Definitely not the quality you would expect from an RPG

Xbox 360 - Fallout: New Vegas

2011-01-02T00:14:00.000-08:00

Fallout: New Vegas by Obsidian

I would love to say this game is perfect. In general, I like Bethesda games, even if they do come from Obsidian. However, even though Fallout: New Vegas is very similar to Fallout 3, it's just different enough that I'm still not overly thrilled. Since Fallout New Vegas is basically an expansion to Fallout 3, I will treat it as such and not go into depth about the entire game. If you're looking for a more in-depth review, please read my Fallout 3 review here on Gamezelot.

Story

Fallout New Vegas starts with a completely new character. This time, you don't start out in a vault as a baby (a good thing). Instead, you wake up after having been knocked out from some mostly unexplained event. You come to find out that you're basically a delivery boy delivering a package when you're beaten within an inch of your life. A doctor intervenes and saves you.

This is where your character begins. From here, you choose your character's look and attire. After this, it's much the same as Fallout 3, other than you're hoping to find your attackers and the reason you were attacked. So then, you are hopelessly roaming the countryside in search of and completing quests in and around 'New Vegas' (a post apocalyptic version of Las Vegas). Every ounce of power generated is sent to New Vegas, so you will find quests related to power generation.

Gameplay

The same as Fallout which is also the same as Oblivion. The scenery has changed, but the game play and controls are identical. Not that this is bad, but I was at least hoping for an updated look and feel. No such luck.

Quests

As with RPGs like this, the quests are many and varied. Some you get right away, some you pick up by talking to people, others just fall in your lap as part of other quests. Overall, the questing system is near the same as Fallout 3.

Pip Boy

The pip boy is still here and is your interface to your character's health, armor and items. Basically, anything and everything dealing with your character is available through the pip boy. I'm still not overly impressed by this in-game device. I would have preferred a different interface system, but it works for what it is.

Leveling up and Perks

This aspect has changed just slightly from Fallout 3. Instead of getting perks each time you level, you only get perks every other time you level. So, you have to go through two level ups to get more perks. This also means that perks are slow to come. So, don't expect to get a lot of perks throughout this game.

Overall

I like Fallout New Vegas well enough, but the story isn't any more compelling than Fallout 3. The premise is ok, but it's far too much the same as Fallout 3. This is a rather long RPG game. This is definitely a buy if you are into RPGs as the game is quite long. You won't be able to rent this and get through very much before you return it.

At this point, I think Bethesda is beating a dead horse with this title. It's not that it's bad, but it's a 'been there done that' title. Meaning, if you've played Fallout 3, you've pretty much already played Fallout New Vegas. I'm much more anxious and excited to play Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim than to play another Fallout at this point.

Score

Sound: 8/10 (workable, but gets annoying after a while)
Graphics 8.5/10 (a bit glitchy like Oblivion... this wasn't fixed in Fallout New Vegas)
Bugginess: N/A (no hang bugs found yet, surprisingly)
Controls: 8.5/10 (reasonable, but could have been enhanced)
Bang-To-Buck: 2/10 (Not really wanting to revisit this world)
Overall: 8.7/10 (not an improvement over Fallout 3)

Xbox 360 - Tron Evolution

2010-12-17T19:00:00.000-08:00

Tron Evolution by Propaganda Games

Format: Third person shooter / racing / climbing / fighting

Type: Movie Tie-In

Rated: Violence

Tron Evolution is a sequel to the original film Tron and a prequel to the film Tron Legacy. The story in this game fills in the gap between these two films. You play as the 'System Monitor' program (another type of Tron-like program). As the 'System Monitor' you are designed to seek out rogue code and destroy it. Note, while this game borrows heavily on concepts introduced in Tron 2.0, this game has nothing to do with Tron 2.0 or Tron Killer App.

Because this game is a movie-tie in, it really has 'crap' written all over it. Surprisingly, it's better than I expected for a tie-in. However, it is by no means perfect. If this game had had another year for development, this game could have been as good as any top-end game. Alas, it wasn't meant to be. It's too bad that movie studios don't insist on better quality games for tie-ins.

Story

You are System Monitor and are the nemesis of CLU and Abraxas. CLU and Abraxas have teamed up to wipe out the ISOs. You are there to stop this process as System Monitor. CLU has effectively turned rogue and you have to stop CLU and Abraxas from fulfilling their nefarious plans. Along the way you meet Quorra who occasionally helps you out.

Gameplay

The game play starts as you run around looking to do specific tasks. It starts with a small tutorial that leads into the larger game play. The trouble with this game is two-fold. The camera and the controls (both problems are really interlinked).

In many situations, the camera is way too active, moving around randomly and, by effect, causing control problems. Because the controls are based on the direction the camera is looking, it's easy to jump in the wrong direction. Combine this with way overly sensitive controls, and you end up derezzing over and over because System Monitor decides to jump off of a cliff or double jump into an abyss.

The style of many of the levels is to lock you into a space until you kill every enemy in the space. At that point, the blocking shield falls and you can move on.

Grid and Games

Unfortunately, I was expecting a lot more from the grid games and the game didn't deliver. I was hoping for actual grid gaming matches as part of the story. Instead, you're pretty much just fighting your way through each level on your own rather than on the game grid. The lightcycles part of this game is way too sparse. The few times you do get to use the lightcycle, it's unwieldy and uncontrollable. I was hoping for better here. The best part of this game is the tank. Once you finally get into the tank, you can start taking out Recognizers. Then the game almost takes on a feel like Flynn's very own fictional game 'Space Paranoids'. A game that we've never gotten to play, until Tron Evolution. So, once in the tank vehicle, the game feels like it would have to play 'Space Paranoids'.

Music

The music is probably the best part of this game (and, in fact, a great part of the film as well). Daft Punk put together a very strong soundtrack that makes this game work quite well. Unfortunately, the camera really holds back the quality of this game even as good as the music is.

Graphics

The graphics in this game are very good. I was hoping for slightly better graphics, but it still looks very good for what it is. That said, the cinematics are done with the Xbox 360 game engine rather than using pre-rendered animated cinematics. The game suffers graphically from this. While the Xbox 360 engine is good for gaming purposes, it's not outstanding for cinematics. I think Propaganda Games has made a bad design decision for not producing standalone cinematics to link the segments together.

Multiplayer

The multiplayer aspects are similar to most multiplayer games. There are some team games and there are individual games. On some levels, you play only with throwing the disc. On other levels, you can do both disc and vehicles (tank, lightcycle, etc).

I wasn't that impressed with the multiplayer aspect mostly because you either have to run the server on your Xbox 360 or you play it on someone else's 360. If that person shuts off their 360, then the game goes away. So, it's probably better to host the game yourself so that it hangs around as long as you continue to play.

Overall

The story is short and the gameplay can be, at times, tedious. This game suffers from lack of control and an extremely unwieldy camera. Part of the camera problems stem from being too far back behind the player. So, it's constantly trying to avoid bumping into things. Because they have tied the direction of movement to the camera view, it's difficult to control where the character ends up.

The multiplayer aspects are ok, but not great either. The levels are very expansive, depending on the map, so you there's a lot of space to roam. The multiplayer aspects just didn't grab me and make me think it was something great.

If you are a Tron gaming fan, this one is a buy. Otherwise, I recommend renting. The game is very short, so any price above $20 is too much for this game considering its major shortcomings and the overall length of the story. However, if you are looking to fill in the gaps between Tron and Tron Legacy, then you should get Tron Evolution for the story alone.

Score

Sound: 9/10 (excellent soundtrack, effects are good)
Graphics: 8.5/10 (characters look good)
Gameplay: 7/10 (somewhat repetitive)
Story: 8.5/10 (story is better than movie story)
Bugginess: N/A (no bugs found)
Controls: 4/10 (hard to control at times)
Bang-to-buck: 2/10 (definitely a rent)
Play Value: $20 (If fan, buy. If not, rent)
Overall: 7/10 (camera makes controls frustrating).

Xbox 360 - Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

2010-11-29T08:19:00.000-08:00

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood by Ubisoft

Lightning doesn't always strike twice with games and Brotherhood is definitely a miss for Ubisoft. Bear with me as this is a reasonably long review. Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, while adding some interesting things to the Assassin's Creed franchise, fails on far too many occasions.

Story

You're still playing as Ezio (in Italy) from Assassin's Creed II (and, of course, Desmond). All of the climbing, jumping and acrobatics are still in Brotherhood. The controls are identical to that of Assassin's Creed II. The trouble isn't with the controls (or, at least, I should say, they are no worse than the previous games). The climbing controls have not, however, improved either. Nearly all of the same problems that plague episode 1 and 2 are still present in Brotherhood. I do wish Ubisoft would actually fix some of the issues that affect Ezio's climbing abilities. Some of the problems stem from the fact that Ubisoft overloads each buttons' function based on current mode. For example, when climbing, the B button lets you drop. However, if you are using the high reach glove, the B button becomes grasp (for a few seconds). Immediately after, it goes back to drop. So, if you don't time everything perfectly, you'll drop off of whatever you are climbing instead of actually grasping the next ledge. This is completely frustrating and needs to be fixed.

In fact, I do not even know why you have to press the B button to grasp when you use the high jump in the first place. Ezio should auto-grasp high ledges without having to do anything.

Another issue is with jumping. There are many times where I am jumping along on bars and stop, yet Ezio keeps going and jumps right off and to the ground. At times, that can mean lost health or guard detection (if in a quest). Again, frustrating. These are just a few of the 'little things' that tend to plague Brotherhood.

In fact, in this game, there isn't really one single consistent story. There are many stories (like Grand Theft Auto). Each quest leads you to a different story. So, the stories change as the game progresses.

Quests

There is the main quest (those with a ! icon) and there are side quests (those with other icons). As you progress, the game opens up side quests as you play through the main quest. So, just be patient and the quests will all open to you. The same goes for the map areas (we'll come to this issue shortly).

Brotherhood

Further, as you progress, one of the quests opens up the ability to recruit assassin trainees into your ranks. So, the more Borgia towers you burn, the more assassins you will have in your ranks. But first, you must send them on missions to train them, level them up, give them armor and weapons and then they eventually become rank Assassino.

What does the assassin brotherhood do for you? Well, other than bringing in a small amount of money that you won't need once you own all of the property on the map, they add a way to have non-detection kills during detection quests (at least, some quests). So, when you go into the 'Don't be detected' quests, just make sure you have enough assassin signals to handle the guards so you can move through the level without being detected.

Other than that, the assassin brotherhood is rather pointless.

Desmond and the Present

The present amounts to little more than wandering around trying to locate a handful of artifacts, talking to Lucy, Rebecca and Shaun (which is pretty pointless), read pointless emails and entering the Animus. You do get to wander around the town and hop from roof to roof, but you're limited to 10 minute stints (there's a countdown timer). Not that there's much out to do when you're running around as this part of the game is intentionally limited. I'd have really expected more from the 'Present' at this point than there is. There's still no combat, nothing really to do. I haven't personally waited past the 10 minute countdown to 'see what happens', but I probably should. It might actually be interesting.

Clearly, the present is intended to be solely a stepping stone to get you into the Animus and into Ezio's shoes where everything frustrating and repetitive happens.

Map

The map is about as big as the previous game, Assassin's Creed II. The trouble is, there isn't really a whole lot to do besides the quests, finding loot, locating the four Leonardo war machines, restoring businesses and training assassins. The game is pretty much one-tracked. By that I mean, there's nothing surprising here. It's much the same as the last game. The quests are the same throughout (we'll get to the problems with the quests shortly). Sure, you get better weapons, armor and assassin robe dyes, but that's what you'd expect based on Assassin's Creed II. Beyond that, the weapons, armor and dyes really don't add much to the intrinsic play value of this game.

Music

Ok, but repetitive. After you've played the game for a while, the soundtracks become exceedingly old. You might want to think about cranking up some Xbox tunes instead.

Problems that plague Brotherhood

Sync Challenges

Let's start by saying, there are many problems with this game. Specifically the quests. Instead of different hardness levels, which Ubisoft should have supported, the game developers lumped it all together in one game. When questing, for example, Ubisoft lumped two challenges together into each quest. The first challenge is to get through the quest from beginning to end (Ezio's story). The second challenge is to get a 100% sync for the memory (Desmond's story). To get 100% sync, you might have to avoid detection or use your assassins or do the challenge within X minutes. Whatever the challenge is, it tells you up front.

I would have preferred the sync challenges be enabled only on hardness level Intermediate. Perhaps even 'Hard'. There should have been an 'Easy' hardness that did not have the sync challenges at all. In fact, you should get 100% sync just by doing whatever the quest requires. The sync challenges don't really matter to the overall game. Nevertheless, having them there is annoying and frustrating. One of many problems with this game.

Slow Moving

The game is also very slow moving. By that I mean, there are many many main quests you have to do before you even get most of the map open. This is frustrating if you just want to explore the area. Instead, there are large parts of the map that remain locked out until some time way later into the game. Frustrating.

Too Many Detection Challenges

The one constant part of the questing that simply drives me absolutely batsh*t nuts is detection challenges which are seemingly endless. Seems every later quest requires you not being detected. The problem with being detected is that the game is way overly sensitive to detection. You can be climbing around minding your own business and then you're 'detected' and the whole quest starts over (and you wait while the game reloads). You can't even see what detected you. There are times where you assassinate a guard and just as he's hitting the ground, the game says 'detected' and, again, you're starting over. It's these kinds of problems that lead me to believe this game was not play tested.

Skipping Cinematics

Skipping long cinematics is a complete chore. Instead of one button skipping, how most other games handle this, Ubisoft decided to skip cinematics by using a main menu selection. So, you have to open the main menu, select 'Skip Cinematic' in the menu, then answer a 'Yes' or 'No' confirmation question. Seriously, 5 or so button presses compared to a single button press. After you do this, the game takes at least 30-45 seconds to skip the cinematic. That is, the game clears the screen, goes back to the blank Ezio loading screen (you can make him run around), you wait and then the game redraws the screen and places Ezio is in some 'new' location. In some cases, it takes way longer to skip the cinematic than it does to watch it. Worse, in some cases, Ezio will end up starting in some way distant location or on top of a very tall structure (not where you were when you skipped). This can be highly frustrating and puts Ezio at an extreme disadvantage if the quest happens to be a 'chase' quest. The thing is, if you don't skip the cinematic, Ezio starts on the ground where he was standing before the cinematic started. Why the game has to relocate Ezio when you skip the cinematic, I simply have no idea. But, it's frustrating and annoying. It almost seems like Ubisoft intentionally penalizes those gamers who choose to skip cinematics.

War Machine Handling

All of Leonardo's War Machines are a pain to manage, but the flying war machine is near impossible to control. At the same time, with the flying machine, you are tasked to fly around with this near-impossible-to-control flying machine and bomb a very tiny guy on a horse. The flying machine only works by shooting fire at the ground to create heat pockets to make the machine rise into the air. Expect to start this level over about 20 times at least. Again, I say, this game was not play tested.

Continual Button Controller Reassignment

Other frustrations include continual controller button reassignment. Basically, Ubisoft decided to overload the controller buttons with different actions depending on proximity to certain things in the game. For example, if you're in a crowd of people and there are bodies on the ground that you want to loot, if a horse stops and stands on the body, the game remaps the key to 'Hijack' instead of 'Loot'. So, now you're pulling the person off of the horse and not looting the body. If you want to use the high jump glove, the game remaps B to Grasp while the high jump is in action. As soon as the high jump is over (or at least, the game thinks the action is over), the game changes it back to 'Drop'. These controller remapping issues need to be desperately addressed. The game needs a way to stay focused on a specific object (even if it's a non-combatant). The remapping isn't intelligently designed either. For example, placing 'grasp' temporarily on top of the same button as 'drop' almost seems like a cruel joke played on the gamers.

Random Weapon Changes

In combat situations, you'll find your weapon changes based on the game's mood. You'll be going along fine with the sword in your hand. The next thing you know the game has switched you to fists for no apparent reason. So now you have to fumble to get back to your sword. Sometimes, you lose your sword for no apparent reason. I'm assuming one of the soldiers disarmed me, but there was no warning of this. I don't remember this problem in Assassin's Creed II at all. This appears to be something new in Brotherhood.

Random Finishing Moves

Smoke bombs are also frustrating. You throw a smoke bomb and all of the guards start coughing. So, you choose the sword and try to swing it. Instead, the game chooses to do some kind of fist punch and a back breaking thing. If I had wanted to punch the guards with my fists, I would have selected the fist weapon. Why is the game, then, choosing this fist finishing move INSTEAD of using the weapon I've chosen (i.e., the sword or the assassin blade)? It's these little annoying things that just continue to mount making this game less and less enjoyable and more and more frustrating. Use the weapon I select and use it when I tell you to.

Lose-No-Health-Square Challenges, Guards and Running

Further into the game, Brotherhood starts throwing 'Lose no health square' challenges at you. However, instead of making this challenge just progress normally, the game continually throws excessive numbers of guard after guard after guard at you while you're trying to make your way across the map. If this is supposed to be some kind of 'challenge' it isn't. This is a disaster and definitely indicates bad game design. The trouble is, if any guard connects with you, you end up falling on the ground and rolling around. This rolling maneuver kills time and lets other guards catch up. Worse, the guards can actually run faster than Ezio. This is wrong. Ezio is supposed to be a well trained Assassin and in peak athletic form. In order to scale buildings in the way that Ezio does, he would have to be extremely athletic and should be able to outrun anybody when sprinting. Yet, the guards are about 2 times faster than Ezio and the guards are usually oufitted in full body armor. Does anyone really think this stuff through?

Camera Problems

Later into the game, Camera problems also begin to surface. So, you do something like loot a body and then the camera decides to rotate around to a different view. Then, the game proceeds to leave the newly placed camera in the new position. That is, instead of returning the camera to the position before the looting started. Worse, when in close proximity to wall surfaces, the camera can get wonky. It will begin to act erratically and attempt to move into a position that's optimal. Instead, it ends up continually moving around completely disorienting the gamer. Again, this makes the game frustrating to play as the gamer now has to spend time reorienting to where the camera has decided it wants to be. When this happens during a quest (and it will), you lose time and, sometimes, lose the quest.

Countdown Timers and Chase Quests

Countdown timers should not even be used in Assassin's Creed Brotherhood or, indeed, in any Assassin's Creed game. The game is about being an assassin. An assassin who carefully, slowly and meticulously plans kills and then the means of escape without people seeing what happened. Instead, the game throws in 2-3 minute countdown timers to get from point A to B. So, instead of being able to plan the kill, you're racing to get to where the game wants you to be no matter how many guards it throws at you. Worse, when the developers combine chase/follow-me quests with countdown timers, it's the worst of all possibilities. When you're following someone, if the tail gets out of sight, a 25 second countdown timer starts. So, you have to 'see' your tail every so often to reset this timer. By 'see', I mean the camera has to see the person you are following. Ezio can remain hidden inside a bail of hay or some other hiding place.

Chases use a different mechanism. When you're chasing someone, the trouble is that person doesn't even have to get very far head and the game will say 'target lost'. Seriously, you can still see the target on the screen in front of you and the game still says 'target lost'. Bad bad bad. Again, no play testing.

Lack of Achievements

Yes, you'll get a 20G achievement at the completion of every quest (100% sync or not). These kinds of a achievements tend to annoy me. By that I mean, you have to complete the quest to move the game forward anyway, so how is that really an achievement? Yet, once you purchase all tailor shops, blacksmith shops, stables, or indeed purchase every single thing on the map, no achievement. That makes no sense. If you've spent the time and effort to scour the entire map and completely rebuild Rome, isn't that worthy of an achievement or at least Uplay points? How is it that the game developers don't see this? Yet, you get neither an achievement or uplay points. Again, bad design and more proof that this game was not play tested.

Ultimately, you end up fighting with so many problematic character controlling, unexpected button remapping, combat glitching and lack of play testing issues (that, in many cases, force you to restart over and over) that you really can't enjoy the game as it should be enjoyed. Instead, you end up fighting with the controls and stupid game design issues rather than actually playing the game.

Note that these are only a sampling of problems. There are many other small issues that drive me nuts about this game.

Glitchy Bug Problems

This game is reasonably buggy in places... especially the PS3 version. The Xbox 360 version seems much more stable overall than the PS3 version. Apparently, the PS3 version has issues with the tunnel system and various other showstopper bugs. The major PS3 showstopper bug that angers so many people is that people have played through the entire game and only received a handful of Trophies. So, if you decide to give this game a try, be wary of the PS3 version until these issues are resolved.

One additional bug I ran into was with parachutes. At a later time in the game, actually too late in the game really, you'll obtain the parachute from Leonardo. I think he gives you initially 3 or so. If you want more, you have to visit the tailor and buy more Parachutes. So, I visit the tailor and fill up my parachute slots to a max of 15. I go on a flag hunting spree and find one that needs a parachute to obtain the flag. I use about 3-4 parachutes to get to this flag. That's the last time I needed a parachute for a while. That also means I should have had 11 or 12 parachutes left. Yet, several hours later when I tried using the parachute again, I had no parachutes at all. I know that I hadn't used them up. So, somewhere along the way, the game removed all of the parachutes from my inventory. I was able to refill my supply by visiting a tailor, though. This is serious bug that needs to be fixed and a bug that indicates limited or no beta or play testing.

Overall

This game could have been great, but was released way too early in the development cycle. Instead it's a mediocre game with no real need for it in the Assassin's Creed lineup.

The Assassin Brotherhood part of this game feels like a last minute add-on rather than the main reason behind the game's creation. Even worse, at the times when you need the Brotherhood to assist you the most in the final main quests, the game inexplicably prevents you from using your carefully trained assassins. I'm at a loss here. Why would you spend all of that time and effort to create an Assassin Brotherhood only to prevent its use in the final quests? Seriously, the assassins that you've spent loads of time sending on contracts and leveling up should have been intrinsic to the final battles of the game, not completely ignored. Bad game design.

The game was seriously not play tested to any large degree. If it had been play tested, all of the frustrating problems would have been addressed long before this game hit the shelves. I can say, though, that I understand why this game hit the shelves early. Ubisoft wanted a title for the 2010 Holiday season. But, putting crap games out doesn't make people want to buy your games. Ubisoft would do well to take heed of that.

I can't recommend this game in its present state. It's too glitchy and problematic at this point. If you enjoy a high levels of frustration in a game, give this a try. If you, like me, don't like frustrating games (i.e., you're fighting with the game more than playing it), then you should avoid this game or rent it. Note, however, there is so much repetitive stuff to do that it will take you at least a week or two to get through the entire game start to finish (including all side quests). So, be wary of the time it takes to play through if you decide to rent. You might do better to buy it used from Gamestop and return it within the 7 day return period.

Note, I'm being a little generous with a score of 5 out of 10. In fact, this game really deserves less score, but because of high quality look of the characters, I'm rating it higher.

Frankly, I would have preferred that Ubisoft devote their efforts to finishing Assassin's Creed III rather than putting this weak and unnecessary game out.

Score

Sound: 5/10 (repetitive verging on annoying)
Graphics: 9/10 (characters look good)
Gameplay: 5/10 (climbing and jumping are not yet perfected after 3 games)
Story: 4/10 (disjointed story)
Bugginess: 5/10 (glitchy problematic issues)
Controls: 6/10 (overloading needs to stop)
Bang-to-buck: 1/10 (definitely a rent)
Play Value: $4 (rent it)
Overall: 5/10 (repetitive, one-tracked, nothing new here, frustrating).

Xbox 360 - Enslaved: Odyssey to the West

2010-11-08T00:55:00.000-08:00

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West by Namco

Type: Platform, Fighting, Climbing, Third Person

This is a pretty limited functionality third person shooter/platformer. Three basic modes are platforming, climbing and fighting. The story is weak and the gameplay is even weaker made problematic by the unresponsive controls and unpredictable camera tracking. On top of that, the game is exceedingly short. On the plus side, the characters look great, not so great for the environments, though. Cinematics are way too long.

Story

You're a nameless guy who's been nicknamed 'Monkey' (most likely because you kind of look and act like one while climbing). While escaping from a prison ship, you cling to the last remaining escape pod containing a girl you were chasing through the prison ship as it disintegrates. When you wake up, you're 'Enslaved' to the girl, 'Trip', because she has put a slave headband on you.

From here you platform and fight your way through the rest of the game with Trip as your companion.

Gameplay

With the aid of Trip, the headband and your climbing skills (ahem), you work your way through each level avoiding such things as mines, 'Mechs' and turrets. The game works reasonably well, but each level is near identical to the last. With the exception of 'The Cloud' levels (surfing on a disc), everything is near identical level to level. Once you understand the types of mechs that attack you, you can devise a strategy that works.

Weapons

You have a staff that you can melee your enemy. The staff doubles as a gun and can shoot explosive or stunning rounds. You have automatic shields that protect you for a limited time. The shields also automatically recharge after no fire. You also have a blocking mode that can take limited amounts of hits before it is ineffective.

Leveling Up

To level up in this game, you have to collect orbs scattered around the levels and also that pop out of downed enemies. As you collect more and more orbs, you get 'money' to spend to buy upgrades. Upgrades include health extension, health regeneration, weapons enhancements, shield enhancements, etc. So, save the orbs and buy stuff that keeps you alive longer.

Playability

The controls on this game work in 80-90% of the game. There are times where the gun is not accurate at all even when aiming perfectly. There are also times where you can't tell where the game wants you to go (like the cloud levels that require you to chase something).

Other issues include jumping. You try to get him to jump and he'll do everything but jump. This includes rolling, jumping in the wrong direction, or nothing. The controls on this game just really don't work properly in many cases.

Story

This is the absolute weakest part of this game. There are so many hypocritical elements in this game, much of it is completely absurd. For example, when you enter Pig's area, you go through a door that's supposed to scan for mechs. Trip says that this detector prevents mechs from getting through. Alright then, I naturally assumed (incorrectly, of course) that there should be no mechs in this area. Yet, the place was swarming with them. So, if the mechs couldn't get through that doorway without being detected, how did they get in there? This is just some of the silliness in this game.

Game designers need to think through these elements to make sure their games at least follow through with rules they themselves have established. Also, at the end, and I don't want to give too much away here, Monkey doesn't remove his headband after it's all over. This is what I was waiting to see the whole game through and it doesn't happen. Note, this doesn't give away the ending at all, but it does give away this one visual that doesn't happen.

Overall

The game is exceedingly short. You can play through the level on 'Normal' hardness in probably 4-6 hours of straight play. Perhaps less if you don't focus on collecting the orbs. The story is weak and convoluted. The only constant are the mechs that use the same strategy to attack you each time. So you can easily devise a counter that works each time. The only difficulty is that instead of throwing three mechs at you, they might throw 6 or 8 or more. The dog mech boss and the bull mech boss are the only two mechs that really require a different thought strategy. I don't really consider the scorpion at the end a 'boss', mostly because you don't really fight it. You just damage it. This one is worth a day's rent, but definitely not worth paying $60.

Score

Sound: 6/10 (average)
Graphics: 7.5/10 (characters look good, environments look bad)
Gameplay: 6/10 (bad controller handling, bad camera handling)
Story: 4/10 (weak story, no resolution, more questions than answers)
Bugginess: N/A (no bugs, yay!)
Controls: 5/10 (needs work)
Bang-to-buck: 2/10 (definitely a rent)
Play Value: $4 (What I paid Redbox to rent it)
Overall: 4/10 (overly short, bad story, bad controls, bad environments).

Xbox 360 - Halo Reach

2010-09-17T17:07:00.000-07:00

Halo Reach by Bungie

Halo Reach is the prequel to the Halo Trilogy and, as far as I know, the final Bungie based Halo game. That doesn't mean there won't be more Halo games, but apparently not from Bungie. The story begins on the planet Reach where a team of Spartans is sent, at first, to locate a beacon. Along the way, it is determined to be a Covenant incursion and is a lot bigger than first thought. Further along, it is revealed to the Spartans that there is an important item to recover. An item that plays an important part in all 3 Halo games, although, not in ODST.

Campaign Mode

This review covers the campaign mode of Halo Reach. As with most recent Bungie Halo releases, the campaign mode portions are exceedingly short. Compared to, for example, Valve's Half Life series, the Halo Reach story is thin and the levels are tiny. Even comparing Halo Reach to Halo 3, the story is thin and the levels are tiny. By short, I mean, you can blow through a level in about 45 minutes or less and there are only 10 levels or so. From the beginning to end of each level, the levels are linear and the maps are tiny. This explains why you can blow through the levels in short order.

It looks like Bungie spent the majority of the development time on the multiplayer aspects of Halo Reach rather than campaign. Each successive game has spent more time on the multiplayer (and other alternative modes) and less on campaign mode. I don't know about you, but I really don't relish the thought of playing the same game levels 3, 4 or 5 times only with slightly different modes. I did that in Halo 3 and found the subsequent playthroughs to be rather tedious and boring. I'd rather spend time playing a new game than the same levels over and over.

Perhaps the 13-19 aged gamers like this repetitive game play, but it doesn't really do it for me. I'd rather be doing something new that I haven't done before. This is why I prefer to play RPG games where there's always a new quest.

Armory and Challenges

In Halo Reach, Bungie expects you to play the game through multiple times so you can obtain all of the challenges and achievements. With Halo Reach, Bungie introduces 'challenges'. A challenge is similar to an achievement, except you receive no achievement points. Instead, you receive credits that you can put towards buying armor and outfitting your Spartan better. Presumably, these better outfits help you out in multiplayer combat mode, although that's really questionable.

When you enter the Armory, you can now modify your armor to add things like shoulder pads, knee pads, chest plates, helmets, etc. So, as you receive more and more credits, you can spend these credits on items to make your Spartan or Elite better.

Frankly, as I've said, this is really not my bag. Playing the same game multiple times just to receive credits to outfit a soldier, not a great idea. If there was some way to use your newly and better outfitted character in some kind of MMO world, I might be more inclined to play. However, the multiplayer modes in Reach are the same as Halo 3. Effectively, running around on a level with a bunch of 13-18 year olds in free-for-all combat. No thinking, just constant killing. It's like Spore, they give you an excellent character creator, but how the character is ultimately used is pointless.

Covenant

This game specifically and only deals with a Covenant incursion. The flood is not part of this game, which is unfortunate. However, there are some new Covenant creatures that are in here that we've not seen before. They're not any tougher than what we've seen, but they're here.

Story

The story is overly weak. I was expecting a solid beginning, middle and end. What we get is a reasonable beginning and a very solid middle with no ending. It ends, but nothing is wrapped up. Your character is left behind and who knows what really happened.

There were also portions that were completely ignored. Twice you run into a scarab and twice the only thing you can do is avoid it. One of those times it gets destroyed. This is wrong. In this story, we should now be able to commandeer one of those Scarabs and use it as a vehicle or commandeer a Phantom an use it. There were so many wasted instances where the story could have taken a huge leap forward and.. nothing. Bungie took the safe approach and didn't do anything new or amazing to Reach. It's definitely a 'safe' game, but there's not a whole lot here to say 'WOW' over.

Easter Eggs

What easter eggs? There may be some, but there are definitely no skulls. The skulls are received after completing the game on Normal automatically. The fun is in finding and obtaining the skulls, not simply just getting them at the end. I understand why, though, as other than New Alexandria, most of the environments are rather sparse. So, there's not a lot of cubbyholes to hide things. Unfortunate, because the secondary fun on Halo 3 was exploring and finding all of the cool hidden things. Even with Halo 3, I really wanted a lot more of this, but instead Bungie is giving us less and less of it.

Gameplay

The game plays much the same as Halo ODST and Halo 3. The exception is that they've added the nightvision mode and a couple of new weapons, but overall the game is much the same as the previous.

Graphics

The graphics haven't tremendously improved, mostly because it appears Bungie is still using the same game engine as in Halo 3. I'd rather see them abandon whatever engine they are using for something like the Cryengine 3. Much of the texture mapping, specifically the ground surfaces, are of a very low resolution. There are definitely better and faster engines out there. So, I'm not sure why they have chosen to stick with that engine.

Sound

On par with previous games. Nothing special or outstanding.

Overall

I liked the campaign mode, for what there was. The campaign mode is entirely too short and not involved enough. There should have been far more firefights than there were. Once you get the package, everyone treats you like kid gloves and the levels become laughably easy. Unfortunately, it appears Bungie spent the most time filling out the multiplayer aspects and not enough on a long detailed campaign. The campaign mode almost feels like an add-on. Like it was there only to appease those who like campaigns, but no real long term development went into this part of the game.

If you like multiplayer games, this is probably a good game. But, if you're looking for a long involved TPS/FPS, this isn't it. It's probably worth a play if you're really into the Halo series or if you intend to play the multiplayer parts. However, I would not recommend this game if you only intend to play the campaign. It's way too short and it's far too much like Halo 1, 2 and 3 and ODST. For campaign only play, you should probably skip this game and go get something like Singularity which is much more involved (even though it's mostly a clone of Bioshock).

Score

Sound: 7/10 (average)
Graphics: 9/10 (random low and high res textures)
Gameplay: 7/10 (standard for Halo)
Story: 5/10 (story not finished, lacking, shallow)
Bugginess: N/A (no bugs, yay!)
Controls: 8/10 (same as Halo 3)
Bang-to-buck: 5/10 (still working through multiplayer)
Play Value: $10 (it's worth more if you are like multiplayer, if not, less)
Overall: 7/10 (overly short campaign mode, not enough story, lacking fights).

Xbox 360 - Alpha Protocol

2010-06-08T15:13:00.000-07:00

Alpha Protocol by Obsidian / Sega

Here is a self-purported RPG. It gets a GZ of 2/10. In actuality, this game really isn't an RPG. It has some RPG aspects to it, but it is no where near a true Role Playing Game.

Character Creation

First, there isn't such a thing. You are who you are and you can't change that. You can change the appearance, but very limited. In a true RPG, you can choose to be male or female. You can choose classes and you can choose your outfit. There is very little of that in Alpha Protocol. You can find other outfits along the way to increase your armor, though. But these are whole outfits, not single pieces (i.e., gloves, shoes, pants, shirt, etc).

With the character creator in AP, you can change the hair to about 6 different styles. You cannot change the hair color. You can change the skin color, but again limited. You can't change the look of the face (i.e., cheeks, nose, mouth, chin, etc). You can add features like limited beards.

Gameplay

The gameplay is actually very limited. Most of the time you are sneaking around places trying not to be seen. You can go in gunz-a-blazin', but this is really counter to the missions and who knows what kind of things the game may change later as a result.

Leveling up

You do get to level up through Action Points (AP). But, you get so few it takes ages to actually level your character up in any real way.

Controls

The controls are strange choosing to put lots of different things on LT, RT, LB, RB, back and start buttons. After a while, I guess you'd get used to it, but it's really mapped in a strange way. Definitely not intuitive.

Save Points

Ok, so here is one of the major problems with this game (not that this is the only problem). Instead of a save-anywhere system, which any RPG worth its weight in salt should have, Sega opted to offer a 'Save Checkpoint' option. So, basically, you can save your current checkpoint and go back to that specific checkpoint. You can't save anywhere. This means you will have to lose a lot of things to restart a checkpoint. This is frustrating, time consuming and overly stupid. Bad decision Obsidian.

Effectively, this game only supports checkpoint saves and the saving of checkpoints can be done only after the current checkpoint is reached. If you forget to save a checkpoint, you lose the ability to go back to that checkpoint later. This is not an intuitive save system.

Quests

Well, frankly, there aren't any. You get missions and that's that. Whatever missions they give you, you do. You don't get any new missions until you complete the few current outstanding missions. In a true RPG, you should be able to find and start missions at any time. As I said, this isn't a true RPG.

Bugs

This game is completely bugged. This aspect alone was enough for me to stop playing it. In fact, there is a mission to retrieve data from a computer. Once I had completed this task, the game locked me into an area that had no exit. So, my character (and my game) was completely trapped in this space. I had no choice but to stop playing there. It is quite clear that this game was not play tested at all. From this point alone, I would recommend not playing Alpha Protocol.

Graphics

For what it is, this game's graphics are incredibly bad. The characters look low res. The levels look low res and the textures are weak. This looks like it could have been ported from a Nintendo 64 and probably would have run on an N64 also.

Overall

My recommendation is to avoid this game. It is currently far too buggy to recommend playing.. unless you like hitting bugs that prevent you from continuing the game. The game itself needs a lot of work and appears to have been released in the beta stage. Frankly, they should have saved this game until sometime in 2011 giving time to work out the bugs and increase the texture quality.

Score

Sound: 7/10 (not outstanding)
Graphics: 8/10 (bad textures, low res)
Gameplay: 5/10 (average, but also repetitive)
Story: 5/10 (no real story that I could see, just missions)
Bugginess: 1/10 (show stopper bug, prevents game progression)
Controls: 5/10 (needs work)
Bang-to-buck: N/A (not completed, probably not)
Play Value: $5 (wait till clearance, by then they might have a patch)
Overall: 2/10 (poor save system, bad gameplay, show stopper bugs).

Xbox 360 - Alan Wake

2010-06-08T14:31:00.000-07:00

Alan Wake by Remedy

Starting with this review, I will give the overall score right up front.

This game is a 4/10. Why? This is one game I really wanted to like, but.... Let's get started.

Story

You play as Alan Wake, a novelist. In this game, however, instead of writing a novel, Alan Wake becomes part of his own novel and must unravel the pieces before it's too late and everything is lost.

The game begins with Alan Wake and wife taking a vacation to a quaint cabin in the woods (cliche). It soon becomes apparent that there's something not quite right about the whole deal. When he visits the person to obtain the keys, he has a strange encounter that starts the whole deal of what follows.

Alan's wife disappears into the lake (along with the cabin, that supposedly hadn't existed in the lake since the 70s) and Alan must find a way to free her.

The story has a reasonably Stephen King like feel, but is marred by the unnecessarily repetitive game play. This is one game I was hoping would marry gameplay and story better than most, but unfortunately, it didn't.

Gameplay

This game is a standard third person shooter. It's not particularly inspired, but it does become both repetitive and annoying. It's repetitive because each level is nearly identical: running around in the woods trying to avoid the 'Taken' (spirits that manifest to kill you) and you must seek the next street light (that makes them go away). It's annoying because of the way the game spawns the 'Taken' to kill you (i.e., intentionally out of the camera and usually behind you). Unfortunately, each and every level is basically the same. There are a few exceptions to this when you have to avoid possessed objects instead of people, but even that becomes repetitive.

The weapons are mostly standard including a pistol and shotgun. Because the 'Taken' avoid light and seek darkness, you also have light weapons including a flashlight, flares and flashbang grenades. Unfortunately, the flashlight only removes the Taken invincibility and lets you finally kill them. You can temporarily increase the brightness of the flashlight to make it work faster (at the cost of using up the battery). The battery recharges, but very slowly.

At some points in the game, you get access to other light sources like search lights and construction lights, but these really do no better than your own flashlight. In reality, it's far simpler to run to the next street light checkpoint. And yes, the street lamps are generally checkpoints. So, it's actually far more beneficial to keep moving than to stop and try to defeat the Taken in each encounter.

Enemies

The enemies you encounter include the Taken. These are dark spirits that manifest and try to kill you by throwing hatchets, chopping you or hitting you. They are primo at ganging up on you and, worse, the game loves to make them appear inches behind you out of the sight of the camera. For this reason alone, I am downrating this game. Using the lack of camera sight to throw enemies at you is a no-no. Never ever do this. If, as a game designer, you think this is some kind of challenge, it isn't. It's an unfair tactic to the gamer. If you want to design this kind of enemy, then offer a HUD where you can see them as a dot around you. So, you may not be able to see them standing just out of the camera, you can at least see them on the HUD.

Controls

The controls are pretty standard. There was nothing horribly wrong with the way the controls are mapped or how they work.

Episodes

The game is broken down into distinct episodes or chapters, but this really wasn't necessary. So, you play for a short time and that segment ends (like a TV show). The next episode starts up and recaps what you did previously (like a TV show). You then move into the game play segment again.

The ending was a bit on the cliche side, but left you hanging enough that they can create an Alan Wake 2. It didn't really end as I expected it to, but the ending didn't really end either.

Overall

This game tried to be unique, but really ended up as a mediocre third person shooter. It's reasonably bug free, but it's still not perfect. It was also reasonably short as I was able to get through it in about a day of play.

Score

Sound: 8/10 (eerie at times, but not that cinematic)
Graphics: 8/10 (not bad, but shaders could have been better)
Gameplay: 4/10 (boring and repetitive)
Story: 4/10 (episodic format was not necessary, ending weak)
Bugginess: N/A
Controls: 8/10 (average, nothing new)
Bang-to-buck: 1/10 (no replay value)
Play Value: $10 (story is really better than gameplay, not by much)
Overall: 4/10 (could have used more work).

Xbox 360 - Red Dead Redemption

2010-05-24T05:30:00.000-07:00

Red Dead Redemption by Rockstar

Parental Rating: Mature Themes, Violence, Gore

Plain and simple, this is Grand Theft Auto with a new setting in the old west. Nearly all of GTA4 is in Red Dead Redemption (RDR), with exception of a few omissions (swimming, modern vehicles, modern weapons). Instead of jacking cars, you can jack stage coaches, trains and horseman. You have all of the old weapons. Your character is Jack Marsten.

While Rockstar did a reasonable job converting GTA4 to an old west setting, there are a number of problems that plague this game.

Controls

The controls could be better. For example, the 'Dead Eye' mode is nearly impossible to activate on the right stick controller. If you press or wiggle the right stick enough times, you might just activate this mode at the last minute and make it work. Then again, you might not. This mode could be great if it would reliably activate. Yes, I realize there is a 'dead eye' meter, but even when it's full it doesn't always want to activate.

Walking through doorways can be an immense chore. Instead of walking through the doorway, he straddles the door frame, first on one side, then on the other. No, I'm not talking about the right button (RB) that activates Jack in cover mode. I'm talking about in free walking mode. I spent the better part of about 2 minutes maneuvering him to walk through a friggin door. Seriously, this part is exceedingly bad. This is also obviously something new for this engine. I'd never had issues controlling a character through a doorway in GTA4. I have no idea why he's that hard to control in RDR, but he is.

Breaking broncos can be a chore when you're near cacti or cliffs. When the camera gets anywhere close to a tall object or cactus, it focuses so tightly on Jack, you can't see what you're doing and the game will ultimately throw you from the horse. If you want to break horses, do it in open areas, not close to cliffs or cacti.

Jumping onto a train (or between train cars) can be near impossible at times. Other times, it can work perfectly.

Controlling a horse can be near impossible at times. When you move the camera to view the character from the front, pushing backwards on the controller should turn the horse around. It doesn't. Instead, the horse keeps going in the forward direction. You have to actually use the stick and swing (rotate) the stick so that the horse also swings and turns. This is very annoying.

Note that nearly every problem with the control system is because of the sluggish controls on Jack. Rockstar pulled the highly annoying slow-to-respond controls from GTA 4 into RDR and this system makes this game suffer and suffer badly.

Gameplay

The gameplay is reasonable, but nowhere near perfect. The problematic controls prevent this game from being anywhere near perfect. It's probably too late to re-engineer the controls for this game, but hopefully Rockstar can fix the control problem with RDR2.

Story

You are Jack Marsten. You are an outlaw who has decided to track down an old friend-turned-enemy. Since Jack is a clean slate, how you choose to handle where you are is entirely up to you. So, if you want to become an outlaw, the game gives you that option. If you want to be a good guy, the game also gives you this option. As you progress, you make choices that add or remove honor and fame. The more honor you have, the better people like you. The less you have, the less they like you. If your honor goes negative, then you're an outlaw.

So, as you progress, you learn new things and get new items and weapons. The missions run much like GTA4 in that they begin and end. You must complete some kind of task and you get a reward. If you complete the task successfully, you may get additional General Store items or new game features.

It's actually hard to tell what's the main story and what's a side story. So, you'll just have to play the game to determine that for yourself or read through the Game Guide.

Weapons

Various weapons become available as you progress. These include a pistol, a shotgun, a repeater, a lasso, a knife and your fists (among others you can find).

Game Map Sections

Just like GTA4, as you progress through the game, other parts of the map open. So, completion of key missions will unlock more map areas. Until then, the bridges prevent you from visiting those other areas.

Game Saves

There are two ways to save games. This has improved over GTA4, but is still not optimal for this game. If you purchase a house in a town, you can save your game by sleeping (just like GTA4). Secondarily, if you get far enough out of a town you can set up a campsite and save your game at the campsite. Once you save, the game's clock will advance by 6 hours.

Accidental Mission Starts

Unfortunately, there are far too many times in RDR where proximity missions start accidentally and, if you want the reward, you have to see them through to completion. But, there are times where you haven't even finished a previous mission and a new one starts simply by reaching a certain area. So, when this happens, you have to make the choice to abandon the new mission to complete the other one. It's also unclear if you abandon a specific mission whether it is restartable later. Note that the main missions start with a yellow X that Marsten must get close to. But, bandit camps are activated merely by proximity (and not close proximity at that).

So as a tip, once you complete a mission, always immediately save before doing anything else. Because saving is so cumbersome in RDR, this part of saving is a chore. This is where RDR fails with game saves. Anyway, to save that means traveling to a house or setting up a campsite. If you don't do this, you will end up redoing missions over and over. Note that some missions (like duels), Marsten can end up dead several times before you figure out how to duel. So, save often.

As I said earlier, the save methods in this game are problematic because of this one issue described above. This game desperately needs a save anywhere system. Because it's so easy to trigger something by accident, RDR needs to allow the gamer to save anywhere at any time. Honestly, there is no real reason why you can't do this either. Without saving, you will end up redoing missions several times using trial and error gameplay to avoid the pitfalls.

Fast Travel

Note, you can fast travel to any destination on the map (including custom way points) when you are at a campsite. So, if you want to fast travel, leave the town you are in just far enough to set up a campsite, then select your destination and travel. Note that time will elapse the same during fast travel. So, if it would take you 3 hours to do it on a horse manually, when you fast travel it will also add 3 hours to the clock.

Accidental Death and Unknown Circumstances

Be prepared for accidental death by saving often. Because there are so many different ways to die in RDR (duels, falling off cliffs, falling into water, getting into accidental gunfights) or even simply just triggering things that shouldn't be triggered, Marsten could die, accidentally kill someone or end up with a hefty bounty. You might even botch a mission that might kill you or reduce your honor. So, save early and save often. There are too many times where the game triggered something that should never have been triggered.

For example, after I obtained the ability to break broncos, I activated a job by stopping on the yellow X and proceeded to hop into the coral. I drew my lasso and was trying to lasso the horse. In this process, the game said I had assaulted the ranch hand (who was outside of the coral) and the job ended. This is one perfect example where I had to reload a previous save to start this mission over again.

Failure and Game Loading

If you fail at doing something or die, the game reloads from the last save. Except, the game keeps state information from the last thing you attempted and won't let you do it again from that modified game load. So, that means you cannot attempt the last task again from the automatic load. This means you need to reload the game again from disk to reset everything so you can try that task again. Why the game has to modify the load to prevent redoing the last task again, I don't know, but it's annoying has sh**.

And further, the game load times are incredibly long. It takes at least 30 seconds to 1 minute to load a saved game. This is way too long. To reload the level where you are should take no more than 5-10 seconds.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics are reasonably well done, but surprisingly there is some screen tearing that happens. The audio is reasonable enough, but it's not cinematic by any degree.

Overall

Red Dead Redemption could have been a much better game if the designers had thought through the design to accommodate the mission design. Instead, the game designers decided to pull in GTA4 almost completely and simply change the scenery without thinking through the way things work. Further, it doesn't really appear the game was truly play tested as these issues should have presented during play testing. Unfortunately, Red Dead Redemption suffers as a result of the lack of proper design.

If anything should be taken from Red Dead Redemption, it should demonstrates that merely pulling a game engine forward from a previous game is not enough to accommodate a major game paradigm change. In the case of RDR, this game would have been far better served with a save anywhere design, with much more clearly defined missions (always used Xs to denote the start) and a far better control system. The sluggish GTA4 controls need to go away in lieu of controls more like what's in Saint's Row. The character's sluggish control (on or off of a horse) is just too problematic to make the game truly fun. A game's controls should easily become second nature. When you're fighting with the controls instead of playing the game, the game has failed the controller, the game and, ultimately, the gamer.

Score

Sound: 7/10 (not outstanding)
Graphics: 8/10 (good, but not great, lighting works, skin surfaces flat)
Gameplay: 6.5/10 (needs some help, accidental mission starts)
Story: 6.5/10 (could be better, but works)
Bugginess: 4/10 (three lockups, one during at the first boss battle)
Controls: 5/10 (needs work)
Bang-to-buck: 2/10 (might replay)
Play Value: $10 (story and mission length will make this title)
Overall: 6.5/10 (needs better save system, needs better design).

Xbox 360 - Ironman 2

2010-05-15T06:54:00.000-07:00

Ironman 2 by Sega

Against my better judgement, I decided to buy this game. I knew that it was a movie tie-in, but I had heard they made the suit controls better. Ok, so this game started out like it might actually have a chance to be something unique. It's unique alright. It's unique trash. This game is no better than its predecessor. The suit is still completely uncontrollable, especially War Machine. Effectively, this game is crap on a stick.

Story

Based on the movie. So, this is effectively a movie tie-in. Nuff said about that.

Gameplay

At least Sega could have tried. But, this feels very much like a game that was written in a weekend. Literally. They couldn't have made a worse game if they had actually tried.

Controls

So many problems with this, it's not even funny. Where to start. The weapons are weak, the weapon cool down is too slow, the rate of fire is minimal, you're constantly out of ammo, the suit is uncontrollable (especially when you're hit). I mean, there is so much wrong with this game, I don't think there's really one thing that Sega managed to get right.

And when it comes to War Machine, the game is simply pathetic. Not only is War Machine about a quarter of the strength of Ironman, he has crappy weapons and effectively no defenses. Yet, the game throws about twice as many enemies at you as it does Ironman. It's effectively impossible to win the higher levels when playing War Machine... especially the carrier levels (where the game forces you to play as War Machine).

Levels

The main problem in playing each of the mission levels is that the suit is completely uncontrollable. You're constantly being thrown in random directions.

There are these basic enemies:

Ground crawlers: Big boss sized enemies that end the level when dead.
Suited attackers: Their attack style is to just constantly melee you. Their attack style does nothing but kill the suit shield and eventually kill you. They gang up on you and attack you en masse to intentionally kill your shield.
Drones: Drones fire laserbeams from a distance and use distance attacks against you. These are usually teamed up against you with Suited Attackers
Ground Suited attackers: These guys are bigger and fire missiles at you from a distance.

Combining all of this with War Machine's incredibly lame suit which you are FORCED to use on some missions means that you are destined for frustration.

Frustration Central

The attack styles of the flying suited attackers is completely frustrating. All that they do is get close and melee your suit about 10 times with a super fast melee attack. It not only stuns you, but it prevents you from any kind of retaliatory attack while they are doing this. Worse, they throw at least four of these enemies at you at once on top of the six or so other type enemies on the level also targeting you. Ultimately, the suited attackers are the most single frustrating enemy in the game. They're not hard to kill, they just like to hide behind you so you can't see them and also gang up on you so you can't defend yourself and you ultimately lose health. The only defense from these attacks is running away, and even that's only temporary because they follow you at the same speed your suit can fly.

The second most frustrating thing is that when you're hit with a missile, the suit drops downward. When you're defending the flying carrier, it ends up throwing you below the carrier. Once you're down there, it's a b*tch to fly back up because the suit is uncontrollable.

The most problematic part of this game is that the Ironman suit should be able to fly supersonic. Yet, when you turn the jets on full, you're flying about as fast as a person walking. So stupid and unrealistic. If you turn on the jets on that suit, you should not only fly exceedingly fast, you should be able to control the speed to go well faster than anything else around you. Unfortunately, you can't use the jets to evade flying attackers. They just hang right behind you at the same speed. So, when you stop, they're right there attacking you again. So stupid.

There was even one time when, for whatever inexplicable reason, the suit decided to careen downward away from the carrier which ended the mission because it said that I had 'abandoned the carrier'. For whatever reason, the game didn't return control of the suit to me so I couldn't even control the suit to make it fly back up. Again, stupid.

Upgrades and Research

Sega wasted this part of this game. To include such a detailed upgrade system in a game containing such incredibly poor gameplay is immeasurably stupid and an insane waste of time. Because even though you get points to research upgrades, the upgrades do nothing to improve the suit at all... especially not War Machine. Worse, there is only one (1) War Machine suit to Ironman's 10 suits. Yet, at two levels of the first 6 levels force you to use War Machine negating the use of Ironman. This is supposed to be Ironman 2, not War Machine. Let me choose the character and suit I want to play. Don't force me to use a weak character!

Graphics

For such a cool suit, the textures are too low res. The game feels rushed and incomplete graphically (and in all other ways too).

Overall

This is a bad game with basically no redeeming value. If you like wasting money, feel free. But, if you feel you really must play, then you should only consider a rental or buying it on clearance for about $5 (or less).

Score

Sound: 7/10 (average)
Graphics: 5/10 (poor, cutscenes best part)
Gameplay: 2/10 (weak, suits too weak, ammo too weak)
Story: 6.5/10 (watch the movie)
Bugginess: N/A
Controls: 1/10 (uncontrollable)
Bang-to-buck: 1/10 (no replay value)
Play Value: $2 (recommend renting)
Overall: 2/10 (Absolute garbage. Nothing redeeming here).

Sega, with this game, you've failed. This is probably one of the last Sega games I'll ever buy.

Game design from a gamer's perspective Pt. 5

2010-04-03T07:24:00.000-07:00

Game Design from a Gamer's Perspective Part V

Patronizing Behaviors - No!

Do not insert patronizing sounds or suggestions. In this case, for example, Dante's Inferno suggested that I should move to an easier difficulty after starting a boss battle over about 5 times. Here is another design no-no. Don't do this. Never patronize your gamer. Never. Patronizing the gamer is not only a way to cause the gamer to get mad, it's not going to help the gamer get past the level (no, not even if they change difficulties). You have to understand that changing difficulties may have other game ramifications. Secondarily, don't lower or alter the difficulty of the level because the gamer has started over multiple times. If you want to allow modification to the hardness level, then allow it as an option on the main menu that the gamer can turn on. Do not turn it on by default. Always design helpful hints into the game, but let the gamer decide if they want to see the helpful hints.

Boss Battles revisited

Even though bosses are discussed in part 1, another issue has cropped up regarding bosses that needs discussion. In this case, the issue is that you are thrown into a boss battle without any idea of what to do. You don't know the boss's tactic, so you're fighting blind. You are forced to trial-and-error your way through the battle to figure out what to do. Here is the perfect opportunity to offer an in-game tutorial to help defeat this boss. This tutorial should only be executed if the gamer requests, but a simple pause request going into this battle the first time only isn't patronizing. It gives the gamer a way to size up the boss and cut some time off of the battle. Some gamers like the challenge of not knowing anything. Others would at least like some kind of clue what to do and what to avoid.

Wave after wave plus enemies with no way to kill them

Here's a boss tactic to avoid, at least early in the game. Dante's Inferno is yet another example of bad design in this regard. The first major and real boss battle throws wave after wave after wave of enemies at you. Just about the time you think you're done, you start completely over again with an entirely new wave of enemies. Again, the problem with Dante's Inferno is lack of health. Always give enough health on a level! During many battles in Dante's Inferno, there is entirely no way to get any health. No health wells, no potions, nothing. So, you have to do the entire boss level on one single health bar. Worse, you're doing it against an enemy where you have no defense (tentacles shoot up from the ground). You just have to move out of the way and hope the next tentacle doesn't hit you. If you could at least target the tentacles and stop the attack, that would be one thing. But, you can't. This harkens back to another game, Batman Arkham Asylum that would put up enemies that you cannot kill. Again, reinforcing another part of the this very guide: never put enemies into the playfield that cannot be wounded, defeated or harmed! Never.

Adding undamagable enemies only serves to take player health and make the player avoid being hit during this useless period. It doesn't make the game any harder, it just makes it frustrating. Let the player use the health he/she has to defeat actually killable enemies. For some reason, a lot of game designers seem to think that reducing the health of the player is somehow challenging. It isn't. Again, it's frustrating and time wasting. This goes back to... don't waste the players time (see part 1 and part 2 of this guide).

Story vs Gameplay

I think a lot of game developers wrestle with this issue when designing a game. So, I'm here to definitively answer this question. If you have a story in your game, then single most important thing in your game is that story. Period. There is no more important aspect than getting through the story to the end. The game play enables the story to work, but the story leads you through. The story is what is most compelling and what drives most gamers to play. If you're setting up a story at all, then it has to be the single most important thing in the game.

What does that mean for your game? This means that all gaming elements must revolve around the story. That also means that should you put any kind of battles or elements in the game that prevent completion of the story, then your design has put a gaming element ahead of the story and you have failed your game and your story. There should never be any gaming element including boss battles, other stories or puzzles that prevent the gamer from moving forward. If a boss battle cannot be completed, then allow it to be skipped entirely. The gamer can come back and play it later. Patronizing the gamer by suggesting a lesser difficulty is not the answer. Letting the gamer skip the level, see the outcome and move-on is not patronizing, It also lets the gamer move the story forward which then means you value the story more than the gaming element... and that's as it should be.

Far too many gaming companies put in impossible roadblock levels that prevent the game and, ultimately, the story from moving forward. If the gamer can never get past the level, then you have failed. Yes, you may have made your $60 from that game purchase, but I can guarantee you that the gamer will think twice before buying another title from your company. This leaves your next game with sales issues.

Future Sales

Always consider your present game as a resume for your next game. That means that the gamer who is playing your current game will judge whether or not to buy future titles from your company based on the present game they are playing. A failure game is a failure for future sales. You don't want this. Make your games a success for the gamer and the gamer will come back to purchase more later. This means you should always think about the gamer when designing your game. Never design the game for your convenience.

Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Xbox 360 - Dante's Inferno

2010-04-02T19:06:00.000-07:00

Dante's Inferno by Visceral / EA

Ok, so while I was very suitably impressed by the graphics on this game, the gameplay is poor to average at best. Let's explore.

Poor design ideas

First, here's a game that is a complete waste. A throw-away title. The sad thing is, it could have been so much more than it is. By tying down this game as an average third person fighting game, it limits the overall quality of this title. But, that's EA for you. They're a churn factory of average games and Dante's Inferno is no exception.

Story

Basically, the story to this game is lame. I do understand its origins. It originated as a book and then a film. So, in effect, this is a media tie-in game. This fact almost assures mediocrity and EA certainly doesn't disappoint in that.

You play a knight who is thrust into hell to find his love. The setup of this story was actually quite confusing overall. While the visuals were quite stunning, the story is muddled and lost in the mix.

Gameplay

This is a standard third person fighter intertwined with a number of cuts scenes. The problem with the cut scenes in this game is that they are cartoons, they are also repetitive. So, you might see a certain scene several times in progression. Not a great idea, actually.

The interweaving of the cut scenes works ok, but not spectacular. That's not the real problem, though. The real problem is in the controls and gameplay. Worse, if you end up replaying a level over and over (3 maybe 4 times), the game patronizes you by suggesting a lesser difficulty level. No. Don't do this. Let the gamer muddle through the level on their own. Don't suggest level difficulties and don't decrease the difficulty unless the player requests it. Here is yet another faux pas that will end up in the Game Design from a Gamer's Perspective. Again, DO NOT suggest or alter level difficulties.

Bosses

But, this isn't the real problem. The real problem with the level isn't the difficulty. The real problem is that you're thrown in without any semblance of what to do or how to defeat a given boss. You HAVE to muddle through it. If the game at least gave you some kind of hint or gave something familiar from a previous fight, then you might even have a clue. But, you're going to end up starting a boss over at least 4-5 times before you get the right combination. So, patronizing the player by suggesting difficulty levels is HIGHLY annoying. Again, DO NOT DO THIS when designing your game.

Further, the problem with the bosses is that you have no idea their strength, their weaknesses or how to cut the whole thing short, if there is even a way to do this. Worse, the boss battles do not give any hiding spaces, ways of taking a break or in any way getting out of the fight. So, you're stuck for the duration (or you press pause). The last problem with the boss levels is, like Batman Arkham Asylum, it throws wave after wave after wave at you. By the time you get to the last wave, and you're not even sure if it is the last wave, you're down to basically no health at all. In other words, the whole point to the boss levels in this game ends up trying to retain as much health as you possibly can. The boss's goal, then, is to whittle down as much health as they can. Overall, there is no fun or pleasure in that. It's just stupid design. The point to any game isn't to make the boss level impossible, it's to make the game FUN. Note that impossible does not equal fun! Fun is making the game enjoyable to play all throughout (including the boss levels) and to keep your story going. Forcing the gamer to stop your story by waging impossible battles means that you value the gameplay over the story. Wrong. You should always value the story over the game. Always.

Note that I'm not playing on the 'easy' level. I'm playing on the second level, which shouldn't be easy, but it shouldn't be impossible. Impossible should be reserved for the final difficulty level. Basically, this game has their difficulty levels set up wrong.

Save Points

Here's another game that does both obelisk saves and memory based checkpoint saves. So for memory saves, if you lose a battle, the game is kind enough to start you back at the beginning of the battle. Bad thing is, you lose any skills you've purchased. After starting over again, you have to stop what you are doing, visit the shop and purchase everything again. Frustrating. The least it could do is remember the things you've purchased. Note that memory saves are gone once you quit out of the game and start over later. So, you'll have to start again from a real save (see obelisk saves below). That means you will also lose your progress and have to backtrack to a disk save.

With obelisk saves, you stop by a specific statue and by pressing RB, you can activate the save point and save your game for real. The trouble, once again, is that like the health wells there are not enough save points throughout the game.

Again, this is a bad design. There is no reason why a limit is placed on the number of save points in a game. In fact, why even use save obelisks when you can put save onto the top menu? If the gaming industry would get rid of this obelisk save idea, it would be too soon.

Health

There is simply not enough health to be had in this game. You find health as wells that you destroy to get health from. The problem, though, is that you can travel an entire level and find only one health increase. Yes, that's right, one. You have no health potions, nothing you can carry with you, so you are entirely reliant on the game to provide you with a health well. When you do find one, it's when you don't need one or at a time when you can't use it (during a fight).

Absolve or Punish

This is an anomaly in this game. It stands out like a sore thumb. You can scoop up an enemy during battle and absolve or punish them. If you absolve, you get light side points. If you punish, you get dark side points. So, while you are absolving or punishing, the battle grinds to a halt, all enemies back away and let you do the deed. Like, huh? If you're going to do this for absolve or punish, then do the same thing with health wells. While I'm trying to get health from a well, all enemies should back off until I'm done. But, the designers didn't do this. So, the game does this for Absolve or Punish, but not when getting health. So, you can't get health from a well during a battle because an enemy will hit you and stop you. Again, wrong design.

Again, the point of a game is to be fun, not frustrating.

Hodge Podge

This game uses a mix mash of ideas all thrown into this game. You have the standard fight areas, you have Absolve or Punish, you have the wells, the doors you attack to open them and several other things I will let you discover if you choose to play. A lot of discordant ideas put together that don't really work as a cohesive whole.

Graphics

This is the only place where this game shines. And shines does it ever. This game is absolutely gorgeous and stunning. The graphics completely hold up even under the most intense and fastest moving scenes. No chop, not tearing, nothing. Someone put a lot of work into making sure the graphics were as fluid as you could make them. On top of the fluid graphics, the texture maps are perfect, the lighting is perfect and the motion capture and lip movements have to be some of the best I've seen. This game easily gets a 10 in graphics. If every game looked and was as smooth as Dante's Inferno, it'd at least make the game somewhat more palatable. Dante's Inferno raises the bar in graphics on the Xbox 360. I haven't seen graphics look this good on the Xbox 360 ever. In fact, it looks so good, I'd swear it was on the PS3.

The smoke and fire effects are amazingly well done. I have to applaud the designers for the effort put into the graphics. It's too bad the graphics design team basically wasted their effort on such a mediocre title.

Sound

The voiceovers are reasonably well done. It definitely sounds like hired actors. The music is good, but not inspiring. I've heard much better music in games than here.

Controls

The controls work, but are odd in places. I would have preferred a more standard control layout, but the way it is set up works ok for this game. The controls are reasonably responsive, but overall it doesn't really help the gameplay much. The one place where there is an issue is when the RB flag appears on the screen. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. So, when you expect an RB symbol to appear, it doesn't.

Note, the default layout puts a darting move on the right stick instead of camera movement. While I would call Visceral on 'Messing with a good thing', it seems to work ok in this game. I would have preferred a camera control on this stick, but the way that it is seems to work well enough.

Overall

I can't really recommend this game. It's an average game that feels like a movie tie-in. It doesn't feel as rushed as most movie tie-ins (mostly because of the graphics subsystem). But, the game play is frustrating as are the boss levels. This is yet another in the endless stream of irritating boss battle games. Overall, I'm getting rather tired of this genre because it's basically the same things rehashed. There has to be some other way to play a game that doesn't involve boss battles to progress. In fact, I'd prefer puzzles to boss battles. Puzzles at least challenge the mind and make you think. Boss battles are mindless chopping, jumping and using combos. Give me something that challenges the mind over mindless gaming any day.

Score

Sound: 8/10 (slightly better than average)
Graphics: 10/10 (easily the best I've seen for this genre)
Gameplay: 5/10 (average, weak in places)
Story: 6.5/10 (too much glitz, not enough story)
Bugginess: N/A
Controls: 7/10 (odd movement control on the right stick)
Bang-to-buck: 1/10 (no replay value)
Play Value: $5 (recommend renting)
Overall: 5.5/10 (nothing new here, even as perfect as the graphics are).

Xbox 360 - Bioshock 2

2010-03-29T04:43:00.000-07:00

Bioshock 2 by 2K Games

This is the sequel to Bioshock. While I was hoping for a lot of out of this title, it really doesn't deliver more than the original. That's not to say that that's a bad thing if you've never played Bioshock, but if you have you'll quickly realize a been-there-done-that moment.

Story

The story is similar to the original Bioshock. You're tasked to wander around Rapture (an underwater city) and gather Adam from Little Sisters. As you gather Adam (a form of plasmid currency), you level up your skills. As you add and strengthen your skills, you can defeat bigger and bigger bosses. The point to each level is to ultimately progress to meet Eleanor Lamb (the voice who taunts you all along the way).

Gameplay

Effectively, you are a Big Daddy in this game. But, you also have the ability to use plasmids (a biotech system that adds such abilities as electric shock, fire and telekinesis to you). So, in addition to the arms you find (shotguns, spear guns and what not), you can use your bio abilities to help subdue your enemies. Not that the bio abilities are not generally strong enough to kill on their own, so you are forced to use a combination of bioweapons and guns to defeat opponents.

In Bioshock 2, the designers added trap rivets and mini-turrets. Trap rivets are only set off once someone gets in close proximity. So, now you can trap an area against splicers (and other enemies). This is important because of the way you must gather Adam now. In B2, you gather Adam by first killing the little sister's Big Daddy. Then you adopt the little sister. You then use the little sister to locate corpses that contain Adam and then have her harvest the Adam from that corpse. That would be great if it stopped there. Unfortunately, the game designers felt that simply gathering Adam was too easy. So all the while the little sister is gathering Adam, splicers start coming out of nowhere and attacking you and the little sister. So, this is why traps and mini-turrets are important. In fact, its better when you can find the corpses near turrets or security cameras that you've hacked. I could really have done without this constant attacking exercise, but whatever. If there were rhyme or reason to this exercise, I'd have probably enjoyed the attacks more. But, they're mostly pointless. Worse, many of the splicers tend to come up from behind you. So, you're constantly having to turn around.

You can only do 2 Adam gathers per sister. Once that's done, you can either harvest the little sister at a vent or you can let her go home. If you harvest, you get the most amount of Adam. If you let her go, you get less (about half). So, if you want to progress in the game faster, you really need to harvest.

After you've either harvested or let the little sister go into the vent, a big sister may or may not come for you. Now, the point in the big sister is pointless. Just an exercise to drain health and eve (what fuels your bioweapons). Big sisters don't always seem to come, but when they do they are relentless until you kill them. Frankly, they're easy to kill. Since you can regenerate, just keep hammering on her until she dies. You may end up in a regeneration chamber 5-10 times, but you can kill her without using any Eve, without firing a single shot or without losing any health packs. You'll lose about half of your current health when you regenerate, but find a health machine and you can boost again for 9 credits (or find booze or food).

Anyway, I have found the big sister battles to be mostly pointless. What they give you after you search them isn't worth the kill. It's just a way to waste time (and health) instead of focusing on the story. Frankly, you can continue forward on your level ignoring the big sister. She'll keep coming, but you can still search and move forward. You will need to eventually kill her, but it's not really that important overall. The one thing, though, is that a big sister gives you a little bit of Adam (around 20-40). So, it's worth it just to get the Adam, but it's not really enough to make it worthwhile losing that much health and eve. So, use the Vita Chambers to kill the big sister and avoid using up health.

Trap Rivets

While setting up traps can help you score Adam gathers, note one important bug in this system. There is a limit on the total number of traps that can be on the playfield. After you exceed that number, the oldest placed traps disappear without warning and, after they begin disappearing, you are wasting traps. Note, however, that the game doesn't warn you of this fact. They just disappear. So, be wary when placing a lot of trap rivets on the playfield. I believe the number is around 15 or so. I haven't counted the maximum number exactly, but that's about what I could eye in the area where i was playing.

Purchasing

You have the ability to purchase weapons, health and plasmids. Weapons and health require money. You find money on dead bodies, chests, cash registers, etc. To buy plasmids, you need Adam. This you obtain by harvesting little sisters (and killing big sisters). You can also find Adam on some underwater levels, so keep your eyes open.

Bigger and bigger weapons are found around the levels. You can't buy these. Some plasmids are unlocked by research (using the camera) or by finding them on levels. The major plasmids can be purchased.

Overall

The game quality is similar to Bioshock. But, the gameplay isn't different enough and the levels aren't different enough to make it a new unique experience. I felt that the game developers played it too safe and tried to create Bioshock too exactly. Instead, they should have taken a risk and tried something new. Like, for example, add brand new and unique plasmids. Make this underwater station clean and bright. Something, anything different would have made it a unique experience. It was just a too much been-there-done-that experience for me to say that it was really a great game experience.

If you haven't played Bioshock, by all means play this one. If you have already played Bioshock, then this won't be anything new for you. If you're looking for a new gaming experience, this isn't really it.

Score

Sound: 7/10 (average, but splicer voices can be annoying)
Graphics: 8.5/10 (good, could see texture loading in-game)
Gameplay: 7.5/10 (reasonable controls and action)
Story: 6.5/10 (slightly better than average, but too much like Bioshock)
Bugginess: 7/10 (traps disappear after unspecified number on playfield)
Controls: 8.5/10 (worked well in most cases, camera made it hard at times)
Bang-to-buck: 2/10 (might replay for release instead of harvest)
Play Value: $10 (recommend renting first, buying if you haven't played Bioshock)
Overall: 6.5/10 (been-there-done-that for B1 players).

Xbox 360 - Darksiders

2010-03-17T02:33:00.000-07:00

Darksiders by THQ / Vigil

Here's another throwback to the late-90's / early-00s. This is your standard third person shooter with semi-irritating boss battles. You probably would have even found this game in an arcade or two in the late 90s.

Controls

Nothing spectacular here. Typical controls for a third person shooter. There is one control, however, that was completely done wrong. When you finally get the chain to swing from floating hook areas, the chain controls are badly done. First, you target the item to chain. Then you press the fire chain control (right trigger). That's ok, so far. But, instead of releasing the RT button to release the chain, you have to press the A button. If you release the RT button, you stop swinging. It's like, huh? Who thought this controller design up? It's far more intuitive to release the RT button to release the chain itself. Duh.

Story

You're one of the four horsemen who are there to prevent heaven and hell from starting a battle on the Earth. Well, it happened anyway and they blame your character (one of the four horsemen). Ok, so the premise is weak, but it at least gets you motivation for what you're doing (or about to do).

So anyway, you'll find there's lots of hacking, slashing, chopping and stomping going on here. Not particularly exciting if you ask me. For a late 90s type game, it'd probably have been a hit back then. With gaming engines and stories that have long progressed beyond this level of hack and slash, it's really old hat at this point.

Level Ups & Combos

They did add the ability to level your weapons up by adding enhancements and obtaining upgrades. You can buy combos from Vulgrim (the local merchant). As you progress through the game, you find a Vulgrim merchant location in each of the map areas (with the exception of the Iron Canopy area). So, you can make your character somewhat stronger by finding (or paying for) new weapons, features and upgrades. You find items by digging through chests, but mainly by paying Vulgrim.

To pay Vulgrim, you obtain blue 'souls'. These souls pop out of things and enemies you destroy. There are blue souls (money), yellow souls (action points) and green souls (health) in various sizes. There are also healing spells that you can buy from Vulgrim when you can't find health on the level (and yes, there will be times).

Bosses

Most of the bosses are quite easy, with the exception of Silitha (a large teleporting spider). It appears that THQ made this specific battle extremely difficult to complete. Not sure why unless they just like raising frustration levels. Simply search at Google for 'Defeat Silitha' and you'll find many many gamers looking for the answer to this battle.

Irritation

As with many games of this style, the developers decided to add some quite irritating things to this game. When you're just about out of health, you have to listen to a heart beating until you find more health. Hello.. I can SEE the meter on the screen, I don't have to be reminded with an irritating heartbeat noise every second.

When you're trying to beat Silitha, about every 2 seconds she says, "Hold still little one" or some other such drivel. It became so irritating, I had to turn the voice volume all the way down.

Next, I play with Y inverted. Unfortunately, Darksiders doesn't remember that once you've restarted the game the next time. So, I have to constantly remember to go into the options and invert the Y setting. This should be saved to the game save.

The controls do not always respond well. So, when you're battling enemies, you seem to sometimes get stunned for no reason and that allows enemies to pound on you. It's almost like the game is doing this on purpose. In fact, it might actually be doing that.

Vulgrim Tunnel Travel

This part of the game was completely pointless. Yes, you do travel from one area to another reasonably fast. The part that is pointless is that you have to run around this track from point A to point B. There's no fighting, no quests and no treasures there. Frankly, I would have preferred to enter the portal and exit it with nothing in between. If you're going to make the gamer do something, then make it worth their while... here's another tip to go into the Game Design from a Gamer's Perspective manual. Although, it's really already there as 'Don't waste the gamer player's time'.

Overall

This is a tired, old and worn out gaming style. I understand a lot of gamers still like to play them, but for an RPG gamer, this play system just doesn't really work. If you're the kind of gamer that likes to roam through levels, figure out puzzles and battle silly creatures, then you might like this.

The best part of this game.. well, there is no real best part. This is an average/mediocre third person shooter with nothing overly special. If you simply must play everything on the Xbox 360, go for it. If you're looking for a quality, longer and more thought provoking game that's compelling, Darksiders isn't it.

Score

Sound: 6/10 (irritating voices)
Graphics: 6/10 (good, but missing too many details)
Gameplay: 7/10 (mostly workable)
Story: 7/10 (weak plot wrapped with lots of hacking and slashing)
Bugginess: N/A
Controls: 6/10 (bad chain control. otherwise workable)
Bang-to-buck: 1/10 (definitely no replay value)
Play Value: $5 (limited play value, repetitive, boring in places, rent)
Overall: 5.5/10 (I definitely recommend renting this title. Not worth $60).

Big Screen - Avatar

2010-03-07T03:46:00.000-08:00

Avatar by James Cameron

While I know there is a video game for this movie (which Gamezelot may eventually review), this review is about the film itself. You're probably asking yourself, "Why is Gamezelot reviewing movies?" Well, I'll tell you. Essentially, Avatar is a nearly 3 hour video game romp. It is effectively one big cutscene from a video game. Because of this fact, I have decided to review this movie here.

Story

It's actually 3 stories in one. Boy meets girl, boy falls in love, boy betrays girl, boy wins girl back. Ok, so much for the love story. The second story is for the battle over Pandora, the planet the Navi inhabit. Humans need 'Unobtanium' and to get it, they must displace the locals (the Navi) on the planet Pandora. The third story is of sacrifice and courage by those chosen to become Avatars.

Essentially, there are two factions towards domination of Pandora. The Sigourney Weaver character camp that believes that understanding the natives is the answer. She does this by creating the Avatars (lifelike representations of Navi bodies that humans can remote control). So, her intent is to blend in with the Navi and become one with them using these Avatars. This tactic doesn't work until a handicapped marine signs on to run an Avatar.

The second camp is the military commander. He wants decisive action to get the job done. If that means destroying the Navi to get the Unobtanium, he'll do it.

The Navi are the indigenous peoples of Pandora. Ok, so that's the setup.

In the 3 hours that unfold, lots of visual effects are used and some cool and amazing things are done. This is, to date, the best live action video game yet. When we can finally get consoles that can produce graphics that look like Avatar, then we'll be onto something.

Premise

The premise behind the film is sound, but the basic stories have been dumbed down to fit into the nearly 3 hour framework. In fact, this movie would have been better served as an actual video game where you could spend hours and hours playing it and get a truly in-depth experience. But, of course, the graphics wouldn't have been anywhere near as stunning.

However, ignoring the graphics work, which is outstanding, the stories are actually fairly weak with lots of holes. The writer(s) could have done much better at sewing up the details of Pandora and the Humans, but failed to do so. So, there are a number of rather cliche and trite things about the way this movie unfolds. While you haven't seen a movie that looks like this one visually, you have seen this film before. Effectively, Cameron has taken stories that are old and tired (and somewhat politically correct) and wrapped them in a shiny new huggable CG ribbon.

Caricatures

Unfortunately, the characters in this film were all basically cartoons of real humans. From the unfeeling G.I. Joe to the Smoking Doctor. There's nothing very realistic about any of the characters. Even the attempt at sympathy for the handicapped marine really falls quite flat. Because his human role in the movie basically consists of entering and exiting the Avatar control pod, you get very little real emotional time with the human part of this character. The only emotional time you get with Jack Sully (the handicapped marine) is him as the Avatar which, with as well as it was done, just doesn't cut it. So, Jack Sully's character is flat and underdeveloped.

Human vs Avatar

Unfortunately, as well, there was very little struggle for any of the characters learning to control the avatars. For example, there have to be long term exposure effects of some kind. Whether that's nosebleeds or convulsions, there needs to be some negative consequences to using the avatar chamber. Something that tells the human body that it's not a good thing. That never happens. Without this element, it leaves the human world flat and emotionless. It makes the story feel all too perfect. Without this element, this leaves the story without a human antagonist that prevents the avatar from working perfectly. And, throughout this film, the avatars perform flawlessly.

Without something that ties the the audience to the cause of the humans, it leaves the audience emotionless towards any of it. It's hard to feel for the Navi fully because you realize they are simply CG characters. Worse, they are CG characters which are caricatures of real tribal cultures. You want to feel for the humans trying to do good for the Navi, but you can't because there's not enough screen time given to these elements. You can't feel for the bad-guy soldiers, so the whole affair ends up mostly unemotional.

Contradictory points

The characters tend to contradict themselves during parts of the film. For example, the tribe leader's daughter who first meets up with Jack Sully (as an Avatar), gets a sign from Eywa (aka Gaia) for her invite him in to her tribe. She doesn't understand why, but she does it. She chastises Sully for killing these dog creatures as 'unnecessary' and him being a child. Yet, later he kills an animal without remorse and it's all ok. There are other times as well where the film steps on itself with the tribal culture. So, this makes the tribal aspects not very well conceived.

High points

There are high points, but they are all there to manipulate the audience into feeling good about the situation. Like when Sully is able to pull off getting his flying creature or when he swoops from the sky and takes control of the much bigger and more revered flying creature. Hello, if it were as easy as he made it out to be, then the entire tribe would have done it.

Manipulating these feel-good points to make the audience feel happy almost seems a bit contrived. It works for the moment, but when you reflect on it you really understand how Cameron manipulated the situation for the audience rather than for the story.

Audio

The music score is fairly intense, but typical for this kind of blockbuster. There's lots of swelling orchestral movements throughout. Too many, in fact. The score is loud, but that may be partly because of the theater. In most parts the score works, but it's also quite cliche. There's nothing new here. Even though the graphics excel, the music score is standard.

Overall

The movie was good, but not perfect. If the movie had grounded the human parts in a more solid reality with more human character development, the Navi parts would have been much more believable. The struggles between the G.I. Joes and the Navi were really there to provide a battle environment... an Ewok vs Stormtrooper moment, if you will. This is the Star Wars for a new millennium, but even Star Wars kept the humanistic aspects to keep the audience grounded (at least for the first 3 movies). The later three movies felt much more like Avatar.

I'm at a loss why CG and human drama can't work. Avatar definitely shows that it is possible to do it with film (even though Avatar itself didn't succeed), but it doesn't have to be feel-good fluff. Unfortunately, Cameron took us on this journey, but primarily as a cartoon than as a real human drama. Perhaps he felt that the CG would play better if it felt more cartoony than as human drama. I don't know, but this film opens doors to the next evolution of film making. I would say that District 9 was probably closer to human drama vs CG than any film to date including Avatar.

Unfortunately, Cameron has already set the tone with Avatar. So, Avatar 2 is off the table for moving back towards real human drama. I don't fully understand the cartoonistic approach to Avatar. Cameron would have done Avatar far better and more satisfying by making all of the characters more real (from character development side) from the beginning... and also truly studying tribal cultures to ensure the approach was consistent throughout.

Oh well, there's always next time.

Score

Graphics: 10/10
Audio: 9/10 (in parts, too loud and abrasive)
Story: 4/10
Overall: 7/10 (too cartoonistic and simplistic)

Game design from a gamer's perspective Pt. 4

2010-02-28T15:59:00.000-08:00

Lighting

Lighting is critical to any 3D game title. It is equally as important as the camera. While the camera lets you peer into the world, the lighting allows you to see (or not see) the world. Good lighting let's you see what you need to see. Great lighting sets a mood for the story. Setting up the proper lighting for any scene in a 3D world is critical to the mood you're trying to achieve and is one of the two major ways (the second way being music) to set the tone and mood for the game (and story). Games that have successfully used lighting properly include Bioshock, Chronicles of Riddick, Halo 3, Assassin's Creed, GTA4, F.E.A.R. and The Darkness (just to name the top games). No, Oblivion didn't make this list. While Oblivion has reasonable lighting, it's just not outstanding. Note that lighting needs to be combined with textures and shaders to complete this package. Perfectly lighting a poorly textured or shaded object doesn't do anything for your game. These two things go hand in hand... which is why texturing is next.

Proper lighting entails making sure the color of the lighting is accurate for the scene. Lights should produce a halo effect if very bright. If it can produce the film 'strings' (left and right horizontal streams), it can easily give your game a film like quality. In fact, I've not yet seen a game that's even done this. Lights on the backs of vehicles or during moving sequences should produce streams. Lighting should produce soft shadows, when possible. Lighting should always produce a shadow. Shadowless lighting is odd and makes your game look unrealistic. Also, unless you're trying to achieve a specific mood, shadows should never be 100% black. True ambient (GI - bounce) lighting always lightens up shadowed areas. So, even if your engine doesn't support GI, you can simulate it through the use of ambient lighting.

Texturing and Shading

While lighting is key to setting a tone and mood, shading and texturing brings out the realism. If you want to make a scene look photoreal, you need four things: natural lighting, high resolution textures / shaders, a high resolution mesh (or low res mesh with great looking normal maps) and natural environments. Clearly, in a video game, there's limited RAM. So, you have to optimize the game's memory footprint by taking some shortcuts. So, while you will need to take shortcuts, don't take them unless absolutely necessary. For example, don't make your mesh resolution so low that even a normal map can't fix it. Use a high enough resolution that the mesh looks good on its own. Then, add normal and displacement maps to increase the resolution and add realistic folds and creases. Combining that with great looking diffuse textures and you've got a winning combination.

Games that have successfully produced great looking human models include Mass Effect, Bioshock (at least the Big Daddy), Oblivion, Fallout 3, Heavy Rain, Drake's Fortune, The Darkness and a few others. Unfortunately, there are many more games that use low res textures, shaders and models. For the Mario's and Sonic's of the world, that's fine. But, for a human drama, don't skimp on shaders and textures.

Additionally, don't put tons of effort into your human characters by using 1024 x 1024 texture maps and then proceed to load 128 x 128 maps onto terrain surfaces. Keep consistent. Use high res maps for all surfaces or none. Don't pick your main character to make look great and then cheese out on the rest of the surfaces. Two Worlds was primo at this. High res character models, low res terrains. It looks horrible.. don't do it.

Shaders

Shaders are what make your objects look like real everyday objects. It adds shine, transparencies, ambience and lots of subtle things to your characters. For example, the use of a specular map on skin surfaces is critical to making skin surfaces shine properly. Without a specular map, the skin surfaces look shiny and plastic. Again, for Mario, that's fine. For human drama, not so much. Always try to make an object look correct by using the proper levels of specularity and specular maps when possible.

Levels of Detail

Level of Detail (LOD) is commonly used in games. It saves memory for distant objects but also gives high res details up close. When possible, use it. Any console programmer likely already knows this, but if you don't, here you go. You can read up on the use of LOD at various sites including Wikipedia.

Character Models

What's to really say here. The best I can offer up is make them look good. Leave this task to your very talented character artists to design. I've rarely come upon games that have poorly designed characters. Occasionally it happens, but rarely. For example, I was a bit disappointed in the models for Crackdown. Most movie tie-in games tend to have poor character models. In many cases, the game designers choose to move the camera very far back from poor quality models. This can make the model look a lot better than it is. For level based games, a small character can work. For up-close-and-personal 3D shooters, that doesn't work so much.

Again, hire quality designers and modelers to produce your models. Texturing and shading them is, of course, a big way to make or break the model.

Graphics modes

I've been very impressed by various games that some designers have chosen to employ. For example, Halo 3 has almost an almost cartoon approach to the models, but placed in a very realistic environment. This gives the game an almost surreal quality. Master Chief looks like armor, but at the same time he looks like a cartoon. This works.

Crackdown and Borderlands, on the other hand, chose an outline system for the characters. While it looks fine for the first few minutes, the graphics quickly get in the way of the story. It's difficult to get past the outlines. If you want to use outlines in a game, use them sparingly. For example, GTA used a design outline approach to intro graphics, but not the game itself. The game itself had a much more realistic look. This also worked.

3D console games really do look best when you use the 3D system to look realistic. Trying to use a stylistic approach to 3D doesn't seem to work well with Direct3D or OpenGL. Perhaps these systems need a facelift, but the recommendation from Gamezelot is not to use outlines if possible. Although, experiment. If you come up with something that has a wow factor, maybe I'll reconsider.

Playability - Terrain and getting stuck

A big part of game design is how well the game plays. Graphics, textures and shaders affect playability very little. Playability includes such things as collision detection, how well the characters move in space and how they interact with objects in the space.

For example, Fallout 3 majorly failed in one aspect of playability. The rebar, rubble and various blocks and chunks of cement get in the way of movement. It's easy to get 'stuck'. Sometimes getting stuck means you can jump your way out. Some times getting stuck means restarting your game. It is crucial to make sure your play testers ferret out any stuck spots. If possible, don't make terrain where you get stuck anyway. It's always frustrating to walk over terrain to be blocked by some invisible thing that you have to jump over or go around. Make sure to thoroughly play test your games for this aspect of the terrain.

Collision Detection

I won't say that much here about collision detection. In short, just make sure it works properly. Bullets aiming at the player character need to impact and be felt through rumble. The collision needs to make sense. So, test and test to ensure your detection system works 100%. Then playtest it again to make sure your game testers agree.

Easter Eggs

Easter eggs are fun little romps. Whether they are an integral part of the game and story or not, you should always include some. They are fun little diversions that let you step away from the main game and just idle down for a little. It's always good to let the gamer take a break in the environment just to 'play'. By 'play', I mean wander around and look at everything, goof off and generally do nothing. Getting away from the main action for a few minutes lets you regroup for a possibly hard boss battle. Wandering off just to explore the gaming system lets you find easter eggs and these can be as little as a secret message to an in-game award. It's your choice as to what people find, but make it fun.

In-game tutorials

When a game first starts out, many game designers feel that tutorials are the only way to 'help' the gamer become accustomed to the environment. For first-time gamers, this is true. For hard core die-hard gamers, this isn't true. Having to start out a brand new game and spend the better part of an hour wading through pause after pause stopping for pop-up screens and messages is frustrating and annoying. Always give the gamer the option to skip tutorials and go right into playing the game. If the first level is designed as the tutorial, then make sure it's not important to the game and give gamers a way to skip it.

Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

PS3 - Heavy Rain

2010-02-28T14:01:00.000-08:00

Heavy Rain by QuanticDream / Sony

Parents: This game is rated M for violence and blood.

Heavy Rain tries to be a new genre. Unfortunately, it isn't. The two things that it tries to do to set it apart (controls and storytelling) don't really work to actually set it apart and have been done before. That said, it is probably worth a play through. The first game that focused on interactive storytelling was Shenmue released in 1999 and then Shenmue II released in 2001 Dreamcast and 2002 Xbox. Flashback.. Shenmue was groundbreaking for its time. It had time flow (winter to spring) and led you through the story of a boy, Ryo, caught in circumstances first in Japan and then Hong Kong. The storytelling worked and the game was reasonably extensive. It promised interaction with 'everything' in the world, but really didn't deliver on that promise. Nevertheless, the game is one of my top games still for interactivity and play value. Shenmue was interactive cinema at its best. Unfortunately, Heavy Rain isn't nearly as good.

Story

Flash forward to 2010 and here we have Heavy Rain. Heavy Rain is a detective story plain and simple. There are detectives in the story and the gamer is also a detective. You primarily watch as the story unfolds, but you can occasionally interact with various people as characters. The story, like a film, flips back and forth between several stories at once. You know when the character changes because the face of the current character will appear as the loading screen.

The game switches between 4 different characters that you can control. Ethan Mars (Architect), Madison Paige (Reporter), Norman Jayden (FBI Profiler) and Scott Shelby (Detective). As you control each of these characters, various pieces of the story unfold based on dialog choices and actions you make (or don't make).

The story starts out with Ethan Mars at home about to celebrate a birthday for his son Jason. After a short intro period to get you familiar with the controls and how the game works, it progresses from home to shopping at a mall. Here is where things go horribly wrong. Ethan lets Jason out of his sight while paying for a balloon and Jason leaves the mall after which Ethan chases only for Ethan and Jason to be hit by car. Jason dies from his injuries and Ethan is left in a coma. After 2 years, Ethan revives only to be tormented by guilt.

His second son is then kidnapped after one of his blackouts and is being held by the Origami killer. Here's where the detective story begins. As Ethan, you're following the clues from the Origami killer to find his second son before time runs out (the rain gauge reaches 6 inches). Hence, the title Heavy Rain. This leads to a series of trials for Ethan. As Madison, you help Ethan by patching him up and doing investigating as well. As Shelby, you're a detective following up on independent leads. As Norman, you're an FBI profiler using a high tech ARI sunglasses appliance that lets you see and analyze clues. The disparity between these stories is unclear and is never fully resolved at the end.

Anyway, after the mall (which this sequence cannot be changed), I'm not sure if the story unfolds in different ways based on choices, but it's possible. The way it unfolded for me left a lot of questions unanswered. So, the story writers didn't completely tie up all of the loose ends by the end. Kind of frustrating.

In my story, Ethan Mars kept blacking out and ending up on Carnaby Lane. Yet, later this story event stopped happening and was never explained based on the outcome of my game. So, it is kind of frustrating that this part of the story wasn't revealed or explained why it happened. Perhaps this will be revealed in Heavy Rain 2 (assuming there is a part 2). Also, I was expecting all four characters to interact at some point, but that also never happened (in my game).

Controls

To start, Quantic Dream made one of Gamezelot's bad game design faux pas'. That is specifically, messing with a good thing. Instead of camera on one stick and control on the other, they decided it would be best to require you to press the R2 button to actually walk. When you press the left stick, all you do is look around, but you do not move. This controller scheme is bad. Bad bad bad. There is no need to reinvent the controller wheel yet again. Again, don't mess with a good thing. The controller style that already works here is Walking on left or right stick and camera on the opposite from walking. You have complete control over pressure with the analog stick, so walking speed is not an issue. In fact, the part of the game where pressure is an issue, it's actually a lot harder to limit the pressure on the R2 button than it would be using the stick. Quantic Dream, if you're listening, you need to redo the stick layout (or let the gamer at least choose). Immediate 1.5 deduction for 'messing with a good thing'.

Gameplay

The thing that's most frustrating about this game's save system is that there is no 'Restart Checkpoint' option. Yes, this game uses checkpoints to save. Once a checkpoint is saved, you cannot easily and quickly reload a previous checkpoint. Instead, you're forced to quit to the main menu and then restart that way. How about we give a menu option for restarting the checkpoint next time, hmm? Also, checkpoint saves are fine IF you can also save your game separately at various points. With a proper save system, you can go back and make alternative choices from a previous save. No, can't do that in Heavy Rain. In an interactive story such as this one, this is the bare minimum of a save system. Another point deducted for not allowing saves.

Segment Types

The segment types in this game include cinematic (watch only), free roaming (interact with the environment) and action timing sequence (pressing specific buttons using specific sequences with timing events attached). The free roaming is really the best part of this game. It lets you interact with the world, people and objects. Unfortunately, there's so little of it in this game that you really feel cheated. The action timing sequences come out of nowhere and without warning. It starts and you better be ready. This is one of the downfalls of this game. If you're not prepared to start an action timing sequence, too bad. They start without warning whether you are ready or not. Of course, if you catch it in time, you can quit to the main menu and restart your checkpoint.

My least favorite part of this game, and any game really, is the action timing sequence portion. I really despise this style of gaming. Just give me real live action fighting. Don't throw a bunch of random sequenced button presses and require me to do them in order timed or not. Live action gaming is best. Timed button sequences only serve to frustrate and annoy. It means you have to know the controller by muscle memory. Worse, this game took this timed button sequence to a whole new level requiring contortion to not only press the buttons in order, but press them simultaneously in order. So, you may end up pressing X, O and Triangle buttons all together and then L1 and R2 and possibly even L2. But, you have to press and hold them in sequence. This is highly frustrating and annoying. As a game designer, don't do this. This entire gaming sequence completely gets in the way of storytelling. This is yet another Gamezelot faux pas. Perhaps Quantic Dream should read Gamezelot's Game Design from a Gamer's Perspective series of articles.

Controller Motion Sequences

Ok, while I know it's a novelty on the PS3. I really despise it. There is no need to use an accelerometer as part of the game controller system. This idea is long past its time and needs to go away. The novelty has long worn off and now it's just annoying when used. As such, any game the uses the accelerometer should also provide a way to not use it. That means that the gamer should be able to disable that part of the controller system and use a button in replacement of that controller event.

Character Interaction

The characters interact with much of their environment. However, characters can usually only interact with items that are necessary to move the story forward in most cases, as it should be. Of course, the more things you can interact with story-related or not, the more realistic your game becomes. Although there are some things you can do, like juggling, that never make a reappearance as something important later.

Audio

The soundtrack audio is typical of a modern thriller. The airy piano segments really set the somber mood of the scenes. The orchestra swells and undulates during action scenes. The music is probably one of the best parts of this game. It really brings out the action properly.

Graphics

The characters are well done in features, textures and mesh design in most places. There is occasionally some letdown (bandages on Ethan). The lip sync is done reasonably well, but still a bit stilted in places. The character's textures, especially on the loading pages, look great.

However, instead of doing them in-game, Quantic Dream should have pre-rendered them in Vray or another higher resolution system to make them look spectacular. The PS3 does a reasonable job rendering characters, but if you're planning to have a closeup of a face, then do it using pre-rendered high res imagery. Make these graphics knock-your-socks off good. There's no need to sacrifice the quality of this imagery simply because you want to prove how good an in-game render can be. An in-game render will never look as good as something that comes out of Vray or any other professional 3D rendering system. Why sacrifice this part of the game?

Overall

This is basically interactive cinema. Although, it feels like Shenmue, it has a lot in common with the Sims and virtual character games. You watch much of the time and play part of the time. The timing action sequences start too often without warning. There are consequences to failing or winning (or even partway winning). So, depending on how the action timing sequence ends and whether you fail or succeed, the story moves on. This is good in that you get to see the events unfold no matter what, but it's frustrating that you can't always easily go back and redo the sequence exactly how you want it to be. If you catch it in time, you can quit to the main menu and reload the checkpoint to start that sequence over. But, this doesn't always work.

Finally, the game is very short. You can play through this game in only a few hours without even trying. The story event continues fail or succeed. If one of your characters dies, the game moves on without them. Overall, for as involved as this game should have been, the story was way too short.

Score

Sound: 9/10
Graphics: 8.5/10 (good, but not perfect, lighting: excellent)
Gameplay: 7/10 (timing action sequences dragged this one down)
Story: 7/10 (plot holes left unfilled)
Bugginess: 5/10 (glitching and slowdowns)
Controls: 6/10 (badly mapped controls, no way to remap)
Bang-to-buck: 1/10
Play Value: $5 (too short, rent)
Overall: 5.6/10 (timing action sequences, poorly mapped controls, no way to turn off accelerometer controls, no player saves, checkpoint saves, way too short)

Xbox 360 - Mass Effect 2

2010-02-14T07:59:00.001-08:00

Mass Effect 2 by EA Games / Bioware

Mass Effect 2 is the sequel to Mass Effect (Gamezelot gave Mass Effect 5/10). Mass Effect 2 picks up where Mass Effect leaves off, story wise. But, the story this time around is questionable at best. Who writes these game stories anyway? I think they need to hire some better writers.

Story

Mass Effect 2 picks up almost immediately where Mass Effect leaves off. Sheperd is commanding the Normandy. However, just about the time all seems great, a large ship cuts the Normandy in half causing the pieces to crash into a planet. We come to find out that the large ship with that huge beam cannon that rips open the Normandy like a can opener is operated by the Collectors. Now starts the Mass Effect 2 story.

So, instead of Sheperd getting to a rescue pod like everyone else, he goes down with the ship and perishes. Or, so we think. Cerberus manages to obtain Sheperd's remains and manages to rebuild him into a whole human again. That's where your character, Sheperd, wakes up. So, here begins the story again. This time, however, because Cerberus brings back Sheperd, he takes allegiance to Cerberus (sort of) and the fact that Cerberus builds him the Normandy 2. Cerberus even manages to get Joker and the doctor back, but not the rest of your 'party'.

Of course, the whole point is that that Illusive man wants Sheperd to take out the collectors. Why exactly Sheperd was reassembled, we're not sure yet.

Importing Character from ME

This was a pointless exercise. The only thing this does is bring in your character's likeness. It doesn't bring the experience or anything else. It's all a cosmetic thing without any substance, so why bother?

Gameplay

Basically, there are three main game play zones. Combat, free roaming and mining. Combat zones get you through the objectives. Free roaming (most on the ship) lets you manage your crew, objectives and research. You can also free roam the Milky Way to find your next objective locations. By using probes, you mine the surface of planets to obtain elements. Elements are used in research upgrades. Upgrades give your armor and weapons better abilities.

While some of the new aspects work, some don't. The developers improved parts of the game, but overall it really is no better than Mass Effect for play value. For story line, it's far worse.

Armor

Well, what's to be said. You can outfit your character with armor, for what it's worth. The reality is, of course, that it's all for show. Also, the only armor that's upgradeable is the armor that comes with the game. Any imported armor from the downloadable content (DLC) area is locked. By locked, I mean you can't do anything to alter this armor. It is what it is, like it or not. You can't add upgrades or in any way strengthen DLC armor.

Controls

The controller is pretty standard. Movement on left stick, camera on right. Various buttons for action (firing, changing modes, etc). You'll pick it up pretty fast because it's fairly standard.

Controlling Sheperd, on the other hand, can be rather tedious. There are lots of bugs in the control system. For example, there are times where Sheperd will move in random haphazard ways even when you're holding the stick firm in a given position. Next, when you're in a cover position or when entering a cover position, I've had several times when he'll enter cover and then immediately jump over the cover into a clear position to the enemy. Frustrating!

Death Halo

Mass Effect is another in this growing series of games that prefers the death halo to putting an actual health bar on the screen. No No NO!. No death halos! Whoever dreamed up with this idea needs to be slapped and slapped hard! Get RID of the death halo. The reason it doesn't work is that 1) it covers the entire screen so you can't see what you're doing, 2) the controller becomes less responsive so you cannot move out of the way of fire (let alone see what's even firing at you) and 3) it's just plain annoying. The first two points are enough to prove that this idea is stupid and doesn't work.

Camera

This is one in a handful of recent games were the camera has, yet again, become an issue. When you're able to shoot at a distance, this mode works great. However, when you have enemies that get right up next to you, the camera fails horribly. First, the enemies that like close contact get so close to you they're touching you. So, there's no way to position the camera so you can even see them. Second, because they are so close, you can't even use a gun. You have to use a melee tactic. The trouble is, the zombie creatures (that love to do this) get right on top of you and congregate. When these enemies do this, you cannot even move. The zombies get right in your way and prevent character movement even when they aren't hitting you.

Between the poor camera system AND these stupid close contact enemies, this game completely fails with the camera. At least let me move the camera to a more distant position so I can see what's going on around me. For this combined problem alone, the game loses 1.5 points from the overall score right off the top. Camera problems should have long been resolved in games at this point. Going back to having camera problems means the designers were not thinking properly about the game design.

Missions

The missions are way too short and very repetitive. Different characters, same results. Move your character from point A to point B and do something at the end. Between points A and B, you fight a lot of enemies from behind cover. It's all mindless shooting and nothing really to think about. No puzzles, no thought provoking ideas, nothing. Just a lot of shooting. I was very disappointed with this part of the game. At least add some puzzle levels to the game. At least make the gamer use some kind of thought process more than pulling the trigger. Alas, it didn't happen. For an RPG style game, it's really pretty one-tracked.

Cinematics and scene skipping

With some cinematics, you can skip them. With others, you can't. There is no rhyme or reason why some are skippable and others aren't. On top of this fact, once you're in certain parts of the opening of a mission, you cannot pause or start the level over. You must wait through perhaps 5 or more minutes before you can get to a point where you can either save or start over. These points where the game is locked out of the save/load screen is very frustrating. It's especially frustrating when the game has automatically loaded an autosave and you want to actually load a different saved game. Yet another 1 point is immediately knocked off for this problem.

Saving

Save early and save often (when you actually can). There are times where the save screen is not available (see above)... and it's usually about the time when you want to save. Also, if there is even one enemy present on the playfield, you cannot save your game. I've had several glitches that have prevented me from saving my game because the game thought there was an enemy on the play field.

Loading

Yet another problem is with the loading after Sheperd dies. There is A for resume and X for load. If you press A for resume, it is random what game it will load... meaning, it could load the 'Restart Mission' version or it could load your last save. Because of this roll-of-the-dice loading technique, you may end up having to load the game twice. Loading the game twice (once as a mistake, once intentional) can sometimes take as long as 5 minutes. Again, another 1 point right off the top (so far, that's 3.5 points right off of the score).

Overall

The game could have been loads better and was slightly better than Mass Effect. They tried, I'll give them that. But, EA must have held Bioware back. This may be the last Mass Effect game I buy unless I know that they've put much more effort into the next game. The gameplay leaves a lot to be desired, it's very repetitive. Worse, though, are the glitchy bugs that make Sheperd uncontrollable at critical times. Even worse, in many cases the game intentionally drops enemies right behind you. I mean, immediately right behind you. So, you're forced to run away for cover. Totally unacceptable considering the camera problems. If, as a developer, you're going to play these combat games, than at least provide the gamer with a HUD scanner to see where your enemies actually are.

Oh, and considering the time era that this is supposed to be set in, it's absolutely ludicrous that Sheperd's suit doesn't contain a HUD scanner.

Score

Sound: 8.5/10
Graphics: 9/10 (very good, not perfect)
Gameplay: 7/10 (fair)
Story: 7/10
Bugginess: 5/10 (lots of glitching)
Controls: 5/10 (could be lots better)
Bang-to-buck: 2/10
Play Value: $10 (rent or buy)
Overall: 6/10 (slightly better than Mass Effect in limited ways)

Game design from a gamer's perspective Pt. 3

2010-02-07T02:47:00.000-08:00

Loading Screens Continued

You should always keep the gamer in mind when you design your game. Always! You should never program the game for your convenience. Always program for your target audience. So, when you design your loading screens, you need to consider how long it takes to get data into memory. If it takes longer than 2 minutes, it's taking too long. If you don't have a choice in this matter and it is what it is, then design a mini-game or alternative screen that the gamer can play with during the loading period. Alternatively, use of cinematics during this time is acceptable. Do use cinematics as ways of moving the game forward combined with loading the world into memory. Don't wait through loading screens only to watch a long cinematic and then get into the game.

Health pickups

If you design a game where the character will lose health, then always design a system to obtain health on the level. Batman Arkham Asylum is yet another shining (bad) example of how not to do this. Batman's designers chose to obtain health pickups by subduing other creatures. So, as long as there was something to subdue, you could get health. The problem with this 'feature' is that there were never enough enemies to subdue (Batman doesn't kill in the game). Worse, when you did subdue enemies, they gave you a pittance of health back. Meaning, you never could fully ever replenish your health bar. Don't do this. If the character needs health pickups, put enough health pickups around the level and make them blatantly obvious what and where they are. If that means attaching a medkit to the wall, do it. Also, health pickups should come in at least two sizes, small and large. Small increases about 1/4 of your health. Large sized should fully or almost fully replenish your health. I despise playing games where my health meter is always 1/4 full because I am unable to find health pickups.

Story

As we move more and more into cinematic games, it's now becoming increasingly important to weave gameplay together with story. Unfortunately, I've yet to find a single game that has successfully achieved this goal. The closest game was probably Oblivion. Oblivion's method was to weave each quest into its own substory. There was the 'main quest'. This quest basically starts and finishes the game. You can do this quest at any time, but because of the way it changes Cyrodil's landscape, it is best to wait until much later after completing many other smaller quests to tackle the main quest. Even still, there were smaller quests that needed to be completed before you could complete the main quest. Thus, this tied in at least exploration and completion of other goals into finishing the main story line. That unfolded other stories that helped solidify the main quest's story and ensure the gamer a much more immersive gaming experience.

A story is a story is a story. It doesn't matter whether you read a book, watch a movie or play a video game. The story is important to the entire affair. If the story is well written, has twists, feels complete and has a satisfying ending, then that's all you can ask. Games with weak stories or without stories at all are limp and lifeless like Dead Rising. Mindless games without a compelling story verge rapidly on boredom. A solid well thought out story not only keeps the gamer interested, it gives enough subtext for the gamer to become immersed in the world. That's exactly what a good story should do. Once you've gotten the person immersed in the story, they will continue to play for a long time. Games with great story lines include Oblivion, Halo 3, Halo 3 ODST and Fallout 3. A good game has great gaming elements. A great game combines the gaming with a solid story. A perfect game devises a way to marry the story and gameplay seamlessly (we've not gotten here yet).

Granted, not all game styles need a story. For example, sports games and racing games don't really need them. But, it helps if there is some kind of story involved. For example, Gran Turismo is pretty much a straight racing game. The goal is to race your way through each event and improve your car. That's pretty much one tracked. Now, if you took that gaming element and wrapped it around a person and events in their life, that would make Gran Turismo take on a whole new dimension in gameplay. You could even open up free roaming aspects to let the person walk around the cities and find things to enhance the car or their driving skills. Just think of a combination of Grand Theft Auto and Gran Turismo together in one game!

Gameplay

Enemy and Boss Tactics

Perhaps this should have been under the bosses section, but I also feel it needs to be under game play. When designing how a boss works, do not use an unkillable/undamageable boss simply to whittle down player health for later smaller enemy attacks. This is frustrating and annoying. If you're going to let the gamer battle the boss, then let them battle it. Don't do some intro game play where it's impossible to kill (or even wound) the boss. If the boss can't take any damage during a specific area of play, then it should not be there. Only enemies on the play field that can actually be killed or damaged should be actively engaging the player. If something can't be killed or damaged, then it should not be there... or at least, it should not be launching damage salvos at the player character. This is similar to Perfect Aim. Don't do it. Only killable or damageable enemies should be actively engaging the player character.

Character Control - Messing with a good thing

Here's an issue where changing controller mappings sometimes works, but most times doesn't. As a game designer, be mindful of your intended gamer audience. Between the PS3 and the Xbox 360, the controllers are similar enough that you can map similar styles to each of the buttons. For example, the analog sticks usually are reserved for camera on one and movement on the other with the buttons mapped to attack, jump, climb, etc. This is the perfect combination. Because so many games have used this style of mapping, don't mess with a good thing. If you want to design a 3D shooter or RPG, use this style. Don't think that because you decided to put the camera movement on the bumper buttons that that will make your game better. Don't do it. Stick with what works and is accepted.

If you decide to modify the usual and standard controller layout to something odd, then at least give the gamer the ability to change this mapping to a controller style of other familiar games. Don't lock the gamer to a non-standard button mapping system and force them to play the game that way. Having to relearn the controller layout for your game is just bad design and, worse, may even doom your title into obscurity and lackluster sales.

Also, don't lock gamers into using the Xbox Kinect, the PS3 Move, PS3 Sixaxis or the Wiimote motion controllers for your games. Give the gamer the option of using a standard controller to play. Simply because you, as the designer, feel the game may be better experienced by using these motion control systems may alienate an entire paying audience who can't (or won't) play games using these motion control systems. Spend the time to add a standard controller layout to your game along side these novelty controllers.

Cameras

I know a lot of people are familiar with the use of fixed cameras through franchises like Resident Evil and early Tomb Raider titles. As much as Resident Evil liked this style of camera, when designing your title, don't do it. The trouble with Resident Evil becomes quite apparent very rapidly once game play starts: Enemies can hide out of the camera view and damage the player. The player can't even see the enemy to kill it. This, once again, goes back to Perfect Aim (and Perfect Vision). In game, the enemies aren't reliant on the camera and can 'see' exactly where the player is. The gamer, on the other hand, is limited by what's shown on screen by the camera. Fixed cameras prevent the player from seeing critical parts of the game playfield. Don't use fixed cameras. Always use a floating camera and let the player move the camera to wherever they need it to be. The camera is the only way to view into this game world. Don't cripple the player by imposing stupid restrictions on the camera. The camera should never be used as a challenge element. It should only be thought of as a way to peer into the world. If the player can't see the world in the way they need to see it, they will get frustrated and stop playing the game.

Recently, I've found few games that cripple the camera. However, every once in a while a game will come along and try to do something creative with the camera. In fact, by crippling the camera the only thing the developers have done with their game is doom it to obscurity and failure.

Audio and Soundtracks

Music is an important element in any game. It's what sets the mood and tone of a given level. It can swell to indicate enemies approaching. It can diminish to indicate the battle is done. There are lots of ways to use music and sound effects in creative astonishing ways. The trouble with some soundtracks, though, is monotony. Be careful to use the right music at the right time. Don't use hip-hop music when doing a medieval genre game (not that I've seen anyone do this, yet). That's an extreme example, but be aware of what you need. I prefer orchestral music in games as it's soothing at necessary times and intense at others. Heavy metal can be used in some instances successfully, but it can be out of place at other times. So, be cautious of using heavy metal in a game you design. The same can be said of techno, so be careful with this genre. The style and type of music, though, can definitely help or hurt your storyline. It can make the difference between an emotional scene or making it stupid.

Coming Up:

Characters
Computer Graphics: 3D models, textures, lighting
Playability
Easter Eggs
In-game Tutorials

Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Game design from a gamer's perspective Pt. 2

2010-02-06T05:32:00.000-08:00

Time Wasting Continued

When designing a game, you're already asking the game player to forfeit part of their lives on your game. But, as long as the gamer is having fun, they don't see that as a loss. However, what is a loss are all of the time wasting moments that are not in-game. For example, loading screens, cinematics, transition scenes, etc. These are all non-playing aspects of the game. Anything that takes the gamer away from the action and forces them into a 'watching' or 'waiting' mode is dead-time. This is true time wasting at its best. To avoid these dead times, always allow the gamer to do something. If that means designing a mini-game or putting up an experience management page, allow the gamer to do something during dead time.

Dead time is what can also make or break a game. Too much dead time and the game becomes boring. Gamers will move on to more action oriented games and leave yours behind. If you want to keep the gamer excited, be acutely aware of dead time. A good example of how to prevent dead time is Assassin's Creed II. During loading screens, you can at least play with Desmond and make him run and so forth. This gives the gamer at least something to do during these dead times.

Also, do not waste a game player's time by making them do pointless activities. Think heavily about each part and level of your game. Consider if it moves the game forward or if it's exciting for the gamer. If it neither moves the story forward nor is exciting for the gamer, remove it from the title or spice it up and make it worthwhile. A few good examples of this are chests, cupboards or containers that contain nothing. If you're going to create a container, put something in it. Make it worth the gamer's while to search for things. If you're planning on creating a level, put something on the level to make it worth being there (a boss, treasure, something.. anything). The prime example of a level being done badly is in Darksiders. The Vulgrim Tunnels are pointless. You walk down a path from start to finish with nothing in that void (literally). Unless they're trying to give your character exercise or test your walking skills, there's nothing here to do. Don't do this in your game.

For loading screens, though, it is suggested to load a mini-game, a shop or an experience screen and let the user manage their character until the loading of the next level is complete. Even better, use incremental loading during the game and never have a loading screen at all. For dungeons or other rooms, begin to prefetch these in the game when the gamer gets close enough to the room. So, if the gamer opens the door and enters, the room is nearly already loaded. This can cut loading times in half or more.

Bosses

There is plenty to be said about bosses. Let's just cut to the chase, though. Bosses can be done right or done wrong. Most times, however, the reason a boss level is done wrong is not because of the boss itself. Many times it's done wrong because the game designer didn't work through the proper method of how it should work.

In Batman Arkham Asylum, for example, the bosses in this game weren't the issue. They were hard, yes. But, the issue is that the game relied on trial and error play to win the level. This means that your character must die and start over many times in order to find a strategy to defeat the boss. This goes back to time wasting. Making the gamer restart the boss battle over and over and over is a utter time waster. Don't do this. The problem with Batman, though, goes back to the fact that Batman's health drops rapidly. Far too rapidly for the amount of armor he is supposed to be wearing. Secondarily, the game throws 12-15 enemies at Batman all at once. Then there are other issues, like certain moves the enemies can do that take away nearly 1/4 to 1/2 of Batman's health... merely by kicking or punching him.

So, in Batman, the way to win is let the enemies take out themselves and simply run around and avoid being hit. Yes, the enemies will attack each other. So, let them. The trouble, of course, is that you have to get them in a position to do so. They won't do it on their own. Batman must lure them.

Perfect Aim / Perfect Vision

One thing about enemies and bosses that always drives me nuts is perfect aim. In a digital world, we are limited by our view into this world through pixels. Because pixels are a fixed dimension, as objects get smaller they also get harder to read. But, the game world itself has clear vision to infinity. So, while the gamer is crippled by the pixel screen, the in-game enemies have perfect vision. This is an unfair advantage. So, for example, enemies can always seem to find, aim and target your player character perfectly. On the other hand, finding and aiming at enemies can be a challenge due to pixel size limitations.

When designing a game, please keep this in mind and compensate for the 'perfect vision' by at least making the enemies miss or aim incorrectly at least some of the time. Perfect aim gets old and tired in games. Don't do it. Do make the enemies miss more often the farther away they are from the player character. Basically, whatever rules you impose on the player to negatively affect aim should be applied to enemies and bosses. Even more than this is that extra care should be taken to ensure there is no such thing as 'perfect aim' in your game.

Enemies always targeting the Player Character

An offshoot of the Perfect Vision problem is game designers who design games so that the enemy AI always targets the player's character. Even if you have a team helping you, inevitably most games have their bosses and enemies target the player's character. This is stupid, unfair and unrealistic. If you have a team, the enemies should equally target each of the team. The player's character should have no more weight in being attacked than any other player. The trigger to whether a specific character should be attacked is if the character enters the enemy's block of influence. This means, as soon as any character gets in range, the enemy should 'see' and begin targeting that character. A perfect example of this being done wrong is in by Bioware in Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age Origins. In these games, once an enemy locks onto your character, it stays locked until you kill it or run away.

Character Deaths

Inevitably, when playing bosses, your character may die. How your game design team chooses to handle a character death is as important as any other aspect of the game. In some cases, it's even more important. Some games (Too Human) like to produce long drawn out unskippable death sequences. Don't do this. Instead, if you must show some kind of cinematic, make it quick and let the gamer skip it. If you are going to show a cinematic, use that time to reload the level. Don't wait until the cinematic is complete before reloading the level.

As far as level reloads, I never get this part of gaming. You already have the level loaded, yet you have to reload it again from scratch? This can take 1-2 minutes. Why do this? Instead, use the existing loaded level and simply reset all of the objects on the level. That's got to be faster than dumping the level and reloading it from disk. After all, you were already playing the level and it's already in memory. It may be slightly more complex to code this, but shaving the time off of the gamer's dead time gives the gamer much more in-game time. This is what you want. So, it IS worth the effort to code it. Smart coding leads to higher quality gaming.

The next issue with character deaths is using this as part of the gaming experience. The player characters should never die. Never. The goal is to keep the gamer in the game experience as much as possible. Making the gamer wade through death sequences time and time again goes back to time wasting. Don't do it. Do everything you can to avoid the character dying. If the character must die, then the reload to start the level should be instantaneous. No sequences, no specialty things, just fade out and fade back in. Let the gamer start immediately. We'll come to why this is important for the story shortly.

Loading Times

When a game needs to load a level or reload after a character death, it should be as fast as possible. There is no need for 3 minute loading screens. This is excessive and wasteful of the gamer's time. Granted, sometimes it can't be helped, but smart incremental loading can be designed. Oblivion and Fallout 3 are perfect examples of incremental loading of the environment. With incremental loading, the game never has a loading screen and instead is constantly fetching in-game data to build the next part of the environment. Waiting through loading screens is not mindful of the value of the gamer's time and suggests convenience on the part of the programmer and designer. Don't do this.

Coming Up:

Health Pickups
Story
Character Control
Controller Mapping
Audio & Music

Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Game design from a gamer's perspective

2010-02-05T09:47:00.000-08:00

This is a multi-part series on successful game design from a gamer's perspective. This article series will encompass such topics as story, models and texturing, lighting, artwork, gameplay, genre choice, audio and many other subtle aspects of creating 3D based video games. This article will also discuss what game techniques work and what to avoid. So, let's get started.

Successful games

Let's get right into the meat of this and discuss what makes a successful game. Clearly, success is nearly always measured by dollars. Specifically, how many units sold and how much profit was made. Even more, did the game pay off its debts that were generated during creation and did the revenue rise above those expenses to actually make money? For executives of gaming companies, this is the goal of a video game. But, was the game actually successful for the gamer? For the C-level executives, I'm sure they'd respond a resounding yes (assuming it exceeded its dollar goals). From their point of view, apparently enough gamers purchased the game to make the dollars at least work. But, was the game a success for the gamer? That's a completely different question.

From the gamer's perspective, the game may not actually work. An overhyped game from a brand resting on past successful history can produce games that appear successful, but only because a gamer was 'tricked' into the purchase. So, success of a game is measured both in dollars and in how the game was received by the gamer. The adage is still quite relevant, "Once bitten, twice shy". If you burn the gamer with a bad title, you likely won't get much respect from future titles. So, don't burn the people who keep you in business by producing bad titles.

So, that means you should measure success in two ways. First, money. Second, longevity. Money describes how well the gamers decided to adopt the game immediately. Longevity describes how long the gamer played the game before giving up or trading it in. If there are massive trade-ins within a few days, the game failed as a game. That's when the developers need to understand why it failed.

No longer can developers sit in a bubble and develop games without listening to gamer comments. With social networks like Twitter and blogging, it is more important than ever for developers to review forums, read critical reviews, listen to complaints and understand just what problems gamers have found in a game. These are issues that must be addressed, preferably in patch updates to the existing game if possible. If not, then these issues definitely need be addressed in any sequel games.

So, while sheer numbers may describe immediate monetary success, this does not tell the whole story. Executives who are simply bean counters fail to see the bigger picture. Gamers are finicky and will choose with their wallets. Once bitten, twice shy applies to game titles. More than this, it also applies to game development company loyalty more and more frequently. As a gamer, I know what companies to avoid. For example, I simply will not purchase any more Square Enix titles. I've been burned too many times from this company. I've about had it with EA as well. The quality of EA titles is so widely varied that it's too much of a risk. So, before I buy any EA titles, I must read reviews and play demos, if possible. I also feel this same way with Activision's and Atari's hit and miss strategy.

Game development: Ideas that work and techniques that don't

As a game developer, it's important to solidify the game style and format up front. All too many times, the gaming engine that is chosen dictates the game's play style. The choice, for example, of using the Havok engine may have serious consequences on the success or failure of the final game. So, choose your engine wisely based on game genre and understand its downsides carefully. For example, licensing the Havok engine for a full RPG is probably not a good idea. At least, it's not a good idea without some recoding effort.

Health Status Indicators

As an example of what doesn't work, there are some licensed engines that don't offer a health meter. Instead, the engine opts for a blood or out-of-focus halo around the screen. As health diminishes, the halo increases. For a gamer, this aspect can make the game frustrating and unplayable. Halos obscure the play view, so you can't see what you're doing (see Perfect Aim / Perfect Vision). Worse, some games inhibit the character's ability to play after a certain point. So, you can't move or respond correctly to enemies. This just leaves the gamer to stop right there and reload from a saved game. There's no point in continuing to play when you can't even control the character properly. Mass Effect 2 is the perfect example of a blood halo done poorly. In 2010, if you can't provide a health meter on the screen, don't bother creating the game. There is no reason not to provide a health status indicator (more than a blood halo). All too many times, especially in health screen halo engines, once you see the blood halo, your character has 1-3 hits left before completely dying. Worse, you can't properly see the screen to maneuver your character out of the way.

On the other hand, having an actual meter on the screen so you can see how many hit points you can take before dying is much more useful. It helps the gamer decide how strong a given enemy is by how much damage they deal. Having this information allows the gamer to create a strategy to beat that enemy and know their relative weapon strength.

Save Game Locations

There are many styles of game saves. These include checkpoint saves, save anywhere, pause save screen options and in-game save points (obelisk saves). Game developers need to understand that saving the game is not and should not be part of the game play. Don't weave in saves as part of the story or challenges. Saves are there for convenience to the gamer. They are there to allow the gamer to save progress and also allow the gamer to stop the game at selected times and/or prevent losing the work up to that point. Therefore, game save points should never be treated as some kind of obstacle, challenge or in-world treasure. Never.

It is preferable if game saves be allowed anywhere in the game. This style is the most efficient for the gamer and allows the gamer to prevent starting over time and time again. The game save style to completely avoid is the one that forces you to play through an incredibly long, hard and complex level with lots of chances for death before you reach an in-game save point. This style of gaming is frustrating and extremely bad design. It ensures the gamer will give up before they finish the game. Don't do this.

Checkpoint saves can be useful as long as there are enough checkpoints. Again, this goes back to in-game saving. If your team has decided that checkpoint saves will be the only mechanism for saving progress, then your team better make sure there are enough of them along the way. Otherwise, your game will end up in the same boat as the immediate example above. Keep in mind the pitfalls of using checkpoint saves, though. Checkpoint saves overwrite the previous save. So, the gamer can only start at the most recent checkpoint. This means they cannot step back two or three checkpoints and redo those sections of the game. If your game is the type where you can make choices that affect the outcome of the story, then checkpoint saves are not appropriate for this gaming style. Checkpoint saves are intended for mindless zombie killing. They are used where outcome of the game is irrelevant. For RPGs where choices can be made that affect outcome, do not use checkpoint saves. Instead, RPGs should always use save-anywhere saves. This allows the gamer to save before critical choices or battles and restart the battle from seconds before.

It's fine to combine save styles, though. If you allow save-anywhere saves and want to also create checkpoint or restart mission saves along side, that's fine. Again, though, beware of pitfalls. If the character dies on the level, let the gamer choose which save point to restore from. Do not automatically start loading from the checkpoint immediately after a character death. This is especially true if there is a newer save-anywhere save present. This is waste of the gamer's time as he/she will need to wait through that load sequence only to reload again from their own save. Mass Effect 2 is a prime example of this behavior. Do not do this!

Other saving issues include how much data is saved to the save file. For example, the best games store everything including character position in game, character level, inventory items, etc. With this save type, your character starts exactly where you left off. This is the best style of save format there is and the least disruptive to the gamer. Always choose this style of save when designing. Other save game file formats include starting over at the checkpoint. So, this file format stores only the start point and nothing else. In this case, the gamer starts the level over with a clean slate (no previous weapons, armor or whatever). This is frustrating because all of the stuff you'd found to that point is lost. Don't do this... especially on an RPG. Don't force the gamer to backtrack in a game to get goodies a second, third or fourth time. For shooters, it may be acceptable, but even here I wouldn't recommend it.

Time Savings

As part of the game, don't waste the gamer's time on irrelevant or unnecessary things. These things include long loading screens, long death sequences or unskippable cinematic sequences. In this goal, the pause button on the controller should work 100% of the time in game. Granted, certain times you can't, like intro loading screens, game saving sequences and other operations that can't easily be interrupted. But, as long as it's in game, pause and load panels should be available 100% of the time. Again, Mass Effect 2 is the prime example of not doing this correctly.

Coming up in part 2:

Bosses (when is too much or not enough)
Character Deaths
Loading screens
Loading times

Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Xbox 360 - Assassin's Creed II

2010-01-11T01:37:00.000-08:00

Assassin's Creed II by Ubisoft

Assassin's Creed (series) is interesting and unique as a story. It is definitely adult oriented, so parents may want to review the content prior to allowing children access. With that said, let's get going...

Assassin's Creed II is a reasonably well done game. The flaws and repetitive nature have been mostly removed from this sequel. The game plays pretty much like the first game, but with some improvements. I was hoping for more, but Ubisoft didn't improve the game substantially over Assassin's Creed.

Story

The game starts in the present with Lucy and Desmond. Desmond had been kidnapped by Abstergo to probe his mind using a device called the Animus. During probing his mind, the Animus brings to life past historical events. So, Desmond lives as Altair in a distant past and inherits some of Altair's powers.

In this second installment, Desmond and Lucy escape from Abstergo and set up shop as rebel present-day assassins using an different kind of hacked-together Animus devised by a hacker. In this game, Desmond goes back to the time of Leonardo Da Vinci in various cities in Italy (during the Renaissance). The game's new character is Ezio. Ezio has all of the abilities of Altair (climbing, assassinating, weapons and even now armor). There is a fighting arena that lets Ezio learn new skills. In addition to what Altair could do, now there's the ability to build out a town and spend money on things in the town (to improve it). As Ezio improves his town, his 'salary' goes up. The salary is placed into a chest about every 20 minutes of play. The more you improve the town, the more money you make every 20 minutes. So, spend the money on improvements if you need cash.

New Things

Now you can buy paintings and obtain weapons and armor. The paintings improve the value of the palace that Ezio owns. The weapons and armor also improve the value, but at the same time give Ezio more armor and strength. The reality is, these new features are more apt to provide income potential. The new armors only improve the amount of health points you hold. The armor really doesn't do much for protecting you better (i.e., take less damage)

There are now 'leap of faith' points all over town that are easier to spot. Whenever you see pigeons sitting on a roof, that's a 'leap of faith' point. In Assassin's Creed, they weren't as easy to distinguish.

There are other additions like locating symbols throughout the level that compiles a database of the artifacts of Eden. These are side quests and really don't factor into the main story.

Things Removed

Inevitably, some things have been removed. For example, the eavesdropping puzzles in Assassin's Creed are now gone in Assassin's Creed II.

Gameplay / Controls

Overall, the gameplay is similar to Assassin's Creed. So, if you're familiar with climbing and assassination, then you'll already be familiar. The main problem I found with the controls is that they don't always work as well as you would like. I found this same issue in the first game. Worse, as the game progresses and adds more upgrades, it becomes increasingly harder to control Ezio properly. So, he'll jump off of high buildings all the way to the ground when I didn't control him that direction. This control behavior of Ezio is very frustrating.

Repetition

I didn't find this game quite as repetitive as the first game. The repetition is there, but the stories feel much more like Grand Theft Auto IV (the way they begin) than Assassin's Creed did. There are plenty of side quests and some of them are repetitive. There are also side quest areas that reset. So, even though you may have cleared a codex page, the guards will reappear around the doorway even though there's nothing there to get a second time.

Overall

I enjoyed playing this game and it's better than Assassin's Creed. But, it still hasn't fully resolved the issues of being overly repetitive in places. The main problem, though, is the controls. I found, as I did with the first game, that the control of Ezio gets increasingly harder and harder as the game continues. Some of that may be because they are overloading the controller with new skills that are easily triggered, but some of it just seems to be the game.

Score

Sound: 8/10
Graphics: 8/10 (needs more realistic shaders)
Gameplay: 8/10 (good, but not substantially better)
Story: 9.5/10
Bugginess: N/A
Controls: 7/10 (controls get increasingly harder)
Bang-to-buck: 3/10
Play Value: $15 (rent or buy)
Overall: 8/10

Xbox 360 - Batman Arkham Asylum

2010-01-11T00:05:00.000-08:00

Batman Arkham Asylum

by Eidos / Rocksteady / Brady Games

This game is a third person fighting and questing style game. You play as

Batman (Dark Knight). As Batman, you enter the Arkham Asylum to ensure the Joker is properly restrained and placed into a cell. Batman is taking no chances and goes into Arkham Asylum. Of course, the Joker has other plans... and that's when things go wrong.

So, of course, the plan to secure the Joker fails (otherwise there would be no game) and that's where you begin this Batman game.

Problems

This game has many problems. From the 'death screens', which are incredibly long and annoying with their 'Sorry you're dead' speeches, to the game constantly cheating and ultimately to bad control over Batman during critical times. Ultimately, the game does not give the gamer a fair shake. While Batman has limited abilities and aim, the enemies have perfect aim and perfect skills. Combining this with overly broad collision detection (bullets always find Batman), and you've got a winning (or losing, as the case may be) combination to make this game entirely frustrating to play.

Worse, the game is designed as a 'death trial and error' style game. So, Batman ends up dying over and over and over and over until you're sick of this process (or you figure out how to get through). Frankly, there is no point in this. It takes far too much time to cycle through all of those 'death' screens waiting to get back into the action. On top of that, you have to wait through intro screens before you can press B to skip the cinematics.

Story

You play as Batman to re-secure the Joker properly into a cell in Arkham Asylum. Along the way, you gain skills and unlock Batman features. To get these skills, you gain Experience Points (XP) which unlocks upgrades. As you upgrade your character you can add armor, weapons and skills. Unfortunately, these upgrades come far too slowly for my liking.

Health

This is one of the biggest flaws in this game. While you play, there is no real way to add health to Batman. Instead, as you unravel quests or subdue 'bad guys', your health meter is increased (if you've lost health). Unfortunately, a single action never adds enough. So, you spend a lot of time trying to gain back lost health. There are no 'health pickups or medicine packs' in this game. So, you have to rely on subduing people and finishing quests to get health back. If you've already cleared the level of enemies and quests, you're kind of stuck.

Dying

This is another in a long list of games that just simply and plainly drives me nuts. Again, the developers have designed the game so Batman must 'die' in order to replay the level again and again and again. So, you find Batman is constantly dying only to restart the level from the last checkpoint in order to muddle through the strategy of the level. Not only does this become frustrating just from the 'starting over' perspective, you have to endure incredibly annoying taunts from the Joker and Poison Ivy (among others) at the 'death screens'. That part of the game frustrated me so much, I turned voice audio off. I simply did not want to listen to this anymore.

Fighting

The style of fighting in this game is limited and, again, the game cheats. There are far too many times where you press the buttons on the controller, but it doesn't respond and the game takes away health anyway. I really despise games that cheat and this is one of them. So, for this alone, this game loses one point immediately from its overall score.

Disarming Enemies

Unfortunately, Batman cannot do this. Instead, you have to keep hitting them until they drop their weapon. However, even though they've dropped the weapon, they can pick it right back up. Batman has no control over discarding, destroying or throwing away weapons laying on the ground. Batman also cannot use these weapons. So, the weapons continue to lay there for some other thug to pick up and use on Batman again.

Bosses

The levels get progressively harder and harder. The bosses also get progressively bigger and bigger (thanks, in part, to the Titan formula.. which you find out more about as the story progresses). The Titan formula (which comes from Bane) increases soldier sizes to much larger soldiers (bosses). As you progress, the game throws more and more of these at you in waves. So, you might fight one big boss and five fighters early in the game, by the end you might have 3 waves of 10 fighters combined with two big bosses (all at the same time). The fights get longer and longer and are extended by the 'death trial and error' gaming process.

Trial and error gaming

I despise games that force the gamer into using trial and error to play through the game. As a gamer, you waste lots of time trying to find the proper 'strategy' to defeat the bosses rather than focusing on the game and story. So, you might spend a day working through a boss level rather than actually progressing in the game. For me, making the story come to a complete stop by requiring trial and error gaming tells me that the story isn't important. It also tells me that the game developer doesn't value the gamer's time. A gamer's time is critical to use properly. Wasting a gamer's time is the quickest way to the death of a quality game. Don't do it. Don't use trial and error as a gaming strategy. Don't require dying as a strategy to play the game. Don't use annoying repetitive dying screens and death taunts that are unskippable. Let the gamer get immediately back into the game.

The End (of the game and of each level)

The endings of the levels and of the end of the game needs work. You work through fighting the bosses, but when it comes time to finish off each boss, it's a complete letdown. Instead of getting to put the finishing moves on the character, the game moves to a pre-recorded cinematic that shows the final blow. Taking this approach is a complete letdown. I've spent the better part of an hour or two fighting through the level only to see a cut scene?

This issue is present on each level and even on the final Joker showdown. Ultimately, this is extremely frustrating and a huge letdown not being able to give the final blow in game.

Audio

The music is tolerable, the chatter is not. After about 1/3 of the way into the game, I quickly realized the trial and error nature of this game. Worse, though, is that during the death trial and error sequences, you have to sit through annoying taunts from the enemies during cut scenes. You can eventually cut these scenes short, but not before the annoying taunt is mostly finished. I ended up turning off the voice audio about halfway through the game and that simplified the game dramatically. It also made the game much more bearable. Otherwise, I would have probably put this game down completely.

Graphics

The imagery used in this game feels an awful lot like Bioshock. The game isn't as dark and moody as Bioshock, but there is still enough feel here for me to think of it while playing Arkham Asylum. But, even as much as the game may look like Bioshock, that's where the similarity ends. This game plays nothing like Bioshock and is a weak wannabe contender to Bioshock.

Overall

This game is a reasonable game that contains some nasty flaws. The levels are reasonably well done. The Bat tools are well thought out and work well. But, the annoyances far outweigh the coolness of playing as Batman. I realize this is the first installment to this series, so the first one will have problems. For the developers, the takeaway is to get rid of these annoyances and let the gamer move forward in the game (and story) without them. Also, you should never ever stop the progression of the story at the expense of a boss level. Never. Let's hope Batman Arkham Asylum 2 fixes these issues.

Score

Sound: 7/10
Graphics: 9/10
Gameplay: 7/10 (a mixed bag)
Story: 8/10
Bugginess: N/A
Controls: 7/10
Bang-to-buck: 1/10
Play Value: $5 (rent)
Overall: 6/10

Xbox 360 - Dragon Age Origins

2009-11-18T03:26:00.000-08:00

Dragon Age Origins by EA Games / Bioware

I was hoping for great things from this RPG. Having seen Mass Effect and

Knights of the Old Republic, I was hoping for something similar in terms of play value. Well, unfortnately, Bioware doesn't fully deliver.

It almost seems as though Bioware felt the need to start over in this genre. While the party system and the questing system seems similar to Mass Effect, at the same time, it feels very much like a rewrite. I also don't remember so many fundamental problems with Mass Effect or KOTOR.

Story

You play through this tale as any of the standard RPG classes: Warrior, Mage, Rogue (middle of the road), etc. You can choose from the standard races of the Tolkien-type era: Human, Elf, Dwarf, etc. I say 'etc' because I'll leave part of the game unspoiled in case you want to play through yourself.

Gameplay

The game play style is similar to Mass Effect in that you roam levels, find things and reveal a story in the process. So, the controller layout is similar and there's nothing overly complex about it. So, that's at least a good thing.

Fundamental problems

Where this game falls down at gameplay is the incessant dialog. The dialog is not just never ending, it's downright annoying. Seems about every place you end up important in the game, you end up having dialog that goes on and on and on and on. Yes, you can make choices in the dialog, but please. This is overkill. This is fundamental mistake number 1 from Bioware: too much dialog. At first, I found myself walking through the dialog carefully. After the twentieth time of it, I find myself skipping most of it (X key).

With this game, save early and save often. Especially if you think something is about to happen (like more incessant dialog). This way, you can go back to a previous save and see the various outcomes of various dialog choices. Saving early prevents your entire party's death.

Health issues

The second fundamental problem is that, unlike Oblivion, the enemy is whatever level that they are. So, that means that if you're level 6, you might end up fighting a level 20 enemy. Oblivion would level up the enemies around you close to your level, but yet still a challenge. With Dragon Age, I find my character is far far weaker than the characters in my party and even the enemies. On top of the characters being far weaker than they should, the game is predisposed to throw massive amounts of enemies at you at once. So, your party of 4 may encounter 20-30 creatures at once. You do have the ability to heal and the ability to drink potions. So,while a mage character can heal party members remotely, you must take control of each character separately to drink potions (tedious and time consuming).

Inventory system

The final fundamental problem is that Bioware failed to provide an adequate inventory system. First, the inventory bag is too small. So, after you pick up a certain amount of items (not very many I might add), you're out of space. So, I find myself constantly destroying items to pick up others. Selling items to traders is few and far between. Second, there is no rhyme or reason to size or weight of items. So, for example, you might have to destroy many items just to allow another item to be picked up (like a scroll). It's very random with regards to this issue. I find myself having to go through and delete items throughout the inventory just to find the proper item type or size to allow me to pick up something new.

On top of this problem, there's the lack of randomness of items around the levels. So, when you find an item, nearly every chest or container has the same item (and lots of it). So, you end up picking up 20 of a thing. Worse, when you go into the inventory to destroy an item (or 20 of them). You put them in the trash all or nothing. You can't choose to move only 10 of them. If there are 20, you must move all 20 to the trash and you must destroy all 20. Stupid.

Maps

The map is limited and problematic to navigate. There is no fast travel to speak of other than from the main map which only allows travel when you reach a 'World Map' portal. You can open the world map at any time, but you can only travel using this map when you are at a 'World Map' portal.

Graphics

For as long as it has taken to get this game to market, the graphics feel far too low res. In fact, most of the texture maps (landscape, trees, plants) are poor quality and far too low resolution. I was definitely expecting more out of this title considering the quality of Mass Effect. Unfortunately, it didn't appear here.

Uninspired

Because of the fundamental problems that Bioware did not resolve before bringing this game to market, it makes the game tedious and not very much fun to play. The overly long dialog sequences make the game grindingly tedious. I find the story uninspired and not engaging. As well, the story feels unfinished and the game feels rushed even though I know it took Bioware plenty of time to get it to market. Because of these fundamental problems in design, this game is nowhere near a 10. In fact, Mass Effect's story far exceeds the quality of this story.

Overall

This game could have been something special. Unfortunately, Bioware managed to botch the title and make it average. The game unfolds far too slowly, the dialog is incessant, the characters are far too weak, and the fighting portions are overly uninvolved. That's not to say I don't recommend playing this RPG, just don't put it at the top of your list. Instead, for RPGs, save the top for Oblivion, Fallout 3 and even Mass Effect and follow up with some great shooters like Bioshock and the Halo series. Or, pick up some new titles like Assassin's Creed II or Halo 3 ODST. For more adult themes, there is great play value with Grand Theft Auto, Saint's Row (1 or 2) and even Call of Duty. If you have played all of the other major RPGs, only then would I suggest playing this game. Alternatively, you might want to save the money and wait for Mass Effect 2 in 2010.

Score

Sound: 8/10
Graphics: 6/10
Gameplay: 6/10 (too many fundamental problems)
Story: 7.5/10
Bugginess: N/A
Controls: 9/10
Bang-to-buck: 3/10
Play Value: $15 (rent first, then buy)
Overall: 6.5/10

Xbox 360 - Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2

2009-10-26T04:50:00.000-07:00

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 by Activision

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is the sequel to Ultimate Alliance. In this game, you get to play as most of the major Marvel characters including Spiderman, Deadpool, Capt. Fantastic, Invisible Girl, Human Torch, The Thing, Iceman, Wolverine, Ironman, Captain America and several others.

Story

In this game, the mutants are being forced to register themselves and their real identity with the government. Captain America takes offense to this act and goes rebel to keep the freedom. Others side with the government. From this division comes an enemy who takes control over many of the superheroes with nano technology and forces them to try to kill both humans and mutants. As the alliance, you must stop this from happening and clean it all up.

Gameplay

This game is pretty much the same as the first one with the exception that you could change out characters even when they were knocked out in the first game. In this version, that was taken out of the game which leaves your team weakened when one of your heroes is knocked out. Although, you can revive them if you get the right pickup.

Controls

The controls are easy and reasonably simple. It is a combo based game, though, so be prepared to press lots of buttons to get the right power out of the individual hero.

Overall

I liked the game about as much as the first game. I was hoping for more in this one, but didn't really get very much in that department. The story was reasonably engaging. Moreso than the first game, I'd say. Overall, I liked the game, but it would be preferable to rent it over buying it. It's not a keeper and it doesn't warrant a second play through.

Score

Sound: 8/10
Graphics: 8/10
Gameplay: 8/10
Story: 9/10
Bugginess: N/A
Controls: 9/10
Bang-to-buck: 3/10
Play Value: $15 (rent or buy)
Overall: 8.5/10

PS3 - Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

2009-10-26T04:34:00.000-07:00

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves by Sony / NaughtyDog

Style: Third Person Shooter

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is the sequel to Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. This game is similar to Lara Croft's Tomb Raiders series of games in story, but gameplay is a third person free roaming shooter. You are an Indiana Jones kind of character seeking fortune through antiquities.

Gameplay

The game is similar to Drake's Fortune, but they've done away with the timed button press maneuvering system (at least so far). Otherwise, the system is pretty much standard for a shooter. You can move through the various weapons you carry. It is a free form questing kind of system, so you can roam the levels looking for Easter Eggs. Unfortunately, there really aren't enough Easter Eggs to make wandering the levels terribly productive. So, you find yourself not really looking very hard after a while.

Story

The story is that you are seeking a treasure that could lead you to Shangri La / Shambala. So, that's where you are heading. Along the way you run into various people who help or hinder you in that process. Ultimately, everyone needs you because of your knowledge. So, you end up tagging along with everyone even if they don't want you there.

Overall

The game is reasonably long, so the Bang-to-Buck is reasonably high here. Unfortunately, I don't find this game as enthralling as the original game. The character models also don't look as good as I remember from Drake's Fortune. So, it looks like they may have cut some corners to get this one out the door.

The game is reasonably well done, but it's definitely not a must-have game. If you want to play it, buy it. But, I felt that the first Uncharted was better than this one because it was new. This one didn't really improve on Uncharted in any substantial way, so it feels like more of the same.

Score

Sound: 8/10 (better than average)
Graphics: 8/10 (characters could have been better)
Gameplay: 8/10 (same as Drake's fortune)
Story: 8/10 (good, but not perfect)
Bugginess: N/A
Controls: 9/10
Bang-to-buck: 6/10 (reasonably long play value)
Play Value: $15 (rent or buy, probably not a keeper)
Overall: 8/10 (I expected more from this sequel)

Xbox 360 - Clone Wars Republic Heroes

2009-10-26T03:58:00.000-07:00

Clone Wars - Republic Heroes by LucasArts

Family Friendly: Yes

LucasArts games are hit-and-miss lately. Republic Heroes is a miss. It fails to understand what Star Wars is about. I understand they were trying to make this game feel like the new 3D comic, but it fails to accomplish this well enough.

Gameplay

This is basically a level based game like Super Mario Sunshine or Sonic 3D. It has a stylistic comic look. It attempts to look like the new Star Wars Clone Wars comics. While it mostly succeeds with this, the gameplay mostly fails.

You play as Anakin with his padawan. The padawan follows you around. You crawl the levels with the light saber killing lots of droids over and over. It becomes pretty repetitive relatively quickly. Like Sonic's Rings or Mario's coins, Anakin has blue orbs to pick up. So, as you run around the levels, this what you will need to pick up throughout.

Later on, you get to switch up and play as a Clone trooper for some unknown reason. The gameplay is identical to playing with Anakin, so there's nothing special here.

Achievements

You can get a lot of achievements fairly rapidly with this one. So, if you're looking for easy achievements, this game has them.

Overall

The game is intended for a young audience who's attention span is reasonably short. I found the game extremely repetitive and underwhelming. The story was mostly not there and the graphics were simply mediocre. There's not much depth to this game, so it's mostly about getting the blue orbs.

Score

Sound: 7/10 (better than average)
Graphics: 6/10 (could be much better)
Gameplay: 5/10 (far too linear, no depth)
Story: 5/10 (fair)
Bugginess: N/A
Controls: 9/10 (best part of the game)
Bang-to-buck: 1/10 (expensive, not enough to do)
Play Value: $5 (rent it)
Overall: 5/10 (could have been much better)

Xbox 360 - Borderlands

2009-10-26T03:40:00.000-07:00

Borderlands by 2K games / Gearbox

Borderlands tries to be a semi-comic based roll playing / questing game. It uses an outline 3D model that makes the game look like a cartoon. Combing this with a cartoon image map on the models, it feels like a comic. Unfortunately, while it feels like a comic, I don't like this graphic style as it always feels cheap and unfinished. If they're going to work in a 3D world, then just do the 3D like 3D. Halo 3 is one game that uses a full 3D approach, but still takes a stylistic approach to the 3D models that keeps it from appearing 'realistic'.

Gameplay

You get to pick from four different characters to play. Each of the four characters has their own abilities. I won't spoil that here in case you want to play, but you'll get to see the characters and their abilities within five minutes of beginning the game.

The weapon button system is a bit confusing. So, it will take me a little bit of time to get used to where they are. The movement system is reasonably standard, though. So, getting around the environment is easy. The enemies in the game are all over the place, so you'll have to constantly deal with killing them.

Questing system

In order to level up, you will need to complete quests for various people. As you complete the quests, you get paid back with experience points. The trouble with this game, though, is that I don't see any real benefit to the experience points. I probably haven't played enough through the entire game yet to know if they matter, but it should really be apparent within the first few quests of playing.

Map

There is a map, but it's not that helpful (doesn't show enemies). So, you're pretty much on your own when you need to locate things.

Controls

As I said above, the weapon controls are a bit confusing so I have to reprogram myself into this game. I prefer games that choose to mimic a popular game's button system rather than creating their own. When they choose to create their own system, it takes time for the gamer to learn the system.

Overall

The game is reasonably well done. But, the quests are silly and the game itself doesn't seem to take itself seriously enough either. So, it all seems very tongue-in-cheek. While that can work, I'd prefer they didn't do this here. Questing / Roleplaying games usually suffer from tongue-in-cheek storytelling and this game is no exception.

This game is not a Fallout 3 or Oblivion by any stretch. For a role playing and questing game, it's a good first attempt. However, it needs a lot more work to get near the caliber of Fallout 3 or Oblivion. I'm hoping that 2k / Gearbox can figure this out for a sequel (assuming it does well enough for that).

Score

Sound: 6/10 (better than average)
Graphics: 7/10 (low res)
Gameplay: 7.5/10 (it's hard to like a rail shooter)
Story: 6/10 (not engaging enough)
Bugginess: N/A
Controls: 6.5/10 (learning curve)
Bang-to-buck: 1/10 (not worth replaying)
Play Value: $10 (rent it)
Overall: 6/10 (doesn't grow on you)

Xbox 360 - Halo 3 ODST

2009-10-26T02:19:00.000-07:00

Halo 3 ODST by Bungie / Microsoft

ODST stands for Orbital Drop Shock Troops (or Troopers). These troops were part of the elite guard just behind the Spartans (Master Chief from Halo 3). The ODST are deployed in other parts of the fight separately from the Spartans. Spartans are deployed to work on mission critical operations (usually alone).

Therefore, Halo 3 ODST is a side-by-side sequel to Halo 3. This means that what's going on in ODST happens at the same time as the stories from Master Chief in Halo 3.

Campaign Story

Your character is deployed as an ODST. As you progress through the game, you will play as several different characters in the game. As an ODST, your armor is not nearly as strong as a Spartan. But, it's reasonably strong and recovers fast from gun fire.

The story is told after-the-fact with your character finding artifacts that trigger flashbacks. As the flashbacks occur, you get to play as other ODST from their perspective of what happened. After the flashback is over, you're back in the present holding the object you examined that triggered the flashback.

While this storytelling technique is good for cinema (because of the fast pacing), inside a video game this storytelling technique gets jumbled and is a bit disconcerting. The pace the game plays also leads to issues with these flashbacks. Personally, if I had been designing this game I would have done it as a straight forward first person shooter without all the cinematic gimmickry. Needless to say, once you understand the perspective and the flashback system, you get used to it and understand what it is and where the story is going.

Gameplay

The game plays pretty much identically to Halo 3 with the exception that your ODST armor is far weaker than a Spartan. To make up for this, there are a reasonably generous supply of Optican health pickups on most levels. You can also regenerate your armor by ducking behind something. Although, I remember hearing long before release that there wouldn't be any shields at all, but I guess Bungie changed that idea or the rumor was incorrect. As for controls, if you're familiar with Halo 3, you'll fall right into ODST's controls.

Audio / Music

The music is serene and calming. The designers choose to use orchestral and synth mixes that are light, simple and dramatic. A lot of games like to throw heavy metal at you in charged scenes, the Halo 3 franchise has never done this.. including ODST. I wouldn't say that music is cinematic, but it works for the environments.

Packaging / Extras

The game ships with two disks. Unlike Halo 3 which contained both the multiplayer and the campaign game on one disk, Halo 3 ODST has split this up into two disks. The first disk is campaign mode. The second disk is multiplayer mode. The first disk also contains the 'firefight' mode which is effectively your character against AI monsters in a multi-player type level. You get points for each enemy you kill and you have a limited number of lives in which to do this. So, this gaming mode is primarily for high score points.

Multiplayer

I am not a big fan of multiplayer level portions of most games. ODST is no exception. So, I rarely get into this part of the game. Mostly the reason I avoid this is that I don't enjoy being constantly shot by some kid who feels the need to target one person over and over. While I understand the reasoning behind putting this game portion onto the second disk, I don't generally play or review these sections as they get boring really fast. Mostly the reason I don't review them is that they are pretty much all the same. Pick a level and then play one of several games: Capture the Flag, Bomb the Base or free-for-all kill fest (death match). Once you've played these types of levels, you've pretty much played them all. So, it's very difficult to review this in an objective way multiple times. Suffice it to say that if you enjoy this part of the game, it's here.

Overall

The game progresses in the present with your character wandering through a mostly deserted area looking for anything important and trying to get out of there. As flashbacks, you are an ODST who just dropped. So, the game plays off of the early part of the drop against the last part of the drop.

I found the game reasonably easy. Easier than I expected and easier than Halo 3. It is reasonably well done, but I think it felt a little too familiar and safe. I wish that Bungie had done something more daring with this game to give it something unique.

Overall, I was disappointed with the end result of the campaign level, However, it was close to as much fun as Halo 3. Although, there doesn't appear to be any skulls to be found in Campaign mode (at least not on the Normal hardness). I was hoping for a more unique experience. That didn't pan out. I also felt the levels seemed a bit too small overall. I liked the more expansive qualities of Halo 3's levels.

Score

Sound: 9/10 (better than average)
Graphics: 8.5/10 (good, but a bit too much bloom)
Gameplay: 9/10 (like Halo 3)
Story: 7/10 (original, but not perfect)
Bugginess: N/A
Controls: 9/10 (average for the Wii)
Bang-to-buck: 7/10
Play Value: $35 (rent it or buy it used)
Overall: 8/10

Wii - Dead Space Extraction

2009-10-26T01:22:00.000-07:00

Dead Space Extraction by EA games

Parental Advisory: This game contains graphic violence and mature

themes. Parental guidance is suggested.

Style: First Person Rail Shooter

This one will be short and sweet. EA has converted the Dead Space Shooter on the Xbox 360 from a first person shooter to a rail shooter. That conversion doesn't help this game at all. Frankly, I don't like rail shooters to begin with (other than certain arcade style games). When it comes to a first person (or even third person) Doom style game, I prefer free roaming to constrained gaming... hands down. For this game to become constrained to a rail shooter fails this game miserably. It would have worked far better as a straight TPS or FPS game.

Story

The game is basically the same game as Dead Space on the 360. However, now that it's a rail shooter, they have added more people who tag along with you. Unfortunately, the tag-alongs don't help you at all. Once the shooting begins, your 'helpers' disappear and do nothing to help you. Thankfully, EA didn't require you to protect them while shooting the enemy. Thank goodness for small favors. But, even as small a favor as that is, this game fails on so many other levels.

Graphics

This is the first failure. This game harkens back to 320x240 shooter days. Most of this is because of the Wii's limited 3D abilities. But, it doesn't do this game any favors. The levels look ok, but the people look horrible. This is only made up for in the motion capture which works reasonably well.

Audio

Fair, but nothing to write home about. Average for today's games.

Originality

This game lacks in being original because it steals so much from Dead Space. If they had made this a follow-up or a new story with new sets, I'd have been more impressed. Unfortunately, they've stolen most of the level environments directly from Dead Space and inserted them into this game and that doesn't make this game original at all.

Worse, they even steal much of Dead Space's story and pacing and put it in Extraction making this game even more unoriginal.

Checkpoint saves

The game uses the end of each level as a checkpoint. So, you have to work through the entire level before it actually saves your play position if you want to turn off the game and start up later. However, whenever the player character dies, the game starts back up at the current play position. Thanks again for small favors.

Overall

This game is, as I've said, unoriginal. Because it's a rail shooter, you have no control over where the character looks or goes (except at random limited points in the game). When you do have the ability to look around, you only have a few seconds (frustrating). Most times when they give you the ability to look around, there's nothing to look around to find (wasted opportunity). You can also occasionally choose a direction to go, but that's also wasted.

This game isn't the worst game I've played, but it is definitely mediocre at best. If you are desperate to play something, then this might suffice. However, I'd suggest renting the game first. Say no to rail shooters and don't buy this. If you must play it, rent it.

Score

Sound: 8/10 (better than average)
Graphics: 5/10 (low res)
Gameplay: 5/10 (it's hard to like a rail shooter)
Story: 5/10 (unoriginal)
Bugginess: N/A
Controls: 7/10 (average for the Wii)
Bang-to-buck: 2/10 (expensive for what it is)
Play Value: $10 (rent it)
Overall: 5/10 (say no to rail shooters)

Xbox 360 - Ghostbusters

2009-07-11T17:45:00.000-07:00

Ghostbusters by Atari

I had been waiting for this game for over a year. When it got postponed last year, I was disappointed. It almost seemed like it wasn't going to be released. However, it has since been released (in June 2009) and upon release I high hopes for this game, but alas the balloon has burst.

Story

I was hoping for a brand new story with brand new things. Instead,

Ghostbusters gives a rehash of everything that's been done in the films already. Basically, the game takes off with the lore set up in the films and tries to expand on that. Specifically, the Gozer mythos. I was hoping to get away from this, but I guess it fits with what they are trying to do.

Unfortunately, there is a severe disconnect between the story and the gameplay. So, what you're doing in the game seems distant to the story line. Basically, you play as a new recruit to the Ghostbusters team. So, in addition to Egon, Ray, Peter, Winston and Janine, you are now a new young recruit to the team.

Because you are new (and in the game's driver's seat), you are expected to do everything. All the while, the team gives you praise after you finish off a ghost.

Gameplay

You carry a backpack and traps. You have to trap ghosts that appear. In much of the beginning of the game, you do this. Later on in the game, there's far less ghost trapping. In fact, there are some things that appear to be ghosts, but the game won't let you trap them. So, you just have to eliminate them with your protonic stream.

Each level is prefaced by a cinematic that leads you into the gameplay. Unfortunately, the cinematic is disconnected from the gameplay. So, while it's kind of cool to watch, they get boring really fast when you just want to get to playing. In many cases, I found myself often skipping them just to get the level going.

Note that the cinematics are rendered and not actual footage. So, they are sometimes tedious to watch.

Controls

The controls are reasonably intuitive. There's nothing overly strange about the way your character handles. The one thing that is annoying is that there is no health gauge to speak of. So, you really don't know when your character is about to die. The other annoying thing is that the proton pack overheats and you have to release the heat before you can use it again.

Upgrades

There are upgrades in the game, but they are mostly useless.

Bosses

The bosses in this game are reasonably easy to defeat. The exception to this are the flying cherubs. These things are actually the hardest enemy to deal with. Because the pack is so imprecise, you can't easly target these flying cherubs. And, even when you do, another one swoops in and knocks you down. There is no defense against these things. Even on the easiest level of this game, these cherubs are difficult to defeat. Even the final boss wasnt nearly as hard as the flying cherubs.

Perfect Aim

This is another in the ever growing numbers of shooters where you have sucky aim and every enemy has perfect aim even when they are but one pixel in size. Game designers MUST stop doing this in games. They must give some level of random probability of miss to enemies.

Overall

The game is way way too short. The hardness levels go up exponentially. Unless you really like your frustration level high, don't play this game on anything other than easy. The story is far too familiar and not enough different from the first film to really say this has a great story. The gameplay is medicre for a shooter and, at times, tedious. The proton stream weapon is cool, but you don't really get to use it enough in the way it should be used.

Score

Sound: 8/10 (average)
Graphics: 9.5/10 (looks great at times)
Gameplay: 5/10 (fair, but hard a times)
Story: 5/10 (too much the same as the films)
Bugginess: N/A
Controls: 9/10 (well done)
Bang-to-buck: 1/10 (too short, no replay value)
Play Value: $10 (rent it)
Overall: 5/10 (needed a lot more work)

Xbox 360 - Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

2009-07-11T17:04:00.001-07:00

Harry Potter (and the Half-Blood Prince) by Warner/EA

Preface this by saying I've liked most of the Harry

Potter games. I specifically liked Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix game. Order of the Phoenix took advantage of some things that HBP doesn't. Let's explore Half-Blood Prince.

Story

The game's story pretty much follows the book, but does leave out a lot of elements. For a movie game, the games have always been light on the story side. Even lighter than the movie, unfortunately. So, this basically leaves the game elements to pick up for what the story lacks. The game does put in most of the major story points, but leaves out a lot of nuances that makes Harry Potter stories intriguing. This is unfortunate because a game has a lot more time to give the player to explore Hogwarts, Harry and his friends. But, in every HP game, they've always ignored what can be done with the length of a video game... and Half-Blood Prince is no exception.

Gameplay

You play as Harry most of the game. You do change to play as other characters twice in the game... first Ron, then Ginny.

Quidditch

Quidditch is a big part of this game, but unfortunately it fails completely in gameplay. The Quidditch sections force you to practice each time before a 'real' game and you cannot skip the practice. The practice course has nothing in common with the 'real' course when you play the game. Worse, your sole goal is to chase the snitch by flying through star shaped rings. You can't fly faster or slower, you simply have to follow the course laid out for you. You have a limited amount of time to get through all of the rings and if you miss enough rings, you run out of time as flying through the rings extends the time. There is no timer on the screen, only the color the rings guides you. Green, you're ok, red you're running out of time. Of all of the sections of Half-Blood Prince, the Quidditch is the most annoying as you can't skip it.

Hogwarts

Unlike Order of the Phoenix, this game has no quests to speak of. There

are a few side quests, but not near the quality of what was in OOTP. This game basically removed most of the side elements that made OOTP fun. So, there's no Wizard Chess, no Gobstones and none of the other little things that made OOTP a better game then HBP. This game is fairly light on anything but the main storyline. So, pretty much everything leads you back to the main story. The exception to this is dueling and potion making.

Paintings

The passageways remain from OOTP, but there are fewer and you get the passwords to them far easier than OOTP. In fact, most times you just happen upon them by some character telling you the password after you've completed some part of the game.

Crests and mini-crests

The game offers both Crests (large medalions) and mini-crests. Most other games offered collecting jelly beans to give you things. In HBP, the jelly beans were replaced with mini-crests. Certain things like lights, bushes and suits of armor can be touched to give you mini-crests. Once you collect enough mini-crests, you will be awarded a full crest. There are 150 full crests in the game.

Potions

Because HBP is mostly about the HBP's potion manual, this game focuses on potion making as a big part of the mini-games. You do potion making through the potions club. So, you are tasked with making various potions. The most annoying part of this is that the potions have a timer so that you must complete the potion in a specific amount of time. The problem with the timer, for example, is that this doesn't follow with Rowling's canon. For example, Polyjuice potion supposedly takes a month to brew. Yet you have only a few seconds to make it in the potions club. In fact, I don't even see why there is a timer on potion making. It should take as long as it takes. I understand the gaming aspect to adding a timer, it's just not realistic with the actual canon of Harry Potter.

Duels

The second mini-game aspect to HBP is dueling. This was present, somewhat, in OOTP, but it becomes a mini-game in Half-Blood Prince. In dueling, you have to try to get the most points by using the most unique spells. The problem is, it's far too easy once you know the trick. Basically, if you stand a few inches away from the other person, you can hit them with any spell every time. Expelliarmus knocks down the opponent and then you can hammer them with smaller spells to whittle down their health. This works in any duel (whether in the dueling club or outside it).

Overall

Considering the release date extension from November 2008 to July 2009 for the film release, this game is not nearly as good Order of the Phoenix and is overly short. The questing system is incomplete. The lack of quests is annoying and the linear nature of the game basically forces you to stay on track. Quidditch should have been fun, but was completely botched. Overall, as a family game for kids, they might like it. For adults, this one is much weaker than the previous games... but at the same time, it's also much much easier than OOTP. I liked some of the challenges in OOTP because they were challenging. Especially the chess. Unfortunately, that was taken away in this game and what's left is far too easy.

Score

Sound: 7.5/10 (reasonable, but could have been better)
Graphics: 7.5/10 (textures are done well enough)
Gameplay: 6/10 (too linear, too easy)
Story: 5/10 (not enough detail)
Bugginess: N/A
Controls: 9/10 (same controls as OOTP)
Bang-to-buck: 2/10 (too short, too linear)
Play Value: $7 (rent it)
Overall: 5/10 (needs a lot more work)

Xbox 360 - Prototype

2009-07-11T16:04:00.000-07:00

Prototype by Activision

I get a lot of people asking me about Prototype and if it's a good game.

As this is a no-holds-barred review site, suffice it to say that this game is an almost exact rip-off of Spiderman: Web of Shadows right down to the story. The only thing that's substantially different from Spiderman is the character and his abilities. His abilities lead to only minor differences in play between Spiderman and Prototype.

Story

As I stated, Prototype rips off Spiderman: Web of Shadows near completely. From the pods on the side of the buildings that you have to defeat, to the city-wide infection, to the people on the street trying to attack you. Everything is nearly identical.

Gameplay

Instead of webs to hurl you through the air, in Prototype your character can run up the sides of buildings (although, even Spiderman could do this). You can then jump off and glide between buildings.

They've added a few new things to this game that Spiderman didn't have (i.e. consuming your enemy and disguises), but that's really not enough to warrant calling this a brand new game.

Control

The controls on this game are fair. They work about as well as Spiderman, but not always.

Overall

I understand the need to recoup monies from the investment in game development. But to take an existing game, give it a slight facelift, new graphics and slight story changes is not enough to warrant this game as new. This game is really not worth the money considering its revamped ties to Spiderman: Web of Shadows.

Ultimately, I would lump this in as a sequel to Spiderman even though it's not of the Spiderman genre. The game and story is just too close to Spiderman for comfort.

Spiderman was a better game only because of the Spiderman lore. Prototype, on the other hand, isn't nearly as good primarily because you have to ask who is this guy and why should I care?

Score

Sound: 7/10
Graphics: 8/10 (reasonable)
Bugginess: N/A
Controls: 7/10 (control works well enough, but could be better)
Bang-To-Buck: 1/10 (played it already)
Play Value: $5
Overall: 4/10 (unoriginal)

PC - Sims 3

2009-06-07T05:46:00.001-07:00

Sims 3 by EA Games

I recently purchased Sims 3 and here is the Gamezelot take on this game. It is definitely not an improvement over the Sims 2. There are still far too many quirky problems that have yet to be resolved in this game from Sims 2. The one major thing they improved is the loading times when moving around the map. But, that's really as far as the improvements go. The game and pacing are cloned from Sims 2.

Yes, it is a human simulator. No, it is not perfect. Let's hop back in time to 'Little Computer People'. This was actually the first (and arguably) the best human simulator that's been devised for the computer. You took care of a single household with its occupants and pets. You had to feed the dog and you had to manage the people in the game. You could play games with them and interact (or not). Fast forward to the Sims (as a copy of Little Computer People). Now, that's not to say that the Sims is a bad simulator, it's just a bit too quirky. And, you'd think by the third time around that EA could have finally fixed all of the major problems with this game. Alas, they haven't.

Gameplay

If you haven't played The Sims, here's the rundown. It's a game where you can build houses and have these houses become occupied by computer controlled people. In the first game, there was little you could do with your 'Sim' (short for your player). They did whatever they did and they had mostly bland personalities. By the Sims 2, the focus was taken away from the building and placed onto the people. So, EA tried to give the people personalities, but that it was only somewhat successful. The problems with the Sims 2 were numerous... from your constantly having to run to the bathroom to pee, to constant things breaking (the toilet, TV, computer, etc) to fires and burglary. Each day it was always something different, but there was always something. So, your sim ended up spending far too much time cleaning up messes that the game simulator made for you and not socializing or going places.

Enter Sims 3 and, unfortunately, you are still cleaning up far too many simulator created messes. Basically, it's one household disaster after another. The person builder is great, but that's really where the game fun mostly stops. Once you get into the game, the game is overly verbose with tutorials even though you can turn this off from the options menu. That's fine if you've never played a Sims before. It's completely annoying when you already know what to do.

As you progress, you begin running into many of the same problems that plagued The Sims 2. You also quickly realize that very little has been added in the way of substantial new features. At least, that's what I thought that a new game was supposed to be. The things that remained are still annoying. For example, while your character does not need to go to the bathroom as often, other things have now taken the place of that stupid and quirky issue. The main problem is that there is not enough time in 'Live Mode'. For example, in order to get money to buy things, your sim needs a job. Once your sim lands that job, the job kills most of the day so your sim can't do hardly anything but work. Once your sim is off of work, your sim is so tired he/she can't even go grocery shopping. You have to send them straight home to nap or play video games. Even then, the energy runs out very rapidly.

Passage of time is also too fast in 'live mode' and too slow in 'turbo mode'. So, for example, your sim needs to wake up at 6am for his job at 7am. Here's the perfect example with 'Live Mode' time. Your sim usually needs to take a shower, use the toilet and eat breakfast (and possibly even do more than this). Unfortunately, you can't do that many things in a 1 sim hour. It's just not possible. This issue plagued Sims 2 and I was expecting it to have been resolved in Sims 3. In real life, it would certainly be possible to complete all three of these things. But, in The Sims 3, it doesn't work. So, you end up having to cut the sleep time (yes, your sim has to sleep to regain energy) in order to get more stuff done. The problem with that is that by cutting sleep short, your sim doesn't get 'well rested'. Your sim runs out of energy very rapidly during the day. So, there are all of these stupid quirky things. Basically, in order to solve one problem, you create others.

Worse, in preparation for work, your sim usually ends up breaking something like the toilet, shower or sink. Or, in preparing food for breakfast, the surfaces get grimy or dirty dishes pile up. In this game, perfect cleanliness is a must or the 'mood meter' takes a firm nosedive. At least in the Sims 2, you could choose if your character was a clean freak or not. In the Sims 3, your character is now always a clean freak. He complains when he stinks, when others stink or when dirty dishes stink. When a sim complains, that reduces 15-30 mood points.

Mood Meter

The mood meter is the barometer by which your sim is happy or unhappy. When green, the sim is perfectly happy. When red, the sim needs something (food, sleep, etc). Your sim doesn't stay happy for very long, so expect to have him/her constantly do something to please them. The sims will do for themselves, but usually not that well.

Birthdays

After a period of time, your sim will 'Grow Up'. This is a complete disaster of a feature. I don't necessarily WANT my sim to grow up, or at least as fast as it does. But, you don't know how long you need for your sim until you've actually played the game. Suffice it to say, the default settings for a sim to age is not nearly long enough to complete sim goals. For example, I started my sim as an Adult. Within just a few hours of play, my sim had a birthday and turned into an elderly old man. It's like HUH? Why didn't I get a say in this matter? The game should ask you if you want to your sim to age instead of just outright doing it.

And why to an elderly old man? Where are the other stages between adult and elderly? So now, the game I've just spent several hours playing is pointless. I don't want to continue to play this game as some crotchety old geezer. That's not what I expected or intended for my character. It also negates the point of the game. The game changes your sim from a healthy robust adult around 45-48 years old to a 70 year old geezer. With the growing up feature enabled, you need to start your sim on at least young adult for maximum play time. Otherwise, you need to extend your sims lifespan (or turn off aging).

Life Stages / Aging

Further, the aging system is not well designed. You have baby, toddler, child, teen, young adult, adult and elederly. Between the first six stages, there's an age progression of 5-15 years. Between adult and elderly, you're talking about a 30 year jump to 'retirement age'. EA should have added at least 2 more stages between Adult and Elderly. This is part of the reason EA is failing as a game company. They cut so many corners to produce games, this is what you get.

The Urbz / no story mode

Let's jump back in time again for comparisons. Here is another Sims title where EA decided to take the Sims in a new direction. Instead of the free form gameplay of Sims 2, the Urbz created small stories and completion goals. It was linear progression in that you had to get your sim to do very specific things in order to progress in the game. Comparing this to the Sims 3, there is none of that. I was full well expecting at least some story progression system to have been added. So, as you complete small stories, the rest of the game (city) becomes unlocked so you can move forward. For me, this would have been an improvement over the Sims 2. Yet, it didn't happen.

Sim Needs

The Sims 3 requires you to constantly baby your sim. Like, for example, the sim simply won't pay any bills on his own. You have to make him do it. Sure, you can press buttons in the interface to do this, but the sim should simply do this task on his own without your help. If the bills don't get paid, people come and repo the purchased possessions. Again, I'm like HUH? I paid for the things outright. How is it that I need to any pay bills? This is a pointless stupid activity and just wastes time (and money) for the sim.

Because of the constant hands on to keep the sim in line, you can't really spend much time socializing as there's always something getting in the way (phone ringing, potty break, hungry, needs to have fun, etc). If you want to go any place, expect that that's the only place you be able to visit in a single day.

New Game Design and Sequels

I'm not sure why people tend to feel satisfied with clones of previous games. Sure, there's something to be said for releasing a game that's very similar to a previous title. After all, you want lightning to strike twice as a developer. At the same time, you want to provide the gamer with a unique and different experience from the previous title on which s sequel is based. You don't want them walking away feeling that they were duped into buying a slightly upgraded sequel. Well, unfortunately, that's exactly what Sims 3 is. Everything that's in the Sims 3 could have been added to the Sims 2 as upgrades and expansion packs. The Sims 3 is not a new game more than an expansion of the Sims 2. When you design a sequel, you want to retain many of the better elements from the sequel, but you also want to add new features that make the gameplay unique and new over its older cousin. EA's developers failed at producing a game system that was uniquely different from the Sims 2 in the Sims 3. So, $50 for this title is not really justified. An upgrade or expansion pack to the Sims 2 would have cost far less than the outright purchase of this title. EA is now effectively grasping at straws trying to keep this franchise alive. And this is part of the reason that EA is known for making mediocre titles. Unlike developers like Bethesda, Rockstar, Bungie, Ubisoft and Bioware, EA just doesn't go the extra mile to produce the perfect game.

Working

Here is the sorest point of this entire game (excluding Birthdays which is really just bad design). Unless you strike up a relationship with someone first thing out (so you end up with two sims to play with), during the work day there is absolutely nothing to do but wait. Literally. You can't even build on your home because time progression stops while you do this. Instead, you have to sit through an arduously long work day waiting on the sim instead of actually playing the game. In real minutes, that's about 10-15 minutes of real dead game time per sim work day. You actually do nothing during this period of time inside of the game. You might as well go do something in Real Life during that period (like check email, surf the web or make a sandwich).

This, in game design terms, is a complete and utter disaster. You NEVER want your game to come to a complete standstill forcing the gamer to do absolutely nothing. Worse, when your sim is it work, you can't even see the sim. You get to watch the sim's icon parked inside of a building. You can't watch the sim work, you only hear sounds while he/she does it. Again, one more failure from EA. If this game had been complete, they would have added the ability to actually control your sim while at work and make him walk around and do things. Instead, you're limited to a drop down menu that lets you change how hard your sim works. Even that is somewhat pointless. A fully in depth game (which is expected from a new version) would have allowed you to control your sim's behavior 100% of the time both at home and at work. Again, this is EA cutting corners.

EA's missed opportunities

I could probably write a book on all of the poor design choices in the Sims 3. Suffice it to say that what is covered in this review only scratches the surface of the issues. If you choose to wade through the myriad of issues, be warned that there is more than what I'm discussing here (including mediocre graphics). However, if you like the minutiae of making your sim do every little thing and the dead time waiting for your sim at work (and about 10 minutes real time waiting), waiting even longer watching them sleep or spending most of the home time cleaning and fixing, then you might like the Sims 3. I was hoping that EA would have taken this minutiae out of Sims 3 to replace it with something more story based like the Urbz, but it didn't happen.

Multiplayer

What multiplayer? Exactly. In this day and age with services like Xbox Live and PS3's online gaming, where is the multiplayer in Sims 3? Again, EA completely botched this. There is no multiplayer mode at all in Sims 3. Adding that feature would have been a huge enhancement. In fact, it would have been awesome to share sims back and forth between online players. Perhaps in Sims 4, EA can finally get all of this right.

Overall

I would have preferred far less minutiae and for more things like socializing, sim control 100% of the time, story goals (like the Urbz) and working on relationships and life goals. Having to spend time sending your sim to the office every day is useless and a waste of time (especially because you waste about 10-15 real dead minutes waiting for this activity to complete). In fact, I would prefer just to completely skip that work time altogether. If you're not going to allow 100% control over the sim, then show the sim leaving for work and show him coming back with the amount of hours missing (in two small cutscenes) and then place the cash in the bank. I don't need to watch the sim sitting in a building losing energy for 10 real minutes.

That level of micro management may have been good in The Sims 2, but I'm well past that. For me, the point to this game isn't to micro manage every little detail, it's to play a game (which includes building up the house, having the sim do things, having the sim learn things and having the sim socialize). That's the point in the sims. The minutiae of fixing broken sinks, fixing and scrubbing toilets I can really do without. It was fun in the Sims 2 (for a while), but in the Sims 3 it should be gone.

Finally, the two biggest game design flaws are the birthdays and work. The jumps between each of your sims' life stages leave a lot to be desired and should be more consistent. If you play with the default settings, you need to start your sim out as a kid in order to be able to actually attain your life goal. If you start your sim as an adult, you don't have enough time... and there is no warning of this if you begin your game with your sim as an adult. If you want to start your sim as an adult, you need to change the aging options of the game to actually complete the game. Work time is complete gamer dead time. Dead time in a game is as bad as a game can get. You ALWAYS want the gamer engaged in the game and doing something moving the game forward. Work time, unfortunately, makes the game come to a complete stop where the gamer literally has nothing to do during this time (assuming only one Sim). To avoid the dead time, you need to start a family as the first thing you do in Sims 3 so you have at least two sims to control. In fact, the game should have started you with two sims to avoid the dead time issue.

Score

Sound: 8/10 (reminds me of Desperate Housewives)
Graphics: 6/10 (useable, but not great)
Gameplay: 5/10 (too much minutiae)
Story: 1/10 (no story)
Bugginess: No issues
Controls: 8.5/10 (reasonable, but not the problem)
Bang-to-buck: 2/10 (not worth the price)
Play Value: $15 (buy the Sims 2 instead)
Overall: 3/10 (too many disasters and distractions, too much deadtime, time speed incorrect, bad gaming design not an improvement over Sims 2)

Note, you can alter some of these issues by altering the options in the menu. What you can't alter is the lack of improvement over Sims 2, the complete dead time that is work, the repetitive and constant babying of your sim, the repetitive nature of this game and the lack of actual gaming goals or a story that move this game forward. The game gets a 3/10 rating because it is a sequel and is not enough of an improvement over the Sims 2 and, thus, doesn't warrant the full price tag of a new game.

Upcoming Game Releases for Xbox 360

2009-05-28T02:35:00.000-07:00

Here are several games I look forward during 2009. Look for most of these games to be reviewed during 2009.

Game	Type	Release Date
Alpha Protocol	RPG	10/06/09
Bioshock 2	Shooter	10/05/09
Dragon Age Origins	RPG	11/03/09
Fallout New Vegas	RPG	06/01/10
Ghostbusters	Shooter	06/16/09
Halo 3: ODST	Shooter	09/01/09
Harry Potter: Half Blood Prince	Movie	06/23/09
Mass Effect 2	RPG	12/31/09
Overlord 2	Shooter	06/23/09
Prototype	---	06/09/09
Singularity	Shooter	09/15/09
Star Wars: Republic Heroes	Shooter	09/08/09
Two Worlds 2	RPG	02/01/10
Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf	RPG	09/15/09

Games with Possibility:

Game	Type	Release Date
Wolfenstein	Shooter	07/28/09
Planet 51	---	11/20/09
Splinter Cell: Conviction	Shooter	06/30/09
Rogue Warrior	Shooter	10/01/09
Splatterhouse	Shooter	09/29/09
Aliens vs Predator	Shooter	01/19/10

Note that dates are subject to change, especially dates scheduled after October. Dates listed on December 31, 2009 can be expected to actually show early in 2010.

Xbox 360 - Ninja Gaiden 2

2009-05-16T15:28:00.000-07:00

Ninja Gaiden 2 - by Team Ninja

Rated for Violence, Gore
Game Type: Fighting

Here's a game, like Dead Space, that seems to work well enough for a couple of levels and then completely fails. The graphics on this game are gorgeous, but beyond that, this game is one of the worst games I've played in quite some time. I usually don't get into fighting games, but I'd heard some reasonable things about this title and I picked it up on the cheap... and that's a good thing!

Gameplay

This is a 3D level based third person fighting game. This isn't a two player fighting game like Mortal Kombat. Instead, this is a level game where you run around on platforms or paths, pick up things, buy things and kind of quest. But, the sole purpose of this game is fighting. You fight enemy after enemy just to get to more enemies to fight. Like I said, it's a fighting game. Note, I started out on the Acolyte Level (Easy).

The controls are simple: X short attack (weaker), Y long attack (stronger, less likely to succeed). So, in the first two levels you are running around attacking every other attacker. Some have arrows and shoot you, some have Wolverine-like claws and some have swords. Whatever it is the attacker is using, you can't be complacent. They attack fairly ruthlessly, but they're reasonably easy to defeat once you get the upper hand. As you progress through the game, you learn more and better combos by examining corpses (?). Yeah, I couldn't figure that one out either.

Of course, as with most games of this sort (and since it's level based), you will have to fight a boss at the end of each level. And... here's where the game falls down. At the end of the first level, the boss is moderately hard to beat. There's a health meter that you have to whittle down, so at least you know where you stand. You can do this if you focus on the boss instead of the other attackers. Once you defeat the boss, the level is over.

Game Failure

Unfortunately, here is also where the game fails. While the first boss and all of the level based attackers are reasonably easy to beat, the second boss you find on the second level is pratically impossible to beat. He's got combos far ahead of yours. He's got attacks that will wipe out half your character's (Ryu) health in just one or two moves. You have none of this. Your weapons are weak at best if you can even land a strike. When you land a strike, it takes away a tiny amount of his health. He's so fast at combos and so quick moving that there is almost nothing that works on him. You can spend probably an hour just trying to get past him and still not succeed. The only thing that even works against him is blocking and that only works minimally. He can still land devastating attacks against your character even when blocking.

This level 2 boss is a prime example of game design failure. This game was very clearly NOT play tested. It was not given to an average game player to find out if the game is actually playable. Instead, they just created it and dumped it on the market. And here's exactly the reason why games like this do not make the money they should (and why I was able to buy it as cheaply as I did).

Graphics

The graphics on this game are quite literally stunning. The buildings, lighting, trees, everything are about as perfect as they come. Even Ryu, your character, has an excellent outfit and is well made. They did a superb job building the environments. It's too bad that Team Ninja failed so badly at putting together a playable game.

Audio

The audio is reasonable, but not outstanding. It works for the context of the video game, but there's nothing here that's going to win awards. The sound effects are ok, but a little on the cheesy side.

Overall

I wanted to like this game when it began. But, after the major failure of the boss on the second level, I won't be playing this game any farther. Again, like Dead Space, this is a waste of time and I really don't want to get arthritis in my hands just because they make you constantly and repetitively press buttons and combos.

Note, the second level boss is a boss that should probably have been the final boss of the game and not a boss on the second level. If they had actually let you level your character up to be a more even match, I would have appreciated this game a lot more. Unfortunately, Team Ninja completely botched this game design majorly.

Score

Sound: 7/10
Graphics: 9.5/10 (outstanding)
Gameplay: 5/10 (poor boss design)
Story: 6/10 (limited story line)
Bugginess: 3/10 (1 crash/lockup, several major slowdowns)
Controls: 8.5/10 (reasonable, but not the problem)
Bang-to-buck: 2/10 (poorly designed fighting game)
Play Value: $5 (rent it)
Overall: 4/10 (even with the excellent graphics, gameplay is poor)