The fourth DiRT game to come from Codemasters was out of the left field. A rally racing simulator turned arcade demolition derby? The truth of the matter is that the game is solid and is a lot of fun with friends. The single-player AI is frustrating and annoying, but after you finish these events for achievements, you won’t come back to it. Some people seem to be pretty harsh on the game, so let me stamp out a few fires here. It’s the AI that makes it feel like you have low top speed. The game has a very fast sense of speed, but Codemasters chose to use the much-hated “rubber-band AI.”.
There are several events you can play, such as 8-Ball, which reminded me of Hot Wheels’ Criss-Cross-Crash track set from when I was a kid. There are good ol’ demolition derbies and regular race-offs. There are no real-world cars available for these events, only in Gymkhana. I’m kind of torn with this event because I found it too difficult in DiRT 3, even with all the assists. I found it much easier this time around, but the only event I really liked was one where you had to smash down colored blocks in a certain order.
Other than that, the game is a standard DiRT affair. Beat the main event, play online, rinse, and repeat until you race yourself to boredom. I found playing online a ton of fun, but after a while, the novelty wears off, and you get sick of the game after a while. If Codemasters put some other gameplay elements in here to deter that, it wouldn’t be this way. From what we have, DiRT: Showdown is an extremely fun arcade racer with gorgeous visuals, but don’t expect to stay for too long.
BioWare is a company that revolutionized the action RPG genre for the western era. In a time where Japanese RPGs dominated the market, BioWare was sitting in a little studio, churning out one of the best RPGs of all time. I remember when I was younger how much of a big hoopla this game was. For someone who didn’t own an Xbox or a PC that could run the game, it still slipped under my radar. I eventually got a chance to rent the game years later on 360 and quickly got bored due to its age. I finally picked it up again on the PC, and I am glad I did. The game may feel very dated and old (an entire decade), but there’s no denying the excellent story and well-crafted atmosphere that truly feel genuine in the Star Wars universe.
You play a custom character that has to defeat the evil Sith Lord Darth Malak. He has found some sort of Star Forge to use against the Republic, so you are shadowing his footsteps to find the star maps to this star forge. This takes you across several planets, such as Tatooine, Dantooine, Kashyyyk, Korriban, Kevin, and even Taris. You acquire companions of all types along the way and endure some pretty tough battles and story choices. You have to constantly choose between the light and dark side during choices, and there are plenty of ways to go about the story.
Firstly, you can choose any world in any order. Each one is roughly laid out the same, with a larger hub area than an area beyond where your main quest and some side quests lie. I got rather annoyed with the constant similar layouts and wished for variety. Each world has the Star Map area blocked off until you fix some global catastrophe on the planet. Some are so serious that your decision will determine if you are allowed back on later. Besides running around and talking to people to get quests and buy stuff, the combat and customization are fathoms deep; fans will be pleased.
You can customize your character with a plethora of items, such as implants, shields, different weapons from lightsabers, blasters, vibroblades, belts, armor, robes, and headgear, and I haven’t even started on leveling up. You should pick your character based on how you’re going to fight. I chose to use melee weapons because you eventually go through Jedi training and get your first lightsaber. I have to say that this brought a smile to my face when I inserted my crystals and watched my character whip around those sabers with the classic lightsaber sounds. Nothing can top that.
The game allows you to customize all your items by inserting upgrades that you find or buy. This is mandatory because there really isn’t a “most powerful weapon in the game.” You just get a powerful weapon, and you have to upgrade it, or it won’t do you much good. Other than this, there is the deep leveling system. You can choose an attribute, feat, power, and skill. Feats affect what you use physically in combat and what combat attacks you can use. Powers are forceful powers, and there are plenty of them. All the light and dark powers you can possibly think of are here. I had a lot of fun using them in combat and getting an edge over certain enemies. The level cap is at 20, but most people probably won’t even hit that by the end. I finished at level 18 and didn’t have too much trouble finishing it. You can even choose how your companions level up because you can control them too! This is great for people who like variety and can’t have every skill available for their character.
Combat is turn-based, with dice rolling behind the scenes. I really would have liked real-time combat, but what’s here is exciting and fun on its own. There are tons of different enemies to fight on each planet, and some are harder than others. I found the game really hard at first, but after a while, you will level up and find the game very balanced. There are some issues in combat that just really annoyed me. There seems to be a targeting problem in small areas. When you click the action you want, the characters will get stuck in an endlessly looping animation if there is someone in their way. This can cause you a battle because you have to disengage and restart the attack or move around the obstruction. This happened quite a lot, but you will learn to just live with it.
While the story is interesting and choosing how dialog will change it is fun, there are some issues here. Instead of your choice being final, some dialog trees will allow you to go back and change your answer, or no matter how you persuade or force persuade, neither will work and you can’t continue the dialog. This is usually on side missions, but I have never seen the persuade option fail so much in a BioWare game. No matter how much I leveled up my persuasion attribute, I failed an awful lot. Other than this, though, my other issue is that some dialog just drags on way too long. I found myself skipping a lot of it or just reading ahead of the voices. These, again, are just minor issues that can be overlooked.
The graphics in the game look old and terrible these days, but back in the day, they looked amazing. I can see why it looked so good then, but you can still feel the Star Wars atmosphere, and that’s what counts the most. The character models and animations are stiff, blocky, and repeat a lot, but overall they work. Even some of the voice acting is spotty at best, but overall it is pretty good.
KotOR is an amazing Star Wars experience, but the age may turn a lot of people off. My biggest issue of all is that the game doesn’t give any clues on where to go. You get no hints and are left on your own to just figure out what to do. I had to use a walkthrough through most of the game because I had no idea where to go, or some quests were very cryptic. This is a huge no-no for me and really hurts the score the most. Overall, this is an amazing Star Wars game, and any Star Wars fan will love this game.
Prototype 2 is a huge improvement over the first game in every way possible. The first game was clumsy, lifeless, and just got boring after a few hours. Prototype 2 is streamlined and even changed the gameplay style to that of a hunter instead of a destroyer. The game is so much fun that I hope people who didn’t like the last game will come back, like I did, and enjoy this game. You play James Heller, who gets turned into an Evolved by Alex Mercer. His goal is to shut down Blackwatch and Gentek, who are trying to test a biological weapon on the populace. Alex Mercer is now your enemy, and you must take revenge for the deaths of your wife and daughter.
The story is actually one of the first things that you notice is improved. The first game had a disjointed, irritating way of telling the story; it was random and mashed around. The delivery is still the same, in which you get tidbits here and thereby consume key people in the game, but it all makes sense and is actually quite engaging and entertaining. I always wanted to know what happened next, but even side quests have story tidbits that you will want to hear. The game is open for a third sequel, which I hope comes along. Heller is a much more likeable character than Mercer and is a little more relatable. Alex is a jerk and is selfish, so he plays a better enemy this time around.
The combat is another major improvement because it focuses more on one-on-one combat than killing dozens of enemies everywhere. There’s a better lock-on system that allows you to track certain enemies, and the auto-target is pretty smart. This game has huge enemies that you fight instead of just the smaller infected and military all the time. Brawlers, Goliaths, and Hydras are just a few that you will fight. Since you are a hunter this time around, you get hunting sense, which allows you to track certain people on missions. A gold ring goes out, and you must follow in the direction it pings back. I found this really fun, and the stealth is fun as well, but the AI is pretty stupid. You can stealth consume an enemy right in front of someone, but as long as he pings white, you can consume him. Consuming also gives you health and mass in combat.
You can perform two huge, devastating attacks called Devastator and Brawler Pack. Devastator is a huge shockwave that will kill almost every enemy in its range, and the brawler pack allows you to call brawlers to your side to fight. Of course, you can hijack vehicles like tanks and helicopters, which is really fun, but you can also tear off their weapons and use them. I just found the more focused combat to be more fun and easier than the crap-tier combat from the first game. Even the weapons you get to use are more fun, like the blade, claws, whip, and hammer fist. You will use each one because they are actually fun to use and each has a purpose. There’s even a nicely placed dodge button that pops up to avoid attacks, which I really liked. The combat is just so streamlined and focused that it feels great even compared to other games.
There are plenty of collectibles and side missions to do, which are all fun. These give you perks when completed, so the leveling system is much deeper than in the last game. Destroying lairs, finding black boxes, and destroying other defenses can actually be fun because even something as simple as gliding around the city is fun thanks to the improved controls and excellent animations. My only issue is that the game is repetitive because it’s the same kind of mission over and over again. Kill these enemies, stealth consumes this guy, collect these items, etc. Each mission just mixes them up a lot, which is fine. By the end of the game, you will feel satisfied, thanks to the well-told story and fun combat.
Overall, Prototype 2 is a huge improvement over the first game. The graphics look great, there’s plenty to do, and the story is entertaining and cohesive. I just wish the missions weren’t so repetitive. I also found the game too easy in some spots and then too hard in others. Other than that, this is a solid game and well worth a purchase.
Inversion is a game about gravity manipulation that fails to work. How a single element that an entire game evolves around fails is beyond me. You play as a man named Dennis, trying to find his daughter after an unknown enemy destroys his city. Unfortunately, that’s about as far as this ridiculous game gets. There are massive plot holes, completely broken game mechanics, and some very monotonous shooting segments.
The game gives you a Gravlink that allows you to make objects light or heavy. You can use this on enemies as well, but it doesn’t work as well as you think and feels completely useless most of the time. Why shoot a barrel to make it light, aim at it, pick it up, aim it at the enemy, then toss it when just a few bullets work twice as fast? The only time this is useful is when the game forces you to use it during the many boring boss fights. You can acquire upgrades for it as you go along, like being able to pick up heavier objects, and the heavy gravity isn’t unlocked until much later. This one mechanic just felt completely useless to me except for when I fought larger enemies, and that wasn’t very often. So hats off to Saber for screwing that one simple thing up. They made a major game mechanic uninteresting and useless.
Secondly, there is the inversion of gravity that affects your navigation. This part was fun until you realized how broken the cover mechanic is. One type has you flipping around walls and buildings, which reminded me a lot of Prey, but not as fun. The second type is where you’re in Zero-G and you can float around by moving pieces of debris. Here’s where the mechanics suddenly break down and make the game a living nightmare to play. You can somehow still get injured when behind cover, whether it’s Zero-G or on the ground. I died so many times because a rocket somehow killed me by hitting the object I’m hiding behind. Secondly, if an enemy throws high gravity at you, you can’t land even if you move away from the area. You can try to push yourself around, but sometimes it doesn’t work, and you are left vulnerable for a good 10 seconds. That’s enough time to die. If an enemy uses low gravity, you go through this stupid, long animation of recovering your senses before you can aim your gun and fire while on the ground. After that, you can’t move and are just laying there taking shots, and 99% of the time you will die during this stupid animation.
Why all this wasn’t tested and thought of is the obvious question. On top of all this, you get some guns that aren’t fun to shoot and have no impact or weight to them. You get the same types of guns in standard form and plasma form. The boss fights are even more repetitious and boring because the game throws the same exact boss at you several times. I fought the slave driver five times, and the security bot about four. Each time, you fight them the same way with no changes. All I wanted to do was shoot myself because of this. On top of all this, you’re sitting there wondering why you’re even bothering because the plot has so many damn holes. Why are these guys invading the city? Where are they from? What do they want? None of those questions are answered. You just go along trying to find your daughter, and that’s pretty much it. The game is a seriously huge waste of time, and I can’t recommend it to anyone.
Overall, Inversion’s graphics are pretty good, but the art style is generic and boring. All the gameplay elements and mechanics are either broken or useless, and the game has more plot holes than LA’s streets. What’s the point of playing? Sheer boredom is all I can think of. Do not waste a single penny on this game, but if you have to, just rent it. The multiplayer is incredibly boring as well, so don’t even bother with that either.
Trials practically invented the 2D motocross physics genre, and now it has evolved the series a bit like the title implies. No longer are you confined to cramped and dark indoor environments or just being able to push your bike around. Now there is a bit of customization with some outdoor stuff thrown in, but the levels just got a whole lot crazier.
For starters, the levels are better designed and can actually be mastered with practice on higher difficulties. The physics are a lot better, so you feel like you are mastering levels of skill rather than dumb luck. The environments get pretty crazy with huge explosions, rushing water, sinking and rising platforms, and even some crazy mini-games. You can pick what bike you want now, so there is something here that anybody can master. The best part about this game is that every level is different. There are so many different levels that looking forward to the next one is fun. Some are so crazy that you are actually riding on a roller coaster track and actually feel like you’re on one. Making huge jumps, steep drops, and crazy stunts makes you feel the adrenaline rush. The catch is that you have to be good at the game this time to master it and get gold medals.
Restarting at the checkpoints is as simple as pressing B and continuing on. Usually, you will mess up a lot until you master the levels. Then, you need to know just the right acceleration at certain jumps and how to angle the bike. The last stages take precise memorization to master, but it’s fun because every time you retry, you get better and better. There are some mini-games thrown in here, but I was disappointed with them. The physics don’t really work with mini-games that try to do crazy things like the UFO one. As you accelerate, your UFO will climb, but you have to land in a certain spot. I found this almost impossible because my UFO kept flipping around and landing upside down. There are a few mini-games on SkyRiding that involve riding sand, which is odd because you feel very top-heavy. The best ones are when you are just on your bike and doing things like conserving fuel between fuel stations or trying to get as far as you can while flying through the air. Only a few are fun, but at least there’s something different here.
Lastly, there’s a track editor that I am not a fan of. I’m actually not a fan of any track editor because I prefer playing a game already made for me, but it’s there for people who like that sort of thing. It’s not very intuitive, but what is a console-based editor? There are some customization options here that are pretty shallow. You can customize your bike, but only aesthetically, and customizing your rider is about as simple as it gets. There’s no option for a female rider, which is disappointing. I really like where the series is going, and hopefully the next one will take it even further.
In the end, Trials Evolution has great physics and has more variety in environments this time around. You actually feel like you master the levels of skill and not luck. The customization options are pretty shallow and basic, but a few mini-games are the least fun. The track editor is very unwieldy, but that will be to everyone’s taste. Trials Evolution is a solid Xbox LIVE arcade game that any motocross fan will enjoy.
Advanced Warfighter was one of the first games to really push the new next-gen consoles but also evolve into the tiring Ghost Recon franchise. Future Soldier has huge boots to fill, and it does a good job by evolving the series even further. The game finds a balance between stealth and action, plus it throws in some cinematic scripted events to keep things exciting.
The story is pretty much what you would expect from a Tom Clancy game. Full of politics and pretty dull. You are a team of four ghosts who are helping the Russians put the “good” president back on the seat. There’s not much to it, and even the banter between the ghosts isn’t fleshed out as well as it could have been. You’re here for the action, and Future Soldier delivers well. I was most impressed by the new recon elements. First off, you have camo that makes you practically invisible. This can only be used when standing for a while and crouched or prone. Enemies can still spot you if you get too close, so this isn’t cheating per se. On top of this, you get a nifty little drone that you can control in the air or turn into an RC car for ground recon (with a pulse blast!). In the air, you can tag targets, figure out where the enemies are, and study patrols without the frustrating trial and error of figuring it all out yourself on the ground. The drone is a lifesaver and one of the best gadgets ever implemented into a Ghost Recon title.
The coolest thing in the whole game are the sync shots. These allow you to tag up to four enemies and, at the same time, take them down quietly. This eliminates the frustration of having to take everyone down yourself or use useless commands. The friendly AI in this game is some of the best I have ever seen. You can tag enemies above in the drone, and the ghosts will quietly move around and position themselves for the sync shots. The only problem is that if you do four tags, you have to be the fourth.
Sync shots and active camo may be lifesavers for recon, but there is action thrown in. To prevent diving into action, the game will tell you where enemies can see you, so you get a few seconds to find cover before getting discovered right away. However, the game sometimes forces engagement on you because enemies will be clumped too close together for stealth sync shots. This only leaves one option, and that’s open firefights. You aren’t penalized for this at the end of missions because the game encourages sync shots and stealth kills.
I did find the campaign, toward the end, repetitive and less exciting because there are fewer scripted events and more of just non-stop shooting. The difficulty spikes all over the place in these later levels, leaving you to do many checkpoint restarts due to dying. Thankfully, you can “die” three times, and a team member will revive you. I just found the first half of the game to be better designed and more exciting than the last half. There was less and less recon and more running and gunning, which isn’t what Ghost Recon is famous for.
Besides these few complaints, I do have to say that being able to fully customize your guns is an awesome addition to the series. Instead of just choosing people and stocking weapons, you actually get to decide each part of the gun. Trigger, stock, magazine, side rail, under rail, paint, muzzle, gas system, barrel, everything. Most items are unlocked by completing challenges during missions. Other than this, the only thing to go back for is multiplayer, which is what Ghost Recon is famous for.
Multiplayer is pretty much like the campaign and just as fun as past GR games. There’s not much to really say except that GR multiplayer isn’t really for the typical Call of Duty fan. At least there’s a co-op here for buddies to sit around and play, which can actually make the game a lot easier and more fun. The visuals are amazing, and the PC has extra detail thanks to DirectX 11 support, so it looks way better than the console versions. There is tons of visual detail on the PC version, but you will need a really powerful rig (a GPU no more than 2 years old and a high-end dual-core or quad-core CPU for full detail).
Overall, Future Soldier was a long wait, but we got some great new ideas, like gadgets such as the active camo and the drone. Sync shots are a lifesaver, and there are some pretty awesome scripted moments in the game. The story is typical GR dullness, but we get a lengthy campaign with challenges to complete and even fully customizable weapons. I highly recommend this to any GR fan or newcomer who loves stealth action and shooters in general. Just expect some difficulty spikes towards the last half of the campaign.
I have to admit that I expected this game to be an absolute abomination, like most of the past games in the series. I’m surprised that the game looks good, feels good, and has some shocking moments with an actual interesting story. This is something you wouldn’t expect from a military shooter set in Dubai, but it’s here to prove you wrong. The game has you following a team of three through Dubai, trying to track down a man named Konrad, who has led the 33rd battalion to go rogue. The story doesn’t really ever make a lot of sense, but the shocking moments throughout are entertaining and memorable.
The game has a lot of real-world weapons to shoot, and they feel good, but not as good as other shooters you have grown to love. Some weapons have some sort of alternate mode, like burst fire, laser sight, grenade launcher, or scope, but other than that, the weapons are a standard affair. The game tries to use the environment as a weapon but doesn’t really pull through. You can shoot the glass out of the glass that has a bunch of trapped sand behind it to bury enemies, but there are only a few spots on the whole to do this. There are some epic set pieces throughout the game, like hanging onto a gas truck while firing a grenade launcher, using a mini-gun in a helicopter, and a few moral choice points in the game.
These moral choices are pretty disturbing, like seeing two men hanging from a freeway sign. You have to choose one or the other to survive. Another section has you firing white phosphorus down on soldiers, but you end up killing tons of civilians in the process. The cut scenes that lead up to and after these moments are pretty shocking and gruesome. This is something I would not expect from a military shooter, and I hope others follow suit. In between these moments, there is just monotonous shooting and boring brown deserts to look at, which really bring the great moments down. The characters are at least as interesting as their mental state deteriorates as the game progresses and you start to feel for them, which is also rare in military shooters full of cookie-cutter one-man armies.
I constantly wanted more of those shocking moments, but they were far and few between. It was just bad guy after bad guy, and they all looked the same after a while. You can wander around and pick up intelligence items, but how many of us are tired of doing this in shooters? The cover system at least works pretty well and is similar to Gears of War, but not as fluid. Then there’s multiplayer, which is a standard affair and won’t keep you coming back for very long.
Overall, Spec Ops has some shocking story moments that give you choice and question your moral standards. In between these moments are monotonous shooting segments through boring and brown environments. Even the sand elements are not put to good use and are almost forgotten halfway through the game. This is a fun weekend rental, but don’t expect any miracles.
The first episode was just amazing and had some shocking moments. I have been waiting for this episode, but I feel a little letdown this time around. Lee and the gang need to find food because they ran out at the motel they are holding down. You go to try to find food and wind up on a dairy farm, but the food isn’t exactly what you think it might be. There aren’t as many shocking moments, and they don’t come off as surprising as in the first episode. The big moments are more dialog choices than actual gameplay, which is disappointing. One moment does have you chopping off a guy’s leg stuck in a bear trap, but other than that, the other moments are pretty typical, like yanking a gun out of a guy’s hand. In fact, there aren’t even really that many zombies in this episode; they kind of take a back seat to the internal struggle on the farm.
The game plays out exactly the same, but there are fewer exploring segments and even fewer puzzles to solve. In fact, this mainly felt like an interactively animated episode rather than an adventure game. Not to say that is bad, but fans of the first episode may find it disappointing. There are some more important choices you have to make, and that is probably the biggest switch from the first episode. Some changes actually determine the lives of a few characters you probably got attached to. Episode 2 does what this series is doing best, and that’s slowly drawing the characters’s personalities out and constantly making you question how you feel about them.
The game isn’t so much tense gameplay-wise as story-wise. The whole time, I was surprised when something did happen. You are thrown important choices and need to make decisions quickly at times when you least expect them, and they really make you think. I had such a hard time picking almost every choice because sometimes the right thing to do isn’t the best thing to do. A lot of times, I wonder how that will affect me later on in the series.
Overall, Episode 2 doesn’t have as much action or surprising moments, but it expands the character’s personality and gives you some seriously heavy situations that force you to make big decisions. The episode also puts zombies on the back burner for the problems on this farm and the group, so be prepared for that.
I have really given this game some time, and I have tried to forgive it. I rented this on Xbox 360 when it first came out and gave up after the second level. I bought this at a cheap Steam sale about a year ago and have just had it sitting on my HDD since then. I have gone back here and there to try to beat or continue this game. I just can’t do it and have finally given up. After two years of giving this game a chance, I doubt it will become better over time. The paper-thin story, poor stealth mechanics, and technical flaws just bring this promising game down.
You play as a British spy infiltrating Germany during World War II and other occupied territories for…I don’t really know. The story is presented in flashbacks that don’t really explain much other than why Violet is at that current location. You have various goals you have to complete, but there are enemies in between that you have to kill off or avoid. A stealth game has to have great stealth mechanics like sneaking, killing, and gadgets, which Velvet fails in every category. First off, she moves way too slowly when crouching. You can never catch up to enemies who are walking because they just leave her in the dust. This is extremely difficult when you are trying to quickly kill someone before you are spotted. The kill moves are pretty cool, but you have to be in the exact position the game needs you to be before you can trigger them. You also have to be extremely close, which is ridiculous. This isn’t a splinter cell where you can trigger the kill at a reasonable distance.
You get a few items to help you kill these Nazis. You can use morphine shots to become invisible, freeze time, and do an automatic kill. This is useful for a guard that has been spotted, so you can take him down really quick. You get a silenced pistol, but ammo is hard to come by, so use it wisely. Sometimes you can also use a Nazi uniform as a disguise, but if you get too close to enemies, they will recognize you. The game has shadow stealth, which means if you hide in the shadows, you will have a blue aura around you, and enemies won’t see you. This game has some of the dumbest AI enemies I have ever seen. You can whistle to lure a guard into some shadows, but he won’t see you even though you are two feet in front of him. If you are seen and try to hide, the enemies know exactly where you are, and you can’t hide from them. What kind of lame crap is that?
The game looks good and has a nice visual art style, but there are some technical flaws here. Animations are pretty bad, with some terrible sound effects. The footsteps all sound the same, and the animations just seem floaty and canned. I also found some of the guard’s patrols to be very long, and the overall patterns are hard to work around. It’s difficult to figure out how to take out enemies because there are no natural hints or obvious paths most of the time.
Overall, Velvet Assassin was a promising stealth action game set in World War II but has a pointless story, broken stealth mechanics, and some technical flaws. The game looks good, but other than that, there is no reason for you to pick it up. Rent this if you want to play a stealth game with a sexy protagonist; otherwise, look elsewhere.
The first DeathSpank gave us some solid RPG action with really funny dialog and wit. Thongs of Virtue is the direct sequel but feels more like an expansion. The game is exactly the same, but with new content. Unfortunately, the game also carries over the same problems from the first game, so not a single thing was fixed or changed. The story is about DeathSpank trying to retrieve three thongs from three evil bosses, but in between, you can do about 150 side quests.
The game is broken up into several areas, just like the first game. You can warp around the world via outhouses, and you will revive at the nearest one if you die. As you do quests for various people, you pick up more powerful armor and weapons along the way. There are new armor and weapons in this game, but everything else is the same. The same food, potions, and other little tidbits like chests. Some chests can only be opened with special keys that have to be fitted by a locksmith, though. There are more areas to explore in this game, which means it’s a bit longer. You can probably finish most of the game in about 15 hours, or 20 if you are slow.
Running around and whacking enemies is the name of the game, but only certain ones can be beaten when you are at a higher level. The level cap is 20 again, but it takes a bit longer to get there this time around. There are more characters to talk to, which means hours of funny and strange dialog. There’s even an area where you can steer a pirate ship and go to little islands to get quest items as well. I actually found the fortune cookie hints to be more useful this time around and rarely needed to use a walkthrough. The last game had poor hints, and even the quest descriptions were pretty poor. At least now most of them tell you where the quest giver is, so you can go back to them without having to wander around.
The biggest issues I had with the last game still exist. You can only have five health potions at a time, so you have to rely on consuming food items. This takes forever, and sometimes you will fail if enemies have projectile weapons because DeathSpank will stop eating if hit. This made combat drag out and become irritating, which just so happens to be the case here too. Most enemies that are around your level will kill you almost instantly if you get ganged up on, so running around in circles eating food is just annoying. Why this wasn’t addressed is beyond me, but it needs to be in the third game, or I actually won’t play it. The game is also full of repetitive fetch quests that I didn’t really think about in the first game. There needs to be more variety in the gameplay and/or quests, because a third helping of this would just be way too much.
Overall, Thongs of Virtue is a fun action RPG for fans of the first game. People who didn’t like the first game will hate this one too, because nothing really changed or improved. Come for the witty and funny dialog, but don’t expect anything spectacular or extraordinary.
thebinarymessiah.com 
Try multiplayer. A lot of fun !