I love novels that bend religion, especially ones that take the evil in religion and make that the religion. Paul Hoffman is a no-holds-barred author here with teenage boy Thomas Cale’s murderous attitude and demeanor. You follow him and two of his friends on a forced adventure to escape from the Sanctuary. A religious sanctum of boys only where they are continued to follow the Hanged Man Redeemer and suffer torture and cruel punishment among the Redeemers at this holy (or unholy, depending on how you look at it) remote location.
After the first quarter of the book, you follow the boys throughout Memphis and their involvement in royalty. Everyone finds out how good of a killer Cale is, and everyone wants him by their side as their personal assassin. In the meantime, the redeemers are continuing an ageless war against the antagonists, but their motives move elsewhere. I can’t say much more than this without spoiling the book, but Hoffman’s style of writing is a breath of fresh air. He sidesteps typical clichés, even brings them up from time to time, and explains why he avoids them. The pacing is excellent in this novel, and I promise you will constantly be turning pages and having time pass behind you.
The novel is very dark and gory and features a lot of medieval torture and time-period events. Weapons, armor, ways of living—it is all in here from that time period, and Paul really draws you in and makes you a part of it. Conversations among the characters are great and engaging, plus he doesn’t drag things on with a lot of descriptive narratives or lose focus, which I really hate. This book feels like a smooth train ride with a sudden stop because of the cliffhanger ending, which will make you want to run out and buy the second book.
I can’t say it enough, but the book just has such amazing characters and a great narrative that is paced very well. Events unfold from minor to epic and are spread evenly throughout. Plot twists abound; I felt like I was reading a great movie and was absorbed in such a way as well. If you love religion or the dark parts of religion, this book is for you. Some naysayers or hardcore religious fanatics may turn their noses up at it, but they are missing out on a truly epic novel that I can’t wait to see where it turns next.
Diablo III is one of the most long-awaited games in history. StarCraft II and Duke Nukem Forever are in the same boat, but Diablo III is something else. Everyone who played the last two games was either in high school or college at the time and is now in their 30s and 40s. 12 years in the making with so much turmoil and history to write a novel about. Now that the game is finally out, is it any good? Blizzard surprised us with StarCraft II and how good that game is, but can they do it twice in a row? The answer is yes. The game has its fair share of problems, but they were mainly during launch with a plethora of glitches, balancing, and server issues. Most of the major problems have been patched now, so I won’t spend time complaining about that because I didn’t experience any issues apart from the occasional server error.
The story in Diablo III is fairly good, but only people who played the last two will truly appreciate it. I found the middle of the game to be pretty uneventful, but the ending was great, with a few plot twists. You play as one of many hero classes who are trying to stop the Prime Evils from taking over the world. Not just Diablo, but Azmodan, Mephisto, Belial, and many others. One of the best things about the game is the many different locales, from indoors to outdoors. The art style is absolutely beautiful, leaving you with plenty of great scenery to look at.
Of course, a dungeon crawler isn’t one without a lot of loot, and Diablo III has an endless amount. The best loot is at higher levels (60 is the cap) and on Nightmare difficulty. This is really a game for people who want loot. You can blow through the story and reach around level 30, but it will take another play-through to get the best loot. Why do you want this loot so bad? To sell in the auction house for in-game gold or real-world cash. That’s right. Cash. People can bid on it or buy it outright, but don’t expect anyone to bid on the crappy stuff. Only level 60 loot is really being fought for. I tried selling dozens of rare items throughout my playthrough and only sold one for $1.25. Really sad.
The best loot comes from bosses, which are highlighted in gold. Main bosses give you the best stuff, but they can be tough as nails. Some bosses were pretty easy, such as mid-level bosses or blue sub-bosses. There were a few that just kept killing me, but I didn’t die all that often. The penalty isn’t very severe, with just 10% durability of all your equipped items taken away, but you can always repair it at a town center. One thing I didn’t do at all was buy items. I always found the best ones as drops rather than at shops. I didn’t even craft any items, which is a shame. I found this to be sorely wasted. I did like the new gem ability, which will raise the stats of items significantly. Weaker gems can be crafted into more powerful ones as well.
Of course, you can take a buddy with you, but you really don’t have to. This is only recommended for Nightmare difficulty, but most people will probably want to take a long break from the game and come back a few months later when the game feels a little fresher. After I finished the game, I felt I needed a long break because you are just clicking around madly while using 1-4 keys for your attacks. I sure wasn’t disappointed here because there are plenty of abilities to learn; I just wish you could hotkey more of them instead of just four. I even wish there were some better AoE attacks because the last two acts throw a ton of tough enemies at you, and you are constantly boxed in. I managed, but it would have been nice.
At the end of the day, you are just clicking around furiously at everything that moves and trying to find the best loot in the game to sell in the auction house. This is a game for people who are dedicated. Sure, you can enjoy the single-player mode, but if you really want to experience the way Diablo was built to be played, you must continue on with a second playthrough on a harder difficulty. Sure, the game has good voice acting, some of the most beautiful pre-rendered cutscenes I have ever seen, lots of abilities, and tons of loot, but in the end, this is all this game is about. Looting, clicking, and selling. If you don’t like that, then you will hate this game.
My biggest complaint would have to be that the layout of each level is nearly the same. There is a fog of war on the map, and you have to discover where everything is. There may be some side quests, hidden chests, and sub-bosses, but I found this tiring and kind of boring. What’s here is great; I just wish there was a little more variety. Another thing I will complain about is the game’s DRM. You need to be online at all times, or it will boot you and you will lose your progress. I hated this more than anything, but Blizzard has successfully sidestepped pirates, and I applaud them for that. It’s probably the only video game ever made that isn’t pirateable. Other than this, the game is great and well worth a purchase.
Survival games without the horror are hard to come by, and I Am Alive has a lot of potential. Being stranded after a natural disaster that pretty much wipes out the planet, you are trying to find your wife and daughter after getting injured and trekking across the country back to your apartment. You stumble upon a little girl that you end up helping, along with her current caretaker. The story has some interesting points but ultimately isn’t all that interesting. The plot doesn’t thicken very much, and right when it should, the game ends. What we are left with is a disappointing cliffhanger.
There are two main elements in the game: exploration and combat. Each has a huge flaw that makes the game a tad frustrating, but not so bad that you can’t look past it. The exploration is based on a stamina meter that slowly depletes while you climb, combat, run, jump, and pretty much anything else you do. This is fine and all, except when you are down on the ground in the ash. The meter slowly depletes until you are dead or climb up high out of the ash. This is the most frustrating thing in the game and makes you not want to explore and help people. Climbing is just fine because it makes you think quickly and decide whether or not risking your stamina capacity is worth getting a bullet or healing item. If you start to deplete too much while climbing, you can use pistons to recharge or items that give you stamina and stamina capacity. If you run out of stamina, you will go into an effort mode where you quickly tap a button and your capacity starts depleting. If you deplete this, you’re dead. Not once did I completely deplete my capacity, so don’t worry about that being hard.
Secondly, comes the combat. Bullets are extremely rare, but you have to intimidate enemies by pointing your gun at them. They will put their hands up, but enemies with guns will not. You need to use strategy and decide who to kill first. Sometimes an enemy will get cocky and speak up. If you kill him first, the others may surrender. If not, you can order them to back up and knock them into fire or off high ledges. If you put your gun down, they will start charging. If you are out of bullets, you need to be careful and not pull the trigger, or they will know you’re empty. This isn’t as clever as it sounds because, in execution, there are problems. If you are completely out of bullets, you are pretty much screwed if there is more than one enemy with a gun. You can walk up to him and surprise kill him, take his bullet, and shoot another gun wielder, but then you’re out of bullets again. You may have two more guys to kill with knives, so what do you do? That’s the flaw. Each scenario is set up with really only one outcome. Later on, the combat gets really frustrating, despite having a bow with retrievable arrows. These arrows are so rare that I only found three in the whole game. The combat is great on paper but slightly flawed in execution.
When you help people, you will get extra retries, but there are items you need to find to help them. Some want rarer items than others, but in the end, the ash issue kept me from exploring everywhere and helping anyone. They abused this stamina meter and should have held back a bit. That’s pretty much all there is to the game. You rotate around exploration and combat, but in the end, the game could have been a lot more. I love the idea of the combat, but it really needs work in the next game.
Despite those two major flaws, I Am Alive is entertaining, and when you aren’t freely exploring, the game is quite fun. The atmosphere is foreboding, but the story isn’t as interesting as it could have been. At least the PC gets some enhanced visuals with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, so the game doesn’t look as ugly. For the small price, I Am Alive is worth this purchase, but most people may want to download a demo first before buying.
The band rhythm genre was one of the shortest-lived I have ever seen. Starting with Guitar Hero and quickly being killed off with games like Rock Band 3, Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, and DJ Hero 2. There were a ton of them, but because of the constant yearly releases, the public got sick of them quickly, and now the genre is pretty much dead. Harmonix decided to go back to its roots and release another controller-based rhythm game like Amplitude for PS2. Before you insult the game, read on.
Blitz is just as addictive as the other games in the series, but in a different way. You play all the instruments at the same time, but this is a very important thing that you need to remember: This game is about scores and not hitting every note. You only use two buttons on the controller to hit each note on the left and right sides of the track. You play like you normally would in a Rock Band game, but just with two notes. Don’t sit there thinking this is easy. The game can get downright hard, mainly because you have to constantly keep your score multiplier up. As you play along, you will pass gates that will turn the multiplier wheel. It will stop at the lowest-set number. Make sure you switch between tracks and get those multipliers for each one! If you play close to perfect, you can raise each track by four with plenty of room left before the gate.
This sounds hard and stupid, but the game is so much fun! It also helps that you can use power-ups that you unlock by raising your cred. Using the power-ups costs coins that are earned based on your score. There are a lot of fun power-ups, such as a rocket that will shoot ahead and destroy some notes. Certain instruments can have double points, bombs, flames that spread around and increase your score, a 2x multiplier, and the list goes on. You will find yourself trying out different power-ups and using your favorites. I also love how you can use your entire Rock Band library. You can also download any Rock Band song from the store, and it will work with this game! This, of course, increases replayability quite a bit.
Blitz incorporates Facebook integration for co-op play and most multiplayer stuff. This is both good and bad. It’s good for people who use Facebook, but bad for people who don’t or who are paranoid about their internet security. I didn’t have a problem with this, but I know some people will. One issue I did find annoying is that there is only one stage the game plays through. Sure, it changes a bit as you go along, but I would have liked to have seen more. Other than that, there really isn’t much wrong with this game.
In the end, this game is about taste. Some people may think just hitting two buttons is stupid, but if you sit down and play for a while, you will realize how ridiculously addictive this game can be. The game keeps your adrenaline up by constantly having to switch between tracks and keeping your multiplier up. If you are a huge Rock Band fan, then give this a whirl, but due to the small list of songs the game comes with, newcomers will find the game less appealing. You should really only play this if you have a large Rock Band library.
Oni was a very hyped anime-style game back in the day. This game was made by Rockstar before getting into 3D Grand Theft Autos and other games. This game has a lot of potential but is flawed in a lot of ways that make the game more boring and frustrating than bad. With that said, the only redeeming quality is the good-looking combat animations and challenges.
Right out of the gate, you will notice that the controls are complete, both upside and backward. All the combat moves are on the shoulder buttons. Why in the world they thought of this is beyond me. You actually don’t really use the face buttons all that much. This makes jumping, fighting, and shooting clumsy and cumbersome, and you can’t change the controls to something more natural. These are just some of the worst action and adventure controls I have ever used. The actual combat is fine, but executing these moves is a pain. I felt like I was stumbling over myself because I had to think about the controls. These just aren’t natural! Jumping with R1, L2, and L1 is kick and punch, and you pick up items with R3. What?! I felt like I was trying to solve a Rubix cube, not play a game.
Secondly, there is the exploration factor. The levels are boring. They all look pretty much the same, with flat, boring textures, and the design is confusing and labyrinthine on some levels. There’s no direction, and your compass is useless. The bar gets smaller as you get near an objective, but if you are two flights down, it will act like you’re standing right next to it. Enemies are stupid and clumsy, boss fights are frustrating, and the game just can’t compensate for its own design with the clumsy controls. I can’t tell you how tired I got after just three levels of finding this colored console to open the same colored door over and over again.
The story isn’t really worth sticking around the 14 levels either. The anime cutscenes are nice, but you probably won’t even get through this slog of a game. I tried really hard to keep going, but there was never a change of pace. It didn’t help that there is no mid-level saving and the checkpoint placement is unfair. If you quit in the middle of a level, you have to start all over. There are just a lot of annoying things with this game, but even if it were flawless, you still have the fact that the game is just boring and not very fun.
When it is all said and done, only the hardest core of anime fans will stick around until the end. You really had to have played this when it first came out, then come back for nostalgic purposes. The game is just clumsy and boring, but it has so much potential if only the developers spent more time on it. As it stands, I really can’t recommend this to anyone.
90s kids remember Oregon Trail at school on those old, colorful iMacs, right? If you didn’t, then you had a terrible childhood! For those who did, you must play this game. Organ Trail is a zombie take on the Oregon Trail gameplay, but it is much better with a great atmosphere.
You start off by shooting some zombies, but you run out of ammo. Someone comes to help, but he ends up getting bitten, so you put him down. Yes, you can put down people in this game! After you name your characters with names that aren’t real names (you all did it!) You set off in your station wagon to the first town. This is where you decide what kind of supplies you are going to start off with. Ammo, money, tires, batteries, gas, food, and mufflers. Your station wagon is your life. If it breaks down, you aren’t getting to the west coast. In between landmarks, random events will display that will affect your character or car in some way. Sometimes harsh weather may make you drive slower; you might find interesting things on the road, lose things on the road, get ambushed by biker gangs, have to drive through a horde of zombies, etc.
Not all of this is as simple as flipping through menus. When a gang attacks, you have to ram them off the road with your car, or their bullets will cause precious damage to your car. When you see a horde, you have to decide how to approach them. Is the horde docile? Then sneak through at a slow speed. You can blast your way through or hire mercenaries to protect you, but they are very expensive. There are events that you run into where you have to decide whether to help the person, leave, or kill them. This is a game about surviving a zombie apocalypse, and it is very dark and moody. These events make the game feel like a true adventure. Even scavenging at any time can be a risky move due to how many bullets you have and your health. If you don’t survive, you could possibly die by taking too much damage!
Of course, you can rest and heal your group, but this costs food. Using medkits should only be kept for yourself so you can quickly heal after scavenging. When you reach a town, you can either buy upgrades for your car and pay to repair it, or you can use the scrap you find to do it yourself. This costs lots of food and may not be successful if you don’t have enough scrap. Sometimes you can take jobs for people or trade with them for items you desperately need. I have never played a game like this where I had to think about every single decision so much.
My only main issue is that the game can be too hard sometimes, and the shooting mechanic is clumsy. You hold back the gun and let go to shoot, but the three pixels that help you aim aren’t much help. I found the aiming too sensitive and desperately needed a longer guide or larger projectiles. The shooting sections are the hardest in the game because tons of zombies will come after you, so you must constantly be on the move. I found the character’s moves too slow—just barely faster than the zombies. If this issue were fixed, this game would be perfect. A lot of people will be turned off by the Atari 2600-style graphics, but they add to the charm. The atmosphere is surprisingly well done here, despite the ancient-looking graphics.
Overall, the game requires a lot of thinking and careful strategy but throws in enough random events to make it seem almost realistic. The shooting mechanic is finicky, and the character moves too slowly, but I couldn’t put this game down. Even after dying halfway across America, I tried again because the next journey was completely different from the last. I even decided to take more of something else and try again. This is a wonderful game, but it may not be for everyone.
I was so excited about this game because I could see the potential it could bring. Lots of gore in a 3D setting with the awesome monster design from the classic arcade and Sega Genesis games. Man, was I wrong? This game is full of so many flaws and good ideas that have gone wrong that just a little playtesting and polish could have made this game great. It tries to be a modern action/adventure with a bit of softcore porn and a lot of ultra-violence thrown in. The story is somewhat interesting with H.P. Lovecraft-inspired mythos and art styles, but you won’t care because most won’t even finish the game.
Splatterhouse is all about combat, so let’s start there. The combat is just seriously flawed. I can’t explain enough how unbalanced and frustrating the combat is. If the developers only tweaked it some, it would be just right, but there are so many little nuances that drive you crazy. Firstly, you never feel powerful enough. You can acquire new moves, but you never increase in strength. These moves just add to your arsenal of weaknesses. Even the smallest enemy needs a lot of pummeling before they die. This gets really frustrating when the game throws a lot of enemies at you. You are just so overwhelmed, and you rely on your mask powers, which use the poorly balanced blood meter. This meter can be increased with upgrades, but it takes three slots to activate mask mode. In mask mode, you can slaughter enemies easily, but it doesn’t last long. Poor use of this meter is when you do temporary mask attacks like Splatter or Smash. They each use a blood slot. Why?! That is so frustrating because you need to use it because regular attacks aren’t powerful enough. If you use these special attacks, you will never be able to enter mask mode when you really need it. Highly unbalanced and frustrating.
If that isn’t enough, let’s talk about the weapons and 2D platforming sections. They tried to be cute and go back to Splatterhouse roots, but they just ruin your precious memories of that game. Whenever you just touch an obstacle, you get hurt. The jumping is terrible, with no momentum at play. The run button is flawed because you can’t interrupt it, so you have to remember how far you run because Rick just stops, and it takes forever for the animation to end. This leads to cheap deaths, which lead to horrendously long load times that can take up to a minute. You will die a lot in this game, so expect to endure long load times after each death. If that isn’t enough, the weapons break just after a few hits, and instead of creating more interesting enemies, the last four levels of the game are just ridiculously difficult because tons of sub-bosses are thrown at you to compensate for the lazy enemy design. There are only about six different enemies in the whole game, and they are not fun to even kill. The Splatter Kills are fun during the first level, but there are only about 4 different animations! This game just wants you to hate it.
So if that isn’t enough to keep you away, I don’t know what will. A few of the bosses are pretty fun, but towards the end, that kind of stops. There are some interesting combat puzzles that are flawed due to poor hit detection. Even if you beat the game, why would you want to come back for combat arenas? The combat system is just slow, unresponsive, full of uninterruptible animations, and not fun at all. If you really want to play, you can pick up the nude Jenny photos along the way, but it isn’t even worth it for that. Splatterhouse has a lot of potential but ultimately fails due to lazy game design and unbalanced everything. The story and art are nice, with a lot of gore, but even the graphics are lacking due to using the outdated Unreal Engine 3. I honestly can’t even recommend a rental. Stick with the three Sega Genesis games and forget this even exists. Maybe next time? We will have to see.
The Walking Dead is probably my favorite adventure series of all time. It surpasses most adventure game clichés like inventory management, tank controls, and disjointed pacing. The Walking Dead: Episode 3 is well-paced, and there are some of the toughest choices you have to make. Things get very serious this time around because the group is starting to lose its mental stability. There’s a lot of internal fighting, and you must decide how this all turns out.
The group is trying to get to Savannah, Georgia, because things at the motel didn’t work out so well. They find a train engine that takes them partway, but I won’t say any more. There are a few major areas you can explore with a few simple puzzles, but like usual, the opening is awesome, and I played through this entire episode and wanted the next one right away. There are three new characters introduced, but at the same time, a few people in the group die. Who or how is up to you, but you will be shocked at how this all turns out. I actually had to pause the game with my mouth agape due to the shocking turns and, mainly, how it actually happened.
There’s more zombie killing this time around, but not nearly as much as in the first episode. I found myself glued to my computer more than Episode 2, and I felt like the story was actually progressing better. A lot of bugs are also starting to get ironed out, such as the constant stuttering during cut scenes and some control issues. You won’t be exploring much, just in the main puzzle areas, but this is OK because of how much the story advances through dialog choices. This is about the time when a lot of your choices from the last two episodes will really start blossoming here. Some choices I made actually determined huge plot changes, and I realized either I shouldn’t have done something or wish I had done something, but that’s the excitement of this series. You feel like you are playing a movie and directing it yourself.
I just can’t wait for the fourth episode because things will really start going downhill from there. This episode is a huge turning point for the story, and every fan will want more.
I know what you’re probably thinking. Deadly Alliance on the GBA? Puh-lease. Don’t criticize the game just yet. Deadly Alliance for GBA is a solid fighter with a trick 3D fighting system that is simplified from the console versions. The game features a full Krypt, mini-games, and a new survival mode. The graphics are surprisingly good, and the sound quality is excellent.
Unlike past Mortal Kombat handheld ports, this game is actually good. The fighting system is a mix of 2D and 3D with each character’s two main martial arts stances (the weapon stance was taken out). The fighting system may seem dumbed down or too simple because the GBA only has two face buttons. Using a combo of the D-pad and face buttons, you can pull off some great combos with ease. The whole transition feels natural and hand-tailored to the console. My main disappointment is the lack of characters. Only about 10 made it into the GBA version, but a new character, Sareena, made it into the game from Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero. I am also disappointed that each character only has one fatality (like in the console version), but they are different and quite detailed for a GBA game.
The sound quality is excellent, with the announcer’s voice intact. The graphics are pretty decent, with full 3D backgrounds, but they are very muddy and lack any detail. The graphics are a love-hate type of thing. The Test-You-Might and Sight are fully intact here, which is nice, but the Konquest mode is obviously missing. Instead, there is a Survival mode that was stuck in here. There is a full Krypt with alternative costumes and other things. So this is a huge MK experience on the GBA, and probably the best one.
If you loved Deadly Alliance or just want a solid fighter on your GBA, then pick this up. There is a lot of content in here, and the fighting system is solid and fluid. The graphics look pretty, and the sound quality is excellent, so you have no reason not to play this!
Sniper Elite: V2 doesn’t stand for version 2, as some people may think. This is about trying to stop the Germans from using V2 rockets in World War II. After seeing those three words, you probably left this review already. Another WWII game? V2 has a lot of potential but is lacking in many areas due to the developers’ laziness in design. The story is nothing special, with the only satisfying thing being sniper shots.
The game is all about stealth, but right away you will notice this is broken. The enemies are laid out in such a poor manner that it is hard to figure out how to take everyone out without raising an alert. If you do so, you have to fight it out with limited ammo from your other weapons, and you die very quickly. Using sniper rifles is just fine with the ability to hold your breath to steady your aim. Slowly, a red diamond will focus on a part of an enemy, and that is where your bullet will land. Once you fire, the game uses a bullet camera, and sometimes you will see an X-ray shot of the bullet penetrating the target’s organs (the nut shot is awesome!). You will see the skull shatter, organs burst, and eyes explode. This is the most satisfying use of a sniper rifle for any shooter. The problem is, the fun stops there.
Of course, sniper rifles back then really didn’t have silencers, so once you make the shot, everyone knows you’re there. Some levels have loud noises you can mask the shot from, but this can be difficult. The enemy AI is extremely dumb; they won’t notice a dead comrade right next to them, or they will spot you from hundreds of yards away with some sort of eagle vision. On top of all that, enemies spawn strangely out of some sort of ether because you will walk a hallway with no enemies, circle around, and then somehow there’s an enemy there. This makes stealth frustrating as hell, and you will rage quit often. It doesn’t help that the forced shootouts are frustrating and hard because you die almost instantly.
You can lay traps for enemies and such, but I honestly didn’t find any reason to do this much. Even the level design is screwy because the hallways are confusing and everything looks the same. There just isn’t enough satisfaction from finishing levels and outsmarting enemies because, in reality, you’re exploiting the dumb AI to advance through the levels. After just about 3 or 4, you will probably have enough and call it quits. It is just so sad that the great sniper mechanic was wasted on such a boring and dull game. The graphics look pretty good, but other than that, you won’t stay interested. I had this game on my HDD for about 2 months, and even when I had nothing to play, I couldn’t go back to this drab game.
Overall, V2 has some awesome kill shots and great sniper rifles; everything else is a bust. Dumb AI, poor stealth mechanics, boring level design, uninteresting stories, and frustrating shootouts. The multiplayer is pretty satisfying, but you won’t be coming back for long. V2 is a huge disappointment over a prequel that was fairly decent. Even the most patient gamers won’t last here.
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ORC is probably the worst game in the entire series. It's objectively awful. Being bad isn't different. Different is Outbreak…