The Alice in Wonderland series isn’t something you would expect to be a game or even good at. American McGee took the series and twisted it into a sick gothic horror adventure back in 2000 on the PS1 and PC. The game’s atmosphere, art, and overall design were amazing for the time, but everything else was subpar at best. The game returns 11 years later and with tons of improvements. If you haven’t read the books or seen any of the many films or TV shows, then you’ll be fine. The story is kind of confusing, even at the end, but the story is supposed to be. The whole world of Wonderland doesn’t really make any sense except for the fact that Alice has been locked away in an asylum because she can’t get over the death of her sister. She lost her family in a fire that burned her house down, but there are some shady characters around her that seem to be manipulating her. She falls into Wonderland (her own mind) and has to stop the Infernal Train from destroying the place.
You get to meet classic characters like the Cheshire Cat, Caterpillar, The Mad Hatter and March Hare, the Door Mouse, The Queen of Hearts, and so on. Each character is wonderfully designed for the atmosphere, and they are just sick and twisted, unlike anything I have ever seen. However, the game is made up of two main parts: combat and platforming. Each is equal in flaws, but both are better than the last game and are a lot of fun.
Platforming consists of puzzles, shrinking down on the fly to find invisible platforms, hiding keyholes to find hidden items, jumping around, floating, gliding, pulling switches, avoiding traps, and heading through obstacle courses. Each level is very unique and looks completely different from the last, but the same elements apply to each level, and towards the end, it gets kind of boring and repetitive since it’s the same thing over and over without end. The combat and platforming are balanced, but by the end of the game, you just get too much of both because the whole game mainly focuses on just that.
The combat is fun and violent, but it’s very simple, with just one button for light attacks and another for heavy ones. You can use the pepper grinder and teapot cannon to shoot; the auto lock-on works well; but overall, you can only upgrade your weapons, and there aren’t enough of them. The hobby horse is for heavy attacks, and the vorpal blade is for light attacks, but those are the only four weapons in-game. You slowly acquired them, but I wanted to see more. The combat feels repetitive because there’s not much substance to it, and the enemies all play out almost the same. Each level has its own unique enemies with different weaknesses, but executing them is pretty much the same for each one.
While combat and platforming are the same, there are some mini-games tossed in for good measure, which is a sigh of relief. These involve sliding puzzles, chess games, and 2D platforming sections. These are fun, and each level has its own unique mini-game. Speaking of uniqueness, that’s exactly why I rated this game so high. The art, atmosphere, characters, and everything combined are just so amazing, and I have never seen anything quite like it. It’s also the fact that something so sweet and innocent like Alice has turned into a screwed-up gothic adventure (some scenes are really messed up, trust me) with dismemberment, cursing, gore, and downright freaky images. That’s what I love about Alice so much, and you always look forward to new levels to play. Even Alice’s dress changes with each level, so you can tell there’s a lot of detail going into the game. The game technically is a little dated, with some pretty bad low-resolution textures in spots, and there are a few collision detection bugs that can make you restart.
If you can get past the repetition and sometimes very difficult spots, then you will fall in love with the game. The game is amazing to look at, the characters are great, and it just oozes creativity. I just wish the combat and platforming weren’t the same throughout the whole game and were lacking in depth.
With this being the final DLC in the New Vegas saga, this one is about you. You finally get to meet Courier Six, and this journey is a true test of your skills leading up to this release. This lonesome road doesn’t allow you to take companions (you do find an old friend inside, however); you also get new weapons, enemies, and probably the most destroyed-looking area in any Fallout game so far. The game is very linear, but not like Dead Money, where you just run around in circles completing stupid tasks. You go from point A to point B, but it’s a long road (about 5 hours, actually), and there are some surprises along the way.
First off, you get a detonator gun along the way that allows you to blow up nuclear warheads along the way (30 in total) to kill enemies from afar or make new paths. This is exactly what I have been waiting for since Fallout 3, and we finally get to do it. Hell, you get to launch two different huge nukes in this DLC. The ending also makes a huge impact on the story (even if you did finish the main story). You do get new weapons that are mostly energy-based, but there are some awesome melee weapons, so there is something here for every type of player.
The new enemies are Marked Men, which are NCR troops that got stuck out here in this nuclear site and turned into ghouls. These guys have many different weapons (the new Glare gun is my favorite since it acts like a semi-automatic rocket launcher). The tunnelers are pretty tough little guys that are fast-moving, but you only run into them when you are underground. Deathclaws make an appearance and will cut you down fast if you don’t have some good armor. Overall, the game will provide a great challenge, especially the final boss fight (which required several restarts and quick saves for me).
Overall, Lonesome Road provides a great challenge, new weapons, and environments, but there are no real quests since you are only going in one direction. There are also only two characters in the whole DLC, so overall, the DLC may feel empty to some people and too straightforward. I liked it since it really made you feel alone, and everything was up to you: survival, as the ending turns out, and saving the Mojave from mass destruction (once again). The DLC feels like the exact opposite of Old World Blues (tons of brilliant characters and quests), but not nearly as linear and hard as Dead Money.
The original F.E.A.R. (you know it stands for First Encounter Assault Recon, right?) was marked as an excellent shooter due to its scary atmosphere, solid shooting, and (at the time) system-pushing graphics. Two installments later, the game has fizzled out as an above-average shooter and has lost most of its share value over the years. The game also feels more paramilitary than paranormal, with the same generic soldiers, mechs, and the occasional tough boss. At this point, if you haven’t played the first game, you will be completely lost in the plot. Even people who played the first and second when they came out might want to search Wikipedia for a plot refresher because F.E.A.R. has always been known for its holey plot and confusing endings.
The game feels a bit different from the last two games, but not by much. The game is tighter-ended, with a better cover system, a couple of new weapons, and slightly updated visuals. You have your standard assortment of weapons, including assault rifles, sub-machine guns, shotguns, rocket launchers, and a few original weapons. The weapons feel solid, though the aiming is a bit touchy. Every gun feels different, and you must really use them in the right situations. This isn’t a stick-with-one-gun type of game. The slo-mo is back, but you can now upgrade yourself by doing things you normally would in the game and earning points. F.3.A.R. has based on co-op this time around, so you can play as either the main protagonist, Point Man, or his dead brother Fettel, who follows you around the story.
You get points by collecting weapons, doing kills and headshots, using the cover for a certain amount of time, finding the rare Alma dolls, dead bodies that give you Psychic Link points, etc. Throughout the campaign, whoever scores the most points gets to see the end of that brother. It’s a neat way to do co-op, but you can still enjoy the game by yourself. The game brings back the awesome machines, and they feel better than ever. You get to use them more often than in the last entry, so look forward to some awesome machine sections.
When it comes to the atmosphere, I feel Project Origin pulled it off the best. That game was downright scary, but F.3.A.R. loses it somehow by concentrating too much on the action. Sure, there are some points that make you jump, but Alma doesn’t appear nearly as much, and those truly scary points are far and few between. The ending is even more disappointing and still doesn’t answer anything, but it just concludes Point Man’s journey to find Alma and his dad. Alma is what made F.E.A.R., but due to her lack of exposure in this final entry, it just feels like an almost generic shooter. Not only that, but the campaign is really short, with only 8 levels that can be beaten in about 8 hours.
This game has the best multiplayer suite in the series, with the head mode being F Run!, where Alma’s contractions (play the story to know what I am talking about) bring the walls down on you and you have to, well, run. It’s too bad no one is playing online anymore, so you probably have to stick to LAN on this one. That’s a bummer despite the game being so recent compared to the thousands who played F.E.A.R.’s separate multiplayer mode that was released months later than the original. There are other modes to be had in the game, but if you can’t get a LAN party going, then you’re stuck with co-op or just single-player.
Overall, F.3.A.R. has decent visuals, but for some reason, the game has serious performance issues even on high-end systems. Constant stuttering, complete hang-ups, and other issues bog down the experience a little. The game is enjoyable at best, but I doubt you will run through the game a second time (even with a buddy) just to see the quick second ending (that’s what YouTube is for). I recommend this for long-time F.E.A.R. fans, but newcomers should start at the beginning or move on.
Point-and-click adventures are still abundant, but good ones are hard to come by, and even rarer are ones that make it mainstream. Gray Matter is a game that has a story that is a bit more sophisticated than your typical adventure game. You play both Samantha Everett and David Styles, who are probably the most interesting characters in the game. Sam is an orphan who is traveling the world, but her bike breaks down in London, and she winds up at Dread Hill, which is the home of Dr. Styles. Dr. Styles is researching ways to bring his wife’s spirit back after a fatal car accident, and he’ll do anything to get this research done. The rest of the characters are people you recruit for the research, but their personalities aren’t as likeable as the main characters.
The story really gets involved and has a twist ending that will surprise you, so playing the game is worth it. The gameplay consists of your typical clicking on things to find the clues and move on. However, Gray Matter is severely flawed in that you have missions to complete, and each mission has a number of points associated with finding things. If you miss a few points, you have to scour the huge world in the game to find what you missed. This can lead to hours of hunting and clicking on everything until you find it. Certain events won’t trigger until missions are done, which I really hate. There is also little to no direction on where to go and what to do in the game. There are different areas in the game you can jump to, but there are so many things to click on that the game is nearly impossible to beat without a guide. Later in the game, you run into a labyrinthine maze-type area, and this will take forever without some kind of guide.
There are a few interesting things Gray Matter does for the adventure genre, and these are magic tricks. You get a book of magic, and you have to use it to get certain things done in the game. Things bring up a new window that has you following instructions on how to map out the trick. It’s interesting and changes the pace a bit. Of course, there is a mini-game tossed in here and there, but most of the time you will be running around clicking on everything almost blindly, and this really hurts the flow and pacing of the game.
The visuals in the game are decent, but the drawn cutscenes that are just a few frames really aren’t that great. The art is smudgy, and the character design is inconsistent throughout the whole game. The in-game models will be completely different from the hand-drawn scenes, but some scenes will have the characters looking different. I found this very weird and annoying. Overall, the art is very nice, especially towards the end of the game in the Daedalus Club.
The voice acting is decent at best, but Sam’s actress is pretty bad and sounds cheesy. Most of the game is played by British actors, so there isn’t much variety. My favorite character of them all is Dr. Styles, who is struggling within himself to go out and socialize, but he feels like a monster due to the scar on his face. The game is really an acquired taste among both adventure gamers and hardcore gamers alike.
If you can stomach the goalless wandering of the game by either using a guide or just aimlessly clicking everywhere, you will be rewarded with a rich and dark story. The game also has a decent length that will run you about 8–10 hours, and that’s if you just use a guide and run through the game. I really wish the game would guide you more because it almost breaks the entire game.
New Vegas has been struggling to have solid DLC that stands up to the Fallout 3 releases. Old World Blues is the best of the three so far, even for the excellent dialog, great characters, and huge new world. Old World Blues has you going to a drive-in that teleports you to Big MT. Once inside, you meet some strange doctors who lobotomized you, and you are on a quest to stop the evil Dr. Mobius and find your brain. Old World Blues takes a whole new approach to Fallout DLC by removing your spine and heart and giving you perks at the start. There are new weapons, enemies, and a whole new world to explore.
There are also a lot of great dungeons to explore, such as the X facilities, which have things such as new armor and testing facilities that run you through a series of courses, as well as other hidden items like new recipes. My favorite part of the whole DLC is the excellent new characters that are inside The Sink, which is your little safe hub inside the dome. All the appliances have hilarious personalities, such as the evil toaster, the crazy miniature robot, the perverted fertilizer, and the seductive light switches. Sound strange? That’s what makes this DLC brilliant. Even the doctors have great personalities, and the whole story has some twists at the end, so you really get a punchy, fulfilling story and ending.
The new weapons are some of the best yet, such as the K9000 Cyberdog Gun, which actually barks when you shoot it thanks to the dog brain attached. The Sonic Emitter pistol is probably the best, thanks to the upgrades you can find for it to enhance its power. Unfortunately, this DLC is really best for people who specialize in energy weapons and melee because guns are hard to come by. Old World Blues also raises the level cap, so you will have a chance to maybe dump some XP into energy if you are weak in that area.
The new environments are great, such as the canyons that have giant red crystals, which are a huge change from the brown wasteland. The new enemies are challenging, such as the robo-scorpions, lobotomites, and other weird creatures lurking around. I highly doubt you will be bored with this DLC due to so many things being different from the other ones. All I have to say is that the dialog and characters are probably better than the main game and are just top-notch.
There are a few problems, such as the fact that the initial dialog with the doctors will take you a good hour to get into its entirety. While the characters are very interesting, you’ll start getting antsy to start exploring. Most of the quests are fetch quests, and this really kept the score from getting a solid 9 because I wanted some pre-scripted stuff or just more unique quests. Most of the quests consist of getting technology for The Sink and Dr. Klein. This kind of gets old after a while, but the quests drag you through most of Big MT, so it’ll help you encourage exploration. The usual New Vegas glitches and bugs are still ever-present, but the dated Gamebryo engine can’t really be saved at this point. Old World Blues is a must-buy even if you skip the past two because the good 12 to 15-hour storyline is just brilliant.
Being a regular human in a shooter has been done hundreds of times, but being a true one-man army with technology built into your nano-suit is something that hasn’t really been done before. Meet Alcatraz. The poor dying soldier or nobody whom the Prophet chose to stick his suit on and kill himself. Now you are thrown into the war that you wanted nothing to do with and are the key to helping stop the invasion of Manhattan.
A lot that you remember from the first game is different now, thanks to the game being streamlined for consoles. You no longer have a power wheel, and two of them have been taken away and put into the other two. You get to switch between armor mode and stealth mode. You can use your superpower moves in armor modes, such as powerful kicks and punches, as well as absorbing long falls. Stealth mode allows you to cloak and sneak up on enemies or just go right in the past without being detected. Both of these are key to staying alive, and you will be switching constantly.
Another thing that changed was the lush jungle you got to roam around in freely. You are now stuck in a concrete world, and the game is more linear this time around. That’s not all bad because you still get to choose your approach to firefights, and some areas are massive. Using your tactical visor, the game will give you options on how to approach the battle, such as certain weapons, high perches for sniping, or complete paths to totally avoid all enemies. This still gives you the sense of battle control like in the first game without making it feel like a Halo/Call of Duty hallway clone.
You have two enemies in the game: Ceph aliens and the CELL army, trying to capture and use your technology for their own good. The story isn’t exactly the most cohesive thing we’ve seen; it wasn’t the first game either. The story is kind of confusing, and you never really know what’s going on between all the characters, and it doesn’t get really good until the last couple of missions. In the middle of the game, there is a lot of back and forth between Hargreaves and Gould, who are two scientists with completely different views. The CELL enemies are just like regular humans, but later on, the game throws countless Ceph at you, and they have different types of Ceph that come after you, from grunts to huge walking tanks. Of course, this makes the game feel very repetitious due to the low enemy type, and the game doesn’t really look different from area to area except for different levels of destruction.
There is a little more to it than just shooting everything in sight. You can upgrade your powers this time around by collecting nanocatalysts from dead Ceph, and the stronger the Ceph, the more you will get. Press the upgrade button, and Alcatraz’s hand will be displayed with five different areas of upgrades on his fingers. A few examples are bullet tracers, longer stealth mode, and the ability to see cloaked enemies. While it does change the gameplay a bit, it doesn’t do a lot to truly enhance the experience. Not to mention the fact that you have to watch your energy meter when using the power because it runs out in a matter of seconds. Using your night vision plus stealth while running will run it down in less than 10 seconds, so you never truly feel powerful or get the ability to upgrade your energy meter.
Of course, you can still customize your weapons with different sights, silencers, and other attachments, but I wish we could use every attachment for every gun instead of each gun getting its own special options. There are some new guns, however, and there are plenty, but they are fun to shoot, so don’t think that the weapon selection is weak at all. There are some other things thrown in, like a few turret sections, and some quick-time events are thrown into the cinematic parts of the game, which are thrilling and very fun, but they are too short and too far apart from each other. The linearity of the game allows this type of cinematic control, and it’s welcomed, but I would have liked to see more of it.
You’re probably wondering about the graphics. Since this is streamlined for consoles, do we get DirectX 11? Do we get higher-resolution textures and extra graphics options? When the game launched, it was no. We got exactly what the consoles got, but a few months later the DirectX 11 patch was released as well as a high-resolution texture pack. With this, the game looks phenomenal and is probably the best-looking shooter to date. Of course, you need a monster rig to run the game with these settings enabled. Even my rig dropped in the single digits during certain scenes, but man, is it gorgeous to look at? The game also supports 3D, so if you have the GPU, then enable it because it does enhance the experience a lot.
Overall, there are a few bugs that can sometimes hinder the game, and it is also very long for an FPS to run for about 10–12 hours. The multiplayer is also very addictive and fun for a while, with perks and upgrades, and there is a good variety of maps available. I had a lot of fun since using the suit powers kind of makes playing an FPS different online. However, it still doesn’t have the addictive quality of Call of Duty or Halo to keep you playing for months or years after release. So, with an underwhelming story and a low enemy variety, just stomach the repetition for a while, and you’ll be treated to one gorgeous and fun shooter.
It seems the New Vegas DLC just can’t balance itself, right? First Dead Money was full of cramped environments and brutal difficulty with game designs that worked against the game. Honest Hearts has a very open area to explore, but the characters are pretty underwhelming, as is the overall story. You meet some travelers who are part of a caravan trying to get across Zion National Park, and they hire you to protect them. Of course, there’s more than that, so when you enter, you see three rival tribes fighting against each other. You have the dead horses, white legs, and sorrows. The White Legs want to prove themselves so they can work for Caesar’s Legion, but the Sorrows want to stay, and the Dead Horses are a rogue “extra” tribe. Of course, in Fallout, there’s some sort of third-party hand in the pot, and that’s where Daniel and Joshua Graham come in.
Joshua wants to fight the white legs, and Daniel wants to run. Without getting into their backstory too much, you help each other out on various missions, but most of them are fetch missions and aren’t very inventive. I was really disappointed with this and kept expecting some more exciting missions. Even Dead Money had some exciting missions, despite its major flaws. The characters seem interesting at first, but after the initial dialog stuff, when you meet them, you never do much more with them. This is due to the DLC’s short length, running at about 10–12 hours. There are hardly any side missions, and it feels like the huge area gets wasted since you don’t really get to explore it much.
The area is full of huge canyons and cliffs that surround a lake and a couple of rivers. The area is a pain to navigate because it’s hard to find how to get to high-up areas due to all these layered cliffs. Some of the areas are great to see, and they really captured the national park feeling with abandoned camps and cars on the road right when the bombs fell. So there is a nice charm about the area, and seeing some trees and rivers is a nice change from the dried-up Mojave. Other than that, the environment is full of vicious animals instead of just people, so that’s also a bit different than the Mojave and Dead Money.
Other than that, the DLC is worth a purchase, but don’t expect 15+ hours and tons of new weapons or extra stuff. It’s the best New Vegas DLC so far, but it’s also not the best it could be. I hope the third and fourth DLCs are a lot better and are finally on par with the excellent Fallout 3 DLC add-ons.
While the Oddworld series may have been dead for years now, the last creation from Lorne Lanning is a great opus. While the series hasn’t been perfect gameplay-wise, it instills great characters, humor, and a unique art style that can be recognized from the series. Stranger’s Wrath was a cult classic Xbox hit but saw poor sales (as did most of the Oddworld games) due to its quirky style. You play as a bounty hunter named Stranger, trying to collect enough Mulah (money) to get a mysterious surgery performed. The story doesn’t get interesting at all until the end, but there are two key plot twists that really throw you for a loop and make the story worthwhile.
The game is split up into two parts. The first half of the game has you finding 12 different wanted bad buys and wandering around the linear world to find them. The thing that made Stranger’s Wrath so unique was its shooting mechanic. Unlike most shooters, Wrath has you shooting critters as your ammo, and you even have to gather them in the wild. A few ranges from Zap Flies have unlimited ammo and can be charged. Boombats are explosive, Thud Slugs are like shotgun shells, and so on. Each critter will eventually be upgraded in the game, but this is a unique approach to shooters that has never been done since.
Most of the time, you can try to sneak your way around and bounty up bad guys, but the stealth mechanics are pretty broken. You can hide in tall grass and lure the bad guys to you, then wrap them up to get them alive (for more bounty), or just run and gun and kill them all, but you get less bounty. While the shooting may be unique, it doesn’t really know what it wants to do. There’s ammo for stealth, but it’s not good enough for run-and-gun action. Finding ammo in crates helps, but you will constantly try to decide which ammo type is best suited for the situation. You can equip any two at the same time for combos, but you can’t shoot them at the same time. I would have liked to see some sort of combo element implemented with that.
The second part of the game lets you have more powerful melee attacks and is all about running and shooting, really. You get the upgraded ammo types, so this is possible, but the game’s difficulty is ruthless, and you will die a lot. Thankfully, the game has a quick save feature, so this alleviates it a little bit. I just felt that this game should have stuck to either a platformer or a shooter because switching from first to third constantly can be a bit disjointing, and even jumping around and climbing is difficult because it feels like all the physics in the game are very floaty.
The second part of the game lets you have more powerful melee attacks and is all about running and shooting, really. You get the upgraded ammo types, so this is possible, but the game’s difficulty is ruthless, and you will die a lot. Thankfully, the game has a quick save feature, so this alleviates it a little bit. I just felt that this game should have stuck to either a platformer or a shooter because switching from first to third constantly can be a bit disjointing, and even jumping around and climbing is difficult because it feels like all the physics in the game are very floaty.
Overall, the shooting mechanic is very unique but works against itself, and the game doesn’t know if it’s a third-person platformer, stealth game, or run-and-gun first-person shooter. If it stuck to just one, the game would be better, but it is a cult classic and shouldn’t be missed if you never owned an Xbox.
“Fatality!” “Finish Him!” “Flawless Victory!” “Get Over Here!”. These are just some famous quotes from the infamous Mortal Kombat that everyone knows and remembers. What everyone mainly remembers is the fast-paced fighting that has been missed since 1995’s Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. It’s been over 15 years since we got a really good and classic-feeling MK game, but it’s finally here and back with all its bloody gore. Yes, the game is still in 3D, but it’s what fighting fans like to call “2.5D.”. The game plays with a 2D feel, and as soon as you start hammering away on those classic moves and combos, you feel the nostalgia seeping into your blood.
The most surprising part of the game isn’t the new level of gore, but the amazing story mode. Yes, Mortal Kombatactually has an awesome story mode that plays out far better than last generation’s story modes. Instead of some ridiculous adventure mode or scrolling text, we get a fully acted, scripted, and voiced story about the actual Mortal Kombat tournament and a backstory on almost every classic character. The voice acting is actually good, and Netherealm Studios actually took the time to bring out each character’s personality, such as Johnny Cage’s smart lack of Hollywood attitude. Liu Kang’s eagerness, Kung Lao’s jealousy, and Sonya’s hotheadedness. The story is done beautifully, despite picking up where Armageddon left off. Raiden travels in time to his past self to stop the destruction of Armageddon. There are plot twists and even some seriously tense moments in the story that are quite gripping. I can actually say it’s the best story mode in any fighting game ever made.
However, fans came for the fight, and this seriously delivers. Not only are the animations smooth and great to look at, but the controls are as tight as ever. The game responds without any delay, and that’s what a fighter is all about. Not only is the usual gore back, but the game just packs a serious punch and feels punchy. The hits transfer amazingly well into feelings, and that’s never been done in an MK game before. The newest things brought to the series are X-ray moves. Fill your supermeter up all the way, and you can execute an extremely brutal move that shows your opponent in X-ray vision, and you can see bones crunch, snap, and organs burst. The anatomy is done superbly well, with muscles, organs, and everything else in the right place. Each character has its own special skeletal structure, so it stays true to the anatomy. I say bravo on Netherealm’s part instead of doing it cheaply.
This supermeter actually does one other thing that I love, and these are enhanced moves. Forget the crap from the DC Universe completely. When you fill one section of the meter up (it fills up faster when you are getting your butt whooped), you can do the special move while holding down the “Attack Modifier,” and it’ll change the super move up a little bit and make it more powerful. For example, doing Jax’s Gotcha Grab will only do two hits, but if you enhance it, he’ll punch them five or six times and do more damage. Do Scorpion’s Spear Throw, and he’ll throw two out for extra damage. These are great, and each special attack has its own unique enhancement. This is great for strategists who want to give their fight a little extra kick. The second thing you can do with the meter is the usual breakers, but this requires two pieces to be filled.
For the first time, tag teaming was put into the game, and it works just as great as you’d think. Each character has a special tag-out move, and it makes the game more intense and just that much more fun. Of course, the single-player story mode will have you fighting against two people for a challenge, but when you play online or with a friend, it’s an absolute blast. Of course, this could have gone all wrong, but the team learned from games like Marvel vs. Capcom to get it right. This is just one more feature the team got right but could have gone horribly wrong or made the game too unbalanced.
The Fatalities are gory, and each character has two plus a stage fatality combo. Each character’s fatality can be viewed in the move list in the pause menu, but you have to unlock the second one in the krypt (more on that later). One thing I have to mention is that Babalities were brought back, but only certain characters can do these. These haven’t been since UMK3! When it comes to fighters, there are no characters in here past UMK3. Classics are only here, and that’s for the better. You won’t see Kenshi, Kira, Drahmin, Hsu Hao, or any of those guys, but there will be DLC add-ins later on, so who knows? Each character is beautifully rendered, and they fight just like you remember, so fans can feel relieved about that. There is one new character, and that is Cyber Sub-Zero, to tie into the story mode, and he plays differently from the regular Sub-Zero and has some unique moves. Kratos is also an exclusive character for PS3 owners, and he plays just like he does in the games, complete with some quiet time buttons and moves from God of War III. He even has his own unique stage, with three different stage fatalities to choose from.
Mortal Kombat has always been known for adding a ton of content since Deadly Alliance, but this time you’re going to like the extras. The Krypt is back with just one type of currency this time around, and the Krypt has five different sections. Each one has uniquely animated item containers, and some are extremely gross, brutal, and gory. I won’t spoil it, but it’s very creative. My favorite extra is the Challenge Tower. There are hundreds of challenges that consist of fights that have different parameters, such as zombies coming toward you, and you have to use Johnny Cage’s special Energy Ball move to kill them before they get to you. There are so many that I would spend days explaining them, but they are great fun, and you earn currency doing them. One thing I wanted back so bad were the mini-games Test Your Might and Sight last seen in Deadly Alliance. They are back, just as great as before, but two new ones were added. Test Your Strike is just like Might, but you have to hold the meter inside a box for a few seconds before striking. Test Your Luck has you spinning a wheel and deciding the fighter and fighting conditions for you.
Lastly, Kombat Kodes was brought back last seen in UMK3. For people who don’t know, each character gets three boxes during the loading screen, and there are different codes such as headless combat, armless combat, dream combat, upside-down combat, X-rays disabled, blocking disabled, and it just goes on and on. These are used a lot in the challenge tower that I was talking about, but having them in VS is a blast. Lastly, the online modes are a must-have for any fighter these days, and MK was the very first one and seems to be one of the best. While Tag Team and regular 1vs1 are expected, a new King of the Hill mode lets you pick an avatar and puts everyone in a room that looks like a theater. The winner keeps fighting everyone in the room until he loses, but people can rate the fight based on a number score and can even cheer or boo the fight. This is a fun mode and is greatly welcomed.
My only big issue with the game is that the combos aren’t as crazy as in MK3, and you still have to memorize most of them, and a lot of people don’t like that. This still really isn’t a button masher, so strategic minds are still needed to fight well here. I really wanted to see more crazy combos that aren’t complicated to pull off, but if you are hardcore enough, you will find a way. Besides that, there really isn’t too much to complain about unless you want to gripe about characters from MK4 not being included.
Besides all this amazing content, the game looks superb using Unreal Engine 3, and every background is greatly animated, and they are all from classic MK games all the way back to the first one. The classic Stage Fatalities are also back, but they are upgraded to pack more punch and are gorier. Overall, the game looks and sounds amazing, with lots of content to unlock and many modes to play. This is probably one of the best fighting games of this decade so far, and it is definitely my pick for the best fighting game of the year.
Kollector’s Edition: For hardcore fans, an extra $40 gets you two beautifully crafted bookends of Scorpion and Sub-Zero in gory Kombat, Ermac’s classic outfit, a well-put-together art book, and PS3 themes and avatars. The big box is also nicely made if you want that too.
Tournament Edition: For an extra $90, you get a wonderfully created arcade stick, but it does not come with any of the other stuff besides the extra outfit. It’s up to you which one you get, but I preferred the Kollector’s Edition since the stick can be bought separately elsewhere.
I have a feeling the Fallout series has a curse that the first DLC release isn’t very good. Dead Money tries to do things with the game that it can’t do, and it makes the DLC very hard and sometimes boring, but the story, characters, and underlying reason why you’re in the Sierra Madre are great. You start off by following a signal to the Sierra Madre Casino, but then you’re knocked out and a collar is put on you. You’re told to find three people to help you open the casino and bypass its defenses.
The three characters are great to talk to and learn about. Dog/God is a super mutant with schizophrenia; Dean Domino is a British stage actor turned ghoul; and Christine is a mute who was tortured. After you find each character, you must take them to their designated spots in the villa. This is the second part of the DLC, but by the time you get here, you’ll have cried up a storm. The game features heavy stealth and hand-to-hand combat, so people who put points into the classes will breeze through it. There are guns, but the ammo is scarce, and people who invested in energy weapons have no shot here.
The ghost people are extremely hard to kill, even if you are at level 30. You’re mainly forced to use melee with bear trap fists, spears, and knives. If you invested in guns, you’re going to have a real hard time here. It doesn’t help that all your equipment was taken away and you stuck with the few armor pieces in this whole 8–12 hour DLC. It’s light armor, and it sucks, but it’s better than nothing. There are no vendors here, just vending machines. Oh, but wait, you can’t use caps. You have to use Sierra Madre Casino chips that are scattered everywhere to buy stim packs, ammo, and everything else. Yes, why would they work against the system that’s already made and working? It’s very odd and makes playing the game so frustrating because you’re scrounging and looking for exploits in the game design to not die.
It doesn’t help that the DLC is very maze-like, and this is bad for this type of game. Where are the open areas? Nowhere. It’s just corridor after corridor, and it’s dark, bleak, and boring to look at. Everything looks the same, and it’s not very nice to be in either. Not in a good way either; I felt cramped throughout the whole ordeal, and it gets worse when you get in the casino to figure out how to get into the vault. I hope Obsidian doesn’t force us to do things the engine can’t really do next time. Part of the frustration comes with the beeping collar. Let it beep too long, and you blow up and die. There are speakers everywhere that emit a signal, and you have to run around until it stops, but this is trial and error. Run down the wrong path, and the signal won’t stop there, so you die. Yes, save constantly, or you will tear your hair out.
This mechanic is probably the most flawed since Fallout isn’t meant for this kind of stuff. I started hearing the beeping in my sleep; it goes off so many times. Some speakers you can shoot and others you can’t, but good luck that you do not get tired of this. Overall, the story is excellent, and I really felt attached to the characters. The ending is probably one of the most interesting I’ve seen in a game, and I’ll say this part because it won’t spoil anything. There are gold bars, and you can carry as much as you can, and they are worth over 7,000 caps each!! I saw these and tried to stuff my pack with them, but they weigh you down quickly. I decided to drop everything except one weapon and my armor to carry about seven of them. People who have the Rat Pack perk will take advantage here.
With two different endings and choices being a big part of the three characters, you should enjoy this part of the game. You can only get this if you are a hardcore Fallout fan; otherwise, you should just pass. It’s way too hard, and the mechanics work against what’s already established.
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Try multiplayer. A lot of fun !