SSX Review

Posted on April 26, 2012 by Riley

Riley Guttman

Some Games are easy to get, like casino, but I’ve never really gotten why people like Sports games. It seems to me that the target audience of sports games would much rather go and play the sport itself then a simulation of it. But Sports games do sell like hot cakes so there’s obviously something I’m not getting. I believe the further removed from our reality a game’s setting gets the more worthy it is to play. This of course brings us to SSX.

Old school b****!

SSX has always been the golden star in Snowboarding games, mostly because every other snowboarding game wants to keep things “realistic”. SSX has made never any attempts to be realistic in any sort and it has worked amazingly. Pulling off physics-defying tricks on awesome courses with cartoony characters has always been SSX’s selling point. But since SSX 3 this series has been kind of listlessly rolling around in the dirt, and not a lot of people were happy. But this year we’ve got a brand new game that EA assures us will revitalize the franchise.
So first off we have the story, if you can call it that. Zoe, a past SSX character, decides to create a team of the world’s greatest snowboarders comprised of past SSX members and is named “Team SSX”. Why? We’re never really given a reason, so just because. Things are going swell until Griff Simmons, last seen as a twelve year old in SSX 3, decides to go solo making him the villain by default. Actually we’re never really given a reason why he’s such a villain, other than kind of acting like a douchebag. So? Kanye West has acted like a douchebag and his music is still goddam amazing. But I digress.

What kind of scumbag beats a poor, helpless woman in Connect 4?!

So it’s a race between Team SSX and Griff to scale the world’s most deadly peaks and descend them intact. There are more than 25 different courses and you can’t blame the game for lacking in variety, as the courses take place all over the world in nine different locales. Each location has a different “Deadly Descent”, a sort of “boss” course. Each of these courses has a unique challenge depending on the locale. For instance, the Rockies have a lot of trees you need to avoid, Siberia has ice you need to navigate on, and the Himalayas are so high up you need an Oxygen mask. As serious as these challenges may seem, they never really got in my way too much. They’re just sort of there, just another obstacle to overcome and not a serious business sort of thing. At worst, they’re kind of annoying. At best, they’re kind of interesting.

The first snowboarding game to make defying death "Not that big of a deal".

Now my problem with SSX that seeps into many different aspects of the game is something I thought would ever touch the franchise. It’s surprisingly “pretentions at realism”. The addition of the somewhat unnecessary deadly descents is proof of this, as well as how the game handles characterization. Instead of the ridiculous costumes and personalities that gave previous SSX plenty of style, everyone here is dressed practically with heavy jackets, helmets and goggles. The only costume customization is what color your suit is and if it has lights or not. It also seems that the more realistic clothing has made the characters blander. Most of them have little to no personality. Luckily the tricks they preform are still ridiculous which lightens things up.
There’s also no split screen multiplayer, which is rather lame. Instead there’s an online mode where you compete with ghosts for the fastest time, most tricks, etc. And this feature is really what saves the game in my opinion. SSX does perfectly what any good sports/pseudo-sports game does: it makes you competitive. Despite any nitpicking I could do on the characters or the music, whenever I see that a friend has taken down my high score on a course I go into competitive mode and can spend hours trying to get the few point necessary to topple them.
The saving grace of the game is the perfected mechanics, and that’s what makes SSX awesome. It’s a flawed but addicting game, and if you don’t mind the competitive frustration, there’s a lot to like. My initial skepticism gave away to sheer joy and determination, and eventually I threw away my notes all together. Take this is a hesitant recommendation.

Must...keep..playing...

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Top 5 and Bottom 5 Games of 2011

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Riley

Well 2011 is wrapped up, and the flow of AAA titles has stopped and won’t resume until the release of SSX (the 2012 version that is). So it’s safe to say that now would be a good time to list out my personal top 5 and bottom 5 for the year 2011. My sponsors want me to make party poker my permanent game of the year, but they’ll have to start paying me in diamonds if they want me to do that.

Top #5: Crysis 2

In an industry where a game’s flaws are unnoticed due to hype and denial, it’s hard to notice the games that just run efficiently. Crysis 2 may not have had a stellar plot, but it knew how to pace itself which is what you should go for in a military shooter. The gameplay was somewhat scaled down from Crysis 1 as well as the level design, but it worked quite well and was tense, exciting, and skillful. The game also gets the best intro music of the year award for that killer guitar wailing.     

            watch?v=z81KirL8fv8&feature=related

New Yoooooorrrkk, concrete jungle where aliens kill you, there's nothing you can do...

Top #4: Portal 2

Valve may have omitted any cake references in Portal 2 but that won’t stop fans from going on about combustible lemons. The game might have suffered from being a bit easy unless you played co-op, but it was still a memorable story with a good sense of humor and a bunch of cool toys in each puzzle that you could play with. Let’s just hope Valve wasn’t thinking that the downloadable hats for the robots could compensate for insubstantiality.

At the least there's no more cake jokes...

Top #3: Deus Ex: Human Revolution

                After the failure of Deus Ex: Invisible War, Edios reevaluated who they were making these games for and the result is one of the most stylish and memorable RPGs I’ve played. It may lack the complexity of the original game, but Human Revolution still has a wide range of combat options. The game’s also well written, with fleshed out characters and events that last in the memory (although the ending rather falls short). What I think is best about Human Revolution is that it caters to any type of player. For the more sophisticated player it raises serious questions over man’s relationship with the evolution of technology, and to the less sophisticated player you get to run around Detroit punching hookers and policemen in the face.

I love roboco- I mean Deus Ex.

Top #2: Saints Row: The Third

                With most action games being grim-dark, realistic shooters this year with pretentions to realism, a change of tone is not unwelcome. Saints Row: The Third fills that gap quite nicely, offering a ludicrous, insanity filled, sandbox crime game. It is a game where you can be mowing down Luchadores in a jet-bike and jump off to plant a two-foot kick in the face of a passing elderly lady and then start dancing like Tom Jones as Burt Reynolds mows down waves of gang members. It’s pure mindless fun, a bit immature admittedly but there’s nothing inherently wrong with that.

It's like if we mixed every drug in the world and ingestied it while riding a tiger.

Game of the Year: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

                Having never played an Elder Scrolls game before, I couldn’t really understand the hype that most of my friends went through during the year before release. I wasn’t really impressed by the first few hours of Skyrim either. The installation took a legendary amount of time to complete and so did a forty five minute patch. The intro sequence was also way too long, but once I got past that I was surprised by how I was immersed by the experience. The sweeping landscapes, the interesting characters, and the amount of roles you can take make it a game with virtually unlimited playtime. What I like about was that it truly felt like an epic game. Clutching your battle axe while gazing down at a snowy valley and hearing the distant roar of a dragon, that’s a moment that couldn’t be matched this year.

DOVAHKIIN!!!!!

 

Bottom #5: Dead Space 2

I was actually having a lot of trouble figuring out a number five for my bottom list. I just couldn’t remember a Triple-A game that I played this year that fit the spot. It was only by chance that I remembered Dead Space 2, which should communicate right off the bat the position it deserves. A boring game is at best an embarrassment and at worst a waste of time, and Dead Space 2’s failed attempts at horror and pacing emulate this. Bad games deserve some attention but boring games deserve none.     

It's certaintly dead, dead of anything good.

Bottom #4: Battlefield 3

Whatever fun I might have had playing BF3’s multiplayer was eroded beneath the many little frustrations. Not only do you need to install Origin in order to use it, but it launches through an unnecessary browser based menu which was organized like a torn up spreadsheet. But even when I ignored the PC-specific issues, the actual game wasn’t even that great either. The campaign and co-op were both dull, and the Multiplayer had a bizzaro leveling system. One example was that you were expected to dogfight in a plane with no missiles, flares, or armor and level up to get those items through that. I’m expected to his a bird sized blip on my screen without the usual technology of modern day military jets, while my opponent is armed with lock-on missiles, faster engines, and flares. More often than not I would be barreling towards the ground at supersonic speeds, cursing the person who actually brought a lock on missile in their load-out. And whoever decided to add in the tactical flash light that blinds whoever looks at it is going to Hell. “Above and beyond the call”, more like “above and beyond the call of good game design”.

Have fun installing your free spyware!

Bottom #3: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

I was actually surprised this game didn’t do worse than 3rd from worst. After all, an unbalanced multiplayer with a terrible community and a single-player campaign shorter than a school on early release schedule does make for a pretty awful game. But the co-op was better than I expected so I‘ll be generous and put MW3 in this position. Activision doesn’t really need my generosity though because the game has made enough money to create a small city made from the stuff. So I’ll conclude by saying that anyone who thinks that MW3 should be Game of the Year needs to go dive in a frozen lake and seriously rethink their life.

This is what not trying looks like.

 

Bottom #2: Duke Nukem Forever

On the other end of the juvenile spectrum opposite SRT3 lies Duke Nukem Forever. Where do I even begin with this game? It has the sense of humor of a 9 year old who just watched a 90’s action movie marathon, it looks awful, and the controls are clunky and inefficient. The loading times are biblical which will slowly wear away at our patience until you want to rip Duke’s sunglasses off and crush them beneath your shoe. I would be more generous towards the game if Gearbox hadn’t stated that they intentionally designed the game to be like this. Randy Pitchford said that people who bought Duke Nukem Forever were sick of eating caviar, and just wanted a good old greasy burger. That may be true Mr. Pitchford, but burgers usually aren’t filled with the Ebola Virus.

Well to the box's credit, the game cetaintly does feel like it's putting its dick in your face.

Worst Game of the Year: Ace Combat: Assault Horizon

Let me tell you something, I love flight combat games. The feeling of going several hundred miles per hour at several thousand feet above the ground and shooting tanks and jets with missiles that could level a school, that’s one of my favorite feeling in games. So Project Aces are to be congratulated for taking a formula that’s incredibly hard to screw up, and screwing it up anyway. The first problem was catering to the same audience as Call of Duty, the one that can’t play a game for three seconds without there being an explosion. All of the other problems would be taking the gameplay and turning it into a series of glorified quick time events that felt like they should have been in a Transformers movie. Project Aces have alienated the flight combat crowd by taking away all strategy whatsoever, ironically in the hopes of keeping the franchise alive. They were using defibrillators on a franchise drenched in water and now it just smells like burnt flesh.

Congratulations Project Aces, you have successfully alienated all of your long time fans. Now go bankrupt and die.

Guilty Pleasure of the Year: Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine

If there’s one thing that Space Marine stands as, it’s an example of why you should polish games. From repetitive environments and enemies, to some of the blandest plot and characters of the year, to the five multiplayer maps, two game modes, and month delayed horde mode, Space Marine got a lot of well-deserved sticks. I like the combat so much though that I’m willing to overlook these flaws if it means I get to smash a daemon’s face with a giant hammer. Only 40k fans should play it at this point, but I do believe that a sequel has a lot of opportunity to expand.

WE ARE TE SPHESS MAHREENS!!! WE AR TE EMPRAH'S FUREH!!!

 

Biggest Disappointment: Minecraft

If there’s one thing that the educational system likes to hammer into our skulls like nails, it’s that everyone has something special about them. Whether this is true of all people is hard to say, but I think that it’s true for a lot of video games. Minecraft however decided to take its individuality and throw it off a bridge in favor for tedium. What made Minecraft feel so rewarding was the effort that went into building your creation, as well as defending it from destruction by various monsters. But the adventure update thought to change that. Now there are mines crafted for you, so finding ores is now infinitely less challenging. And the hunger meter adds unnecessary busy work that keeps you away from building your doom fortress and more time chasing a chicken around a field. Minecraft traded creative building for a bland RPG, thus proving once again that there’s no bigger threat to Indie games than success.

The only thing worse than this game is its fanbase.

Looking back:

If there’s one thing that I felt troubled the industry this year, it’s the pretention that games need to be cinematic. In Space Marine’s behind the scenes features the developers talked about how studios hope that in a way game’s become cinematic. Another example is Uncharted 3 where the developers said that they based the story around the set pieces. But I think the best example was Modern Warfare 3, when Josué Pereira, creator of the web comic “Nerf Now”, made this http://www.nerfnow.com/comic/628.

Let’s get something clear game developers, GAMES ARE NOT MOVIES. Gaming is an experience completely unique and not linked to any other medium of entertainment. I wouldn’t read a book by giving control prompts every few pages, and I wouldn’t watch a movie by putting 24 frames in each page of a book. “Cinematic” games this year had barely any player involvement whatsoever, where all you did was guide your character down an extremely narrow path and stop every few minutes so the game could throw an explosion and yell “PHWOOOOOAAAAAAARRRR” right into our faces. So in that sense, there were barely any action games this year, just a bunch of movies with occasional thumb war exercises.

Looking ahead:

There are only a few games of note coming out this year, so this section is a bit insubstantial. However considering that the first noteworthy game is SSX it might not be a bad year after all. Until they announce the new Call of Duty that is. Happy 2012 everybody!

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Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine Review

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Riley

 

Once upon a time in the land of fish and chips there was a small company called Games Workshop. They were a tabletop miniature-making company that created a game called, Warhammer, taking dwarves, elves, vampires, and a whole bunch of other mythological creatures and making them have one big rumble. One day someone at GW decided to play a joke by taking the Tolkien-like setting

of Warhammer and setting it in the future, in space. This was called, Rogue Trader, and amidst the parody of-it-all there was a glimpse of potential, showing a truly excellent game system, coupled with a dark and dynamic universe. But Games Workshop decided to ignore it and made Warhammer 40,000 instead.

Why yes, he is using that Ork's head as a grenade.

A couple decades have passed, and now Games Workshop has quietly grown into a vast corporation, sort of like how mildew grows in a shower. They’ve been able to expand their franchises into surprisingly successful books, comics, a movie, and of course video games. Up until now the Warhammer and Warhammer 40k franchises have been confined to RTS, but no longer. Now Relic Studios has created Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, a 3rd person action game for the PC, Xbox 360, and PS3.

Warhammer 40k: Space Marine follows the adventures of Captain Titus of the Ultramarines. It’s an odd name that Relic chose, as it is also the name of a Roman Emperor who had a famous arch in Rome named after him, depicting his conquering of the Jews. After presumably conquering the Space Jews, Captain Titus is sent to a manufacturing world to kill some Orks and defend the world’s titans, sort of like Gundam mechs crossed with gothic architecture with weapons that can wipe out cities. Along the way you and your mates gradually discover a much darker conspiracy culminating in an epic boss fight, and by boss fight I mean, “quick time event” and by epic I mean, “irksome.”

Now even before I played the game I was dubious. It didn’t seem that Relic, a company that had produced RTS games for the better part of the last decade could successfully make a transition into the action game genre, and this thought wasn’t helped when they chose the most generic of all titles for their game. It also didn’t help when Relic said they wanted the game to feel cinematic, which has worked as often in video games as making consoles with 3d graphics. But perhaps Relic’s new eyes on the action genre will help Space Marine learn from other games mistakes.

At Space Marine’s core is the ability to switch quickly from shooting mode to melee combat, which the game pulls of quite well. It’s very easy to switch between the two fighting styles, ensuring that combat is constantly dynamic. This can result in some really fun moments. There’s no cover system though, and while your shield does regenerate your health does not. Space Marine employs a system where in order to regain health you stun an enemy and execute them, Orks being presumably made out of life-giving jelly. The system is designed to keep you in the fight and for the most part it works. The gameplay is incredibly cathartic and you’ll want to keep fighting. You have a choice of guns that are very effective at turning Orks into headless green bags, a choice of melee weapons ranging from a combat knife to a gigantic hammer that’s very effective at making Ork pancakes. The game then points you to the nearest horde and lets you go nuts.

Game-play is solid, but there's definitely room for improvment, particularly in exections.

There are a few issues though. I did suffer a few cheap deaths when Titus’s executions took too long and a nearby Ork was able to run up and chop my limbs off. And while I didn’t mind it, some of the executions may start to get a bit repetitive after a while. Speaking of repetition, while the level design is quite nice, the environments are mostly brown industrial complexes, which can get old, especially when the level design is unnecessarily padded at points with the worst offender being a forge level early on.

Enviornments are repetitive, so I hope you like Brown...

The worst part is the end though. They spend the last few levels hyping an epic boss battle and after killing a few difficult hordes you do a quick time event and it’s over. Not even a good quick time event! You slap the last boss in the face with the butt of your sword until he dies. Nice to see that being cinematic is working out for your game, Relic.

The Forces of Chaos are a lot of fun to fight.

Also, while it’s nice to see that they went through the effort to make your Space Marine as customizable as possible in the multiplayer (like making a Dark Angel look like a casino playing Marine), there are only five maps and two game modes. Whether you’ll want to keep playing or not depends on any future DLC they have planned. There’s a fight off the horde mode coming to the game later this month, so that may add some replay-ability.   

Don't forget, pink is always an option.

Even though these are all polish issues, they’re quite numerous and hard not to notice. Still, at the end of the day I had fun with Space Marine and you probably will too. The developers have announced this to be part of a new series, and you know what–that could work. Touch up on the executions, add some new enemies and environments, trim the padding, and add some new Multiplayer maps and the next game will be even better. Consider this at the very least a recommendation to keep your eye on the series, and not up an iron-sight.

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Update

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Riley

Blimey it’s been a while sine I last updated hasn’t it? The excuse I’d like to give is that I’ve been intensely learning the arts of writing and journalism from the most experienced people in the world, covering stories that have put me right at the heart of danger and earning me worldwide prestige. The excuse I have to give is that I went on vacation and got lazy. And no, I wasn’t playing Party Poker in some casino in Eastern Europe. I was in Italy actually.

I also spent some time going over previous reviews, and I can really see some of the mistakes in my writing. It’s sort of how we look at how people in the middle ages used to treat illness by bleeding themselves. Hindsight is both a benefit and a curse I suppose. Anyway I’ve got a review in the works right now that should be out before the week’s end, hopefully my best yet. And you can expect a lot more improved content seeing as this Holiday release season is going to be extremely busy. I might even throw in a hour by hour review of Final Fantasy XIII (if I don’t kill myself by the end of it)! So stay tuned!

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Darkspore or should I say “Dullspore”

Posted on May 11, 2011 by steveguttman

by Ethan Guttman

When I first started “Darkspore” I was delighted to finally play this game because the creature creator tool (one of it’s noteworthy features) sounded great. When I finished the day I was very disappointed. I expected much better gameplay.

“Darkspore” is made by “Maxis”, and is published by “EA”. “Darkspore” is a Hack and slash RPG with an overhead display like “Diablo.” It requires Internet connection at all times, and an “EA” account.

In the game you are a crogenitor—a guy that creates hero creatures using genetics. The gameplay is basically the same as your standard hack and slash game. It’s really forgettable. You click to perform basic attacks like swinging your claws. And, you keep using the abilities you earn with each hero creature as you progress through each level. You get a new creature at each crogenitor level.  To get to new level you… that’s right…  hack, hack, and hack… This is basically the only thing you need to do to win the game… hack.

Where “Darkspore” gets interesting is in its creature customization. Darkspore lets you to put gear and detail on any part of your pre-set creatures. Gear is a creature characteristic like “increasing damage,” and detail are aspects of appearance put on for fun, like goggles.

To be honest, I was disappointed. It would have been 10x cooler to be able to make your own creatures.

One other novel element of “Darkspore” is being able to bring teams of three creatures onto the battlefield, each of which is effective against other types of enemy creatures according to their powers. There are a hundred creatures available (although that still wasn’t enough to keep me interested). I have a short attention-span…

There is player vs. player mode, as well. This mode doesn’t actually work that well, as you can end up with a more-experienced competitor who can easily beat you.  That alone essentially ruined the mode. Then there’s campaign mode, which is boring and dull. In this mode you can play in matchmaking for up to four players, or just by yourself.

In the campaign you’re forced to endure a boring AI called “Helix” say this and that. The story is superficial. This game can be played without even knowing the story. It’s mainly an excuse to go around and kill things!

If that weren’t bad enough, the visuals are poorly done. They make Darkspore look like a game from the early 2000’s. The cut scenes are just 2D cartoons with a few added special effects. The atmosphere of this game is mediocre and not engaging.

I had many other problems. One was simply learning the game—there weren’t enough tutorials. The only tutorial was in-game, and you learned by doing. So, it took me about ten play-through to actually figure out how everything worked.

I wish I could say that, with a few changes, this would be a great game. Sorry. This game is not worth $50.00. If you really want Darkspore, wait for a sale—a deeply discounted sale.

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Portal 2 Review

Posted on May 9, 2011 by Riley

In 2007, game developer Valve released an anthology of their newest and best games called, The Orange Box; yet they received a success that they did not expect. The gaming media’s coverage of the package focused on the inclusion of all the Half Life 2 games to date, including the new 2nd episode, as well as Team Fortress 2, which quickly grew to be one of the most successful online shooters to date. The game that received the most success however was the puzzle game Portal. The concept of the game was simple, but had the potential to become game of the year, which it did. The player had a gun that could shoot two portals, and the player could walk between the two.  This created some very complicated and fun puzzles that had a seamless increase in difficulty. Combine this with a surprisingly brilliant story, excellently humorous dialogue, and a memorable villain, and it’s no surprise why Portal gained quite the following.

Now after four years, Portal 2 has arrived for the PC, Mac, box 360 and PS3. The expectations for the game are high, considering that some critics called Portal “the closest to perfection a video game is going to get”. Portal 2 isn’t just a small game thrown into a package either, it’s a full blown triple A sequel selling at full retail price. But did Valve succeed in improving the original, or was it a flop?

Wheatly is one of the several characters you'll meet in Portal 2.

First, let’s start with the single player. I’m going to say straight out that this is probably some of the best writing I’ve seen in a video game as of late. While the dialogue’s pacing can be a little predictable in the beginning, it still is very funny to listen to. The dialogue manages to seamlessly blend light and dark humor, while the original game only had the latter. As for the story, it’s good, with the pacing still expertly done, although admittedly it can get pretty bizarre sometimes, especially the ending. This isn’t a complaint, but there were times when I was weirded out, and let’s just say the game’s final achievement is more appropriately named than you might think. If you like a good story, characters and dialogue, then this is a game for you.

But of course, there’s the gameplay, which is absolutely critical. The gameplay hasn’t been refined seeing as how Portal gameplay was perfect as it was, so Valve just added more to the game. There are several new elements to work with in the game, such as repulsion gel, which causes you to bounce incredible heights, and Arial faith plates, which catapult you through the air. When all these elements are combined together, it can make for some incredibly complicated, but nonetheless fun puzzles. One of the problems though, is that the difficulty curve of the game is a little too low. While the puzzles can be complicated and a real joy to solve, the mechanics could have been more cohered, which would have made for some really complicated puzzles had more elements been combined. The single player is also somewhat, going at only six hours, although I did have fun replaying it several times.

Apart from the single player, there’s also an independent cooperative mode. The cooperative mode isn’t just the campaign with a multiplayer add-on; it has its own story, characters and levels. You and a partner go through the levels as two robots: Atlas and P-Body. The cooperative mode becomes much more challenging when you’re coordinating a puzzle between two different people, and if you think the campaign holds your hand too much, you’ll have fun with this.

Co-op is a must play

I won’t lie; Portal was a hard game to make a sequel for. It was perfect as it was, yet it was small enough that a sequel would demand much more content. This game was probably tough to make, and while it isn’t better than the original, it still is worthy of the name Portal. If you love puzzle games, and if you loved Portal then this is definitely a must buy.

 

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Total War: Shogun 2

Posted on April 24, 2011 by steveguttman

By Ethan Guttman

As I was running with my men to my enemy’s battle line, all of a sudden a huge force of horses came out of the trees a distance behind us. As I saw them I yelled to a few troops of mine. “Make a line before the horses get here!” As they did so, we saw the bowman a second before getting slaughtered by the fast horsemen.

Total war: Shogun 2 is a RTS (Real time Strategy) game. It is a game with tactics that are simple to grasp, but still provides deep gameplay. I would recommend this to all strategy fans new or old to the “Total War” series.

The atmosphere of the game is great—everything looks Japanese—even the menu. The voice actors had realistic foreign accents. The developer put a lot of work into creating a compelling atmosphere.

The gameplay was simple to grasp. It’s like rock-paper-scissors (one element versus another) with a few extra twists.  But, the strategy you use to apply it is challenging. For example—should I put my archers in front or behind my troops?  Or, should I put my horses in the trees to surprise and ambush my enemies. In addition, there are some things that can change the conditions on the field of battle. For example, rain can make bowmen less accurate. There are a lot of complex decisions to be made—but, this is one thing that makes the game interesting

.

The objective of the game is simple–you need to travel to “Kyoto” to defeat the current shogun, and hold the city for several turns. The campaign includes a turn-based map where you manage your provinces, (which are basically bases). You govern your people who pay taxes (which can make them unhappy if you get too greedy). Then there are battles, which can be played in real-time or which can be automatically resolved without actually fighting.

There is an extra option when you attack enemy provinces—“Siege” which allows you to surround a province without attacking it, hoping that the province will surrender (or starve).  You also have the option of using the multiplayer mode instead of using the AI, which let’s a person come into your campaign.

The multiplayer mode is pretty good. It is either co-op-campaign or avatar-conquest. Co-op campaign doesn’t change the gameplay. Avatar Conquest does, and uses a different map.

In avatar conquest you play normal battles, and if you play enough games you can unlock new parts of the map. Every new unlock can get you new units.

A major element of “Avatar Conquest” is your avatar. In the process of dominating the map, you create your own avatar, which can unlock special skills. With this custom avatar, as the game progresses, you can get retainers, which assist you in battle.

Another aspect of multiplayer is clan competition. This mode allows you to get into a clan and fight for territories to control. This is the first game that made me want to try out for a clan!

Total War: Shogun 2 kept me intrigued the entire time I played. It’s the kind of game that challenges you, and makes you think deeply and carefully about your moves. But, it’s still simple enough to achieve a win in your first few games. Anyone who enjoys strategy games—whether or not they are familiar with the Total War series—will appreciate this game.

Total War: Shogun 2 is made by “Creative Assembly” and published by “Sega”. The developer, Creative Assembly was founded in 1987 and is in the U.K.

 

 

 

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Bulletstorm Review

Posted on March 7, 2011 by Riley

I first realized how much fun I had with Bulletstorm after I had finished it. I had beat the game and played the multiplayer and went upstairs to finish my homework. I went through the rest of the day normally, but after dinner I went back to my PC and started playing the game again. I’m not saying that reviewing a game is an unhappy obligation, but rarely have I had so much fun in a game, that I wanted to play after I was done with my obligation. That’s what this game is; it’s fun, it’s just damn fun.

Bulletstorm has you play as a former solider turned space pirate named Grayson Hunt (voiced by Steve Blum). Grayson and his crew have turned pirate after they discovered they were being used by an army General to assassinate civilians. Their ship runs into the former General’s ship, and Grayson (in drunken rage) manages to crash both his and the general’s ship on a post-apocalyptic planet.

The story is just OK. It manages to get its job done and little else, although it does get rather weak towards the end as it deliberately tries to set up room for a sequel. The game really tries to go for humor which is hit or miss. While a lot of the humor could be considered juvenile, it can be rather clever at times, and I won’t deny that it gave me a chuckle or even a big laugh at some times. The characters are rather likable and have a dynamic that doesn’t just make them feel like cardboard cut-outs, like so many other shooters.

The gameplay is by far the strongest aspect of the game. Instead of going through the game, popping in and out of cover and shooting enemies (stander shooter gameplay), Bulletstorm has you “kill with skill”. You basically need to use all the tools in your arsenal to come up with the most creative ways to kill someone. For example, if you just shoot someone until they die, you’ll only get ten points. Instead, why not slide towards the enemy, kick him into the air, shoot him in the crotch, and while he’s down, pull an explosive barrel towards him so he explodes. You can easily get a couple hundred points off of that. The motivation for the point system is that the points are used to buy upgrades and ammo for your guns. The guns are also quite fun; I mean who wouldn’t like a four barreled shotgun.

The levels are gorgeously detailed thanks to the new Unreal engine. Environments are really pleasing to look at and the level design is quite good too. In order to make sure you’re not bored by the same moves over and over, Bulletstorm is constantly throwing things your way, whether it is set pieces, new weapons or new environments Bulletstorm never gets you bored.

Multiplayer is done a little differently than your average deathwatch. In multiplayer, you play solo through a section of the campaign and try to get the most amounts of points possible. Those points are then compared on a leaderboard to see where you place. The second part of multiplayer is anarchy mode in which you and 4 people fight off waves of enemies and again, try to get the most amounts of points possible.

Bulletstorm is a game that accomplished what it set out to be.  It has managed to make itself unique in a time where the Gaming market is oversaturated with gritty, realistic and boring first person shooters. Bulletstorm is a fun, goofy and memorable FPS that reminds us how to have fun again.

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Magicka The Review

Posted on February 13, 2011 by steveguttman

by Ethan Guttman

Magicka was created by Arrowhead. Arrowhead is a studio working in the northern parts of Sweden. I wanted to review this game because I saw some gameplay and it looked both funny and creative.

This game is about stopping an evil sorcerer that has brought evil forces into the world, attacking the good. This includes evil beings like goblins, trolls and druids. They are trying to stop the wizards—you, and up to four friends.
Magicka - display of arcane powers
This game has small RPG elements that you can customize, like robe colors. You have an account name online and in single player mode, but no NPC ever says your name. If they did, it would be in the weird language they speak in the game.

In the game you get eight powers to use and you can combine them to make more. These powers include water, life, shield (for protection), frost (for freezing people), lightning, arcane powers (a big laser), earth, and fire. This game is also filled with hundreds of pop culture references like “This Is Magicka” (reference to “This is Sparta”) an achievement. The graphics were well made and vibrant like, the grass and village visuals. I could recommend this game to casual gamers, but not for hardcore players because there’s no PVP (player versus player).

A combo on display

Although this can be a fun game, there are a lot of bugs in multiplayer mode (and a few in single player) that ruin the gameplay! The developers make new patches every day! So, be prepared for some glitches and crashes.

The games mechanics use a variety of keys. These keys control your element powers and you can combine up to 5 powers to make a spell. The movement mechanics consists of clicking and holding on a position to move there.

This game could be very good but. I think the developers kind of rushed it. This left the game with too many bugs. The good news is that its only $10.00 and in time it will be patched. So, eventually, it will be reliable and worth your while.

Magicka - Lightning Powers

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Dead Space 2 Review

Posted on February 1, 2011 by Riley

Whenever a game is good or bad, it’s usually easy to tell why. The pros outweigh the cons or vice versa. That’s why Dead Space 2 has stumped me in that it’s completely average. This has been the hardest review I’ve ever done mostly because it’s hard to figure out why Dead Space 2 is average. Dead Space 1 wasn’t an amazing game, but it had a few things going for it. It had a good atmosphere, and tension and an interesting combat system. Dead Space 2 just feels like a huge and disappointing step backwards.

The biggest problem is that it’s not scary. Now this is a huge problem if your game is supposed to be a horror game. The scares are jump out scares meaning that enemies will jump out of the walls at you and play dead only to jump up and start biting your legs off. The problem with this type of horror is that it soon becomes hackneyed and predictable. The player begins to expect jump out scares and reacts to them as indifferently as John Malcovich in any movie ever. It also doesn’t help that combat has been severely dumbed down in favor of the player. You see, Dead Space 1 was tense in that the combat was actually hard enough so that if you didn’t dismember every single enemy running at you down a hall, then you’d soon find your innards floating through the void of space. In Dead Space 2 you literally only need to upgrade the first gun you get and all your problems are solved. It also doesn’t help that one of the two new enemies can be instantly killed upon anything more than a gentle breeze. Combat doesn’t even become challenging after a while, it just becomes a slog through the different levels, hoping to get to the end of the game as fast as possible.

There is however, one thing in the game that while I wouldn’t call scary, I’d definitely say it’s creepy. The protagonist in this game, Isaac Clarke, is suffering from dementia and repeatedly sees his dead girlfriend appear. The problem is that his girlfriend is now the mental manifestation of an ancient alien artifact that was coded in Isaac’s brain. So every now and then a ragdoll marionette of Isaac’s girlfriend appears and taunts him. This would have worked well as a horror aspect and might have even been scary, but it still fails. Example, I was walking towards a train station when Isaac’s girlfriend appears on a bench and starts taunting him. Unfortunately instead of making the event scripted and taking your freedom of movement away in the scenario so you could focus on Isaac’s girlfriend, they give you the freedom of movement. I just walked right past her while she was still talking and started looting corpses for ammo and money. Horror is not horror if we are given the option to ignore it. The best way to make a horror game is to give the player as little power as possible to progress, so that they can just barely make it past the other dimensional horror hoping to make your brain his snack before his afternoon commute.

The gameplay is standard and unchanged from Dead Space 1. You still have the same guns minus a couple new ones, but like I said before you only need to upgrade the first gun you get. What breaks the gameplay even more is when during the last couple of levels, they throw enemies at you that were from level one. I’m actually insulted that they think they can get away with that. The biggest insult though is when they literally copy paste the entire first and second levels of Dead Space 1. I miss the day when a sequel actually meant innovation instead of padding. Speaking of which, the boss monsters in this game, save for one, are all copy pasted multiple times from Dead Space 1. I can’t even begin to tell you how lazy this is. Did the developers spend the time they should have been working on new enemies playing Minecraft? Oh wait…

One thing that actually had a lot of potential was the puzzles. The puzzles were actually really interesting and had a lot of potential. That is until they were ruined by having the game literally tell you the answer. There was one puzzle where I needed to deactivate a core surrounded by 3 spinning fields and my only clue was that there was a time slower device charger nearby. Then a voice came over the intercoms and told me that I needed to pull down the plates that would power the containment fields. “This is what we like to calling unnecessary padding instead of a puzzle” I thought while entertaining the notion of microwaving the game disk.

Scary, until you realise they all go down with one shot

One thing I actually did like about this game was the scripted events. For example there’s one moment where you need to fly to one train car to another in the void of space, only for the train to be derailed and you firing at enemies while sliding down the cars. You get your foot caught at the train’s door and must fight advancing enemies whilst hanging upside down and finally destroy a boss monster as you finally make it down and escape the exploding train. Those kinds of moments I actually like because that was when the game decided what it was and embraced it, instead of trying to be a horror game it clearly wasn’t.

The plot is competent as far as plots go. Isaac has awoken after the events of the first game to find himself in a space station overrun by alien zombies. He finds out it’s all the work of an alien marker and goes on a quest to destroy. He gets some friends, some enemies and manages to get out safely in the end.  The plot serves its purpose and nothing else.

Oh yes and there’s multiplayer. In multiplayer you either play humans or necromorphs. As humans your job is to complete a series of objectives before time runs out and if you do so, you win. As necromorphs you need to delay the humans until the timer runs out. Humans get your standard machine gun, pistol load-out while necromorphs get several special units. There’s a fast melee necromorph, a necromorph that shoots acid, a necromorph that shoots spikes and can climb on walls, and others. In fact it may remind you of another vastly superior game, Left 4 Dead. Better yet, just buy Left 4 dead because it and is sequel combined are better and cheaper than Dead Space 2, because they know what they are.

I think the problem with Dead Space 2 is that it isn’t sure what it wants to be. It tries horror but it’s repetitive and hackneyed. It tries action but the gunplay is merely average. It tries puzzles but they’re too easy. All and all the game just feels average, a step down from its superior predecessor. I’m not sure who exactly I’d recommend this game to since there’s no one genre it consistently is. Give it a rental, but don’t be surprised if you’re disappointed.

Even Isaac can't believe how disappointing this game is

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