I have never read a book that made me feel so scared of our current technology. Computers and AI are getting scary, so Daniel Wilson wakes us up with a man-made computer with hyper-intelligent AI that takes over the world and starts killing us. Before you go rolling your eyes, thinking this is some cheesy sci-fi story, think again. David takes his story seriously, and this is all in the way he tells the story itself. The book is a journal written by a war hero named Cormac Wallace, who sees video and audio on a “black box” from recordings of every robot or “Rob” that was connected to Archos (the evil AI).
Throughout these passages is his retelling of what he is seeing and hearing, but he tells it like he might be interviewing the people in the recording. We follow several war heroes from just before Zero Hour and on throughout the war against the robots. Daniel tells the story in a relentless balls-to-the-wall sort of way that sucks you in just the first couple of pages. Each scenario describes the torture and gruesome death scenes as we get torn apart and destroyed by these robots. The characters are well portrayed and vary greatly. Each person has a completely different personality, so you have many people to look forward to reading about.
Each story from each person is heartbreaking, and you really feel what it is like to be afraid of what we rely on on a day-to-day basis. Simple machines like service robots and high-tech military drones are overwritten and start attacking people. Daniel does an excellent job of telling you how innocently each robot acted before Zero Hour, and then suddenly they became killing machines. Things like smart cars start running people over in the streets. The book is far from cheesy and will just take your breath away.
My only real complaint is that I wish there were more. I wanted to hear more stories from these people, but overall, what we get is one hell of a ride through robotic hell. Other than that, the book is excellent, and any fan of technology should read it and be wary of the future.
The first ShellShock was a blip on the FPS timeline that no one knew about, cared about, or quickly forgot about. The game was poorly designed, and why a second game was ever approved is beyond me. The game is terrible; in fact, it is one of the worst FPS games I have played in a while. Not only is the story boring and uninteresting, but the game has bad level design and FPS mechanics that go against what everyone is used to.
Blood Trails has you trying to find your brother and a mysterious person called Whiteknight. Suddenly, there are zombies everywhere, and that’s where the game starts to head downhill. The biggest issue is how you kill enemies. You have to pump dozens of bullets into one enemy just to kill them, so headshots are essential. This game might as well be called ShellShock: Headshots because that’s the only way to put enemies down quickly before you are overrun. This especially goes for zombies, because most can take on almost 10 shotgun shells before going down. This is completely ridiculous and unnecessary, but for some reason, I guess the developers thought it was funny. Towards the end of the game, you will literally get hordes of zombies coming after you, so you better be precise and give an expert shot.
You think the guns would at least be fun to shoot, but they aren’t. There is no feedback from the gun, so they all feel the same. It doesn’t help that you can’t carry much ammo, so you will find yourself whacking enemies with a useless machete. The guns reload at a snail’s pace, and you can’t interrupt reload animations to take out zombies that are charging after you. I also don’t know how I keep missing zombies at point-blank range, but it must be the POV or how the engine is designed because this little mishap is just annoying. It doesn’t help that all the animations in the game are terrible and robot-like. Even the enemy AI is completely dumb because if you are high up, a zombie will just keep running into the wall and bounce back and forth at hyper speed.
If you want to talk about the atmosphere, the game nails that decently. The game can be scary at times and is very dark and gory, with body parts hanging everywhere, babies crying, horrific screams, and just plain old scary. There are some scripted events and some quick-time events, but even these are poorly designed and boring. The game seemed to have a good start in the beginning, but after the first level, you will just keep wondering when it will end. The game can be beaten in about 4 hours, so you won’t have to play it for long. Why should you play it, you ask? Only if you really need an FPS to fix for some reason or are just bored.
Overall, Blood Trails has decent visuals but terrible lighting effects that wash the scenes away. The gunplay is horrible, the enemy AI is dumber than dirt, enemies are way too tough to take down, and there are just so many bad quirks that you will regret even starting the game. There are other FPS games out there that are better, but if you have to, then go ahead.
Shank had a great idea but was poorly executed with extreme difficulty, sluggish controls, and monotonous combat. The story was interesting, with lots of gore and boobs, but there wasn’t much beyond this. Shank 2 tones down the difficulty a tad, improves controls, and adds a few things to combat, but the story this time is lame, the voice acting stinks, and the game is even shorter. How Klei screwed up the sequel so much is beyond me.
As Shank, you still have your shanks, but there are a few new weapons. You can use Molotov’s and landmines as projectiles this time. The sledgehammer is a new one, but you also get to play as Corina for one level, and she has her own weapons. I would have liked to see more new weapons, but if you count the turret sections, then that could be a new one. The combat is exactly the same as the last game, but the controls seem to respond a bit more, and that annoying knockback effect isn’t in effect as bad here because you can at least jump as soon as you get knocked back. The pickup button is no longer the dodge button, so you can save your tequilas for when you really need them and not accidentally drink them.
My main disappointment is that the boss fights aren’t as interesting and are pretty easy. They all play out the same, and the final boss is a cakewalk compared to Shank’s final boss, which was a serious pain. There are some environmental elements added where you can press buttons, and certain things will damage enemies or open traps. This can help you in a pinch when you’re surrounded. Weapon pickups are a new feature, but most of these are useless except the large ones, and this includes large items that can be thrown.
The levels seem a bit shorter, and the game can be beaten in just a few short hours. Besides the few combat changes, the game is actually worse than the first game due to the stupid story and disappointing bosses. The visuals are still great with lots of gore, but the fundamental problem is that you’re just hacking away at the same enemies through every level. I would have liked to see more platforming sections or some scripted events, but those are very rare in this game.
Overall, Shank 2 is a fun game to go through thanks to the lowered difficulty, but you won’t get the same satisfaction when beating tough and interesting bosses. The combat and controls have been improved a lot, but the newly added elements like weapon pickups feel almost useless. The story is lame with bad voice acting, and the game can be beaten in a few short hours. Fans of the first game (the few that there are) should go ahead and pick this up, but people who held off on the last can skip this one too.
Legacy of Blood is a great tale about just how powerful items can be in Diablo. This sounds lame, but that’s why people play dungeon crawlers: for the loot. Legacy of Blood tells a tale of loot more than anything else, and this will bring fans right into the story and keep them there. You follow several characters around, chasing down this armor of Bartuc that has a mind of its own. A mercenary and war veteran just so happens to accidentally dawn this armor while looting a tomb. He loses friends, makes new enemies, and tries to rid himself of the armor that has taken control of him.
The story overall is well-paced and has a perfect length. I did feel some attachment to the characters, especially the female ones, because of how innocent and treacherous they are. I also like how Knaak makes you shift feelings toward characters as the story goes on. You may like a character, hate them, and then like them again. That is what makes you keep turning the pages and continue reading. The book is full of magic, treason, power, vengeance, death, and the undead, which is all great stuff that Diablo fans love. The story also takes you across different known areas of the Diablo universe, like Aranoch, and mentions places like Tristram. The build-up to the final pages is great because, after following all these characters through absolute hell, you feel a satisfying conclusion to what happens to every character.
My only complaint is that the book did get a little boring in some spots, which made me unfocused and spaced out. Sometimes Knaak will describe things too much or cut away from dialog for so long that you feel he sidetracked himself and lost focus. Other than that, the book is pretty good for video game standards, especially back when game novels were scarce. I highly recommend this to any Diablo fan, but everyone else probably won’t care.
Being based on an episode of Night Springs that is written by Alan Wake, this little adventure takes you through a time loop (x3) and Alan Wake’s physically manifested dark side—or is it? You get to know what happened to all the characters from the original game, and the story is delivered very nicely with a decent ending, but there are no plot twists like in the last game, so the story is a little weak in terms of substance.
The game plays exactly the same, and if you are a fan of the last game, you will be right at home. The game plays a little more like an open-world game, minus the world. There are three areas that you visit three times (yawn), and each time is shorter and shorter, but the objectives are exactly the same. I get that there is a time loop, but why do we have to do everything three times? At least there are more guns to play with and new enemies to shoot. You can step up to fully automatic weapons now with an Uzi and assault rifle. You get a carbine, a 9mm semi-auto pistol, and a sawed-off shotgun. You can’t get some weapons until you find enough manuscript pages, which are now shown as question mark blips on your mini-map.
The enemies are the same, except for a few new ones. Flocks of birds now turn into creepy vampire-looking demons, and there are huge, giant guys with table saws that can kill you in one hit. I found the game much easier this time around because there are ammo boxes everywhere that refill you all the way, plus extra ammo lying almost every 20 feet or so. Batteries don’t run down nearly as quickly as they used to, and to be honest, through the whole game, I rarely swapped a single battery out of the flashlight except toward the end. The short length of the game actually helps counter this a little and makes it a bit forgiving.
There is an arcade mode that puts you through waves of enemies with various ammo and weapons scattered everywhere. This is fun to rack up a score and kill time, but other than that, there is really no reason to go back to the game. The visuals look great on the PC with the new engine from the original game that uses DirectX 10 lighting effects. I did find the voice acting a little poor for the new characters this time around, who are also not very interesting.
Overall, this game is really for the fans of the last one, and newcomers won’t really understand the story because of the constant mentions of the last game. Think of this as a side story, because technically it is. The game looks good, plays well, and has an interesting story, but it is way too easy, short, and overall repetitive due to playing the same three areas three times over. For the small price, it is well worth it, thanks to the fun arcade mode.
BlazBlue is a newer fighter from the guys behind Guilty Gear. The game has crazy characters, beautiful art, and an awesome soundtrack, but it has one of the most complicated fighting systems I have ever played. Jump cancels, combo cancels, high jump cancels, canceling mid-combo it continues said combo, this is all just ridiculous and literally gave me a headache. The story is also something to be desired, but the overall characters are fun, and the game is a good button masher.
The game also has a lot of modes, which means you get your money’s worth. Not only do you get arcade, story, and a tutorial mode, but an endless mode, online play, score attack, a full gallery, and a few others. Unlimited Mars is a mode where you fight against advanced AI, and mission mode allows you to fight waves of enemies. There are lots of things to do here, but overall, you won’t spend too much time in either mode because it all feels repetitive after a while. When I went into the tutorial mode, I pretty much gave up 3/4 through because of how complicated the fighting system is. Thankfully, there is a stylish mode that simplifies the whole thing and allows you to do complicated combos with only a few button presses, but all the other elements like shield barriers, different blocking techniques, this meter, that meter—it all just becomes too much.
BlazBlue does become an entertaining button masher once you get the hang of it, but only hardcore fans will attempt to master the fighting system. I even found the arcade mode to be long-winded, and there’s just too much talking in the game. There’s a “Teach Me, Miss Litchi” section in the story mode that is just constant yapping about tips on the game. You get to experience the other two-story modes from past games, but there is more talking than fighting here. Sure, it’s entertaining, but I couldn’t wrap my head around the overly frustrating and complex fight system to enjoy it enough.
Once you spend a few hours in the game, you will put it down at this point, and that’s when you will decide if you like it or not. I highly suggest renting this first for newcomers, because even Street Fighter or other Japanese fighting game vets will balk at this game. The animations and scenes are beautiful, the soundtrack is great, and I can’t help but really dig the characters here despite all the complaints. Sticking to stylish mode eased some of the headache-inducing memorization.
Overall, the game is great for fans of the series, but newcomers may want to seriously consider this a rental first before buying. If you do buy it, there is tons of content to keep you busy in many modes. Online play is the usual blast and the only reason to come back to any fighter these days. The characters are awesome with great personalities, and the visuals are stunning. I just wish the fighting engine itself wasn’t so complicated and complex.
X Blades was a pretty bad game when it came out, with combat that wasn’t fun, a lame story, bad graphics, and just all-around bad. The sequel is much better but still isn’t great. Ayumi is back, trying to find some sort of dragon sphere in Dragon Land, but she has to get through the Sky Guards, who are trying to stop her from awakening The Keeper, who is guarding this sphere. The plot is very “meh” and doesn’t have any redeeming value. The combat is decent with some fun shooting mechanics, but everything here is broken to some degree.
Take combat, for starters. There are only light and heavy attacks, and the same combos are used throughout the whole game. You can’t unlock new moves or combos, just spells. These spells consist of fire, ice, and power. As you beat up on enemies, your spell gauge will increase to one and two skulls. One unleashes a weak attack, while two are powerful. If you fill your bar up all the way, you get a health pack. This would be fine if unleashing this magic wasn’t done in a terrible fashion. Holding down the spell button to charge it and then pressing the appropriate spell button slows down combat. Why can’t I just equip the spell and unleash it with one button? It doesn’t help that enemies can interrupt the spell charge, leading to cheap deaths. Speaking of deaths, you can die very easily in this game, causing you to constantly use health packs.
Platforming is just as bad because Ayumi doesn’t jump very far, making you rely on her dash move. If you don’t judge the distance right, she will just drop like a rock after her dash. That’s why you dash jump around floating corrals, but fighting on small platforms is a nightmare because the knockback seems to be glitched because she will fly across the level sometimes if hit by large enemies. You can shoot with guns you find throughout the game, and this is at least decent. Shooting enemies feels good with the different weapons and can actually help you when you’re low on health and need to back off.
The third part of Blades of Time is puzzle-solving. This is in the form of rewinding time and using switches that you stand on. Anyone who has played Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time will know what I’m talking about. This seems to be dull and confusing at first, but you can also use it during combat. Some larger enemies need two Ayumis to take them down via quick-time events, which are poorly implemented here. I really felt this time the rewind feature could have been used in better ways than opening doors and beating only a couple different enemies. You can use your compass to find hidden items that give you various stat effects, but these are really easy to find because the compass points you right to them.
The graphics are average at best. The textures have a pretty low resolution, but the art style is nice with varied environments and different suits that Ayumi wears. Overall, everything is just flawed in some way due to poor mechanics. The combat is repetitive and dull with the same attacks; the puzzle-solving is boring and confusing; and the few platforming sections are hard due to bad jumping mechanics. The story is bland with boring characters, and even Ayumi isn’t all that interesting (she tries to be a new-age Lara Croft). The game is playable, but after you play it, you will quickly forget about it.
The Lost and Damned is the first of two expansions for GTA 4, but we should feel lucky just to have more. The expansion is short, doesn’t really do anything new, but is satisfying enough to recommend a purchase. The new characters are great; there’s still that witty GTA dialog, but the game is seriously lacking in new mission types and treads too much on the original game’s content.
You play as The Lost Motorcycle Club’s Johnny Klebitz, who is trying to help re-establish his motorcycle gang and beat out his rivals, The Angels of Death. All the new characters are great to listen to, but there’s just not enough of it. The missions were the typical blow this up, kill these guys, run from cops, deliver these drugs, etc. Nothing new or interesting outside of the GTA norm, which isn’t what I wanted to see. The only “new” mission types are motorcycle races and gang wars, which are as uninteresting as they sound. The missions here are really hard, mainly because of GTA’s overall problems. These range from dying with just a few hits, too many guys thrown at you, crappy vehicle control, and some various glitches that were never fixed.
The expansion tries to tie into some cameos from past missions, so actually, some are retreads that you have already played, just from a different point of view. The only missions that felt different were when you rode on the back of a bike and shot down various foes. There are only two missions like this, but I really have to say there is just too much shooting in this expansion. Almost every mission requires you to take down hordes of thugs. This becomes very frustrating when you are dying dozens of times for permission.
You have maybe less than 10 hours of gameplay here if you just stick to the story missions. Each character has about 3 or 4 for you to do, some only one. The main reason to play this expansion is for the new characters, the protagonist, and the excellent dialog, which will make you laugh. The game is crude, mature, and downright dirty in some instances, but this just pushes the envelope like we come to expect from a GTA game. If you really loved the original and want some more GTA action, this is a decent expansion, but don’t expect the game to try anything different or new.
One of the best DS series is Professor Layton because of the charming characters, engaging story, and fun puzzles. Doctor Lautrec is similar in story but far worse in gameplay. The story and ideas are superb and very original, but they are just poorly executed. You play Sophie and Doctor Lautrec, who are 19th-century treasure hunters in France. The game consists of three parts: battling your treasures, finding your way around labyrinths, and solving door puzzles. The story is about Sophie and Lautrec, who find a mysterious deciphering device. Other treasure hunters are after him, but all he wants is the mystery and not the glory.
Let’s start with the treasure battles. These are highly convoluted, poorly explained, and simple to a fault. You fight your treasures, known as Treasure Animatus, so think of an archeological version of Pokemon. The whole battle system is based on a hierarchy, like Humanoid is stronger than Avian, which is stronger than Aborheal, etc., but the chart and symbols don’t make any sense. You place each treasure on a pedestal, but some are cracked, which will give you random effects, both good and bad. Once you place a treasure, you can no longer use it, which is completely outside of standard RPG battle rules. You can only equip three treasures before entering a dungeon; if you equip the wrong ones, you have to leave and do the dungeon all over again. It is very important that you explore the entire dungeon because you need to find gems and tame other smaller animals for the boss. Most animals can be tamed by bringing their health into the blue range. If you kill them, they become extinguished and can’t be used for battle.
This all sounds very simple, but it is actually really complicated when you play. Even after reading in-depth guides online, I still didn’t get it. The most frustrating part, and why I quit after 5 hours, is that you will solve the mystery to get to the dungeon only to realize that your Animatus isn’t strong enough to fight the boss. Sophie will tell you before entering the dungeon how your Animatus will fare because she can sense the boss. If you can’t do any quests, you have to buy resurrection stones to bring your Animatus back to life, but they are very expensive, so sometimes you will be screwed. Those gems you collect that aren’t killed in battle at the end of each dungeon are turned into experience points that go toward your Animatus. If you get stuck on a boss that kills all your gems except the one you want, you will never be able to level them up.
So, you will run around solving all these boring quests just to realize you can’t do that dungeon. The quests involve running around a map to different blue pins and listening to various dialogs. Rarely will you get to solve an actual puzzle. The puzzles involve using the touchscreen but aren’t very interesting. Matching words on a crossword puzzle-style grid, making shapes fit on different shapes, a Minesweeper-style mini-game that makes no sense, spotting the difference, and a few other boring puzzles. These are far and few between and the only break from the monotonous mystery solving.
Once you get into a dungeon, you have to push blocks around, avoid enemies, and dodge traps to get to the various animals. The AI is really stupid here because you can push blocks right in front of them and they won’t notice, but run behind them and they chase after you reset the whole room. These dungeons are not fun and are a complete pain to complete.
Between all this nonsense are huge strings of dialog and cut scenes. The anime-style ones are nice to look at, but the 3D ones are just awful. The voice acting is really good, but some of the characters are just not interesting to listen to or get to know. The only reason to keep playing is to find out more about the interesting characters and story, but the game is so frustrating to play that you will give up quickly. Just a side note: My rental copy had two saves of only 54 minutes and 90 minutes. (That’s how frustrating this game is.).
Overall, Doctor Lautrec has a great story and characters, but the puzzles are boring and spread too thin. The 3D effects alone are minimal and don’t really add anything to the experience. The worst part about the game is the confusing and terrible Pokemon rip-off battle system. I actually can’t even recommend this game to anyone except hardcore puzzle fans.
World War Z is a book of short interviews with survivors of the zombie war. The book is depicted as if it actually happened, and this is a nice change for zombie stories. The book is broken down into different major events of the war. The book starts with warnings and signs of a zombie infection. After this, you get to hear about how people of all walks of life survived the war under various conditions. This ranges from businessmen, teenagers, astronauts stranded in space, soldiers, generals, doctors, moms, families, and every other type of person you can think of. They are from all over the world, and each story is completely different from the last.
Of course, there are a few duds that are full of dry politics, or the characters ramble on about one subject and never switch topics. Some of my favorite parts were when the author argued with or offended someone during an interview because it made it seem more real. Some interviews are short, while others just drag on too long. These uninteresting stories don’t come up too often, and they usually don’t talk much about an event or tell a specific story. They just talk about the politics surrounding the event or philosophize about it.
The zombies themselves are depicted as an unstoppable force that we can’t stop. Max Brooks chose to make you fear these things because sheer numbers overlook what they can do to you, and it all started. Battles are fought over millions of zombies coming at you, and this can create a fairly scary image. Towards the end of the book, you start to see how conventional warfare just doesn’t work on these things. Knowing that our army and high-tech equipment are ineffective against the undead is just astounding. This was probably the scariest thing of all. We rely on our military to protect us so much that when a problem comes up, they can’t fix it. You know everyone is screwed.
While all this is really interesting, the book doesn’t exactly have a hard conclusion or overall story. The book feels very loose and almost random because the interviewer jumps around all over the world, and each person’s story takes place at different times and locations, so you feel disoriented when reading. Despite all this, this is a wonderful zombie book that even takes storytelling to a different level. Just be patient and stick with the book, and you will enjoy it.
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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…