Most third-party controllers are usually never good. Power A did a great job with this officially licensed (by DC anyways) PS3 controller. While it looks a bit cheap, with some areas not coming together smoothly and seeing a few uneven gaps, the controller feels good and has a few nice features. For one, the thing lights up with seven different colors that you can change with a push of the button. All the regular PS3 buttons are here, including the Home button, plus there is a battery indicator button that lights up the quadrants to the left of the top row of buttons.
The overall feeling in your hands is great, except that the shoulder buttons are a bit closer together. People with huge hands will not like this. It has kind of a triangle shape, and the ergonomics are great when wrapping your fingers behind the controller to grip it. The sticks are laid out like the Xbox 360, which I prefer, and they are just tight enough for the perfect sensitivity range (which is really important for shooters).
Overall, there are a few problems, such as the top buttons being too close to each other, so you have to look down to press Start and Select. Several times I didn’t look and hit the color change button instead of starting. I also like how it’s wireless, but it doesn’t use Bluetooth, so you have to use a dongle in the PS3 USB slot. That also means no turning on the console with the controller, but it does have an on/off switch to kind of make up for it. The battery lasts a long time, so no issue there, but if the controller didn’t look as cheap as it does, the top buttons were spread out more, and this thing used Bluetooth, I would say it was perfect. For what you get, this is a great controller for Batman fans.
While the first book suffered a bit from confusing descriptions, poor pacing, and just an overall weirdness that you really didn’t find in the games, Lord of Souls tones it down a bit and becomes more coherent. The book takes off from the first, with Attrebus and Sul stuck in Oblivion and Annaig and Mere-Glim trying to find a way to destroy the floating city of Umbriel. With this being the conclusion, you will finally get to the climax of the whole event and discover some interesting twists.
The romanticism in the book is still forced because it’s brief and doesn’t go into much detail or become more than a single couple-page event. Overall, you grow to like the characters a lot more, and I found the book paced nicely between action and plot, but it could use more action because the scenes are brief. A lot of questions are answered, mainly about Umbriel and the lords within, which is actually very interesting and will satisfy your questions.
I did find the end a bit rushed, and you never quite find out what happens to everyone in enough depth. There are also a few new characters that get brief chapters, but overall, you never get attached to them. I also found the jumping around between characters to be more smooth and less jarring. But what I want in the end is something from the games that are in book form, and you kind of get that feeling once you finish the series, but I feel it could have been more. The floating city of Umbriel and how it works is kind of a world of its own, and I feel Tamriel was only a base for that. Sure, names and cities from the game are mentioned, but overall, I don’t exactly get the same feeling from the game.
If you love the games, you should pick up the first book, but people who read the last go ahead and get this because it’s better and feels more solid, but don’t expect the same adventurous feeling from the games.
Need for Speed has taken many different directions in the last decade, but The Run tries to go back to its roots while trying something new. Sure, you’re being chased by cops, doing illegal stuff in a car, having great graphics, and having a super-fast sense of speed. It sounds like an NFS game, right? Well, in a sense, it is, but it won’t change haters’ minds or make hardcore fans happy. This isn’t the true return like Hot Pursuit was, but it does convey a nice idea. You play a guy named Jack Rourke who owes a mob a lot of money. You hear about a race from San Francisco to New York, and your “agent” will give you a cut of the prize money and make your little mob problem go away. You start at the 200th place and make your way to the 1st.
This sounds like it would take forever or be just one straight race, but it isn’t. The game is broken down into 10 stages, and each stage has various races. The terrain obviously changes a lot, and this means lots of different environments to look at, which gets help from EA’s latest Frostbite 2 engine that was used in Battlefield 3. While it doesn’t look as amazing as that game, it looks fantastic and is probably the best-looking NFS game to date. There are so many different places to race—snow, open fields, farms, factories, cities, you name it. There are several different race types, but they are thrown up variously, and the overall experience is repetitive.
Races range from gaining a certain number of positions to battling against the clock in elimination races. There are “boss” races that have you racing a good distance; there are also races solely against the clock to catch up time. That’s about all there is, and the only thing keeping you from getting really bored are the constantly changing environments, which are great to look at, and not one stage is the same. There are some better elements that make the game thrilling, and these are the survival sections. One has you running from an avalanche, another from a helicopter shooting at you, as well as a mountain demolition, but these are so far, and few of you yearn for them between the constant drag of gaining positions.
While these moments are highly entertaining, and probably the moments in the game, a few times Jack will get out of his car and initiate quick time events, which are also entertaining but pretty pointless since you normally don’t play an on-foot NFS game. Don’t worry, you don’t control him; just think of it as an interactive cutscene.
A great NFS game needs fast real-world cars, and there are plenty here, from Ferrari to Lamborghini. You will find them here. You can change cars by pulling into gas stations throughout stages, but overall, you usually stick with one car until the next group is unlocked. You can earn experience through things like drifting, jumping, overtaking cars, etc., but I found this kind of useless since you only earn one thing when leveling up, and it’s usually an avatar or something like that. You can use resets during a race if you crash or really screw up, but watch out; they are limited.
The game features Autolog, which everyone has grown to love, plus there are Challenge Series races to do after you beat the short 4-5 hour campaign mode. Multiplayer is pretty standard and nothing to write home about, but The Run is a fun weekend rental and nothing more. You will quickly forget about this one, but the whole idea is fun while it lasts.
The Uncharted series is really interesting because it was a skeptical Tomb Raider/Indiana Jones knock-off during E3 2005 when Sony showed it off as a new IP for the PS3, but everywhere just kind of blew it off and ignored it. Now we’re six years ahead, and Uncharted is one of the most respected and well-liked series in gaming history. Uncharted 3 is a solid roller coaster ride of action, suspense, and excellent voice acting that will really keep you sucked in.
After the events of Uncharted 2, Drake and Sully find themselves in a fight at a bar with a strange woman wanting Drake’s ring. What this ring does and how they get themselves into more trouble will be left for you to find out. The story gives us some history on how the two met as well as the most dangerous treasure hunt Drake has been on. These guys seriously want blood, and they are more vicious and violent than any of Drake’s other adversaries. The story isn’t anything to balk at because there are some extremely harrowing scripted events, and the characters are just perfect, and you get attached to them even more because Naughty Dog brought out a new level for each character (especially Drake) for this big finale.
The game is mostly the same combat-wise, with cover, lots of guns, and explosions. There is a great variety of guns that we love in the series as well as a few new ones, but combat still has a few issues, like snapping into cover doesn’t always work, and the game is extremely hard with way too many enemies like in the previous games, so this has never been addressed. You will die dozens of times during certain scenes, and I really wish they would have fixed this and made it more reasonable and not so difficult. The stealth sections are still poorly designed because you have no idea where to go, and there are too many enemies to sneak past or take out silently. One area will be choked up with enemies, and if you kill one, the next will see you because he’s just a few feet away.
Despite the combat being the same, the hand-to-hand is improved and is a blast to use thanks to great animations and quick counters to knock these guys flat. The platforming and climbing are the same, and that’s a really good thing. Cleverly laid-out levels are really fun to explore because you never really get lost. But what is special about Uncharted are the unique puzzles that span entire levels and are even bigger in this game. They are a little easier to figure out only in the sense that the clues you get can actually be used like they should, unlike in the last game, where the puzzles were almost impossible to figure out. Each puzzle is completely different from the last, but there aren’t as many as in previous games because this one is cutscene-heavy, and there is a better balance of shooting, puzzle-solving, adventuring, and cutscenes, so the overall flow is more natural.
Of course, the best part about Uncharted is the scripted scenes, and these go way over the top with horseback riding, combat in the air while trying to get on a plane, a battle on a sinking ship, and just a whole bunch more that make the game feel like a blockbuster movie. This was my favorite part of the whole game because it just sucked you into the experience like most games can’t, and I really felt the situations and the danger Drake was in thanks to clever camera work. The visuals are probably the best the PS3 has seen (better than Killzone 3, Resistance 3, and I daresay may be better than God of War III). The huge open landscapes are just riddled with ridiculous detail that I didn’t think the PS3 could even do. Beautiful lighting, high-resolution textures, and the animations are so detailed, with Drake tripping over himself and putting his hands on stair rails, so this makes the entire game feel organic and fluid.
Uncharted 3’s multiplayer is also a blast, with unlockable characters, guns, and other goodies to keep you playing. I really like the multiplayer, and the style works great, but of course, it’s nothing to break the ground for online shooters. Co-op single-player is a welcome blast, so the whole multiplayer suite involved helps sweeten the already great package. Uncharted will be remembered by myself and most gamers who appreciate an excellent game. The third entry is the perfect ending to an amazing trilogy.
Collector’s Edition: If you want to spend the extra $40, then you will be treated with everything coming in a beautiful chest (it’s heavy cardboard, unfortunately), as well as a replica of the ring, a belt buckle, and a 6″ figure of Drake, plus special packaging for the game case. The whole collection is beautiful and very well designed, but this is strictly for collectors, and people who aren’t really hardcore fans of the series should probably pass this up.
For a game that carries the Dead Space name, you would expect it to be good. Ignition is nothing of the sort because it’s a series of hacking minigames that follows an engineer and a cop on The Sprawl who have to do hacking things during the Necromorph outbreak. Yeah, really exciting. The voice acting is terrible, and the gameplay is even worth a lame story.
The game is comprised of three games, and the first is a side-scrolling defender-type game, but not nearly as fun. You just control a red orb that moves through space while dodging obstacles and racing AI orbs. You have a few powers, such as speed boosts, walls you can drop to slow them down, and circuits that make them spin out of control. This is as uninteresting as it sounds because no matter what you do, they seem to always get ahead of you, and this game was obviously not playtested because the obstacles are almost unavoidable and are in such positions that you have to slow down every time while the AI just quickly maneuvers through them.
The second game is some weird reverse tower defense game where you have to get viruses to a gate on the other side but have to destroy seekers and radars on the way. You get four different types of viruses that do various things, but you just spit them out, and they go wherever they want. You can’t control them, so there’s no strategy except spitting them out in certain orders.
The third game is a mirror and laser mini-game, but they are laid out in such incomprehensible designs that you don’t really get a grasp on where to start. Getting different colored lasers to different endpoints should be simple, but lasers flip and move on their own to confuse you, and this doesn’t make the game fun at all. You can drop lasers that split the beams, and of course, this is timed, but there is no strategic way of going about any of these games, so it all feels like a big mess.
You won’t even finish the game because it is so frustrating that you will just give up. No matter how skilled you are, the game works around you and doesn’t allow you to increase your skill due to poor level design. On top of all this, the game is made up of badly drawn concept art turned into some hack of a Dead Space story that you will quickly forget. The easy achievements and the armor you get at the end of Dead Space 2 aren’t worth a trek through this terrible hack job.
Kart racing games tend to be able to beat the king of them all: Mario Kart. While that game started, all a few entertaining offbeat ones have raced by, but this is Sega’s serious attempt at it, and it works. You can play as almost every major Sega mascot, such as most Sonic characters and familiar faces from Space Channel 5, Super Monkey Ball, and others. You race around tracks that reflect the design and setting of various Sega games while using power-ups to stay ahead of the pack.
The game has a power sliding ability that will increase your boost, which is the key to getting in the first place, but also picking up capsules that hold random power-ups such as a homing missile, mines, shields, speed boosts, and various other power-ups we have seen countless times. The game has a great sense of speed, and sliding around corners and doing various stunts is exciting, but the overall experience is borderline juvenile and very easy, even in the hardest mode. There are various missions you can complete as well as buying characters with Sega Miles, but this only goes so far.
The ideal way to play is with friends, but you need several controllers to do so because there is no online play. Why this was stripped from the PC version beats me, but it really brings down the experience since crowding around one computer isn’t very convenient. Once you do get some friends aboard, the game is a blast, and power-sliding and knocking enemies down makes for great laughs.
But when it’s all said and done, the game is a really average kart racer and has dated graphics as well as some annoying sounds. The game just feels the same no matter what you do as a single player, and I highly doubt anyone over 10 can play all 50+ missions without going crazy. If there was just some online play in here, it could sweeten the deal some, but the single-player can only be tolerated for so long.
When Midway announced Mortal Kombat: Unchained for PSP, Nintendo fans screamed that they wanted one as well. They got their wish with a port of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and Puzzle Kombat from MK: Deception thrown in. Here you have a perfect port for both responsive controls and a useful bottom screen that shows finishing moves and special moves. All the characters from UMK3 are here, plus some unlockables. There’s not much to say other than the controls work well, and I could pull off fast combos online while dishing out fatalities and animals left and right.
A couple of small gripes are that the -ality position isn’t listed on the bottom screen, so you kind of need to experiment, and the time to pull off the fatality is like 4 seconds, so you get one try. I also found the graphics slightly blurry due to the low resolution and small screen, but it’s only noticeable to people who play the classics a lot. I also found the Puzzle Kombat graphics were toned down a bit, even more so than on the PSP. Overall, this isn’t a huge package, but enough to satisfy fans, and online play is the best way to go.
Being able to make the fight screen on the top or bottom is a nice feature, but the problems from UMK3 still exist, like ridiculous AI, combos that are hard to pull off, and forgetting to try to beat Shao Kahn unless you cheat. I just wish there were some more modes that could have been thrown in or maybe a few more arcade ports, but what’s here works well and feels great to play and come back to.
Colors: Cosmo Black, Aqua Blue, Flame Red, Pearl Pink, Red
MSRP: $169.99
Nintendo is well-known for making hardware that takes huge risks. While they usually fail software-wise, they tend to soar in hardware sales. The 3DS started out pretty poorly, with crappy launch titles and a steep retail price of $250. About 6 months later, Nintendo dropped the price to $170 (the same price as the Wii and DSi XL), and suddenly sales rose, and third-party developers jumped on board. I wonder why… Now that the 3DS is in full swing, I finally got one for Christmas this year and have several games to tinker around with with this bad boy. I actually have to say the hardware is well-built and very impressive, despite my early speculation that the hardware would be a complete failure.
The whole system is just completely new because not only is it capable of 3D, but it also has more powerful hardware, so they like GameCube/PS2 quality. The main menu is designed more like the DSi, but leans more toward what the Wii looks like. You can now use the Mii Plaza, plus a bevy of built-in apps that are pretty neat. When you start the thing up, you will notice some hardware changes, like an analog stick, which completely changes the way DS games are played. The top screen is only capable of 3D, but it’s slightly bigger (3.53″), kind of like the DSi XL (4.2″). The bottom screen is the same size, which I found disappointing, but there was something about technical issues that kept the touchscreen from being 3D.
The system has a 1 GHz processor, which is about 10x what the other DS systems are capable of (133 MHz), and the GPU is also more powerful. To show this power off, the system comes with AR (augmented reality) cards of famous Nintendo characters that you use in the built-in game AR Games. Setting the question mark box down in front of the camera acts as a menu with different games like shooting targets, billiards, being able to pose the characters to take 3D pictures, and other crazy games. This is actually very impressive, and it’s so neat to just see these guys pop out of real life onto the 3DS. My only complaint is that you can’t do anything with the characters other than pose them.
The second game is Face Raiders, which takes your face and puts on flying helmets that you shoot down. This is kind of freaky and fun at the same time, but it helps show off the great AR abilities of the system. Other than this, the menu is in 3D, as is most of the eShop, but I can’t explain how much it just pops and makes playing games that much more fun. It didn’t hurt my eyes at all even with the 3D depth slider all the way up, but you have to view it almost straight on, or the view shifts and the 3D goes away, so the whole idea isn’t flawless. The 3DS is capable of downloading some apps that are pretty fun, but overall, the eShop is lacking in good games. The majority are remade original Game Boy games that no one really misses, but over time they will expand, I hope. The 3DS also features StreetPass, which will exchange information on games you own when you pass people in the car or while walking, which is lots of fun. The system also has a pedometer that awards coins that can be used in certain games to unlock stuff. SpotPass allows you to download and unlock items in games when near a center or outside. This is so much fun and adds some unique qualities to games.
Even when playing games for an hour or more, my eyes didn’t even hurt, and yes, even when I was tired. Some games work better than others, but overall, the 3D effects really add to the experience and make most 3DS games unique from regular DS games. Of course, you can play regular DS games, but the top screen puts black bars on the side to compensate for the larger screen, but I found this was kind of stupid and should be full screen. The battery life is also shorter because of the more powerful hardware, but it has some pretty good power-saving features to extend this. One other advantage is that the 3DS takes SD cards and has internal storage, plus it has a 2.4 GHz wi-fi card for super-fast internet speeds. 3DS games also (finally!) save to the SD card instead of on the cartridge due to the size capacity of the 3DS cards (plus price hikes).
When it’s all said and done, the 3DS is well worth the money, and there are enough great games to consider a purchase. The 3D is revolutionary and actually works with the games, but just make sure you try an in-store demo before buying because the 3D will not work for some people or it may hurt your eyes. For the low price and great features, I would go pick one up right now!
Game of the year is the hardest of them all. What makes the game of the year? Everything must be almost perfect, well balanced, epic, have a great story, characters, mechanics, graphics, and everything that makes up a game must be amazing and better than the competition. I wish I could have picked more than one because there were so many amazing games this year.
Skyrim actually wasn’t my first choice. It won because of how grand in scale the game was and the attention to detail that only a few games this year did. Over 100 hours of gameplay, unique characters, a grand story, beautiful graphics, lots of customization, and a gorgeous soundtrack made Skyrim come out on top of the entire pile. Skyrim is a special game in the sense that no other RPG or game can do 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…