The Dishwasher is a strange name, but the story of Yuki is actually pretty sad and engaging. Yuki dies in the hands of the dishwasher and is hallucinating. You play flashbacks of her in an asylum, trying to find her killer, but then again, she’s hallucinating and kills the wrong person. She crash-landed on the moon, trying to find the person making her hallucinate and find out why this is all happening to her. There’s a lot of detail in the story, so explaining too much will spoil spoilers. Just know that the story is excellent and very engaging.
The game is all about combat, which is superfluid, fast, and fun thanks to smooth and responsive controls. You will find different weapons like Cloud’s sword, a hypodermic needle, kamas, as well as a mini-gun arm attachment. You can use the right stick to use the blood dash to go through enemies and dodge them, but everything is just so fast and fun that you just forget the controller is in your hands. You can hit enemies with a light and heavy attack as well as a unique attack with B, such as a grab, needle jab, or chainsaw attack, depending on your weapon. After you damage an enemy enough, they will have buttons flash under them. Hit it and see a brutal execution move that just looks awesome. The game is very punchy, heavy-hitting, and powerful, thanks to the excellent combat system.
You can equip beads that add attributes to Yuki, and you can also use magic skulls that do massive damage to enemies. I just can’t really describe how excellent the combat is until you actually play it. It’s like trying to explain how good Devil May Cry’s combat is. There’s just no way, unless you actually play it. Boss fights are also fun and unique, but some can be brutally difficult to beat. Dodging and twitch reactions are key to staying alive in the game, so this is no walk in the park. The game will just take your breath away with how fast-paced it is, but I guarantee your fingers will ache after a couple of levels.
The art style is just awesome, with a very messy, dark, and smeary style. It looks like you can’t tell what’s going on, but it was done in such a way that you can make everything out just fine. I love how dark and brutal the art is, so it just helps portray how helpless Yuki is. I didn’t really find much wrong with the game except for the brutal difficulty. The enemy variety is pretty high, and there are plenty of boss fights. After you finish Yuki’s story, you can even go back and play the dishwasher’s side, so it’s like two games in one. This is probably one of the best XBLA games I have ever played, and it should not be passed up.
Action RPGs these days are really iffy due to the fact that they tend to feel too formulaic. They usually have good stories, but the graphics are horrible, the combat is clumsy, and the quest system is yawn-worthy. The Witcher 2 takes what was great from the first and makes it even better to form one of the greatest action RPGs of this generation.
You play, once again, as Geralt of Rivia, a witch who got framed for assassinating King Demavend and must prove his innocence. The story is heavy on politics but is also very deep and feels just like the novels. Triss Merrigold also returns with her beautiful red hair and all. You will also see other familiar faces, such as Zoltan Chivay and Dandelion. The new faces are strong, likable, and memorable characters that you will grow to love or hate, respectively, throughout the course of this 20- to 30-hhour game. Geralt himself is even stronger this time around, with more problems than you can shake a stick at. You learn to respect him more and see just how much this poor man can take. CD Projekt really shows you the roots of both good and evil in humanity in such a realistic fashion, and that’s what really drives the characters home.
The combat in The Witcher 2 is better than the first game because gone are the timed sword swings and stances. You now just have light and heavy attacks, but you can block and counter-attack (when you unlock the skill), and you still use the steel/silver sword combo. Steel is for people, and silver is for monsters. Combat was very hard to do when the game first launched, but patches as of late have fixed this for multiple blocking and faster responses. The combat isn’t great and is clumsy, especially early on when you aren’t very strong and towards the end of the game. Combat will make you smash your monitor in frustration in the beginning because you have to learn to just hit once or twice, dodge, run around, hit another couple of times, rinse, and repeat 50 times. Yeah, it’s one of those games in the beginning. After you level up enough, you can cut down enemies in just a couple of swings, and groups of 7–10 won’t really bother you.
Of course, you can equip better armor, weapons, and so forth, but The Witcher lets you do other things like equipping trophies that are found on bosses that increase stats, using sword enhancements such as oils, whetstones, runes, and armor enhancements (kind of like Monster Hunter?). This adds a lot of depth to the customization of your loadout, which has endless possibilities. I think the biggest improvement is resource gathering and alchemy because it’s so simple and easy now. Just gather resources as you go, and you can meditate and create potions that increase your vigor (for signs; more on that later), vitality (health), a potion that lets you see in the dark, damage-increasing potions, etc. The only problem is that you can’t drink them from the menu; you have to use them before a fight. This is my biggest beef with the game because if you are low on health in a fight, you’re screwed unless you took a swallow potion beforehand. The premeditated potion drinking is a big flaw in the game, I think, but some hardcore RPG players may like this.
The Witcher is also famous for its signs because witchers can’t use magic like sorcerers or mages can. There are six different signs, and they use chunks of vigor but recharge over time. These signs are vital to winning in combat, especially against bosses, so learn to use them in tandem with sword combos, and you can win even the toughest fights. One last thing you can use in combat is Places of Power, which you find with your wolf medallion. Activate it, and you may find, out in the woods or in wild places, signs of power that give you temporary stat boosts. These come in handy early in the game (especially in Flotsam) when you are at a low level.
The story also has moral decisions thrown in there that really change the outcome of the story. Of course, there are multiple playthroughs (but no new game, sadly), so you can see what each decision will bring. There are a lot of plot holes in the story that aren’t filled until the very end during dialog, which I found odd, so if you get confused, just hang in there until the final moments of the game. Overall, my biggest issue is the potion use, combat, and the huge difficulty spikes. The graphics are groundbreaking, with gorgeous lighting, highly detailed textures, amazing landscapes, and varied environments with nice weather effects. The character models look superb, and the voice acting is top-notch. This game just shows that indie developers can make games look great. You do need a monster rig to run the game on high settings (especially with Ubersampling enabling you to probably need dual GPUs and a high-end quad-core CPU). Other than that, The Witcher 2 is amazing in every way and should not be missed by anyone.
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.
Dead to Rights has been a very rocky series since its debut in 2003. Retribution is not only the best in the series, but it completely redeems the quality and value of what made the game so great. The story isn’t anything new to gamers, with Jack Slate and his dog Shadow trying to revenge his father’s death and also wipe Grant City clean of corrupt cops and criminal syndicates. What is good in Retribution are the voice actors, characters, and action. The guy who plays Jack’s voice is pretty good at putting emotion across to the player.
But you usually don’t come to budget shooters for a story, right? The action is great here, but repetitive. The action consists of two elements, which are shooting and melee. First fighting consists of breakers, combos, counters, and executions, which can be pretty brutal. Fighting is usually a last resort, but sometimes it can’t be avoided. I did find fist-fighting a bit stiff, and the controls were a bit awkward. You can use enemies as human shields and grapple them as well, so at least the fighting has depth and isn’t just mashing a button until your fingers bleed.
Melee has other perks, like being able to pull a weapon on someone and shoot them in the head via execution. The game is very brutal, and it shows what you can do to enemies. I do wish there were more environment executions, but you can’t really expect that from a budget game like this. One thing I noticed is that when you are locked in fighting with someone, enemies tend to completely miss you while you knock the guy down. This really helps fend off frustration, but it does seem a little weird when you notice it. There are a large variety of enemies, ranging from weak to super strong, but they aren’t unique and just feel like standard soldiers.
Shooting is fun, but weapons don’t really pack a punch. The game is very cover-based and is similar to Gears of War but doesn’t feel as smooth as that game. You can slow downtime and focus on headshots (which are key to getting through guys quickly). There is a large variety of weapons in the game, but they are pretty standard and generic, so don’t expect crazy sci-fi weapons here. The game has you scrounging for ammo constantly, which can get annoying and deadly. Guns have very small clips, and you can’t hold much ammo for each one, which really kind of works against you, and I hated this throughout the whole game. It’s manageable, but I’ve always wanted some sort of upgrade system to fix this.
My favorite part of the game (and what sets it apart from other TPS) is being able to play as Jack’s dog, Shadow. The animations are amazing, and he really feels, looks, and sounds like a real dog. The execution moves are brutal and satisfying, with him chomping on jugulars, blood spurting out, or even tearing out people’s crotches (when you do this for the first time, you get an achievement called “Crotchality!”). You can sneak around as Shadow, see heartbeats through walls, and plan your attacks accordingly. I loved all the takedown moves, but they recycle often and get old fast.
Shadow also comes in handy when you play as Jack since you can order him to kill sick people or defend you. A lot of times I would send Shadow after a guy while I took on another, and it really feels good that the AI works well here. In one instance, two soldiers were walking away, and Shadow snuck up on one while I shot the other in the head. Of course, Shadow can go down, so you just go revive him, but using Shadow is key to staying alive and not dying constantly.
This is also the great part of the story, which is the bond between the two that makes you want to stick close and listen to the story. Shadow and Jack are best friends, and you really get to feel for them both. Visually, retribution is nothing special, but it isn’t ugly either. There are some nice lighting effects, and there’s a lot of detail in everything, but the game is very linear. One other annoyance is hidden badges throughout the game, and I hate shooters that make you go searching for hidden stuff because it detracts from the action. Other than that, Retribution is a great bargain bin purchase and is definitely a great game despite its repetition.
Well, here we are. Duke and I are staring at each other face-to-face after 12 years of development hell. How did he stand up? For starters, the game isn’t nearly as bad as everyone is saying. It’s just not as good as everyone hoped. The game won’t knock you off your feet or make you think differently about FPS games, but it does feel like classic Duke, and that’s what counts in the end. The story is the same as always: Pigcops and the evil Cycloid Emperor are stealing our chicks to make alien babies. Pretty cheesy? That’s the entire point, so don’t come into this game thinking it’s just badass. The entire game is coated in thick, gooey cheese, and if you don’t like it, go away right now.
The action is just like classic Duke in the sense that you run around shooting anything that moves with the biggest gun you can find. It’s a recall of the heydays of FPS games from the early 90s, and it feels good to play one that’s actually good. The game even starts out with a slap in the face by having Duke pee in a urinal, and you control the flow. This is Duke for you, and if this stuff offends you, stop playing there because it gets worse as the game goes on. My favorite part about Forever is the interactive objects that add to your ego, which is your health bar. Finding certain things in the game will boost this, and there are dozens of them, some funny, sexy, or just weird, like picking up a turd out of a toilet.
Duke is also infamous for his cheesy one-liners, which are spewed left and right through the whole game. Things like “Hail to the King, baby!” “How many pork chops can I make out of you?” and “Come get some!” are just a few. Duke’s personality is something you will either love or hate, but it’s classic, and that makes me love it. The game is also infused with a lot of sex, such as one whole level that is just a strip club you walk around in called Duke Nukem’s Titty City. You have to do a treasure hunt for a stripper for a lap dance that consists of finding popcorn, a vibrator, and a condom. Just walk into the bathroom, and Duke can enjoy the glory hole in the stall. Yes, it’s very gratuitous and goes over the top, but that’s what’s great about this game. Not only this, but it sticks to a lot of pop culture today, such as an EDF soldier asking Duke if he needs power armor (it’s Master Chief’s armor in the ship) and Duke saying, “Power armor is for pussies!”
Of course, it all comes down to playing the game, and the action is varied with driving sections and even Duke getting shrunk down, which is very fun to do, especially when listening to his high-pitched voice. A lot of classic Duke weapons are here, such as the Devastator (with 69 bullets as a pun), Ripper, and RPG. The guns even look the same, which brings back memories. Quick-time events were added during boss fights (which are really fun) and in other parts of the game, so it has a bit of cinematic juice in it.
The worst part about the game? The looks. Sure, it uses Unreal Engine 3, but the level design and overall feel are really dated. Mountains don’t have that nice, distant, real look to them. Instead, you can drive right up their side, like you’re playing Motocross Madness 2 or something. The textures aren’t low-res but not very detailed, like everything just got converted from 2005. The game actually looks that old, but not enough to distract you too much. The physics are wonky, like you’re playing a Nintendo 64 game, but you can’t really blame the game itself.
Overall, Duke Nukem Forever is a fun game to play. It may not have been worth 12 years for this, but it still feels good to play as the King again. If you can surpass the dated visuals and overall design of the game, you are going to experience something that will probably never happen again.
Japanese developers have a lot to learn from Western developers, but Vanquish shows that they are slowly catching on. Vanquish is infused with Western shooter’s big explosions and lots of shooting fused with Japanese fast-paced action and quick controls. Vanquish is a third-person shooter on speed thanks to the ARS suit. Sam Gideon can slide around at super speeds on the ground as well as slow down time during dodges. This allows for very hectic gameplay against robots of all sizes and shapes.
The plot is paper-thin and only advances at the very end of the game since the middle has absolutely nothing to do with the plot because you’re just dealing with in-the-moment problems, but the overarching story is a pretty standard affair with Russia trying to take over the world with a giant microwave emitter that destroys San Francisco. It’s nothing to get excited about, so just pop in Vanquish and expect fast shooting. The shooting is great thanks to using weapons that can be upgraded throughout the game with droppable upgrades. Everything is done on the battlefield, so there are no menus to fiddle with. I wish more shooters would use this idea so it doesn’t draw you away from the action. You get a loadout of three weapons and two different grenades. EMP grenades stun robots and incendiary blow them up. Different weapons range from your standard assortment of shotguns, heavy and light machine guns, rocket launchers, sniper rifles, etc., but there are a few originals, such as the disk launcher, the LFE gun that shoots huge blobs of purple energy, and the laser rocket launcher.
Thanks to the ARS suit, it allows for what would normally be an impossible amount of enemies to kill in a standard shooter, but being able to slide around at fast speeds and slow downtime isn’t the key to staying alive. If you get shot too much, your suit will automatically slow down time and burn up your energy meter. This allows you to kill any immediate danger and get to cover, but if you continue to get shot, you will die. The energy meter determines all your special abilities, and if you overheat, you have to wait for it to cool down. I found this a little annoying, especially when you start dying and you can’t shut off the use of the auto-slowdown, which will actually cause you to die during boss fights since you can’t slide away after it’s burned up.
The best part of the game is the boss fights since you have to shoot weak points, and sometimes this will trigger cinematic QTEs (Quick Time Events), but the biggest fallback for Vanquish is the repetition. Sure, there is some different gameplay stuff thrown in, like firefights on rail carts and turret sections, but I felt the game never truly took advantage of the whole ARS suit system. This is where the typical Japanese game’s generic atmosphere and aesthetics bring Vanquish down for me. While everything is responsive and sharp, it all feels generic, with weapons feeling like they don’t pack a punch and just feel like pop guns. There’s a good variety of enemies in here, but they are all just robots, and you can pretty much use the same tactic on all of them. Boss fights to recycle after Act 2, and the environments all look the same after Act 1.
The game looks good, but it is also generic-looking thanks to the typical Japanese art style of sterile whitewashed environments and copy-and-paste feeling levels. The characters are the usual stereotypical, cheesy voice-acted, empty-feeling people that you can’t really get attached to or don’t make much sense to. I want to get attached to the characters, but they just feel too cheesy and stereotypical and are completely forgettable. So why should you play Vanquish? The fast-paced action is undeniably addictive, and 6 hours is just enough to not get too sick of the game without wanting it to just end. On a side note, the ending credits are probably the most original I have ever seen in my 19 years of gaming. The developer’s faces are on asteroids, and you shoot them as their names pop up. The more important guys are harder to shoot, and the lead designer ends everything with a final boss fight. Kudos to Platinum for making credits more interesting than scrolling text.
“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.
If you believe in “story over graphics,” this game is the epitome of that. It always saddens me how indie games can’t get AAA budgets because there are some out there that have better elements than AAA titles. Deadly Premonition is one of them when it comes to story, characters, and atmosphere. The game looks, plays, and feels like a pre-2003 PS2 game and is just downright ugly. I’ll get to that later, but right now you have to know how excellent this riveting story is. You play FBI agent Francis York Morgan, who is investigating a murder in the small countryside town of Greenvale. You meet the Sheriff and other citizens throughout the game, and the story is always unwinding with plot twists and revealing dark secrets about every single character.
The premise is a legend of the Raincoat Killer that rampaged through the town in the 1950s. It appears that there is a “New Raincoat Killer” mimicking the old one, and Morgan must stop this guy before he kills everyone Morgan grows close to. There are two parts to the game: driving around the regular world and entering the “Other World” to investigate crime scenes and find clues. This “Other World” is a lot like Silent Hill’s, but the game never explains what this world is or why it appears in the town. I hate how that was never answered, so it feels like it may just be tacked on. When you are in this “other world,” you get to use your guns and shoot creepy zombies. These zombies are really brain-dead and can only really hurt you if you are overwhelmed or backed into a corner. The AI is cheap, but that’s fine because you just want to know more of the story.
When you enter this world, Morgan will start profiling fuzzy clues together, and it’s up to you to find them, but thankfully the game scraps Silent Hill’s labyrinthine maze-like levels for straightforward linear ones, and I never got lost. There are red areas that show where to go, so you never get lost. The puzzles are very simple and don’t even require exercising your cerebral cortex, but it’s OK because you just want the game to move on to uncover more of the juicy story. The controls are very unintuitive, but the game works around them, so it’s never really frustrating. You hold X down to run, but you hold down RT to aim and A to attack, but LT is to lock on. The controls are strange and archaic, but they work for the most part. The weapons are your typical survival horror stuff like shotguns, pistols, and melee weapons, so don’t expect much in that regard.
The rest of the game is completely boring and downright yawn-inducing. Driving around Greenvale from place to place will make you fall asleep because the cars feel, sound, and drive like something from pre-2000 games. The game doesn’t even use real-time or dynamic lighting, but static lighting! Cones for headlights? I felt like I was playing a PS1 game sometimes. The cars sound like dying lawnmowers and drive like one too. There aren’t any people walking around, and the cars appear out of nowhere, like they just came out of hyperdrive. The developers even put in side quests and some sort of collectible card hunt, but why would you bore yourself so much? It’s dry, dull, and just not fun at all.
There are some RPG elements like having to watch Morgan’s hunger, tiredness, and even how dirty his suit gets, plus you can shave. Yeah, it’s WTF moments that are thrown in like that that really make no sense. They are unnecessary, but hey, they’re there. What really saves Deadly Premonition is that the developers knew the game’s flaws and built everything to accommodate them, like quick-time events during boss fights instead of a dodge button. It makes the game very playable, and I applaud them for doing this.
The only reason to trudge through is for the amazing story. You really care about the characters, and there is some freaky crap in this game that would even put some stuff in Silent Hill to shame. The game does drag a little bit with about 15 hours of gameplay, but they could have cut the fat out and made it about 8–10 if there wasn’t the terrible “open-world” part thrown in. If you can forgive horrible graphics, terrible animations, abysmal sounds, and archaic controls, you will be rewarded with a thrilling and deep story that is unforgettable.
Portal was a phenomenon that redefined how puzzle games are made. The narrative was original and also helped create one of the best video game songs ever created (“Still Alive” by John Coulton). Portal 2 helps build upon this in so many ways and really helps show how a sequel should be done. Instead of just being stuck in lab testing rooms through the whole game, there are more environments to enjoy, and the narrative takes leaps forward instead of just GLaDOS’s voice droning on through speakers.
You play as the voiceless Chell once again, but you awaken after being in a coma for some time. A mysterious robot named Wheatley helps you escape your room, and you finally get to see what Aperture Laboratories is like outside the testing rooms. You get to see glimpses of the outside world; vegetation has taken over the facility; and the puzzles now take form in so many different ways. Halfway through the game, you get to see what Aperture was like 50 odd years ago and find out backstories on yourself, GLaDOS, and the founder of Aperture. The narrative is top-notch with lots of cinematic moments, but everything involves puzzle solving, and it’s so mind-bending that each one of the 50+ puzzles feels satisfying. It also goes to show how clever Valve is that I didn’t need a walkthrough once to figure out any of the puzzles. There are so many “AHA!” moments that you just don’t want to put the game down.
However, there aren’t just portals involved; other gameplay elements have been fused into the mix. There are three types of gels that you can use to solve puzzles: propulsion gel (orange stuff that makes you go really fast), fusion gel (blue stuff that makes things bounce), and conversion gel (which allows portals to be made on non-portal surfaces). Due to these new elements, you have to totally rethink how you work with portals, and it’s a great new mechanic and super fun to use. There are a few other things, such as jump pads, new types of companion cubes, turrets, and other items to solve puzzles, but explaining is almost impossible because you should just play it.
The puzzles are just so uniquely fused with the narrative that you never feel like you’re just jumping from room to room anymore. This really feels like a puzzle or adventure this time around, and some of the puzzles span two to three rooms. There’s constant chatter from characters while solving puzzles, so it doesn’t feel as stale this time around. All the new characters are great, and you’ll like them (or hate them) quickly thanks to Valve’s one-of-a-kind storytelling abilities. The music is one thing I love about this game because when you start bouncing around a room or sliding, there’s unique music that instantly plays when you’re doing these things. You get a strong sense of vertigo thanks to the game’s new take on heights, but the music is just phenomenal. This soundtrack is purchase-worthy, and the new GLaDOS song at the end is just as good as “Still Alive,” but in other ways.
The visual quality is great, but Valve really needs a new next-generation engine. Portal 2 uses the Left 4 Dead 2 Source engine, so everything looks nice, and there are some great visual effects (mainly the gel) as well as great lighting, but it’s not exactly up to par. Thankfully, there’s a huge variety of things to look at this time around (the game is over 10GB!) and the addition of a co-op campaign with an additional story and two new characters is a huge plus, so it’s like two games in one. There are also some quality extras, such as developer commentary, and you can customize your robots in the co-op campaign, which is a nice touch.
Portal 2 is truly something unique for this generation and probably the most innovative puzzle game ever made. With a strong narrative, lovable characters, and tons of new gameplay mechanics, it’s like the first game didn’t even exist. Don’t be overwhelmed by working with portals because this game takes your hand for a while and slowly lets you go when you feel confident enough, you’ll know. Valve knows how to make great games, and other developers need to follow suit.
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 !