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.
Dragon Age: Origins was Bioware’s gift to gamers missing the old action RPGs of yonder, such as Diablo, Baldur’s Gate, and Icewind Dale. Dragon Age II has come along and is really a love it or hate it type of thing. It’s almost nothing like Origins, but there’s a lot of good in this as well. The game does have more flaws than the original, but I will get to those later.
DA2 tells the story of Hawke, who is the Champion of Kirkwall, in events that take place right after the last game. DA2 really concentrates on a more personal level with the companions and Hawke instead of an overall save-the-world-type story. The Darkspawn play a very small role in this story, and you only encounter them a few times. Don’t mistake DA2 for a poor linear story because the moral outcomes become the usual Bioware head-scratchers, and as the game goes on, your choices make bigger and bigger impacts. The story is broken up into three acts, which respectively have you rising to power, using that power, and finally completely unleashing your abilities as Champion of Kirkwall to either save the mages or help the Templars destroy them. The character in DA2 is absolutely amazing in both looks and personality, plus some cameos and appearances from the last game. You really get attached to each one and want to use them all during battle.
The story is probably the best thing going for DA2, but it does have a bit of a slow start. If you are used to Origin’s huge, overarching story, you might actually get bored for a while with this one. Little things help influence the story, like romances (yes, gay romances work here), but there are so many choices during the dialog that the story could turn in so many different directions, so you always feel like you have complete control. The dialog is more like Mass Effect with a wheel that has several options. You can choose from the usual good/bad dialog, but a new sarcastic one has been added in the middle, and I always chose these because they were just clever. Just like any Bioware game, relationships with characters can also impact dialog and give you advantages or disadvantages depending on that.
So, if you go into DA2 expecting an excellent story, you won’t be upset there. What you will probably hate are the more action-oriented combat and the more linear and repetitive environments. The combat has fast, fluid animations instead of the clumsy combat from Origins. Characters strike hard and fast, and there is a lot of gore, which I didn’t mind. Of course, you can have up to ten quick slots equipped for abilities, and the new tree is very intuitive. There are different ability classes, and then each ability can also be upgraded within that. Loot collecting and leveling up work just like in Origins, including junk, but you can’t equip armor on companions. Yeah, it’s one of those “What the hell?” type issues with the game. Sure, you can add runes to their armor and weapons, but just don’t expect to change their armor.
There are a lot of changes from Origins that really shouldn’t have been touched, including the linear and extremely repetitive environments. You move around a map and just follow the arrow on your map to each goal. Since you are just in Kirkwall, you are moving around the same hallway dungeons and the same main map cities. After Act 1, you have probably seen 75% of the game. I really missed the open areas from Origins and the feeling of being in an open world. Sure, the graphics got a huge upgrade, and it all looks nice, but there isn’t much variety. What disappointed me more than anything else in the game were the repetitive areas that kept you strictly in Kirkwall. There are some outdoor environments, but don’t expect a lot of them. There is also constant loading between areas, and this drove me nuts early on.
Of course, there’s a lot of good looting and resource collection, and you can use poisons and grenades like before, but what I hate still is the potion cooldown times that are set at 30 seconds. This can make hard boss fights very frustrating because later on you’ll have a ton of money and have over 100 potions, but you can only use one every 30 seconds, and this goes for stamina droughts as well. The only thing I like about the new combat system is its faster pace and speed. There are so many abilities that you won’t even unlock them all in one play-through.
Overall, DA2 feels like a Dragon Age game, but that nostalgic feeling from Origins is gone, and I really missed that. DA2 will keep you busy for a good 30+ hours, and there are even some great side quests. The visuals are great with DirectX 11 support and high-resolution textures on the PC, so if you have the rig, this is the way to go. However, the graphics seem more sterile than Origins due to linearity, so it loses its charm in that area a bit. I highly recommend DA2 to fans of the past game, but don’t expect this to be a true-to-life sequel.
Ever since GT4, the series has had a lot of problems with visuals, content, and just overall polish. GT4 was infamous for its high difficulty and questionable car selection. However, the series is known as the best-looking racing simulator and the one with the most realistic driving physics. GT5 has all of that, but problems lie in other areas, but more on those later.
The first thing you will notice is the new menu, which is laid out better than pins on a map. You will notice a used car menu (which tracks mileage now), a better maintenance shop, the ability to generate a unique user profile for online races, and now seasonal events. Seasonal events are updated quarterly and feature endless amounts of races, so when you finish the disc content, you don’t get bored. Even tuning your vehicle is more user-friendly thanks to better descriptions and better visual guides. Polyphony really polished up the menus, so everything looks more streamlined and not so cluttered and confusing. You know right where something is and how to get there without referring to guides or searching around.
Buying cars is really fun thanks to the huge selection and in-depth descriptions and histories of each car. There are hundreds of them, so car aficionados won’t get bored or yawn at the selection. A few new car dealers are Maserati and Lamborghini, to name a couple. There are a lot of selections that can cost millions, so you should stick to the used dealerships until your credits are in the millions. The car selection is varied and strong, so I have no complaints here.
When you actually race, the physics are excellent, and the new cockpit view is amazing. However, only premium vehicles have high-resolution textures and a cockpit view. The rest of the cars look like complete crap and have no cockpit view. Why do this? I have no idea, but it looks tacky and unfinished and is a real blow to the game. The cars that do look good look photorealistic, and the cockpit views are just amazing. Needles move on the dash, and even the rear window and seats are shown in the car. Driving the cars has a great feeling, but of course, you will have to fine-tune them to get some to drive properly. If you aren’t a racing simulator fan, you are going to hate this because it can take hours to get a single car to drive just right. Tuning the cars is very easy to do thanks to the clean menus, but if you add too much power to most cars, they won’t drive right anymore.
Slipstreaming has been added to the game, and driving properly, such as gas goosing, late braking, and everything else, has never been more important thanks to the updated physics. Most of the races are just challenging enough that if you focus and drive right, you will win. I rarely had races where I was blown away by the competition, but being able to see the PP (performance points) that the other cars have helped a lot too. If you feel you need to tune something on the fly, you can now do so in the race menu instead of having to completely quit the race. If you race it for long enough, you will need to do engine overhauls and chassis alignments now, thanks to the new physics system.
While shopping for cars and racing them is fun, the first-ever online mode, photo mode, and new community features are a plus as well. Museum cards can be acquired by logging in every day, new paint jobs can be acquired by winning vehicles, and there are just so many little things added that it all adds up to make a big difference in the overall experience. Winning licenses, however, is just as much of a pain as ever before, but the new special events are a nice touch, such as NASCAR racing, go-carts, and even Top Gear Rally events. Polyphony really tried adding variety to the game, and it shows indefinitely.
There are a lot of little problems with the game that add up to really frustrate you. For example, when I select a race that has requirements, why can’t it take me to the dealerships to buy that car if it’s country-specific or has a specific drivetrain? Why do I have to memorize the flag symbol in order to know which dealership belongs to which country? I’ve already mentioned the cockpit and low-resolution standard car issues. Why are there still loading times between every menu, and how come they can be so long? Some tracks look really ugly and weren’t updated at all with cardboard cutout buildings and flat grass textures. Why are the graphics all over the place? There are so many questions as to why these issues are present, but I guess we will never know.
With some other nice features like custom soundtracks, a huge selection of supported wheels, true 1080p visuals, 3D, and eye support, The GT5 has so many options, features, and a huge car selection that will make any car fan drool. From exotics to classics, you will find something to love about this game. Just remember to focus on driving, and you will win that dream car.
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.
thebinarymessiah.com 
Try multiplayer. A lot of fun !