Scare Bear: Amnesia - The Dark Decent (Frictional Games) 2010

HOLY SHIT! That is a exclamation that will be uttered by everyone who plays this several times. This is a game that truly knows how to scare it's players. Right off the bat that game tells you how you should play the game, to maximize the effect of the pant soiling. No lights, use headphones and try to focus on the game. The only bit of this I didn't completely follow was the lights, I had Christmas lights on behind me, I'm still slightly jumpy when Christmas lights are turning on or flashing.

Amnesia -  The Dark Decent is an indie game created by Frictional Games. With many indie games, I don't expect much in the graphics aspect but in the story. For a game from 2010, the graphics aren't stellar, but for an indie game they actually aren't all that bad. In fact, they are pretty good. But this is a horror game, graphics aren't all that necessary for this type of game.

Does this game stack up to today's horror games? You bet your ass this game does. Considering more of today's horror games give you either awesome guns that take challenge and thinking, and subsequently scaring, out of the game. When they do this you aren't left with much more then a shooter with some creepy looking baddies. Now does this game stack up with something like Silent Hill 2? Almost, in both games you are frightened to leave whatever hiding hole you have created, the place you are forced to be in feels like it is against you, you don't really know what the hell is going on and you don't have many choices other than running. Sure Silent Hill gives you a gun, but chances are it isn't going to be doing much.

When I was playing Amnesia small things like sounds and the occasional blur in the distance would make me piss myself and I'd go find a hole to crawl in. This game is almost an embodiment of what you want in a true horror game. Things actually scaring you, and not that "Oggly wooggly woo I'm in a closet" crap, this game will scare you on every level.

This game also entails some puzzle that occasionally beg the question "This makes sense why?" or "Didn't I do everything right?" But once you figure it all out the puzzle make sense again, sort of. The puzzle can be challenging at times but always rewarding to know you are getting farther and once step closer to no longer soiling yourself.

In Conclusion: If you enjoy horror games, this is definitively a must. The game is scary on many levels, the puzzle can be interesting and complex and it's really the only real horror game to come up in years. I would highly reccomend this to anyone who likes horror games.

Assassin's Creed: Revelelation (2011) Ubisoft

Assassin's Creed is one of my all time favorite series, one and two were god tier games. Then Brotherhood was released and the series seemed to go downhill, elements were added that seemed to deviate from the series and detracted from assassinations. They also started trying to get Desmond a personality, which is akin to giving a rock a mustache.  It seemed they focused more on the multiplayer than many of the aspects that gave the other games real meat.

Then Revelations came out, the game that focused on Desmond and really tried to give him a personality and make you understand him. With his personality being that of mud, this failed, but they did finally explain his back story ... which is ... nice? The story finally ended the history of Ezio and Altiar, this is almost worth buying they game ... or just watch it on youtube. The newest things they add to the game almost destroy the strategy purposed of the game, the bombs. The second new aspect is a tower defense game. That's right you can play assassins vs templars in a linear tower defense game. This is just what every Assassin's Creed game needed.

Assassin's Creed II: Revelations - Is a game created by Ubisoft in 2011 as the second "expansion pack" of Assassin's Creed II. It takes place in Constantinople with Ezio as the lead once again. The series seems to have devolved from where it was going.

Story line:The storyline for Revelations is very convoluted and at times not even present. The story is sort of split into two branches. A small area exploration searching for key location that you got from a hidden book. The other branch is some strange revolution or something that's happening. They don't really explain it, Ezio shows up and recruits near 50 young assassins to control places around town and around Europe. Ezio is looking for keys to get inside Altair's library and finds out the keys are in Constantinople. After this nothing much was explained to much and it can get confusing as to why you are doing what you are, its better to just follow what the mini-map says.

Character design: This hasn't changed much, the characters have always pretty much looked the same. The NPC's look good and they develop well ... sort of. All I'll say is that this game really ties up all of the loose ends.

Game Design:For a game called Assassin's creed, the number of assassination is extremely limited. The majority of the game is spent babysitting young assassins, tailing people and jumping from place to place dicking around. The latest installment to the game is the tower defense game. The addition is, besides the tutorial, is completely optional. When you are "known" by the Templars you may have to do this tower defense game unless you: Bribe a Herald, Kill an Official or just die during a mission. Doing this (enough) removes the alertness of the templars. To prevent the tower defense game all together all you have to do is level you young assassins to "master assassin" and make them the leader of the Den that gets attacked. Do this for all of the Dens and there will never be a problem, ever.

The, few, assassination that there are, are very challenging and fun. The biggest flaw of these few assassinations is that you need to kill them in a specific way to get a "full synchronization" which takes away a portion of the planning phase of the kill. The other missions are pretty much following people, fighting guards and walking around.

         The tower defense mini game is actually pretty much despite how rare it is to actually play it.
         The game requires a small amount of strategy and some thinking. This makes it fun to play and
         different from what you would expect from an Assassin's Creed game. It's worth busting your
         ass trying to play it.

         Tactical Aspects:The major tactical aspects of this game are, bombs and how to use them,

                                      knowing your surroundings, understanding what your items do and
                                      knowing how to utilize your surroundings. The majority of these
                                      have been in the other games, save the various number of bombs
                                      and how to use them right.

               Bomb's - Besides the smoke bomb they added several new bombs and categorized
                              them.They are: Lethal, Tactical and Diversion. Most of these traps are
                              completely useless. Some of these can be used to add more thought to
                              what you're doing, while others completely ruin the fun and thought and
                              just make everything die and you get away with no issues.

               Surroundings - Not much has changed. I don't think they added any new hiding spots and I

                                         don't think they really changed much from the hiding spots.

                Items - Besides the bombs, they didn't add much to the game. I think they added new
                swords and hammers but, that's it.

In conclusion: As an Assassin's Creed game, I really don't feel that this really fits the bill. With the minimum amount of assassinations, focusing on building your young assassins and a weak storyline. This game just doesn't feel like a real Assassin's Creed game. Ending the Ezio and Altair stories is nice but it doesn't make up for lacking in what makes this series ... well this series. As an expansion it's fine, but for a full retail price game it's not worth it.

          TL;DR: It's an okay expansion, but for full retail price it is not worth it. Wait for the the price to
                         drop.

A Quick One: Minecraft (2011) Mojang

After playing this "game" for almost a year, I have created many things. A giant Pokemon, towns, castles, etc. The "game" itself isn't what most would call fun, you have to create your own fun. Until recently Minecraft didn't even have a purpose, as most could see. Now the purpose is to gather very difficult things and to kill the final boss, a dragon.

I find this game very difficult to critique, as you may have noticed I kept writing "game." I do this because Minecraft is not a game in the normal sense. Minecraft is a creativity tool, with the latest additions it can be considered as some strange misconstrued idea of a game, but I still cannot call it such.

This game isn't for everyone, if you don't like to create your own fun or don't have fun creating things then you will not have fun playing Minecraft. There is no story, the soundtrack is very limited, the fighting is click until they no longer exist.

I feel as though I'm rambling, lets try to get some structure in this critique, shall we?

Minecraft: An "indie" game created by Mojang, mostly Notch from my understanding. Minecraft has been in the works since 2009 and still is, but is not in full release. The game is about surviving in a world were all you have is your hands and what you can create. Unless you only want to build and only build then you either play without enemies or in creative mode. What most people need to know is, this is a creativity tool above all else.

Story: There isn't one, you are plopped down on an island with only your hands to chop down trees and create your own tools and house. From there, you create your own story. With the number of mods you can get to add stories, this, as I said, is a creativity tool and yours and others creativity help define the world you created.

 Game Design: The graphics are horrible but they add a nice touch to the game and actually make it very nice. The worlds are randomly generated or you put in numbers or a phrase and an algorithm created the world. There really isn't much to the game design, but don't tell Notch I said that.

In the end, this game just boils down to your preference, there is noting to it to make it a good or a bad game. As I said earlier, it really isn't a game. If you like to create things, this game is for you, if you don't ... well don't play it then, because, as the earlier part of this, the game has no structure. Everything is up to you.

Darksiders(2010) Vigil Games

Darksiders (2010) by Vigil Games

So, lets get one thing straight, I reviewed this game on an older blog last year around this time. I'm reposting this because It may be a few days before I finish the game I am playing so I can review it. Also, because I have heard some buzz about this game lately and because of the sequel that is to be coming out in June. So, without further ado, here is my old review on Darksiders.

Darksiders, is the first game created by Vigil Games, a subsidiary of THQ. Vigil Games was founded by comic book creators which is Darksiders first problem. Seeing as this is their first attempt at creating a game, I will take it easy on them, as this is also my first full review. If you read my twitter then you probably know that I have a huge list of comments and complaints about this game, I plan on addressing all of them here.

Story line: The one HUGE flaw with this game is, the story line takes a big back seat in this game, so far back that it’s almost nonexistent. The story in the beginning was nice and gave a good backdrop to the game itself and its lore, but as the game progressed it became very evident that the story to this game was to simply realize that you have something sharp and you can kill demons and angels with it. It’s a very simple and linear story, with one major theme, vengeance.

Character design: The one thing I noticed right off the bat, which I bet most would, is War (the main character and one of the four horsemen) looks like a design train wreck. He has about 7 different kinds of armor on and they are all mismatching, which makes me think at one point he has a clothing fixation that was opposite of the Prince’s from the Prince of Persia series, every time War gets blood or a stain on his uniform he covers it with a nearby corpses armor, creating the ensemble you see today. His “final” armor looks much better than his normal clothing. He looks more like a horseman and his armor actually matches.

Game Design: To start off the levels of this game a very very linear, yes there are some split paths are some points in some dungeons but those rarely split off and all have very linear corridors that will either bring you back to the beginning, give you a new item, or give you the key to a door that is two rooms away.

One major question I would have to Vigil Games would be if they actually intended on making a Frankenstein monster of several good games, because they half succeeded. They took parts from certain games and tweaked them a bit, throwing them together creating something that looked like a game, but in the end turned into a brain dead chimp that only knows how to eat its own feces.  Here are only a few of the things I noticed that this game seemed to “borrow” from other successful games.

Life Shard: If you collect 4 life shard you get a new full life container and every time you beat a boss, you get a full Life Piece.

Map/Hordefinder: Each dungeon has a map that shows you the entire layout of the dungeon and a Hordefinder that shows you the locations of all of the treasure chests in the dungeon.

Crossblade: a four-sided blade that moves like a boomerang when thrown and can hit multiple targets.

Grappling Hook: A grappling hook that can catch onto climbable ledges.

Voidwalker: A gun that can shoot blue and orange portals that you and objects can go through.

Lightbeam puzzle: The final dungeon has you move beams of light in certain with portals and movable mirrors.

Gun Juggling: When shooting a falling opponent you can juggle them.

I know that this is their first game but I think these guys could have done better with creating their own material and actually making this game their own, and good.

Fighting System: This is a fighting game so I bet your wondering how the fighting system is, right? Well I can sum up the fighting system very very easily for you. Press attack button to slash, press it again to slash and again and one more time to cut them in half. There, you have now mastered the fighting system.  This game obviously wanted to be like God of War but fails at it very hard.

You get secondary weapons but your main attack doesn’t combo in with them and their attacks on their own are very flimsy and difficult to actually kill with. The one skill that I found to completely break the game was the dash stab. This attack does tremendous amounts of damage and stuns most enemies or makes them fly backwards and stuns them. I leveled this all the way up after my first dungeon in this game and didn’t have a problem afterwards.

Once your enemies and some bosses get low in health you can do a small QTE (Quick Time Event) that I swear was meant for the mentally handicapped. Remember how in God of War the normal enemies had one or two QTE’s and the bosses had 5 or 6 and they gave you a reasonable amount of time to actually press the button? Well this game takes that and makes it stupid, you can kill all minion and most bosses by simply pressing one QTE and its typically the same button. I found this to be way too easy and really dumbed the game down for me.

Enemies: The enemies all look like they either belong in Warhammer 40k or they belong in Starcraft. The Angels look like a mix between some of the Warhammer figures and the Archangel from Diablo 2. The demons either look like the Orc’s from Lord of the Rings or the Zerg from Starcraft and think and act like Orc’s from Warhammer. The enemy diversity at first seems very good and at a nice pace, but once you get a few hour into the game the enemies get palette swapped and all start to look the same and have the same QTE finishers making the game extremely repetitive.

In conclusion: Based on the games own merits I wouldn’t recommend this game at all unless you like to watch games try so very hard and fail, and if that’s true then you are one sick puppy. This game has many ups and downs, many more downs than ups.

However, seeing as Vigil Games is a new company and created a game that had its moments, by moments I mean times where I got a little too *happy* over ripping an angels wings off and slamming his head into the ground. This game is at least worth the rent. It has many flaws that prohibit you from really getting into the gameplay but does its “best” and may entertain you. If you like to support small companies or subsidiaries then I would strongly recommend buying. Even after you beat the main story line there are still things for you to find, even though it’s hard not to find them on your first playthrough.

Pros:

Gore

Challenging Puzzles

Flowing fights

Massive Bosses

Multiple weapons

Easter Eggs

Hidden Items

PS3 version has no graphical glitches

Cons:

Weak Story

Steals from other games

One move can make combat too easy

Short

No replayablilty

The intro to the game is unskippable

Strange loading times

The Xbox version has many graphic glitches

Button priority can get misconstrued.  (Picks up a stick instead of doing QTE finisher)

Stupid AI

Clunky Controls

Bad GUI

War isn’t likable or relatable

Palette swapped enemies (I thought we were past Final Fantasy 3)

Unforgiving Environment

Predictable story and ending

Game is a big lead up for the sequel

Secret Armor doesn’t show in cinimatics.

Name never explained.

A star is born

Once again I have fallen into the pit of wanting to critique video games for my own sick amusement. I do not plan on rating based on a numerical system as I find it hard to justify giving something a score. Not because it is challenging, but because it can belittle what has been said or give the wrong impression. If you don't care what has been mostly said about the game then you shouldn't be looking the game up in the first place.

I digress, The purpose of this "blog", will be to pull a video game apart to its very core, to show all of its flaws and all of its shinings. I hope to show these in a very neutral way, showing no bias towards the company or things they have done in the past, unless it was a prequel.

You may disagree with the things I say, but I what I say may be fact or just opinion. I have been playing video games long enough to feel I can judge what would be considered "good" or "bad" in a game.

The games I review may be old or new, they could have come out last week or last decade. To start off I will be reviewing a game I played last year and once reviewed, Darksiders, in the next post.

(I may also start a twitter so follow me there too :D)