Beneath the Ashes was very mediocre, hardly strayed away from what was offered on the disc, and was not worth $10. Lara’s Shadow is a completely different animal, thanks to the new gameplay elements added. Lara’s shadow can use superspeed and hand-to-hand combat against the undead creatures of the underworld. Natla is trying to restore herself using the machine she used to create Lara’s shadow, and then the tables turn…
Lara can now run up walls using her superspeed. This makes gameplay very fast, extremely quick, and also a lot more fun. She can shimmy walls super fast and can even slow down time to avoid fast-moving obstacles. You also have a kick and punch button, along with a few super attacks. You have a superkick and punch, and you can fire your guns super fast as well, and all of these are very effective.
The fighting is responsive and works very well; it’s just not very deep at all. For $10, this is all you can expect, but I expect Eidos to expand on this with more expansions. What I mainly loved in Lara’s Shadow is the fact that navigating levels isn’t as difficult as it is on the disc. Since you move so fast, you have to navigate quickly, and you don’t need a walkthrough this time around to find out where to go.
I did find some obstacles too hard to avoid since you have to have perfect timing, and this can be very frustrating. I also found that if you fight too close to an edge, Lara will just fall off thanks to the spotty collision detection in the game, and you will die lots of times due to this. Everything else is pretty much the same; while I love Shadow Lara, I just wish there was more. 3–5 hours of gameplay is not that much for $10. If you really love Underworld, I promise you this will be an excellent buy.
I remember when the first BloodRayne came out. I stared at the ad and drooled. I never knew vampires could be so sexy, and right there, she became one of my top 5 favorite female video game heroines ever made. Of course, being younger, I wasn’t allowed to play such games, so in the end, I never got the chance to play the first BloodRayne. When BloodRayne 2 came out, I had to play it, so I rented it for my PS2, and it was great—not amazing, but pretty solid—but now, well, time ages things.
BloodRayne 2 has you playing as the half-human, half-vampire Dhampir Rayne, who is trying to kill her father Kagan (who survived the first game) and kill all his children and demon spawns. Through this escapade, Rayne runs into his new minions, Kestrel, Ferril, and Ephemera (who hate each other). While they are almost as sexy as Rayne, their attitudes make up for it. BloodRayne 2 has pretty decent voice acting, and Rayne’s attitude is just something you have to love.
BR2 is very gruesome, with lots of dismemberment and gory death traps. There are two types of enemies in the game: unarmed weapons (that you can freely feed off of to get health) and armed enemies with melee weapons that will push you down if you try to feed. You just knock their weapons out of their hands before doing this. Yes, I realize there are only two enemy types, but this is why the game could have been better. The designs for them are neat, and they look cool, but seriously? You will run into sub-bosses an awful lot, and most of these are just elite henchmen or giant minotaurs. This is where one of my biggest gripes comes in, and that’s the fact that boss fights are all luck and no skill. It doesn’t help that the game is a button masher and there’s no skill involved whatsoever. You just hit X for blade attacks and B for kicks, and that’s it. The blocking never seems effective, and you are constantly relying on your powers.
Powers range from astral feeding, temporary invincibility, time freeze, and aura vision. These take up a lot of power, so you have to constantly kill them to keep your meter up. You can level up to extend this, but it never seems enough. You also have your Dragon Pistols, but you can’t level them up, and you only get very little ammo, which feeds off your health. You have to kill to keep your ammo up, but this thing never seems effective until you get different ammo types.
You also have a harpoon that you use to throw enemies into deadly death traps to unlock different parts of levels, but later on, enemies in Twisted Park can block this, and you have to use your time freeze or super speed to get behind them, but sometimes THAT doesn’t work. See what I mean? The game is so frustrating later on—so much, in fact, I had to use God Mode through the last 25% because they threw way too many larger enemies at you and not enough people to feed on. There are some acrobatics involved, such as sliding down rails, swinging, and climbing poles, but this is troublesome since the mechanics are so finicky and everything has to be aligned perfectly.
Don’t get me wrong, BR2 is worth a bargain bin purchase; you just have to look past its many flaws. When it comes to graphics, the game is decent at best. The characters look good, and so do the environments, but the pre-rendered scenes look cheap and crappy. There is also a lot of slowdown throughout the game when too much is going on on-screen. With button mashing, no skill involved in fighting, unbalanced everything throughout, and weak acrobatics, there is just something about this game that makes you want to keep playing, and it’s probably Rayne herself.
Before I start here, Dark Messiah suffered bad reviews because of all the terrible bugs that launched with the game. Now that 2 1/2 years have passed, Dark Messiah’s bugs have been pretty much ironed out, and you now have a pretty fun action RPG. Before I start explaining the game, DM uses the Half-Life 2 engine, so you can expect some wonderful graphics and effects. DM uses the HL2 engine very well, but the engine is a bit supped up, so you’ll need a fairly beefy rig to run this game. If your computer was being pushed with HL2, then your computer will have a hard time running this game. I also have to mention that DM felt a lot like Oblivion Lite in the sense that it is set in medieval times, melee combat is in the first person, and the art style is a little like Oblivion (not as unique, of course).
You play as a young protagonist named Sareth, and you must stop the evil Arantir from using the Skull Crystal and bringing the Dark Messiah back to life. You have a choice: either stop him yourself or let the Dark Messiah live on. The story is actually fairly interesting and will keep you on the edge throughout this 15-20-hour adventure. Now DM is a linear RPG (it’s not free-roaming like Oblivion), but it makes up for it with an intricate combat system. You have about 30–40 different item slots, and you can carry things from health, mana, weapons, magic, etc. As you progress through the game, you will earn skill points for completing objectives, and you can upgrade a variety of things from endurance, health, stealth, and archery skills to learn new skills such as heal, fire arrow, freeze, sanctuary, etc. There’s a lot to learn, and you won’t upgrade 100% in a play-through. You can either concentrate on being a knight, mage, or archer or just go down the middle.
There are a variety of unique weapons you can pick up throughout the adventure, such as the awesome rope bow (shoot an arrow at any wood overhanging and a rope will come down), ice staffs, flame swords, poison daggers, and even a cool electricity shield that stuns enemies when they attack you. Now there are no shops where you can buy things, so everything has to be picked up throughout the world. This keeps the action constantly going but will disappoint people who are used to having stores in their RPGs.
Combat consists of left-clicking for your basic attack, but if you hold it down, you do a power strike, and whether or not you strafe, move forward, or backward will determine whether it’s a sideswipe, impale, or overhead strike. This can let you easily dodge an attack and quickly strike back. You can use the right mouse button to block (and, when you get the ability), left-click to knock enemies back. Hit enough bad guys and you’ll get your adrenaline bar up, and this results in a gory, slow-mo instant kill. This applies to all weapons, and each of them has its own unique advantages. You have a kick button, and this is great when you are on a ledge, so you can just kick them off. Every so often, you’ll find spike beds on walls you can impale enemies on, and you’ll also find traps that can be kicked down to crush enemies.
While the combat is really fun and you can do a lot with it, it will get repetitive after about halfway through unless you use different weapons and toss things up. Every so often, you’ll find a blacksmith room where you can add bars of metal and forge your own weapons. Now, when it comes to enemies, there aren’t too many of them (knights, undead, spiders, necromancers, evil demons), and that’s about it. They are mixed up a lot, but you can still get bored of them after a while.
Every so often, though, you will get a great boss fight, and these are huge creatures that require key items in the environment to kill them. These are pretty awesome and very satisfying to take down. My biggest complaint must be the level design. A lot of times, you won’t find most of the hidden secret areas since they aren’t even in places you’d remotely think they’d be in. There will be times you’ll wander around for over 30 minutes in the same place wondering where to go, and this has to do with poor-level design. The levels are very linear, most of the time dark, and really hard to navigate. Other than this, Dark Messiah is a pretty good game, and you can even get it off Steam for $10! I highly recommend Dark Messiah to any action RPG fan.
Afro-Samurai is just one of those comics or cartoons that you never really hear of until it’s a video game. Afro Samurai is about a samurai named Afro who is trying to find the #1 headband from the person who killed his father. Anyone who holds the #1 headband becomes a god, and only the #2 bearer can challenge #1. While the story has interesting developments and great characters, the game is mainly focused on combat. Afro and Ninja Ninja are voiced by Samual L. Jackson (you may have heard him as Officer Tenpenny in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas), along with Justice, voiced by Ron Perlman (of Hellboy fame).
There are a lot of elements to the combat in AS, but the whole thing becomes very monotonous after a few levels. You have three basic attacks: light, heavy, and kick (along with jumping). You also have focus attacks (which slow downtime), and if you hold either heavy or light, you instantly slice the enemy to bits. Not all enemies can easily succumb to the focus, so some will have to be weakened before using it. There is also a parry technique in which you can “mount” an enemy and slice their head off. Parry is essential to most boss fights (more on those later) and to staying alive.
While the combat is very satisfying only because of the sheer amounts of gore that are spilled, it does become very repetitive. There are combos you can learn, but they aren’t really necessary since you can just button-mash most of the time. I particularly loved the gore since it isn’t canned and any part you slice off will come off. If you slice just the toe that comes off, slice a piece of a guy’s skin, it comes off. The whole theme is very mature, with lots of cursing, sexual innuendos, and nude polecats. Yes, nude female samurais—nothing’s hotter than that. Anyways, there are some platforming sections, but this part of the game is somewhat flawed since Afro likes to stick to things a lot, and the controls for this can be somewhat unresponsive. Controls for combat are spot on, but they seem to become sluggish and sticky when you’re platforming.
Another great aspect (that I’m glad more developers are doing) is that there is no HUD. Just like in games such as Dead Space, everything depends on your main character to tell what’s going on. The more Afro glows red, the closer you are to dying when your focus is charged up. Afro’s pendant sparkles, and that’s pretty much all you need. You do level up and learn new focus moves such as bullet slice (reflect and slice bullets in slow-mo), mounting, etc. There are some different enemy types, but there could have been more. You’ll see a lot of the same ones halfway through the game, and it tends to add to the monotony.
Enemy AI is actually pretty good, and you will have a challenge fighting off enemies by the dozens. Thankfully, Afro is fully equipped to take on all these baddies. Combat doesn’t tend to get too frustrating until you get to bosses, since the windows for attacking are so small that it takes so much patience to kill them. While your character does level up, it doesn’t really make a difference since it’s all set on auto. The game is fairly short, clocking in at about 4-6 hours, depending on how you play the game and your skill level. There is zero replay value since there are no extra modes you unlock or anything. I just highly recommend Afro Samurai as a fun weekend rental.
The Sands of Time trilogy was probably one of the best game series ever made, let alone a few diverse series, with each game completely evolving from the other. When the series started with The Sands of Time, everyone completely freaked out on their consoles with the game’s great acrobatic moves, enticing story, and beautiful graphics. The game just felt so good and played so well that the controller almost melted in your hand. The return of Warrior Within the Prince kind of went to the dark side with a grungy, heavy metal, gory sequel that was either hate or love it type thing. I, however, considered that one my favorite, but fans were pleased again with Two Thrones when the Prince actually got a dark side and went back to the style of the first game. If you loved this game, you should go back and play the previous trilogy, because I promise you’ll fall in love with it.
The PoP we are playing has a completely different story, and hell, the Prince isn’t even a prince; he’s a thief who wound up in the wrong place at the wrong time whilst running into Princess Elika. The Prince and Elika play major roles in this wonderfully made game, and it all actually works. The first thing I need to explain is that the core of the gameplay is like the previous PoP games, with the whole acrobatic aspect still intact. However, the prince now has a gauge that he uses to help him with all of this. The controls have been simplified so that everything is just one button press. Yes, let go of that analog stick because you just use it to point the Prince where you want to go, not guide him. He can run across walls, run up walls, swing around poles, climb on vines, shimmy across ledges, etc. The game controls so incredibly well, and with a few minor issues, you really won’t hate the controls. Another major change is that the game is open-world, so you can go anywhere you want in this huge world.
The point of the game is to stop Arihman from destroying the world with corruption and, in turn, save Elika’s father, Ormazd. While there are over 30 areas to explore, you can go to them however you want using the acrobatic moves. Yes, this can get tedious after a while because once you discover everything, you’ll have to backtrack to the temple to acquire new powers. These are four powers that are activated on various colored power plates on walls, and they are key to accessing new Fertile Grounds. Each section is a “mini-level” with various obstacles to cross, and just before fertile ground is a boss fight. Navigating the world can be a bit confusing in the beginning since you’ll be relying on a “compass” that’ll guide you to where you want to go depending on what area you select on your map. The point of healing for each area is to rid itself of the corruption killing that piece of land. Of course, you can’t touch this corruption, or, well, you don’t die in this game. Elika saves you if you fall off a ledge, so consider any flat ground a checkpoint.
During combat, you cannot die either, and you may think this is absurd, but it is a blessing. Trying to find light seeds (after you heal a ground, you go back and collect these to gain new powers) can be kind of hard, so you jump off a cliff to reach one, and if you fail, no big deal. This is better than restarting a level, but of course, if it’s open-world, you can’t technically restart a level. Elika is also a big part of your acrobatics because if you can’t reach a ledge, you press Y when you jump, and she’ll give you a boost. This is also true in combat, where she is basically your “magic” attack. Moving through the levels is fairly easy, and I didn’t once have to resort to an FAQ of any kind. The compass is a great way to find out where to go since it’s a little light that kind of goes along a path, and you can follow it. Of course, finding all 1001 light seeds isn’t necessary since you’ll find plenty to acquire all powers without having to hunt and search for each seed.
Now, when it comes to combat, you’re in for quite a treat since combat is very cinematic. Everything is “one-on-one,” and each enemy has a life bar that you may deplete. You have four major attacks: magic, acrobatics, grab, and sword. You can combine any four of these to make huge combos. Of course, corruption plays a huge role, so if the enemy changes status, you can only use a certain attack to break through it. While each character technically plays the same, you have to use time-button presses to fend off their attacks. This can make things fun and challenging at the same time. The combat is very rewarding with the dramatic sweeping camera angles and beautifully scored music. Of course, after a while, it starts feeling really old, but not enough to really bore you since it always keeps you on your toes.
If you want to talk about cosmetics, PoP is probably one of the best-looking games ever made so far. The game is just stunningly beautiful, and there are high perches you can stand on and just look out to this beautiful vista that is amazingly rendered in real-time. I don’t know how Ubi did it, but they pulled off some amazing stuff to get the game to look the way it does. The soundtrack is really stunning as well (even though there’s not much of it), and the voice acting is top-notch. You are really in love with these two characters, and they struggle with the world around them and with each other. The Prince tends to be a sarcastic, hot-headed wannabe hero, and Elika is a confused woman/goodie-two-shoes who is always putting the Prince’s fire out. There are so many amazing elements to PoP; you just have to play it to really know it all. With a great cliffhanger ending, a great way to control the ending, great controls, cinematic combat, and beautiful graphics, you will spend a good 10 to 12 hours exploring this world.
Everybody knows and loves Lara Croft from way way back in 1996, when she starred on the PlayStation as the busty, sexy British female adventurer that everyone has grown to love over the past decade. Tomb Raider: Underworld really expands off the recent TR games with better environments, more brain-bending puzzles, less linearity, and more moves than you can count. Tomb Raider has always been about exploration and finding the best route using the environment, and this is still the core gameplay element used. The story of Underworld picks off where Legend (read my review for that) ends with Amanda on the loose and Lara trying to find her way into Atlantis to find her dead mother. While most of the story doesn’t pick up until the very end, there is enough incentive to keep you playing and motivated to press on.
The main element I need to talk about is just how much more detailed this game is. While most of the problems still exist, they can easily be overlooked with all the new features and elements added to the game. The first thing you’ll notice is how much more real Lara looks, feels, and moves around in the game. It’s just amazing to see Lara push brush out of her way, move to and fro in 360-degree motion with her stopping and starting really quick, the way she climbs, the way she places her hands and feet while climbing—it all just looks so damn good and real. The best thing about this is that the controls are still responsive and, most of the time, will do what you want. When you are swinging around poles, climbing walls, or hanging from ledges, you can pretty much get where you need to go with minute problems from the camera and some iffy collision detection issues. A lot of times Lara will jump in the wrong direction because of the finicky camera; she’ll fall off an edge you know you didn’t slip from, but all these are easily overlooked.
Now that all the climbing action is still the same and hasn’t changed much, the new animations, better controls, and sheer freedom you have really make it feel fresh again. Still staying in the action, the combat is exactly the same as before, and this is disappointing. The developers seemed to have taken the slo-mo headshot element from Anniversary and mixed it with Legend’s combat, and you get what you get: Simple lock-on combat with dodges and flips that don’t really do much. While the camera keeps up with the action, there’s nothing much to do but shoot your heart out. You can, however, throw grenades, and this really helps in tight situations. With all of that out of the way, let’s talk cosmetics.
Yes, the game looks absolutely stunning and is one of the better next-gen games as of yet. Everything is just huge and detailed. The sheer scope of the levels will make your jaw drop and make you think, “How the hell am I going to get up there?” This doesn’t just include land; it is also underwater. You will partake in two levels where you are hundreds of feet under the ocean, and it will take a good 4-5 minutes just to swim everywhere. The game really leads away from linearity with massive scope in the levels, and this usually leads to treasure hunting. Throughout the levels, you’ll find silver vases or just objects lying around as treasures for you to pick up. These will unlock extra content when you beat the game, so you must keep an eye out for them. Thankfully, they are easier to get to and easier to spot than in previous TR games, so you can relax. There’s just something great about this game that makes it different from other TR games, and the only thing I can think of is its pure epicness. Running around (yes, they added a run button!) in a sinking boat with a beautiful, sweeping orchestral soundtrack playing in the background just wows you every single time.
The game really does a good job mixing up exploration with action, and it also helps build upon Lara’s character. She is wiser, knows more, is a lot older with bitterness in her heart, and is holding onto all she can to keep from becoming corrupted like the enemies of her past. You really see this and how calloused her personality has become since she is no longer cheerful and happy but bitter and angry, with powerful rage flowing through her veins. The game just becomes so epic and amazing in the end that you wind up forgetting about all the gameplay flaws, and you feel very satisfied in the end. The main reason for this is that puzzles really bend your mind in just the right way to make you smile every time you solve a puzzle that expands an entire level.
Underworld requires you to take everything in and divide it into chunks instead of just looking and solving. Most levels will have you going from room to room to find pieces of a bigger puzzle, and this is actually better in the end. A small feature added is the ability to choose your weapons at the beginning of each level and your outfit. This is really useful and lets you mix things up for multiple playthroughs. There are other elements added to the game, such as your Gauntlets, which let you move certain heavier objects around rooms, Thor’s hammer (which you get toward the end), which is a one-hit kill scenario, and not to mention all the cool gadgets such as better binoculars (it’s actually a DV camera), your grapple hook, etc. You also get your bike back, but this time you get to control where you want to go. In Legend, you just drove straight, avoiding things along a linear path, but this time you drove it around and even used it to solve a few puzzles.
Underworld really is for hardcore Tomb Raider fans, and newbies really won’t like this much unless they get hooked on previous games. With gorgeous graphics, a great ending to a great story, our favorite female protagonist, and a few gameplay flaws, you will have a blast with Underworld.
Ahhh…here we are again with the cunning, brave, smart, posh, sexy, and beautiful Lara Croft. Most people overlook the game when they see a half-naked chick on the cover, but Tomb Raider is one of the few (only?) “chick” games that are actually good. Everyone and their mothers have heard of Tomb Raider or Lara Croft as “the game about shooting animals in ruins and sex,” so if you’re reading this, you’re either a fan or one of the latter. While Tomb Raider has absolutely nothing to do with anything sexual, Lara’s skimpy style can contradict that.
The series has always been known for its intricate puzzles, great platforming, and beautiful tombs, ruins, and vistas to explore. Tomb Raider: Legend is the first TR game since the PSX days to be actually good and worth playing. With the first 2 TR games being great, the series started falling with 3, got saved with 4 (The Last Revelation), and just went downhill with 5 (Chronicles) and 6 (Angel of Darkness). TRL revives the series by making us feel familiar and redoing everything we’ve grown to love. The game’s story is also very interesting, mainly for fans of Lara who want to know more about her past. Lara is trying to find the pieces of the Excalibur sword that killed her mother, and she runs into ghosts of her past that come back to haunt her. While the story is teeter-tottering on the edge of bleh, it does get interesting and saves itself at the end with a twist. TR has not been famous for its stories, so let’s get right into the adventure! The game seems to have tried too hard to bring the series back since the game is really short (6 hours you can beat the game) and there are too many levels to explore, so you don’t get a lot of feeling for one level.
Everything about TR’s platforming is still here, so you can either stop reading now or carry on if you are a skeptical action/adventure fan trying to find a new series to get into because you’re bored. The whole game is about puzzles that use the environment and include hanging, swinging, jumping, pole climbing, rope swinging, and zip-lining. Most of the game is pretty easy to figure out where to go since you get a grapple that lets you pull boxes off ledges, bring certain things down to climb across, and even use it to swing across chasms. A lot of items you use with the grapple hook have a shiny gold bit on them, so you know to grapple there; otherwise, you’d spend hours trying to grapple every object in the game. A lot of puzzles are usually lever and switch puzzles, with you pulling statues onto this pressure switch to lower this bridge and pulling this block across onto this switch to raise the gate. Most are simple, but some are unique and fun and have you climbing huge cliffs, walls, and statues to push giant balls (haha!) off ledges to use down below. A lot of the platforming is fun and awesome, with ledges crumbling away, swinging across poles onto ropes, etc.
Not one situation is the same, and that’s what’s so great about the TR series; you’ll have something new to figure out. Jumping around these beautiful environments is easy thanks to the responsive controls, great animations, and a good camera (most of the time). When you jump to a ledge and there’s a wall behind you, the camera will swing out to the side so you can see the whole 30-foot pillar you’re supposed to climb. This works in every type of situation, and the camera does a good job following you. The only time it gets weird is when you’re in tight spaces, when the camera doesn’t know what to do and has seizures. You wind up exploring places such as Japan, Bolivia, Nepal, Kazakhstan, and others. These range from jungles to dark tombs, snow, and even the city. What I found odd was Lara climbing around in buildings like in Japan (she wears a damn sexy dress on that level) and a military base in Kazakhstan, so this can be weird for longtime fans. The whole thing fits well, but it just seems out of place compared to past games.
Combat is also the second thing you’ll be doing the most, and while it’s easy, repetitive, and not amazing, it works and you won’t get annoyed. You just lock onto an enemy and fire away with your pistols, machine guns, or shotguns you find lying around off of enemies. If you get too hurt, you can use health packs lying around as well. While you’ll spend most of your time fighting brain-dead enemies that just stand there and fire at you, you can use the objects in the environment to kill enemies, like barrels, tanks, and even snapping things to make them fall. So while the combat is nothing interesting or fantastic, it’s there, and it works well for what the game can offer. The camera stays behind you well enough when you’re locked on, but Lara will lock onto enemies off-screen a wee bit too often, forcing you to target them yourself.
A new part of TR is the motorcycle driving section. These can be fun and annoying since the physics are a bit weird and the checkpoints are punishing. You just shoot baddies off their bikes while you go off jumps and make your way through. Another added idea is button-pressing cinematics, which are cool to look at and a lot of fun. What makes them so fun is why you have to do them. A lot of the time, it’ll be the most intense part of the game, so you really get into it. The boss fights are also another cool part of the game since they are a bit easy, but they are big and cool, so you’ll have tons of fun with them.
Now that we have two main elements out of the way, let’s talk about cosmetics. Lara’s whole appearance has changed, and she looks so much better. Gone are her sunglasses and the F-size boobs, along with her usual outfit. Lara has different outfits she wears throughout the game, and they are all hot and sexy, and they make Lara look smart and sharp as well. Her breast size has been reduced to DD (boohoo…), and her main outfit is now a brown belly top with shorts, and I prefer this over the old one. She wears an earpiece now, and she no longer has a braided ponytail. Along with Lara looking amazing, she also gets dirty and wet (oh, if only…). When she climbs out of the water, her clothes look wet, and dirt sticks to her as well, so this adds to the realism. She also has a personal light now, so exploring dark places is no longer a problem. The sound is also great with Lara’s charming British accent, and everyone’s voice acting is top-notch.
With new characters aplenty, you’ll expect to like them all, but actually, you won’t. They are underdeveloped and wind up annoying you with their stupid comments over the radio, so the only character you’ll love is Lara. Apart from all of this, the game has replay value with a time trial mode, Croft Manor (where you unlock certain areas to get rewards), and cheats. Doing all of this will grant you new costumes, concept art, profiles, and more. So, as you can see, there is so much to love about TRL, and fans who have hated the series can come back since TR is getting better and better as time goes by. Give the ‘ol girl a second chance and explore her tombs (awww, yeah).
Beyond Good & Evil…yes, I remember that, but for some reason, a certain game called Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was plastered all over TV and stores, and BG&E was disappointingly overshadowed. BG&E is a lovely and wonderful action/adventure game that was released during the peak of the last generation in 2003. BG&E’s premise is something along these lines: You are Jade, who is the caretaker of an orphanage on a futuristic (has a Star Wars feel to it) planet called Hillys. The Alpha Section is fighting a so-called war against the alien invasion known as the Domz. Jade and her pig uncle Pey’j must find out the conspiracy behind the Alpha Section and the Domz in order to bring peace and freedom to the planet of Hillys. You take on a job as a reporter or spy for the IRIS Network, and along the way you take pictures of animals, take part in speedboat races, and play a familiar air hockey game to earn pearls and credits (the game’s two currencies) to find your way through the world.
A lot of the game is set up around two gameplay elements: stealth and combat. While the stealth is stronger than the combat, both are enjoyable and evenly balanced throughout the game. Sneaking around the two major parts of the game to take pictures of the Alpha Section’s activities is rewarding and easy to do. Crouching around corners and learning the guard’s patterns is a typical element of stealth, but the great part about the game is that there’s no jump button. Yes, this makes the gameplay a lot more smooth, and you actually know what to do. If you see a ledge Jade can hop up on, you know to go there instead of hopping around like an idiot trying to, hopefully, find some collision detection glitch and get up onto that ledge. Sneaking around the guards is also like a puzzle in itself since you have to figure out a way to open certain doors, hit certain switches, and even get items without anyone seeing you. The stealth isn’t brutal and is pretty forgiving since if you run out of the area, everything will calm down and go back to normal. Most guards have a weakness on their backs (a yellow jetpack), so this can blind them and make things a little easier. Sneaking around the place is pretty typical, and there’s not much to describe, but it is very fun squeezing between walls, ducking in vents, and whatnot. Thanks to the no-jumper button, dodging lasers is really fun since you have a run button and a dodge button, so you just run and jump over lasers and obstacles, and it can be really fun.
The combat, however, is a bit weak since it’s so simple. You just mash the mouse button, and Jade will beat the S out of everything with her magical staff; hold it down, and you get a supercharged spinning attack. While you can dodge and roll around while running, the camera is one of the major flaws of the game, and the combat can get so tedious and boring. Thankfully, there isn’t much fighting, and you mainly just sneak around and do a lot of traveling. The only thing that keeps the combat from being a snooze fest is the unique way of having to kill certain enemies. Double H or Pey’j may be with you, so you can order them to do their special attack, which will stun enemies or shoot them in the air. When they are in the air, Jade will spin around and knock them across the room, and this is good for taking out certain obstacles in your way.
Traveling around the world can be fun and frustrating since the map is useless and the game is very labyrinthine. Since you’re sneaking around everywhere, you don’t really remember where you’ve been, so if you forget to take a certain picture, you don’t know where it was since the map is just a bunch of white blobs that don’t tell you where to go. Finding things like animals, pearls, and other items is pointless since they are big dots on this useless white map, so hopefully you have enough pearls (used only at Mammago’s Garage to upgrade your speedboat) to finish the game. Finding all of the animals can be almost impossible since a lot of them are in spots you never knew you could even access, so earning a lot of money in the game is a bit hard and can make you go hunting for items you have to know are there. This being the game’s biggest flaw, it can easily be overlooked since you’ll usually get just what you need by just playing normally. You can partake in four separate races, but they are impossible to beat since there is no speed upgrade for your boat, and playing flawlessly and using speed boosts won’t get you first place.
The races are seriously impossible, even if you drive perfectly, so this is just retarded. You can play air hockey at the Akuda Bar or a cup game, which can be fun and challenging. There are items called MDiscs, which you put in save machines to help evolve the story. Increasing your health is done by finding PA1s, Kbup, and Starkos, which are foods that give you health. As you can see, the game tries a lot of original things and is just a fresh world that has been overlooked by many people. With the game’s unique story, great voice acting, and wonderful yet simple gameplay design, you’re sure to spend a great number of hours on this short, yet sweet, adventure.
Picking up the game for any system has its ups and downs. The PC version’s controls are kind of funky for this type of game; the PS2 has a slowdown; the GameCube’s controller requires a controller to play; and the Xbox version isn’t backward compatible on the 360, so take your pick. Either way, you’re going to have a blast with this wonderful yet overlooked game. Look forward to the anticipated game next year as well.
If no one knows much about Conan, there are a few things you should know. He is not a comic superhero (he does have comics, but that’s not his origin), and second, Arnold Schwarzenegger plays the best Conan ever. The story is not exactly great, but it revolves around Conan mythology, where he seeks the four pieces of armor to defeat Graven, who has put the Black Death upon the world. The game’s story is nothing special or interesting, and the only thing that keeps you hooked is acquiring new abilities and seeing the cool levels.
The main focus of the game is the combat, which is pretty satisfying and fun. You have heavy and light attacks, a grab, the ability to throw weapons, and the ability to use magic. You can have different fighting styles by picking up different weapons, such as double-handed weapons, dual-wield swords and shields, or single swords. Each of these has its own set of attacks you can acquire by upgrading. There are tons of attacks, and you may not even acquire all of them by the end of the game. The combat, ironically, is also the most flawed part of the game because there is no counter-attack button; enemies will wail at you and kill you without having some sort of shock wave-type attack to knock them away, plus the heavy enemies can be really cheap. You try to attack them, and they’ll block, but there are no block-breaker attacks that are effective. You can grab small enemies and do as you wish with them, such as take their weapon and slice them in half, take their shield, etc.
The magic system is only used when you’re in dire need of help. You have four attacks over the course of the game, yet they seem to use too much energy, so you’re left dry after a few attacks. You can increase your health and magic by finding three circles on the ground and stabbing them. These can sometimes be hard to find, so hopefully you have enough health to survive through the course of the game. While the combat is fun, it still has its frustrations, as I pointed out, but it’s nothing you can’t handle.
Now that we have the core of the game put aside, let’s talk about visuals. The game has great graphics, yet they look like plastic. The characters have low-res textures, and everything just looks like it’s made of plastic. The game has pre-set camera angles, like in God of War, so you don’t have to worry about fighting the camera. The game has lots and lots of buckets of blood and guts and lots of…mammaries. Yes, there are nude women in the game, and these come in the form of helpless maidens. Conan must find them chained up in places and free them. They yell things like “Crush me with your love!” “I didn’t think my savior would be so…strong.” and “My clothes! Where are my clothes?”. While this may be corny, it’s still hot, and you’ve got to love it.
Speaking of God of War, the game has a lot of similarities to that game, such as a giant dragon fight inside a building (think of the first boss fight in Chains of Olympus (PSP), a giant squid on a boat (think of the Hydra in God of War (PS2)), the fixed sweeping camera angles, lots of blood and guts, nude women, a buff overaggressive hero, a sexy heroine he has to save, wow, the list just goes on and on. I think a certain developer tried making a God of War clone, and it’s written all over Conan’s Neanderthalian face!
No matter, the game is pretty fun, and you’ll appreciate these similarities. The achievements are easy to unlock, and there is an incentive to play through them again thanks to those, but the game is extremely short, with a playtime of 6–8 hours, depending on how slow or fast you are. I highly recommend Conan if you can look past the many bugs (collision detection issues, invisible walls), combat flaws (no counter-attack, wailing enemies), and nude women (well, I’m sure you can handle that). Plus, did I mention the long load times? Every time you die!!!
I never beat the first Ninja Gaiden due to its insane difficulty. I wanted to very badly, but no matter how much I tried, I failed in the end. Thankfully, NG2 is a bit more forgiving in the easy setting, but newcomers will never make it past the first level. The game’s story is nothing special and feels like a rehash at best. You have to save the world from the arch fiends taking over and destroying it, so you have to hunt them down one by one. The gameplay is essentially the same as in NG1. You have light and heavy attacks, along with projectile weapons that you can charge. The game has many more weapons and Ninpo scrolls to use. Weapons range from scythes to tonfas, flails, and even staffs. All the weapons are great, and you can upgrade them for up to three levels. After the enemies get too strong for that weapon, you’ll never use it again.
Ninpo magic is useful for enemies but useless for bosses since it doesn’t do any damage. They can be used to cripple enemies and finish them off with a finishing move. There are a lot of new moves in the game, yet they are repeated far too often. You can hack enemies apart into a bunch of pieces and continue to hack them up for overkill bonuses. While you rack up your karma score, you can also buy items from the Masamusa shops, which are generously spread throughout the levels, and the same goes for saving points. I never found the game unfair with checkpoints or saves. Once you die at a boss, you start right there in front of the boss again, so this makes things less frustrating. Another cool element is being able to run on top of the water. You can fight enemies this way as well, which just adds to the awesome ninja feel of the game. I also found the controls less responsive than in the first game and a bit sluggish. You’ll try to hit an enemy, but they’ll back away and hit you, but you’re stuck in an animation that you can’t back out of. This isn’t a huge issue, but it’s still there. Another problem is the camera, which is terrible. Instead of following Ryu, it’ll always stay in one spot, so enemies are coming at you blindly. While this also isn’t a huge issue, it doesn’t make things better.
Throughout each level is a Test of Valor portal, which has you killing as many enemies in the room as you can and rewarding you. These get extremely hard, then super easy. The game also looks amazing. While it’s not Assassin’s Creed or Gears of War amazing, it looks astounding with awesome lighting, high-res textures, realistic physics, and what have you. Another problem is that the game is insanely linear, with literally only one straight path to go on. This makes fighting a bit cramped sometimes, but overall, it isn’t a huge issue. A lot of people will have the biggest problem with the difficulty. While it’s tolerable on easy, you’ll never beat normal or, god forbid, hard.
What makes the game so hard are the limited healing items, some cheap enemies, and the sluggish controls. You never really feel powerful enough, no matter what weapons you get. I really hated this, and it was the most disappointing part of the game. There are also times when the frame rate will chug when there are tons of enemies on screen. This makes those sections even more annoying.
The game has lots of gore, sexy women, cool weapons and magic, a long campaign, leaderboards, and amazing visuals, but it falls down some with sluggish controls, a bad camera, and insane difficulty. If you loved NG1, you’re going to have a blast here, but if the first game made you feel standoffish, then pick NG2 up because you’ll be able to at least beat the game.
thebinarymessiah.com 
Try multiplayer. A lot of fun !