Watch_Dogs

My first review in quite some time and I pick a game like this ... well where to begin. Watch_Dogs was created by Ubisoft and is a brand new IP from them. In this game you play as Aiden Pierce the small time hacker that uses his abilities to take down the system in a quest for revenge. Along with the hacking Aiden also has a slew of weapons to choose from and a kind of police baton. Lets get into the meat of this review.

The Gameplay

There is so much with the gameplay in this game, it could run circles around some of the other titles from Ubisoft. The hacking starts off very simple, you can change the light signals in the road, peoples cell phones, overload electronics and cameras. The longer you play the more skill points you get to start hacking road blockers, explode steam vents, guards grenades, disrupt communication among with a slew of other things. 

Hacking is the main focus of the game, I've heard and read some people say that the hacking isn't used all that much and you can just run in with a shotgun. That all comes down to play style, I personally tried to use hacking as much as I possibly could and then would try to sneak around the rest then either take them down with melee attacks or used the silenced pistol. Using bigger guns, seemed to ruin the experience, however the fact that Ubisoft included all of these guns was also nice because it gives you more than one way to play the game. During my second play-through I was thinking about going with more of a run and gun approach. (Getting the mobster outfit and Tommy gun really sounds cool for this.) 

As for how everything works, the hacking works very well with itself and even a more direct approach. You can distract a guard and cause the plate he is standing on to explode, then disrupt the communication so that they cannot call backup and mow down the rest of them, or just take them down with hacking. The sneaking is pretty tight, one button press glues you to the nearest wall and another button unglues your. The button that glues you allows you to move to the next bit of cover. The biggest problem that I have this games sneaking, and all of Ubisofts sneaking mechanics is there is no crouch button, I don't know why but that has irked me in every installment they make.

There isn't much to say about the gunplay, you aim and the gun shoots. The reticle has slight movement that creates the idea of a very unsteady arm, someone who doesn't know how to use guns all too well. There is an ability you can unlock called focus that slows down time and allows you to properly aim your weapon. There is also an entire skill tree for guns, however like i said, Aiden doesn't really feel like he should be using as many guns as he can carry, except maybe the pistol.

The final part of the gameplay has been one of the more controversial parts of the game, the driving. Each car has its own handling and torque, which causes the way that each car drives to be different. Sometimes it feels as if the car is driving on ice, but that seems to mostly be the sports cars, they go fast and have a harder time drifting. If you can find a muscle car that start slower but can drift better and have generally better handling, they just have a harder time winning a race. Although the cars have a hard time doing certain things, the rain does affect the handling, with this I would say that for an open sandbox game, it has one of the better driving mechanics.

The Story

The story is decent, not the greatest. Aiden's nieces dies and Aiden is compelled to punish who did it. Doing this causes his sister to get kidnapped and have to deal with the kidnappers while he is also trying to find out who the killer is. There were a few times where I was genuinely surprised with the route that the story took. Then there were a few places were I just shook my head. One of the biggest things I shook my head about was that every female character in the plot is kind of flat they either disappear, get kidnapper or *Spoilers* Dies. The rest of the story was pretty interesting and they added enough flavor to the hacking to make it believable however there are a few places where it is a bit ridiculous. Overall the story wasn't the worst but could have been better,

Others

The soundtrack was nice, where it was present. The copyrighted music was pretty good, but the composed music, where present, was amazing. When you go into a mission the "radio" will be turned off or when you do a side mission the "Radio" will be turned off, sometimes with nothing playing.

One of my biggest gripes with this game is that there were only about 36 story mission in this games and it seemed like they focused more on what they could fill the city with and not what they could have put in the core gameplay. After I beat the main story line I looked at the map to find the side missions, I believe there was something near 200 things I could do. Now, almost all of those things were intertwined into the story somehow, but it seems like they could have pulled more into the core gameplay if they didn't focus as much on the side things.

Conclusion

I had so much fun playing this game and I've had the hardest time writing this review. As a new IP from Ubisoft I would say they made a great first installation, a much better start than Assassins Creed 1, which I was also one of the few to love for its time. However as a Tripple A title, its kind of flat. The story created a great setting and a decent character progression for several of the characters. However there was so much extra content that added and took away from the experience. The shear amount of extra things makes it feel like too much, but several of the side things concludes some of the stories that the main missions started while others add nothing to the experience besides ... well ... experience points, sometimes a nifty audio log that adds to the story but often times, nothing much. As it currently stands this game would be my game of the year for it's mechanics and just for the amount of fun I had for screwing around. In the end I would say, play this game somehow. I am proud to have this sit on my game collection shelf. Some disagree, just go in without any expectation and you will have so much fun with this game, scratch that, any game.

PS

If you get the chance, play the digital trips. They may just be one of the side things that don't add too much to the experience of the main portion of the game, but it plays with several of the mechanics. The sneaking, the driving, there is even a DT that has you bouncing between flowers. They may not add to the experience but they are damn fun to play.

The Last of Us (Naughty Dog)

Excuses, excuses I know, but with Finals and my current internship, I just haven't had time to really sit down and write something. However, I'm waiting for something to upload while I'm at my internship, so I figured now would be a great time to ramble on about how much I loved  played The Last of Us, by Naughty Dog.

Naughty Dog is mostly know for it's Playstation exclusive trilogies, Jak and Daxter, Crash Bandicoot and Uncharted. All of which these games tend to have subtle serious tones with jokes pouring out left and right. Well, if you're looking for this, don't play The Last of Us.This game is as serious as it gets and pulls at all of the emotional heartstrings, while providing some humor and intense gameplay.

For most of the game you play as Joel, a grizzled old man who's life was turned upside-down by a mysterious outbreak that would tear the only family he had left apart.  The meat and bones of this game is protecting Ellie, the only known survivor after contracting this mysterious illness.

Now don't take this as a simple zombie survival game, it is so much more than that. The infected are based off of a real like fungal infection that is only known to be found in certain ants. This fungus is called Cordyceps and in this game, creates some very interesting "zombies". I say don't count this as a typical zombie survival game, because the infection is only a plot element, the real meat of this games plot is the father-daughter relationship that occurs between Ellie and Joel throughout this game. The way that Naughty dog has pulled off this relationship between the characters is dynamic. It is not your typical "Oh isn't that cute" kind of touchy-feely story, no they have found a way to tell an amazing story through excellent use of camera editing, dialog and game play. You feel invested in the characters and you feel everything that you would feel as if you really were Ellie or Joel.

The gameplay itself is kind of rinse and repeat, but the way it's done the fights still seem intense and all of the puzzles are done in interesting ways. The fighting either involves, sneaking, shootouts or a rampage of infected. The game encourages the use of stealth, so you can save your ammo, however that is not always the case. sometimes you'll screw up or you won't really have to option to be sneaky. Sometimes it seems like the AI knows where you are for no reason, however this happens very rarely, you need to be very careful. You are almost always accompanied by an AI, who will, more times than not, run out and around and not do things that would typically make sense. This can pull you out of the immersion of the game, however they don't pull the attention of the enemies, if they did the game would be ridiculously difficult. So, I guess the real question is, why not just have it so she hides in the back or something?

All in all I would say, so far, this game is a major candidate for Game of the Year. (I'm hoping for something amazing from Beyond Two Sous!) Looking over the few odd issues, the gameplay is great, the puzzles are challenging enough and the story and plot are just utterly amazing, I say this about very few games. If you own a PS3 then get this game, The Last of Us is a must for every game collection.

No Daud I ... I give up on puns.

No it didn't take me this long to beat this DLC, I've just been bogged down with homework and I haven't been able to write anything yet. Now, on to the review.

Knife of Dunwall is short, only 3 missions. If you explore all of the maps and look for all of the secret things you'll spend about 6 - 8 on each run, which considering that's about the run time of Dishonored if you just run through the game, that's not too bad. I actually enjoyed this over the game it was made for. Oh right review.

In Knife of Dunwall, you play as Daud the assassin that killed the empress and it was all blamed as Corvo. The story of this game is Daud realizing what he's done and how he needs to find his path to redemption. Story of this DLC is a bit weak unfortunately. The Outsider gives you a hint towards your path and it's a name "Delilah". In the end not much happens besides you finding who ... or what, it is.

The game play is very similar to Dishonored, I however felt that they fixed several problems and put them in Knife of Dunwall. However, going back to playing Corvo leaves you feeling a bit disappointed in Corvo.

In the end, is this DLC worth what you payed for it? Definitely. You have at least 2 playthroughs, good and evil with about 6 - 8 hours each. That estimate is only if you play stealthily. I went through massacring everyone and I beat the DLC in about 1 hour. Although they claim this is for every play style you don't get much out of unless you are going to play stealth.

If you enjoyed Dishonored, I did I got the Platinum Trophy, then you will enjoy this DLC. It add some depth to Daud and sets up for the next DLC finishing Daud's story.

You have Dishonored your family by not playing this game.

Dishonored is published by Bethesda and was made by Arkane studio. Not everyone knows that Bethesda didn't make this game, which explains the art style and why the game isn't open world. Keep in mind that none of these things  point to this game being bad by any measure.

Now in Dishonored you play Corvo the Royal Protector of the Empress and her daughter, Emily. You start off coming back from a mission trying to find a way to end the plague that came from an unexplained source. Soon after you come back to the country someone decides to murder the Empress and blame you for it ... Dishonoring you.

I mentioned the art style earlier. It's looks like the style of Borderlands in a way but at first glance everything looks kind of ... dirty and smudged. Upon closer inspection you will notice that the game is actually done in a very interesting style that I haven't seen before. Everything was done with watercolors and water paints. Some miss this and think that graphics are bad, which is a shame because when you realize this, the game is beautiful. Unless you don't like watercolors ... well then never mind.

The developers really play to the games title, Dishonored. It seems like everyone, who is given the chance, Dishonors themselves in one way or another. There is plenty of irony in the game too. Corvo seems to be the only one who has the option whether or not to Dishonor himself or not. When you go the path of purity you Dishonor your targets, when you go the path of evil you Dishonor yourself. Upon doing this you realize you've either tried to prove your innocence or became the monster they wanted to portray you as. Further looking into that, some of the "pure" ways to handle the situation are pretty monstrous.

The story line is pretty basic, you get Dishonored, you get revenge and there's betrayal everywhere. With out trying to spoil anything, the story line is pretty linear and it has a twist or two. The in between of the targets is where the meat of the game is however. Each mission has small sub-stories that may or may not have to do with the actual mission or the next. These sub-stories give the area a bit more immersion and give the game more life. What I'm trying to say is that the people in the levels have a nice breath of life to them but the story itself was a bit weak.

Many people have dismissed this game because they say that it is a bad mix up of Bioshock and Thief. Which is a bad way of looking at this game. Sure it's a first person exploration game where you can have a power in one hand and your melee weapon in the other. It's reminiscent of of Bioshock but they change it and make it their own to have it work and not be blatantly the same. I'm not 100% why it's compared to thief ... because of the stealth mechanics? meh. Not trying to throw my bias into this, but trying to say that this is a blatant rip off is a bit ignorant.

I would say this game is at least worth one play through and if you like the game, play it another way. The game has three possible endings, two of which require you to be murderous. The amount of slaughter you cause actually does a good job at changing how the game plays. The guards act different or might be more of them, there are more diseased civilians and more rats that may try to kill you. When I can actually get my hands on Knife of Dunwall I will right a mini review for it.

Assassins Creed III

Once again you are following the story of Desmond and one of his ancestors. This time it's Ratonhnhaké:ton and he takes a step back and reads out of Altiar's book and isn't as ... let's say ... charismatic as Ezio, however he can swim.

Ratonhnhaké:ton, pronounce that however you will, is raised by his mother after your white father knocks her up and sends her on her merry way. Soon your fathers men attack your village, burn it and kill your mother. What's let of your village moves and you become one of the best hunters.

With the rumors that your fathers men are trying to get your village to move in their attempt to kill the rebellion (The American Revolution), you go on your way to become an assassin, by learning from a sassy black man. Soon your very complicated name becomes Conner and you blend in with all the white folk and live happily ever after stabbing everyone wearing red ... wait ... that doesn't sound right.

So if you played Revelations and Brotherhood, if you haven't go to Youtube and watch the cinematics  (Don't worry, you didn't miss much), you will notice that that they got rid of the clutter of items and weapons. You've been brought back down to silent ranged, loud ranged, a few melee weapons and a few tricks (like the smoke bomb). To accompany this much smaller myriad of things they add hunting, which is brought up and turned into a side thing. Even though hunting is a side thing, you use these animal parts for additional money so you can make better weapons.

The fighting system hasn't changed much, you block, counter, and kill. There are occasionally bad guys that need you to counter throw or dodge attack but they are not as frequent as the regulars. For the most part the enemies scream that they are attack on screen, with red arrows that dictate that they are about to attack and you need to block. Sometimes they attack with a yellow arrow and you need dodge and you cannot retaliate.

Desmond actually does something in this game. That's right Desmond has a purpose! Sort of ... kind of ... briefly. For the most part you play as Conner and Desmond has a small amount of missions that are short. I think only one of Desmond's missions actually has a fight sequence. Desmond's story bring some sort of closure to his story arc but raises more questions than were answered.

All in all the game is worth playing, these are much better than Revelations and Brotherhood but I'm not sure if this game is better than II. Conner's story is definitely worth the play, Desmond's story might not be. If you aren't really sure about the series, because they churn out games every year, then at least rent the game. The closure to Desmond's arc is worth it and Conner has an interesting take on the American Revolution and bring you to the perspective of an American Indian, albeit a tree hopping, red coat killing, semi-unrelatable American Indian.

Important

Update this game before you play it. The game seemed to be released well before the game was actually projected to get released so the fresh copies have many, many bugs. You can play the game without the updates, but you will find some hilarious bugs.

Mass Effect (The Finale) ... Or is it?

So once again we play as Shepard the Commander of the ... oh wait ... (s)he's grounded. I guess the Alliance didn't like that (s)he was working with/for Cerberus and sent him to his/her room with no Normandy. However as soon as the game starts INVASION! Remember those nasty Reapers that you tried to warn everyone about in the first game and became a realistic threat in the last one and they still ignored you? Well they actually found a way in the known galaxy and are fucking shit up on earth.

Now not to ruin things, and it's not to say that I didn't enjoy this game. However, this game seemed to have more plot holes than I could fathom and the ending ... Jesus Christ the ending. Certain things from the last few games have been ignored or worked around with some backwards thinking. Like how the Reapers originally were explained to only to go through the Citadel Relay and now they can somehow use a relay in dark space to go into our galaxy.

Now besides the few glaring plot holes that can easily be looked over if you don't think to hard about it ... and the ending ... this game is great. I don't quite think it's as good as ME2, however this game did a very good job at keep my attention and me wanting to play more.

As I believe I mentioned in the ME2 review the game changes the mood again and changes how certain things are done. The game revolves around the war so your group has shrunken down, the RPG elements have changed to fit around it and you are in charge of getting the galaxy together to take down the reapers.

Now putting this all together this game is completely different from the other games, which Bioware seems to keep consistent among the series. Again, I'm not saying this is bad thing it keep the games different and interesting. 

However different this game may be from the others, I have a hard time saying anything about his game without repeating myself about the others. There are RPG elements that have been expanded upon  from ME2, it is still a cover based shooter, the shiny clothing has gotten a bit more in depth than in ME2 but it still can't touch ME1, their are still more side quests than I can count and you are still Shepard teaming up with Garrus.

One thing I can say about this game is don't get too connected with some characters or you will be devastated. I would definitely recommend this game series, it kept my attention, it left me wanting to play more, the characters were very well developed and the game is very well rounded. The ending is disappointing however very ... very disappointing.

Mass Effect (Part 2)

Mass Effect 2 is shockingly the second installment in the Mass Effect Series. I know I'm suppose to not show any sort of bias in my reviews, so I'm going to get this out of the way. This is my favorite out of the series and Thane is my favorite, actually useful, team member in ME2.

Mass Effect 2(From now on called ME2), takes place almost immediately after the events of ME1, Shepard is on his ship, cruising around endless space searching for Geth to kill then BAM!, you get exploded and die. The end. No seriously, you die in the first 5 minutes. Everyone gets off, the Normandy and Shepard goes down with the ship. 

Don't fret though, Cerberus spends two years rebuilding you. You'd think tech like that would be a bit more used even if it takes a few years to get right. Anyway, now you either "work with Cerberus"  or are "doing them a favor" to pay them back for bringing your back from the dead.

So now that you've stopped the initial reaper threat in ME1, apparently a race not previously mentioned is now a huge threat and occasionally have been before, who knew, and now you need to stop them.

This game is a bit more intensive then ME1 is, I think the story line is self is about 10 to 15 hours, almost double that of ME1. However you don't need to attain all of you team mates and several of them are optional. Side missions are a bit more ... for lack of a better word ... dumb. You scan a planet, send a probe and land where you sent the probe so you can fulfill what ever excuse the game gives you to shoot things over a chest high wall. While they did in fact fix the gun fighting system, they drastically cut down on the RPG elements of the game.

I played as the sniper/stealth class, in the first game you got a laundry list of abilities to sink your points into. In ME2 you get like 5, which was about half of where it was before. The powers seem to be much more effective however, so I guess that makes up for it. And just for the record, head shots get more and more effective as the series carries on.

If you thought that the game has enough characters to help and play with then this game will make you jump for joy, there are 12 other characters you can play with, each one has a unique set of techs and biotics. Each spec that you can make Shepard play as has a group of at least 2 partners that will play to  your strengths. 

The way you upgrade your weapons and armor have also changed in this installment. Instead of figuring out which suit fits better and acts as better laser repellent, you keep your standard clothing and put different parts on it that you find in shops and you can find new weapons and buy or find the upgrades of. You also cannot change your partners clothing, unless you make them loyal to you, even then its just one new costume. 

One other thing worth mentioning is they changed guns in an interesting way. Guns no longer work on a cool down, it works on ammo. They give flavor to it and a good reason, but the change seems a bit odd. They also took out the old way of doing bypasses and hacking and changed it with a new system where you cant just use omni-gel.

So all in all, ME2 is almost completely different from ME1. They pretty much completely changed the fighting, changed or removed some classes abilities, lowered the level cap, got rid of the several armors, changed the way you upgrade your weapons (for the better), gave you more strategy for biotics and tech for the bad change they did and in some odd way made the game more immersive. I would have liked for them to keep the world exploration in stead of just planet scanning. Some changes were for the better, some for the worse, but as I stated previously this ME is my favorite.

Mass Effect (Part 1)

I apologize for not posting anything the past few weeks; however, two weeks ago was mid-terms and last week was break and I was pretty much just sleeping. So, anyway, I spent most of my break playing through the Mass Effect series and the Metal Gear series (the canon ones anyway). I'm going to try to look at this game without comparing it to the future ones in the series, but I may slip a few times.

So this is a Future Fantasy Third Person Shooter RPG, sounds like a full plate right? Well this game does a pretty good job at merging everything together and making a decent narrative. The game takes the best parts of RPG games like a good story and a decent level up mechanic and then a third person shooter that does a very good job at incorporating the two together.

You play as "Insert First Name" Shepard, the commander of the Normandy, a space ship (I mentioned future fantasy right?). Now Commander Shepard is the first Human "spectre" (A select group or soldiers that do the dirty work of the Council (The "rulers" of the known universe). All of this seems like a lot of information, so the game has a codex that goes into farther explanations of the aliens, planets and lore.

That's all I'm going to say about the specifics as I don't want to ruin anything and I could go forever to try to explain the story of this game. Now, what I saw as the biggest downfall of this game was that the main story line only lasts about 5 - 8 hours. However there is about 20+ more hours of exploration and side missions. The exploration deal with a ATV tank styled vehicle that is one of the biggest pains in the ass to drive, as it bounces everywhere and sometimes doesn't go up certain terrain. The exploration can be a bit of a pain to drive around but each planet is different and brings you into the worlds just a bit more. (Not to mention each planet you can see gives you the story of it and certain statistics.)

As most RPG games you get to obtain new outfits and figure out which one fits better and protects you the best. Each race gets its own armor and cannot where other races armor. However once you've picked which two squad mates you want to use, you don't need to worry about equipping the others. Once your played the game through once however, you can unlock the best weapons and armor the game has to offer, however it is not cheap. In the same breath though, I had earned enough money to buy the weapons, armor, get infinite lap dances and probably still have enough money to own my own solar system.

The game bugging out occasionally caused a few issues for me, certain quests either didn't finish right or wouldn't even appear and sometimes dialog would just stop. Nothing major but when it happens it really takes your away form the immersion of the game.

Now besides these small ... oversights ... the game all in all is very well done. The game tries to rely on cover based shooting but its very difficult to attempt, its just easy to run in guns blazing. With different techs and biotic powers its easy to not die and controlling your team mates is a bit of a cock slap, but I didn't have too much of a problem.

The first of the Mass Effect series does very well at establishing the trilogy of Shepard's story and leaves the story at a good part. The fighting, level up system and powers all go well together and the game easily keeps you immersed in it. This game also does something that I have never seen in another game, when you earn a trophy it more than likely will effect your game in a positive way, like a permanent exp boost or extra tech damage.

If you haven't played this game before and want to, remember to try to do everything before you move onto the next game, Almost side story and major story choice effects the next game and even the one after that in some way. This game sets up the massive trilogy, however this is the only one where almost everything effects the next. This game is well worth the play, someone I know once called it "An RPG cleverly hidden in a Future Fantasy setting" and honestly this one does this the best out of the series.

(To bad the Mass Effect style of handling conversations and battle affected the rest of Biowares games  *cough* Dragon Age 2 *cough*)

-EDIT- I beat Mass Effect 2 so expect its review to be out soon.

Metal Gear Cry: Sigma ... I mean Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

A brief on how this game is: First I want you to find someone you know, hug them ... feels good doesn't it? Now they have to kick you in the groin for a good 10 minutes every hour roughly. That's the difficulty scale in this game. It goes from the easy to kill standard cyborgs to three gekkos, two armored cyborgs with RPG's and a heavily armored soldier with a power hammer. That's just on Normal. If you find this challenging you can always gear it down to easy, which the difficulty scale is between cutting butter with a hot knife to cutting a cake. This doesn't make it a bad game necessarily.

When you think of the Metal Gear series what do you think about? How Hideo Kojima can vomit on a page and turn it into some sort of semi-coherent game that almost everyone loves? David Hayter? Plot twists crazier than a M. Knight Shamalon movie? Repressed memories and anti-war pro technology undertones? Well you can throw most of that out the window because Kojima pretty much threw a concept at Platinum Games and he was there just to make sure the story was intact.

Again, all of this does not make this a bad game, it's just the black sheep of the Metal Gear series. The plot is very tame and doesn't have any twists. However, this story does delve into the psyche of Raiden. If you don't like Raiden then I can't really help you with this game, but you can play it with Raiden wearing a Mariachi outfit!

So with the plot and odd difficulty curve out of the way, lets actually get into the gameplay. If you'd played Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden you will feel right at home. This is the epidemy of ball-grinding run around and either wreck shit or get your ass handed to you. The upside is, the amount of damage you take doesn't effect your score, unless you take none ... then you get a bonus. I found this game to be very fun and in several occasions pretty intense, which is a rare for me.

The only problem I have with it are the QTE's (Quick Time Events). They are what get you into a mode where you can destroy their armor and cut them to pieces and in many occasions kill bosses or sub-bosses. In several occasions you can just attack them and skip the QTE's but int he dire moments you NEED to so the QTE's. And if you fail and you don't have a health upgrade or a heal it will straight up kill you. In some cases that doesn't matter, your still straight up dead. And the final boss had a part where you have to cut up something he throws at you and the cuts have to be exact which is a pain in the dick. The last gripe I have about the game is its parry system.

There isn't a block button, you need to stop attacking, press the attack button and the direction of the attack simultaneously. If you were in the middle of an attack then you can't block or run away or even cancel the attack, and you are getting something in your face. If its a boss, there is a good chance that you are getting dead ... and don't even get me started on the second boss that can throw his body parts at you.

Oh and one more thing. In case you can't tell the enemy is about to attack, there is a glowing visual queue and there are two of those. The red kind you can block or try to stop with a power attack. then there is the yellow kind that you can either run away from or try to do a power attack to stop, but if you try to stop it and fail, you are getting wrecked.

Besides the QTE's, which shouldn't even exist anymore, these battle mechanics are bad, in fact they add to the difficulty ... except the fact that you can't block or cancel in the middle of an attack. I found the fighting can be seamless and the fighting can easily go from one attack to another, unless you get stuck in a yellow move. This game is really fun once you understand how the enemies attack and you get your bearings.

Now with all that out of the way, the story is short. Like really short. I beat the story mode on Normal in 7 hours. Granted there was like 4 hours of just me dying and 2 hours of that specific cut thing on the final boss. However there is quite a bit of replay value in it. There are certain officers arms you need to cut off, hidden MIB's (Men In Boxes), Data tags you need to find, completing the games in certain ways to get titles, finding/completing and gold staring VR missions and upgrading all of your weapons and stats.

If you're playing this game for the story, like you would do with most Metal Gear games, then this is a rent. If your playing this game for the sake of unlocking everything, like I do with all of them, then this game is for you.

This hair tearing, ball grinding, masochistic, murder mayhem game is definitely worth the play. It's fighting mechanics can take awhile to get to, the story is interesting but not as corkscrewed as others, the QTE's are a pain in the ass and the story mode is short but has many hidden things. All in all I really enjoyed this game.

FTL: Faster Than Light

FTL or Faster Than Light, is another indie game on steam. Currently on sale for 4.99 from the original 9.99. FLT is the first game that Subset games has put up on Steam. If you haven't heard of Subset games before that's because they just started out with FTL as their flagship game. However the brains behind this game Mathew Davis and Justin Ma where some of the key designers behind Bioshock Two. (May not have been a good game, but looked beautiful)

 FTL is about a ship captain, his ship and his crew in their attempt to escape the Rebels and to try to take down the flagship of the Rebels to defend the Federation. The game play is very simple, once you understand what you are doing. First you pick the ship you want to play, originally you only get one. Next you pick which layout of the ship you want, originally you only get one. Now after this you are placed into a randomly generated part of the universe, which is split into several different systems. In these systems are randomly placed Mass Relays that have random occurrence in them. These random occurrences can be anything from absolutely nothing, to a trader, to a battle.

Now if you don't know what a Mass Relay is, you obviously haven't played Mass Effect and you therefore live in a cave somewhere in the Middle East ... hello Al Qaeda, a Mass Relay is a station, generally near a planet of a colony, that can be connected to any other Mass Relay that allows a ship to accurately move from location to location using their Faster Then Light engine, you know hyper drive or what ever old science fiction movies called it.

Now in doing certain things you can unlock other ship, achievements and other layouts for the ships. These ships each have something special that is different from the original ship. Now during the actual game you can fight other ships or try to help other ships to get some scrap metal. This scrap metal is used to  upgrade your ship or buy attachments or modifications for your ship. These mods and upgrades get wiped when you die or start over but if you can stay alive long enough you can get some pretty cool mods, like an arm that helps you get more scrap.

Now this may seem like a lot, but once you get into it, it is a very simple game with much to do. It's worth is sale price and definitely worth its original price. So if you got the money and a few minutes to a few hours to burn this game is fun and worth your time.

Don't Starve (Open Beta 2012 Finished Product 2013) Klei Entertainment

This game is currently in open beta and on sale in the Chrome market and on Steam. Get it. Seriously ... right now ... get it ... I'll wait.

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Did you get it? Good.

Now Don't Starve is a sort of mix between Minecraft, Tim Buton and Bear Grylls. That is literally the best way to describe this game and if you aren't intrigued then you are doing life wrong. Anyway, neutral perspective and all that stuff.

Lets try this again. Don't Starve is what would happen if Tim Burton made Minecraft and Bear Grylls was his reason for making the game. Since the game is in Open Beta there is still much that needs to be done to the game, so this is more of a review of what has happened. Once the game is released I will do another short review.

When you start out you play as a character named "Wilson" who has found himself in a strange place he doesn't know and needs to survive. Currently there are 3 meters and a dial you need to worry about. The three meters are Hunger, which if you reach to zero you starve to death ... surprisingly, Health, which again if this reaches zero you die, and finally Sanity, when this reaches to a certain point you start to see things that aren't there and certain neutral monsters turn into nightmare creatures, once it reaches to another point they are no long neutral and you start seeing more things that aren't there. The dial represents what day it is, what world you are made it to and what time it is.

Now that you know what each of these metes and the dial do, none of this is mentioned in the game you need to either find this out in the game or at the games website ... or I suppose here, you can play the game and not die ... or starve. After you have your bearings you need to get your supplies like twigs, grass, loose stone, flint and berries. Then you make your axe and pickaxe to get wood logs and more stones, possibly gold. From there you make a science machine and be able to make more things. From there its just looking through the things you can make and try to make a plan and build them.

Now where this game differs from Minecraft is its almost nothing like Minecraft, however this game is one of the only games even similar to it. You need to mine things to build things and survive. However in Minecraft you build to survive in Don't Starve you need to survive a few days before you can even come close to building a base. The base values of the two are the only common parallels, after that Don't Starve is a unique game with an interesting art style.

Surviving for a certain number of days gives you xp, you receive this xp after you die or find your way into the new world. As of right now, xp only gives you new characters. Most of these characters have interesting and unique powers. (One of these is the amazing power to have no power!) These characters can change how you play the game and how you prioritize your survival.

Is that everything? I think I covered everything ... who knows (WARNING: EDITS EMINENT)

In Conclusion: Trying not to sound biased at all but, this game is very much worth your time if you want a very challenging build/survival game. As its currently only in beta its on sale and if you buy it on steam you get a gift copy. So remember when playing: Don't Starve, Don't Die, Don't Go Crazy and Don't Be Afraid of the Dark ... just kidding, be afraid of the dark ... be very afraid of the dark.

EDIT: The ability to make your own mods and more easily add other peoples mods has been implemented. The ability to have multi-player is not in the foreseen future by the devs, but several attempts have been made by the modding community to have a good multiplayer mod. Keep your eyes peeled.

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)