Zombie shooters are very popular these days, but surprisingly, not a lot is bad. Dead Nation is a top-down shooter that has you blasting zombies away as a lone survivor during a zombie apocalypse. The story isn’t anything original, but the action will test your endurance with waves that come in the hundreds.
All your weapons are equipped with a flashlight, and this is the only thing that allows you to see what’s coming up to you. Zombies range in different sizes as well as really large ones that can kill you in a couple of hits and take a lot of bullets. The levels are very linear, with rubble blocking your way, but the whole point is to score high and get as much gold as you can to upgrade your weapons. You can find this in containers, on the backs of cars, and even in large chests. You will need to upgrade your weapons often, or you will never make it through the game. There are a lot of upgrades, and you won’t buy them all in one playthrough.
The levels are broken up into checkpoints, and in these safe areas, you can upgrade your weapons and swap armor that you find. You can upgrade the ammo capacity, clip capacity, damage, reload speed, firing rate, and other things. Each upgrade costs more, but it is necessary to upgrade as much as you can. You have items that you can throw, such as dynamite, grenades, flares, molotovs, and mines. The zombies become attracted to bright lights and loud noises, so these items can give you a lot of breathing room. Even shooting cars that have alarms can wipe out dozens in an instant. The same goes for barrels and other items that explode.
Enemies get tougher as you go on, but there are also “arenas” on some levels that can be really tough. Hitting a switch to wait for an elevator or a large bridge to expand can be very noisy, so you will have hordes on you while you wait. These can be the toughest areas because you need to use your weapons wisely. Use your rifle to pick off zombies when the numbers are low. Use your shotgun when you have zombies filtering through a choke point. The blade launcher will slice through enemies until it hits a wall, which can take out entire hordes. The game is extremely fun, with lots of gore and great graphics that make the whole game tense.
Of course, this game was designed with co-op in mind, which is the most fun and the easiest. Going through solo is really tough, and levels tend to stretch a bit too long. Dying really stinks because you can very easily get set back to the last checkpoint, meaning you have to fight through the same hordes over again to get to where you died. This is probably the worst thing about the game, but once you play enough, you will get good and learn what weapons are best to use.
Overall, Dead Nation is a fun PSN game that will give you a few hours of tense zombie shooting. This game will really test your endurance because it never lets up. Once you think you are safe, hordes of zombies come at you from all directions. Grab a friend and play this during a long night, and you are bound to have a lot of fun.
The Left Hand of God was a unique tale of a 16-year-old assassin who was tortured in a religious boy fortress, where he broke free with two friends and set in stone events that would change the land. It was gripping with great pacing, well-done dialog, and likable characters. Paul Hoffman’s writing style may be a bit off (or too British) for most, but it was tolerable. The Last Four Things falls short of the first book with many chapters of boring nonsense, and the story never really goes any further by the end of the book.
This book is about Thomas Cale’s campaigns fighting for the Redeemers to take over the world and put Redeemer Bosco on top as the Pope. He doesn’t really have a choice, with the Redeemers completely wiping out the Materazzi empire and Cale’s love, Arbell Swan-Neck, selling him out to Bosco. The battles are boring and poorly described. I honestly couldn’t get a battle plan in my head because Hoffman would talk about a general or King Cale would be battling, then go off to that person for an entire chapter, then the next chapter goes back to the battle. I was very confused, which made this book lose the nice pacing of the last one. There’s a little dialog in the whole book, and it has one of the worst openings I can remember. The book isn’t really interesting until it’s almost over, which is a real shame.
This book is mainly about Vague Henri, Cale, and Bosco, and you don’t even see the Materazzis until the last few chapters. What a shame. It would help if Hoffman updated his map at the beginning of the book for the new territories, but I guess he just forgot. What’s worse is that this book is so long, and you flip through each page wondering when it will get interesting. There is no climax, no cliffhanger ending, nothing; it just ends. It doesn’t even end on a surprising note, but at least the ending is entertaining. Fans of the first book will, of course, read this, so there’s probably no stopping them. This book could have been better if Hoffman did more with the characters. Campaign after campaign is boring with useless dialog that really leads nowhere and isn’t fun to read. There are a few shocking moments that involve torture, execution, and massacres, but they are spread so thin.
Overall, The Last Four Things doesn’t surpass the last book, which was excellent. The dialog (when it is there) is still top-notch and gripping, and the characters do grow in the book, just very slowly. The constant campaigns against the antagonists are poorly done, with a loss of focus that confuses the reader. Hoffman’s style of writing isn’t the best and is very confusing on its own. As it stands, fans of the first book have probably already read this, so there’s no stopping them.
Ninja Gaiden for Xbox was considered one of the hardest games in recent gaming history, at least one of the hardest of the 6th generation. I had Ninja Gaiden Black and couldn’t get past the third level; it was so hard. Ninja Gaiden 3 dumbs down the difficulty and concentrates on cinematic combat like God of War, but doesn’t pull it off as well. There is no reward for combat, the levels are highly linear, and the same patterns repeat often. This is a fun weekend rental, but nothing more.
Usually, in a Ninja Gaiden game, you die several times in the first level. The game starts out pretty cinematic, with Ryu jumping from heights and gliding down. The combat consists of light and heavy attacks and dodges. The problem here is that the same moves and animations repeat constantly and just get tiresome less than halfway through. There are no upgrades, no new weapons, no new Ninpos—nothing. Just hack away until everything dies. The game is still really tough, with dozens of enemies being thrown at you at once, but you restore full health after every battle this time, and there are no health potions; in fact, you can’t even shop at Muramasa’s anymore. Why they took such core elements away is beyond me. The only new gameplay element is using Ryu’s infected and cursed arm to instantly kill enemies. When you kill enough, you can hold down Y and do this, and his dragon-fire Ninpo will clear the entire screen. It seems like cheating when it comes to Ninja Gaiden and is hard to get used to.
A lot of people claimed NG3 wasn’t a true sequel and dumbed it down for today’s audience, which is used to being handheld through games. This may be true, but I think the QTEs are what got people so mad. You use them for everything, like combat and even climbing walls and wires. This is fun at first but grows tiresome quickly because they repeat so often. The same helicopter fight, spider bot, and other enemies repeat quite often, and it gets boring and uninteresting. The only thing breaking up the monotony is the unique boss fights, which are a lot of fun and challenging. I wish there was more to this game, but that is about it. The locales are familiar, at least with jungles, city landscapes, military bases, and various others. They change quickly, so at least that doesn’t get boring.
The story is actually quite interesting, despite how much people complained about it. Ryu gets a curse on his arm, and it is rotting his arm away. The Lords of Alchemy are working on some plot to take over the world, and eventually you will find out how towards the end. The characters are at least likable in that quick-satisfaction way. You won’t remember them long after you finish the game, but they are entertaining enough to keep you in the story, and at least the voice acting is decent.
The graphics are really good for the Xbox 360, but you will notice the gore factor is severely toned down. No longer do enemies slice in half and heads fly off. It was a bit disappointing, but there are still buckets of blood. Overall, NG3 is a disappointment in a long-term way. You won’t be trying to master speed runs in this game, but there’s enough challenge here for a bargain bin purchase or weekend rental. The combat is so dumbed down that it becomes repetitive and nearly boring, but at least the fear of death is always near, and there are frequent checkpoints to counter this. There are no upgrades or anything like that, but at least Team Ninja saw that most people never finished previous games and tried to make it easier; this isn’t the way.
Creative Assembly has made a lot of time-period hack and slash games that are decent but have many flaws (Spartan: Total Warrior for PS2 was one). Viking is a decent game but is plagued with repetition. I played this 5 years ago on the Xbox 360, and it was just OK back then. This game has aged like rotten milk, only having a decent graphics upgrade. Is it worth even a $15 purchase?
The answer is maybe. It depends on how you look at low-budget ports of older games. Viking has a paper-thin story that is middling on nonsense. All I know is that two busty goddesses are fighting each other and using Skarin (what a dumb name) to round up Vikings to stop Hel’s Legion. It feels more like a Lord of the Rings rip-off when you play it. Aside from the lame story, everything in this game is repetitive and grows boring. I finished this game back in 2007, but I couldn’t even finish the third section of this game this time around; I just wanted to tear my hair out. The combat is sluggish, with repetitive animations and combat moves. Sure, there are some upgrades, but mashing light and heavy attacks against hundreds and hundreds of enemies is boring. There are a few instant kill animations, but they repeat so often that you will just finish off the enemies normally because of how tiresome it gets. It doesn’t help that the slow motion goes on for way too long.
Using flame pots, throwing axes, and health potions don’t help either. This game can be really tough, and you respawn at Leystone locations spread throughout each of the three islands. Your only goal is to run around liberating camps with Viking cages in them. It gets boring because that is all you do. There are no other objectives. Some camps require you to “prove” yourself before they join your army. This leads to mundane tasks like liberating another camp to prove yourself. At the end of each island are large fortresses that you liberate, which are probably the only interesting thing in the game for the first time. You can summon a dragon to wipe out shamans, but you need to acquire stones to do this, which completely breaks this. Once all the shamans are dead, you liberate that area and move on. No matter how fast your computer is, you will experience a massive slowdown during these battles because of all the people on screen. This drove me nuts.
Before you can liberate the final town on each island, you have to use stealth to sneak in and complete an objective. This was both broken and boring because you had no idea where to go. Enemies spot you too easily, and then they call all their friends over, and you die. Why you have to sneak into these camps is beyond me. Why can’t you just liberate it and then take the item as a reward? After one hour, this game is just not fun. The world is empty, there’s no reward for exploration, and the map system is nearly useless. The only redeeming qualities are the gore and the updated graphics. At least the game is really short and can be beaten in about 8 hours.
Overall, if you missed this five years ago, you’re not missing anything now. If you really need a budget hack and slash, then go ahead, but be warned of the boring, repetitive gameplay.
I can’t tell you how long I have been waiting for this game—well, I can, since the first one. I didn’t know what AC3 would be, but I knew down the road it would come, and here it is. Somehow, Ubisoft can manage to make each entry feel fresh without having to do drastic reboots. AC3 is set in the American Revolution and is the final chapter in Desmond’s story, or so they say. You play as Connor or the unpronounceable Ratonhnhaké:ton. He is a Mohawk Indian, or half British, half Kanien’kehá:ka. He is actually a likable character, and after Ubisoft created such loved characters as Altair and Ezio, it becomes a huge challenge to create a third. There are so many changes to the game that it feels like a true sequel, but a few flaws that have persisted throughout the series remain.
The first thing you will notice is the change in the HUD design. It is much more streamlined and user-friendly. The second thing you will notice is that the puppeteer system is gone. You do everything with RT only and jump around with A. This is supposed to help streamline climbing (which it does), so you have to press fewer buttons. Connor automatically pushes people out of the way while running, so you no longer stumble and fall down. One major thing I took away was how much you can blend. Being able to run away from guards is much easier now, but you can still hide in stacks. There are different crowd types of blending in, like people leaning against walls, starting riots, etc., but when you are notorious, you can fight or lose them more easily. The whole environment just feels more natural, so you can climb on cliffs in the frontier and use different handholds. Trees can now be climbed because a new V-shaped object has been introduced.
The same flaw persists in parkouring throughout every game. Connor will jump around on handholds that you don’t want him to. He will even sometimes get stopped by invisible barriers if an object is too low. This led to cheap deaths and frustrating restarts. I guess some things can’t ever be ironed out. Thankfully, the combat is much improved, with Ubisoft realizing Assassin’s Creed is a counter-fest and actually building on this. AC3 is my third favorite fight system in an action adventure right under God of War and the new Batmans. Each attack is built around a counter, so you press B when a red triangle appears above an enemy’s head, then press X to instant kill, B again to throw, or A to disarm. The combat system is fast and fluid and leads to fewer deaths, but it is still challenging because you need to be quick. Each assassin you recruit is unique, and there are only six. Each one has a special ability, like escort, marksman, riot, and others. These unique abilities give you much more options when infiltrating restricted areas to either bring you to the heart or distract guards. You can even send them off on missions through the map menu instead of localized areas.
There are many weapons and items you can use in combat. The punch dagger has been reduced to just one, but you have a flintlock pistol (yes, it requires a lengthy reload every time, but you can carry two later on), and you also have a bow and arrow. Other items include mines, poison darts, rope darts, and many others. You also have to watch out because enemies have weapons and will form firing lines. When they do this, press A near an enemy and use them as a human shield. Good stuff.
On another note, combat leads to hunting, which is a great mechanic added to this game. Exploring the large Frontier area and homestead allows you to hunt animals and skin them for items to use for crafting. You can stalk animals (stalking is a whole new feature that allows you to hide in tall brush), assassinate them from the air, and lay snares to trap smaller animals. Laying out bait will make an animal come to the exact area you want, but watch out. Using more aggressive methods of killing will damage the animals’ pelts, such as using a pistol or mine. Hunting also leads to many club challenges, which are extremely difficult to complete. You can even be attacked by animals, which leads to quick-time events.
Now that we have the three major things about the game out of the way, let’s talk about the minor stuff. The menu and HUD design are much more streamlined, such as your health, ammo count, and even the assassins you can call upon. Everything is minimal, and I really like that. Of course, when you pass by new areas, you get briefed on a bit of history about them, which is 25% of the fun in AC3. After you finish the story mode, you can go around finding hundreds of collectibles such as feathers, chests, trinkets, and other items. The club challenges are really tough, though, and require you to meet certain criteria to move onto the next list. It can be fun, but some are nearly impossible to complete.
One of my favorite things in the game is the Peg Leg Trinket missions, which are cinematic and a placeholder for the Templar Tombs that were in previous games. The final piece of loot for these missions is awesome, and each mission is memorable and so much fun. There is a new investigation mechanic added that has you finding clues on the map, which is used for hunting, side missions, and story missions. What’s more, the naval battles are absolutely epic and really fun. Thanks to the new Anvil-Next graphics engine, Ubisoft created some pretty realistic water effects that make you feel like you’re really in the ocean. Steering the ship around and blasting off cannons at enemy ships is so much fun, and each mission has various objectives. Probably the best use of a controllable ship in any game ever!
You are probably wondering about the story. Sure, Connor’s story is touching and has him following every major event in the Revolution along with key people. The characters are entertaining to watch and hear, and Desmond’s story is, like all the other games in the series, very brief, but the ending isn’t as bad as everyone says it is. It isn’t confusing, but just abrupt. Desmond and the gang are trying to stop the solar flare from destroying the world on 12/21/12, and it gets a bit complicated. Connor’s story has a satisfying ending, but you just can’t help but feel giddy when a historic figure like Ben Franklin or George Washington appears on the screen.
Once you finish the epic story mode, there is multiplayer, which is just so addictive. Ubisoft has fine-tuned it and nailed it with the cat-and-mouse gameplay that you can’t get enough of. Each player gets an avatar of another player they have to kill. However, at each level, there are dozens of duplicates walking around, but you can’t just start killing everyone. Killing innocents exposes you and makes you vulnerable. Find your target by watching for suspicious behavior like blending, hiding, or running. You also have people hunting you, but you can’t kill them; just knock them out. If you confront them directly, you just get an honorable death, which reduces their kill score. Stay incognito and knock them out from behind. There are many modes, such as Assassinate, that don’t give you any contracts. You just have to watch your compass and kill everyone you can find. There are deep customization options that allow you to change the appearance, attack moves, stances, taunts, and weapons of each character. You can unlock new items by ranking up and earning credits.
Overall, AC3 is huge and fantastic. Exploring the Frontier, Boston, and New York is amazing, not to mention the fantastic graphics for such dated hardware. Multiplayer is extremely addictive, and other small tidbits just add to that. Weather changes, hunting, crafting, side missions—the list goes on and on. The only way to truly experience this amazing game is to play it. This is definitely a game of the year-worthy game and well worth a purchase.
Limited Edition: For $60 extra, you can get a highly detailed figurine of Connor, a life-size Assassin’s version of the American flag, a beautiful art book, and a belt buckle. This is all well worth the extra money because of how detailed everything is. The flag has metal eyes, so it can be flown on a pole. The statue has so much detail; it looks fantastic. The art book is designed like a 17th-century journal and looks beautiful. It was well worth the purchase.
Revelations is the first Resident Evil game on 3DS and is probably the best portable RE game ever made. Not to mention, probably one of the better, more recent Resident Evil games. The controls are solid, the story is at least a little interesting, and the monsters are awesome. Of course, the game has great 3D effects and a lengthy campaign. Hop aboard Queen Zenobia as Jill Valentine and find out for yourself.
You start out as Jill Valentine aboard Queen Zenobia, which is a derelict ship that possibly holds answers for the T-Abyss virus that the terrorist group Veltro unleashed into the ocean (or will unleash). The game has an over-the-shoulder perspective like RE4 and 5, but when you use your weapons, the camera goes into the first person to utilize the 3D effects. It works well, and you can move around while aiming by holding L. There are many different weapons in the game, and you can find custom parts to upgrade them. It really makes a difference when facing tough enemies, but not every custom part is easy to find. Some are hidden away, needing certain keys, but this is grouped into a major issue with the game (I will explain later). The shooting feels great and is really solid. The weapons vary from various machine guns to shotguns and pistols. Each type of weapon shares the same ammo pool, but each weapon is different in range, fire rate, and damage.
The exploration is a lot like early RE games because it is claustrophobic and you are stuck on a ship the whole time. This felt a lot like the mansion in RE1, but I prefer the more open adventure feeling of the later games. This leads to constant backtracking, but Capcom tries to skirt this by blocking off passages or making new ones available via keys. I find these ships confusing to navigate and am always lost until later in the game, when the last few chapters are linear and more cinematic and you only have one way to go. It would help if the map system didn’t stink so much. It is in 3D, but you can’t turn it the way you want, and there are no lines that divide sectors. Half the time, I couldn’t tell if I was on the bottom floor or the top floor and just had to run around guessing. The mini-map is more detailed, but why not the full map too?
This is probably the worst thing about the game, but sometimes the enemies can be tough, and too many spawn. This is a close-quarters game, so having 10 enemies spawn in one hallway is a disaster and leads to frustrating deaths. Not to mention the extremely tough final boss, who is a lot like Nemesis. The game does have a pretty good dodge feature where you push the analog nub towards the enemy at the right moment. This can ease tough boss fights, but finding their weakness is key. The enemy designs are awesome, and some are almost Silent Hill-like. They are creepy and gross, and they stray away from the human zombies that we are used to in this series. It is a nice change and should be introduced more often.
The game also has some pretty awesome gameplay change-ups where you use a turret to fight off a giant monster, carry wounded team members, swim, and do various other things that change up the pace. Revelations is a fun roller coaster ride that is full of surprises and will keep you entertained throughout the entire 10-hour campaign. Once you beat that, you can do co-op missions where you fight off hordes of monsters, but some sort of single-player mission mode would have been nice. Revelations also look fantastic with visuals that fully utilize the 3DS hardware.
Overall, Revelations is fun with great visuals, 3D effects, and awesome gunplay. The monsters look good, and the story is decent but nothing memorable. The gameplay is changed up often, and there is a nice long 10-hour campaign. If you love Resident Evil, then this is a must-have for any 3DS owner.
Dead or Alive is one of the longest-running fighting games, dating back to the PS1 era. It is also one of the fighting games that probably adds the least amount of features or changes through each sequel. DoA 5 doesn’t really add much, so fans of DoA 4 will be a little disappointed here. The fighting system is nearly unchanged, and all you will notice from the beginning is a new story and a graphical upgrade. The game looks pretty good, and there’s a long 65-mission story, but is it worth the $60 purchase if you are just happy with DoA Dimensions or DoA 4?
The only new additions to the fighting system are the Cliffhangers and the Critical System. Both are underwhelming and just add to the already complicated fight system. However, it is more enjoyable to button mash than other fight games that rely on things like jump canceling, jump this, cancel that, etc. DoA is based around a triangle fight system that is based on holds and counter-attacks. This means you have to be quick and read your opponent’s moves; most fighting games aren’t like that. This is also a problem because predicting moves is very hard in this game, and having counters and holds for high, low, and mid strikes is just ridiculous and creates a very high learning curve that will turn most new players away.
The critical system allows you to do extra damage when the word pops up on the screen; when it turns red, you can do even more damage, but the timing for this is a serious pain. You spend more time trying to read and predict all this stuff than just button mashing, which is a lot more fun. Some fighting games are more fun when learning the moves and the fighting system (Mortal Kombat, Marvel vs. Capcom), but Dead or Alive isn’t. You have to focus less on the fight and more on the animations and things that pop up on the screen. I spent hours trying to learn all this, but in the end, I just resorted back to button mashing, which I felt more confident in.
Cliffhangers are cinematic events in which you power blow (a super-powerful charged attack) into a certain danger zone and a quick-time event comes up. This was fun, but it is hard to figure out the special Danger Zone in most stages and leads right back to that issue where you are distracted from the actual fight. DoA 5 just adds too many distractions, but for people who don’t mind (probably hardcore fans), then you may like these new ideas. Despite all of this, the fighting system is very fun and fluid and is all martial arts, with no fancy fireballs or magic attacks.
The story mode is back and is pretty well developed, but it is confusing for newcomers. You had to have played past story modes because they pick up after each other. Kasumi is just trying to stop Alpha 152 again, and the Mugen Tenshin clan (Ayane, Ryu Hayabusa, and Hayate) are after her. In the meantime, Zack is trying to recruit people for Dead or Alive 5, and most people will find the story mostly uninteresting. It is better than most fighting game stories, though. The graphics look great and pretty much push the consoles to their limits. There is a new dirt and sweat feature added to characters, but you can only guess why. Dead or Alive is 70% female fighters with large breasts that jiggle with every move in very little clothing. This isn’t a bad thing because most of the characters are well known and very well developed, with unique personalities. One of the features in every Dead or Alive release, for me, are the new costumes I can unlock in the game because they are so well done and make the women look even more beautiful.
The story mode also has bonus missions, but after halfway through, they start becoming impossibly difficult. Dead or Alive isn’t really a combo type of game, but pulling off 7 and 10-hit combos can be a serious chore. Online modes are fun as always, but most players will get discouraged by the good long-time fighters. This just proves that you must master the triangle system because once you get locked into a combo, you’re stuck. Health bars deplete quickly in this game, so fights can last only a minute or two.
Overall, DoA 5 doesn’t bring much to the table to call this a true sequel—graphical upgrades, a new story, and just a couple of new additions to the fighting system—but they hamper it down. There are also no new characters, just a few cameos from Virtua Fighter. Plus, the stages are actually pretty boring. Construction site, a street, and a Japanese house. Yawn. DoA 5 is solid and fun, but wait for a price drop.
Modern Warfare gets the bad rep of being the game that sheep flock to. “Only morons play it,” some people say. “The only people online are 12-year-olds.” The problem is that those are true, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a fun game. Sure, the game became too mainstream for everyone, and their mom has played it, but that doesn’t make it a bad game or series. What makes the game tiring is that nothing really changes. Modern Warfare 3 feels like Modern Warfare 2.5. Not much has changed from the second game other than the campaign and a visual upgrade. There are even recycled maps from the second game!
The campaign is a disappointment because it just doesn’t feel as awesome as the past two games. It feels like a gallery shooter more than ever and has very little challenge. The epic set pieces aren’t as grand as previous games and have great potential at first, but no climax ever happens. Levels are really short without the varied gameplay clips that are thrown in. The story is confusing if you haven’t followed the games until now, but you aren’t missing much. The story between Captain Price and Soap MacTavish is interesting, but it just falls flat in the end. The campaign is entertaining at best and a lot of fun, but it isn’t solid like the past two games. What you are mainly here for is multiplayer, because that will keep you coming back for more.
The layout is like all previous Modern Warfare games without much change. You can customize your loadout, callsign, emblem, and unlock new items by ranking up. The only new additions really are how you score. Things like rescuing people and a few other things. To be honest, the controls and feel of the entire game haven’t really changed much. There are a few tweaks here and there, but it doesn’t feel like an actual sequel. The weapons are a little different, but everything is just the same when it comes to how you unlock them. There are a few different killstreak rewards, like the IMS and a few others, but if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? There are a few different perks, and that is really it. The maps aren’t designed as well as in the past two games and aren’t as memorable. There are a couple of maps in here from MW2, like the Airport map, which is a classic, but the others have to just grow on you. There are a lot more modes in this one, but I was missing the modes from Black Ops, which I felt should have been included. One in the Chamber was a favorite of mine, but the whole money system from Black Ops is also missing. I would rather buy upgrades than wait to unlock them, but what can you do?
The graphics received a huge upgrade and look decent on the PC, but look pretty bad on the consoles. There’s a slight texture upgrade, some SSAO effects, and anti-aliasing, but they are all very minor. You don’t need a powerful rig to run this game maxed out. There are a few cool scenes in the campaign, but overall, this doesn’t feel like a true sequel but more of an expansion. Multiplayer is super fun, and most players will pour dozens of hours into the addictiveness of it. There are a few complaints about the multiplayer, such as when you start. You are fighting people who are level 80 prestige and have all the best stuff, so don’t get discouraged. Quick scoping is a thing people complain about where you can look down your scope almost instantly, which is considered cheating by some. They fixed this by making it a perk, but if you play Battlefield 3, you will notice the difference.
Modern Warfare 3 has a lackluster single-player campaign, and not much has changed in multiplayer. The new maps are fun but not as memorable as past games. There are a few tweaks here and there, but no major changes you should expect. For the low price these days, it is well worth it, but just don’t buy it expecting a cinematic campaign and tons of multiplayer changes like you saw from Modern Warfare 1 to 2. I also have to say that there are a surprisingly large number of cheaters and hackers due to the lack of dedicated servers, but this only seems to happen at night. Still worth a purchase.
Klei Entertainment has had a pretty bad reputation with the not-so-great Shank series. It is a huge surprise that Mark of the Ninja turned out so well; in fact, it is probably one of the best indie games to come out this year. Mark of the Ninja succeeds in making you feel like a true ninja with great stealth mechanics, puzzles, and skill moves. However, Klei still needs to hire a new story writer because it isn’t very interesting. You are a ninja who is going after someone, and you have tattoos that give you powers, and that’s pretty much it. You should play this for the action because that’s all you will care about anyway.
The game uses light and dark very well. The game is in 2D, so everything around you is dark. You have to avoid enemies by climbing up walls and ceilings, hiding in ducts, and even in objects. The game has a great kill mechanic where you press the kill button, but time slows so you can press a combo of a direction and the kill button that pops up on the screen. This feels very satisfying and should be incorporated into more games like this. You have some weapons in your arsenal, such as darts, that can be used to distract guards by taking out lights, luring them into traps, and many other things. You get smoke bombs, mines, and even the ability to see everything around you and teleport. That is what a ninja is really like, and I haven’t played a game yet that makes me feel like one (sorry, Ninja Gaiden).
The controls are silky smooth, if a little sticky when clinging to walls and objects. As you progress, you can level up by completing optional objectives and finding hidden scrolls throughout the levels. You can acquire new moves like killing from above, snagging enemies while hiding, etc. You can even unlock more ninja weapons and gadgets for your arsenal. The whole system works really well, and the gameplay is just so addictive. There are multiple ways to approach objectives, but you can never fight head-on. That is what I like about this game. If you are caught, you need to flee and hide until the enemies settle back down. Just a couple of shots will kill you. Thankfully, checkpoints are very fair, unlike the Shank games, and don’t set you back too far.
Puzzles are pretty fun in this game because they require reflexes more than anything. Hitting tripwires may send arrows flying at you, but there’s a crank that pulls a box up along a wall to block them. Cranking it up as you climb the wall is the way to go, but some get really tricky but are fun to solve. This game is just pure fun, and I felt like a ninja the whole way through. No guns, no super-fast martial arts, just stealth, sneaking, and being a part of the shadows.
The graphics are beautiful and are actually part of the gameplay. Everything seems dark and shadowed, but when things are in the light, they are fully revealed. The only thing visible to you in the shadows are your glowing red tattoos, which are really neat. My only complaints are the story and the fact that there really isn’t enough variety in enemies. I wanted to see more, and the overall game just gets repetitive towards the end, but if the story were better, you wouldn’t feel that way.
With great ninja gameplay, smooth controls, fun stealth mechanics, and interesting puzzles, Mark of the Ninja proves to be one of the best indie/arcade games this year. For the low price, you have nothing to lose except a few hours of having a lot of fun.
Silent Hill has had a rough patch, and I thought Book of Memories would change this. The game seems really great at first, and I like the idea of the series branching off for the first time into a different genre. The dungeon crawling path works well for the series, but it is poorly executed here. The first few levels are fun, but later on, they repeat the same way over and over again. The game doesn’t feel much like Silent Hill at all except visually, and I promise you there isn’t a single scare in the whole game.
The story is paper-thin, in which a man or woman (you get to create a character with a very weak customizer) gets a strange book for their birthday from the mailman seen in the last terrible game, Downpour. It is full of memories, and you decide to go inside and change them. That is pretty much it. The story is barely delivered through notes and scattered audio clips. Silent Hill is known for good stories that are at least confusing but not boring. This one is boring and uninteresting.
The game has a top-down perspective, and you run around levels, opening rooms and completing challenges to find puzzle pieces. Silent Hill is known for puzzles, but these are pretty lame (more on that later). You are safe in the hallways, and each room is random. That is probably the most fun part of this game. What’s in the next room? Some need keys to open, which are found on red-highlighted objects. When your flashlight is on, these objects you can search through are highlighted, and they contain things like ammo, medkits, weapons, keys, and repair tools.
The whole point of the game is to run around, smacking down everything in sight, but this is where the game mainly fails. The weapons are nods to pretty much everything seen in a past game, like the steel pipe, wood plank, fire axe, revolver, sledgehammer, and a few original weapons. The issue here is that they can break very quickly. This made the game extremely tough because enemies are really hard to take down. Even after leveling myself up a lot, I never did much damage. Using repair tools can come in handy, but they are hard to find, and you can’t hold many of them. You can upgrade your backpack more, but this requires a lot of memory residue, which is also hard to come by. Saving up this currency is even tougher because you will be spending it on medical kits and repair tools 90% of the time. See what I mean? This is all a vicious cycle that never ends.
There are RPG elements that allow you to equip relics that increase stats. Leveling up takes forever and doesn’t seem to do any good. The combat itself is boring and stiff. You just mash an attack button until everything dies. The lock-on button is handy for ranged weapons, but blocking didn’t really do much good for me. I felt the combat system should be more refined and intuitive for a dungeon crawler. Maybe add some spell casting? I can’t tell you how tired I was of the game by Zone 11. I just called it quits. One redeeming quality of the combat is the fun boss fights every three zones. You have to use strategy and discover their weaknesses, but why can’t regular enemies be like this? Most enemies are from previous games, and very few are new. I just felt the developers didn’t know what direction to go in—Silent Hill survival horror or dungeon crawler?
It really shows in all the flaws in the game. The puzzles are the same three that repeat over and over. Event rooms are confusing, with zero clues on what to do. Even the karma bar seems useless because picking up enemies’ blood (depending on whether it is light, blood, or steel) will move your karma bar around. It seems pretty pointless, actually. The only way to really enjoy this game is to co-op with up to four players, because the game is really hard. Not to mention the fact that if you die before saving a spot in each level, you have to do it all over again, which is not fun.
Book of Memories has some nice graphics for the Vita; nothing special though. There are no scares to be had, and the same track loops over and over again. The story is uninteresting, the character creator is weak, the combat difficulty is all over the place, the combat system is boring and stiff, and many other elements wrapped in the game just feel wrong and half-baked. I love the idea of a dungeon crawler in this series, but please pick one side or the other. Also, make it scary next time.
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Try multiplayer. A lot of fun !