God of War III defines the genre that tells us there are no limits or boundaries and it really shows here. With superb combat, epic boss fights, and gruesome gore that would make even the strongest squirm you have to love this game. It perfects the series and really shows what the next-generation is all about.
Graphics aren’t the most important part of a game, but they are essential in helping deliver every aspect. A lot of games try to push consoles to their limits with higher resolutions, more detailed textures, better lighting, physics, and even just about every other thing that games need to do to look pretty.
What sets God of War apart from other games besides its gruesome violence, and epic boss fights? Its graphics. It pushes shaders, memory, and makes processors sweat with its luscious huge vistas, multi-screened bosses, and stunning detail in every character. In 1080p on an HDTV, nothing can hold a candle to anything graphics wise.
Characters are just as essential as stories and they go hand in hand. Characters are what define video game series, and really make gamers separate from each other, and can decide how much a game sells. Developers really strive to make memorable characters, and most of the time it’s a huge factor in sales.
It’s not just Bayonetta’s sex appeal that makes her Messiah’s top pick of the year, but a sexy character in a game that’s actually good? With a good story? Great gameplay? And the best thing since Devil May Cry! It’s a miracle! Bayonetta also has some serious attitude and shows it is not just a trashy trampy way, but with a style that makes you drool with a sexy coolness that would make glaciers melt in sub-zero temperatures. She’s is sassy, smart, sexy, and just overall out for the greater good as well. Her soft side for little girls and her great sense of humor helps her along as well.
While graphics may not be essential, the artistic side can set them apart and make them individual and unique. The artistry of graphics is very important in defining a series or making it instantly recognizable.
Kirby’s Epic Yarn
Yarn. Who would have thunk? Using yarn to create the world is probably one of the most original art designs I have ever seen. Why does such a cutesy art design beat out other games that have tons of research behind them? Because it’s original. That’s the keyword. The game makes you feel just as fuzzy inside as the characters look.
What makes music in a game good? Something that fits the style of game, setting, and something that isn’t repetitive, annoying, or something we’ve heard in a million other games. Music is probably one of the most important parts of the game but easily overlooked by most gamers.
Bayonetta’s music isn’t only angelic and beautiful, but it’s so catchy that you just want to hear it again and again, and it really fits Bayonetta and her style. You just get goosebumps when seeing Bayonetta fight with style on the screen along with this angelic music. While there isn’t a huge variety what does play is amazing and is memorable.
Brotherhood is one of those sequels that was thought to be just a cash cow tie-in for II, and everyone forgets about it. In fact, it was supposed to be a multiplayer-only add-on, but a few months before release, we realized it had a huge single-player experience that was bigger and better than II. This is what sequels should be like, especially if they borrow everything from their predecessors. Brotherhood isn’t a true Assassin’s Creed sequel like II was to the first one, but a new chapter in the amazing universe of 1500s Renaissance Italy. This time the game is set in Roma (Rome), and it’s huge, and there’s a lot more to this game than one skeptical fan might suspect.
The story is just as engaging, if not more complex, than II. Ezio is now older and the leader of the assassins, and he must stop the Borgia reign in Roma (since he failed to kill Rodrigo Borgia in the second game), but Rodrigo himself is only seen twice in the game and briefly. It’s all his minions and the fight against Cesare that are the main focus here. The game still has a deep political plot that ties in with real-life situations and people at the time.
Along with that, you can also play as Desmond Miles outside the Animus, and he has a bigger gameplay part with a whole section dedicated to restoring power to today’s Auditore Villa for the team’s new hideout to find the Apple of Eden and stop Abstergo and the Templars. While you only see these guys at the beginning and end of the game, you get another cliffhanger ending that will lead to the third game, as well as a great conclusion to Ezio’s story.
The game plays exactly like II, with no changes to gameplay except for some added stuff like a new crossbow, which is a godsend for killing stealthily from far away. It’s great to do a mission and wipe guys out with a crossbow and not get detected by those hard-to-reach guys. There aren’t any newly added weapons besides that, but combat is enhanced slightly, so it’s not such a counterfest. You can kick enemies, combo Arkham Asylum style, and even do some nice executions with the pistol. This is a nice change to combat and makes it a little more fun. You can also call in assassin recruits to help you, and this is extremely helpful, but more on that later.
Despite the main chapters, there are more side missions than you can shake a stick at. The side missions will take a good 20+ hours to complete and are tons of fun. You have the Borgia towers that have to be burned. These have to be burned down to buy closed-down stores and restore areas and landmarks. You have to enter a restricted area, kill the Borgia captain, then climb the tower and burn it down. There are quite a few, so these will keep you busy, and finding and killing each captain is different and challenging. On top of this, you can buy stables, blacksmiths, doctors, art stores, tailors, faction buildings, banks, and landmarks to restore Roma 100%. You will increase the city’s income, which will be deposited in a bank every 20 real-world minutes.
There are other side missions for each faction (thieves, courtesans, and mercenaries), as well as assassination contracts, Christina missions, finding more The Truth files (10 this time), and now Lair of Romulus missions, which have six in all and are much like Templar Lairs. After you find all six keys, you can unlock the Romulus armor, which is like Altair’s armor in the last game. You can also go to pigeon coops and play a mini-RPG that lets you send your assassin recruits out on missions based on their experience. Missions are based on difficulty, and you will see a percentage bar on how successful they will be. Send more than one to fill it higher, but if they come back, you can upgrade their armor or weapons, and when they reach level 10, you can make them full assassins. These are also helpful during missions since you can call up to three, or call them all for an arrow storm, and kill all enemies on-screen. It’s great to call an assassin on someone you can’t reach and then go in further without getting detected.
On top of all this, these missions can only be synched 100% if you complete the challenge, such as using your hidden blade and completing it in this amount of time. Don’t kill this person; only kill this person. It adds a surprisingly huge amount of depth to the game and makes playing missions (both side and main) more interesting and challenging.
Now the multiplayer is a really fun and surprising addition to the series. There is only one mode, and it’s all about a free-for-all cat and mouse hunt. You are given a target (another player out of 7), and you must use your abilities and skills to kill them while you may also be pursued. So you have to find your target and keep from getting killed yourself. The game has a Call of Duty-style perk and ability system that lets you customize load-outs as well. The game is very addictive and keeps you on your toes. You must blend and try to just act natural since NPCs also have the same looks as other players. There are many characters to play as, and each has its own unique abilities. The multiplayer will keep you hooked and make you come back to the game long after the single-player is exhausted.
With tons of new content, great new characters and a story, and an awesome multiplayer suite, Brotherhood is an example of what sequels should be like. I highly recommend this to fans of the last game and anyone who loves the variety in their games.
Collector’s Edition: For an extra $40, you get a Jack-in-the-Box with either the Plague Doctor or Harlequin (depending on what store you get it from), as well as a bonus DVD, extra maps (one exclusive to the PS3), a playable multiplayer character, an art book, and the soundtrack. This is a huge value for $40 and is a must-have for fans. The Jack-in-the-Box is made a tad cheaply with weak springs, and getting the things to close is annoying, but the figure itself is high quality.
A lot of games wind up getting overhyped and overall pissing off the entire gaming community, especially if it’s a game with a huge and strong backbone of fans. Star Wars has always been this way, whether it’s books, movies, games, or cartoons; there has been a huge following with the Star Wars universe, and this is one such game to be buried under the overhype train. LucasArts promised a huge sequel that would make the first game seem like a pile of doo, but it’s only slightly better. Sure, the mechanics are tighter, and the fat has been cut away, but we’re just left with the bones because they somehow fed the meat to the dog.
The developers even had to come up with some absurd way to resurrect Starkiller by having Vader clone him. He’s possessed with memories of his former self and wants to find Juno Eclipse, his lover from the first game. The story is really bare and is really one-dimensional, and only in the last cutscene does it get interesting at all, and this is so lame and cliche that it makes you want to smash your computer in frustration. We’re at the end of 2010, and LucasArts can’t hire writers who can write better than this! You could probably write the entire plot on a napkin. Oh, wait.
Other than that, the combat is fast but still flawed. While Starkiller is dual-wielding here, he still feels stiff to control and a bit chaotic. You have all your powers from the original game, so you’re not trying to find them again. You can use lighting, pushing, mind tricks, tossing crap around, and charges and upgrades of these Force powers, but you’ll mainly stick with Force lightning. I never used the mind trick and only used push when the game called for it. The enemy variety is even less than the original, with your usual Storm Trooper grunts and some bigger guys that are taken down with QTEs, but these are repeated dozens upon dozens of times and get very boring.
Other than that, the actual fighting is okay if only Starkiller could move more than two inches when swinging his sabers around. Mashing X will only kill people next to Starkiller, so you have to stop and move next to the enemy, then start mashing away. That’s why you end up using lightning so much since storm troopers are easy to kill. The combat animations can’t be interrupted, and when he gets stunned during a fall, you’re still vulnerable—and even vulnerable during some QTEs! What’s up with that? Even allowing you to change your saber crystals for stat effects doesn’t really do anything, and you’ll forget it’s there once you discover it.
The game doesn’t have many epic moments, and the only good one is the second level facing off against a giant creature, and it’s completely God of War-style and hugely epic. The only other memorable moments are the few free-fall sections, and that’s all. The game lacks any moments that are memorable, and this is a huge kick in the teeth for a game with such potential. The game is just really repetitive, highly unbalanced, and just isn’t what it could be. The game looks pretty good in some spots, but it could look a lot better. Unleashed II just feels like it’s half done, and even the short length helps this along. There are challenges and extras, but after spending 5–6 hours with this game, you’ll just uninstall it and forget it, just like the last game. If there is ever a Force Unleashed III, please take your time and make it what it should be!
Castlevania and 3D have not mixed well, and everyone since Castlevania 3D for N64 has been a total failure. When Lords of Shadow was announced, everyone expected another terrible 3D iteration that no one wanted. Lo and behold, the game finally redeems itself and becomes one of the best action/adventure games of this generation and one of the best Castlevania games ever made.
You play Gabriel Belmont, who is trying to find a way to bring his love, Marie, back, and while fighting alongside the Brotherhood, he must defeat everyone in his path to get to her. He must reunite three pieces of a mask, and each piece is held by a lord of shadow: the Lycanthropes, the Vampires, and Death himself.
The game is voiced very well and even has some well-known actors like Patrick Stewart narrating the game and voicing Zobek. The game does borrow elements from other games, such as God of War’s combat and Uncharted’s platforming, but LoS crafts them in its own unique way. The part about combat that sticks out the most is using light and dark energy to defeat enemies and bosses and solve puzzles. You have both meters, and they are both used separately. Light magic is a form of healing that will replenish your life gauge as you whip hit after hit until your meter runs down. Dark energy allows you to make more devastating attacks. Switching between these two on the fly is key to beating the game and staying alive.
There is an array of moves you can buy with points, but there are also separate sets of moves for both energies. You can earn points by killing enemies or solving puzzles. Puzzles have a way to reveal the solution, but at the cost of not earning points. I was able to solve every puzzle without revealing a solution, but it’s there for the less cerebral. Combat is swift, tight, and fluid, and Gabriel swings the series’ iconic whip around with ease and flash. Counterattacks can build up your focus meter quickly, which will give off mass amounts of orbs you can absorb for energy. You can even bring down large enemies and use them as mounts for as long as you like to complete climbing puzzles or just wail away at enemies.
The game also has an array of objects you can use as weapons, such as fairies, holy water, daggers, and a crystal that summons a screen-wiping demon. Each of these powers can be infused with light or dark energy, and reading the game’s huge bestiary can tell you what the creatures are weak against. Regular fairies can distract enemies, and while infused with light energy, they become bombs. Holy water can do a number on certain enemies, but infused with light magic, it can create a shield around you as well.
The game has a lot of platforming, and it’s solid, but it does have its share of minor quirks, like Gabriel not jumping at the end of a ledge and just hanging off or dying. Using your whip like a grappling hook works, but most of the time you’ll forget to press X and jump away from the wall to get to different ledges and avoid traps since this isn’t used very often. Platforming even works well in the Shadow of the Colossus Esque massive boss battles.
The game is also fairly difficult. It copies the series’ difficulty with lots of twitch reactions, constant dodging, counterattacking, and blocking. You can’t just wail on an enemy and expect to take a lot of damage. A few hits from a boss, and you die, even if you’ve leveled your health bar all the way up. You get a few hits, dodge, wait for the right moment, and repeat. Each boss has a unique set of predictable moves, but it’s up to your skills and quick reflexes to stay alive, so predictability won’t help you here like other games can.
The game features a huge number of enemies, probably the largest variety seen in an action/adventure title. The game has a good 30+ enemies, and each is unique and requires a different tactic to defeat. Not only this, but the environments vary often, and not one level is the same. The game is also beautiful and probably one of the best-looking games to date, with a gorgeous art style. The camera angles are chosen perfectly, and each shot is a masterpiece to take in. Sleeking castles, forests, and even a massive indoor library look amazing.
The game also has many secrets and will take a couple of playthroughs to find them all, such as gems to upgrade your meters, scrolls, and other items, to get a 100% completion rate. There is artwork to buy and different difficulties to beat, and even just enjoying the game a second time is well worth it. This game is just completely different from your standard Castlevania games and is probably going to be the new standard for the series. You really have to come into this game not expecting typical Castlevania stuff and really expecting something totally different. With an imminent sequel, LoS is one of my favorite games of this generation.
God of War is just one of those games no one gets tired of, and each game brings new and excellent ideas to the table, and this has to do with the fact that each game has a new director. Ghost of Sparta borrows a lot of what God of War III did, tweaks it, and adds things to it as well. I honestly think Sparta is the best example of how to do a portable game well and bring a console experience in without cramping the game’s style. Sparta is probably the most complete console copy on a portable to date, and there is nothing like it out there.
The game is set between the first two and is a side story about Kratos following a haunting vision. The vision of finding his long-lost brother, Deimos, and trying to cleanse yet another horrible memory. Along the way, you battle through Atlantis and other new locales for the game, but the style isn’t anything new. The locales in the game are pretty dark this time around, and they really focus on the whole dark aspect of the game.
The core of God of War is combat, and the Ghost of Sparta trumps the Chains of Olympus by a mile. Borrowing the recharging meter from III, you get to infuse your blades with Thera’s Bane, and this adds a whole new layer to the combat. Holding down R allows you to set your blades on fire and make them more powerful, but you have to time it and use it wisely. This is also used for breaking down armor on foes that can’t be hit normally, environmental puzzles, etc. Thera’s Bane is really fun to use, and there’s a lot of complexity that goes along with it that adds another layer of depth to the standard combat in the series.
There are new magical items, but they’re not as exciting as one might expect. I never really used them as often as I’d liked to, but they come in handy in the later levels. The game also borrows the Hyperion Charge, which rams enemies to the ground and lets you wail on them. I also never really found much use for it and never used it through the entire game except when introduced, so it feels like there’s some filler in here, but it’s great for people who have a different play style. A whole new weapon is introduced, and this is the Arms of Sparta. These are Kratos’ spear and shield, and it’s good for close-up combat and using the spear for far-off enemies, but it’s not a favorite, is no good, mid- to long-range, and doesn’t have the reach of the Blades. I never really used this except for when it was required during puzzles or exploration.
Sparta has a really good story behind it, and it doesn’t disappoint with its epic interactive story elements, such as one scene where he fights his own past in a brutal way you would expect in a God of War game. The game also opens up with a classic gigantic boss battle with a Scylla, but it’s not as memorable as the console games or even Chains of Olympus. Speaking of bosses, that game lacks hardly any, with only maybe four in this six-hour adventure. The ending boss is probably one of the best in the series, with an awesome co-op battle that has never been down before. The game’s ending is well worth it, and you’ll be pleased with how the whole story rolls out.
In technical terms, this is the best-looking PSP or handheld game ever made hands-down. I don’t think any other developer can make a PSP game look better than one of the best-looking PS2 games ever made. Yes, it looks better than God of War II, and it’s just full of lush detail and is bursting at the seams with effects. If you thought Chains of Olympus looked amazing, this trumps it by a long shot. Water drips off every ledge, the backgrounds are fully animated, and the game has a high poly count and highly detailed textures with even bump mapping! It’s just something to truly behold, and I doubt we’ll see another PSP game look this good. Of course, the game also comes with frame rate issues and never really goes above 30 FPS and sometimes drops down below 15, but that could just be my old PSP hardware.
The game also has its usual treasures, but adds the Temple of Zeus and lets you unlock videos, costumes, art, etc. by spending orbs you earn during the Challenge of the Gods. You can also create your own challenges, and this lets you keep playing this epic game without having to tread through the story again (which I know I will be doing again).
Other than that, though, the game is lacking something. It’s not as well-paced as other games in the series, and the lack of bosses hampers the experience a bit. The game mainly focuses on balanced combat, in which you get a variety of foes and must take each battle in a different way since some foes are weak to something and some aren’t. As well as focusing on exploration, and there really aren’t any puzzles to think of except very simple ones we’ve seen a dozen times in the series. The game is also just too straightforward and feels more repetitive than the other games, and that’s a bit disappointing considering the reputation of the series. However, the game is amazing, and I am not quite sick of seeing what Kratos has in store for us. Is this the last God of War game since III marked the end of the trilogy? Probably not, since this is Sony’s major staple for its consoles. Ghost of Sparta achieves many things and will become an all-time classic.
The Spider-Man games have always been generally good, but with the success that Treyarch made with Spider-Man 2, it’s a wonder why this game is not as good. With the success of that game, you wonder why this could have been messed up so badly. While the core game is pretty good, there’s just so much wrong with it, such as a terrible camera, a useless upgrade system, a poor story, bad voice acting, bad graphics, repetitive missions, and the list goes on. The game is about Venom fusing with a bit of Spider-Man and creating bastard symbiotes that are trying to destroy the town. They take over a few Marvel characters (Wolverine, Black Cat, and Vulture, just to name a few), and it’s an interesting twist, but not interesting enough.
The gameplay is what the game is supposed to be best at, but it falters on this. You have a pretty robust fighting system here with heavy and light attacks, web shots, and new wall and aerial combat, but it just doesn’t work very well. The aerial combat isn’t as broken as the wall combat and can be pretty fun at times. You can shoot a web at someone in the air and just keep juggling them. Upgrading this allows for more juggles and more powerful follow-ups. You can also just attack normally, and you will kind of home in on the enemies, and it’s pretty solid.
Ground combat works too but feels pretty boring due to the fact that there are only a few combos that you can upgrade, and there really isn’t anything Spider-Man about it at all, like tying enemies up to light posts or anything like that. Wall combat is the most broken, thanks to the crappy camera. You can climb a wall, but instead of the camera zooming out at a fixed angle, it follows you, and if you’re locked onto an enemy, it’ll follow it, and the camera will do backflips and somersaults, and it’s nauseating. Not only that, but you can’t look very far up a building thanks to the camera being right behind Spidey. The camera also poses an issue when swinging around the city because if you get stuck on a building, the camera jitters and freaks out, and it can get mildly annoying.
Of course, you have a black suit that you can do, but it’s not much different from the red. Instead of being extra powerful or using a completely different fighting style, it just borrows from the red suit and changes the combos slightly. This also leads into the story of being able to be a good or bad spy, and the results are mildly amusing. It’s interesting to see Spidey turn bad, and you can choose the path at different points in the story. I would normally mention epic parts of the game that could have saved it, but there aren’t any.
The missions are also highly repetitive and irritating. There will be a mission that has you waiting and guarding citizens, and then the next mission will be the exact same thing, but just shorter! Forget about the side missions because they are even more repetitive, and even doing things like saving citizens, rescuing them, and fighting bad guys is just boring and not fun at all since it never ends.
Lastly, the game doesn’t look too good. It doesn’t look next-gen at all, but it’s a highly polished Xbox One game. The game just doesn’t look good at all and doesn’t even sound good. Spider-Man has a whiny voice and sounds like he belongs in an emo band. Plus, everyone else sounds pretty bad and just, well, isn’t up to Marvel standards. Web of Shadows isn’t the best game in the world, but it’s good enough for a mediocre rental if you’re craving Spider-Man action.
thebinarymessiah.com 
Yep! The fact that I forgot about this game until you made a comment proves that.