Arcade racing games have always tried to do something new other than just adding new cars, tracks, and customizability. Racing games are trying to go beyond that by bringing in the environment and getting more involved with the other opponents instead of just racing them to the finish line. Split Second tries to involve everything around you in the race, and you really get the feeling that it is. The guys behind the hit sleeper Pure bring back exhilarating speed with top-notch audio, visuals, and controls. The focus around Split Second is bringing the environment down around your opponents and getting ahead in the race.
The way you accomplish this is by building up your power meter, which has three segments. Doing drifts, shunts, jumps, or slipstreaming will grant you this power. Activate the power when the icon appears above an opponent and blast! Something’s going to happen, but you have to watch out because you can wreck yourself doing this as well. You can start out by blowing up cars near opponents, but it’s when you can level whole pieces of track on top of them that it really gets exciting. Having a landing plane come crashing down on you and try to drive under its wing is pretty damn cool and has never been done before in a racing game. Watching huge towers fall down and block the path can really get your adrenaline going, especially when you start getting ahead.
Yeah, the further ahead you get in the pack, the bigger the target you’re going to be and the more you’re going to have to watch out. I’ve never played a racing game before where I was actually afraid to be in first since everyone would be targeting me. There are several modes to keep this interesting, such as time attacks and an eliminator mode, as well as others that have you dodging things and even shooting back at helicopters.
You can unlock cars, and most of them vary depending on their stats, but don’t expect any real-life cars here. These are generic, and Burnout fans will already be used to them. Unlocking new episodes is rewarding, and it keeps you playing through the long game, so you won’t ever get bored.
The game looks and sounds great, but the PC version suffers from a bug that makes the music drown out the car sounds if you have any surround sound system at all. Also, playing the game on a keyboard is no good since you can’t get precise control of your car. I recommend a gamepad for this, or even a wheel if you have one. The multiplayer is what you would expect, and it is a bit more intense thanks to the more clever human opponents.
Split Second is a racing game that really tries to define the genre and really does a good job doing it, if only it weren’t so repetitive. While the game is super fun, it slowly wears off unless you play in short bursts. The game really could have built upon the destructible environment idea more and made it a bit more controllable. Despite this, Split Second is a must for action racing fans, and you will walk away with a smile on your face and sweat on your palm.
A lot of developers with risky ideas tend to get low funding, and in some rare cases, the game turns out well. Singularity is one of those games with a low-budget feel but with AAA ideas. You play as a special ops agent named Nate Renko, who is sent to an island called Katorga-12 and must stop the singularity. In 1955, Russians found a new element called E99 and tried using it as a new weapon to wipe out America. The experiments went wrong due to an evil and greedy man and a scientist who created them all. The story is pretty decent but very hard to follow, and it feels like something from a sci-fi TV series.
The game starts out kind of like BioShock, Half-Life, and even Fallout 3 with an introduction of excellent atmosphere, first-person real-time narrative with movie reels, and the whole destroyed apocalypse feeling. It never really strays from this, but it does wear off fairly quickly, and the game’s atmosphere loses its touch after you get further into the game.
The game has very fun gunplay, but the weapons are what draw your attention and make you want to actually shoot stuff. You get your typical pistol, shotgun, and assault rifle entourage, but there are other unique weapons like a grenade launcher that lets you control the grenade on the ground, so when you let go of the alt-fire button, it will blow up where you want. My favorite weapon is a mix of a sniper rifle and grenade launcher that lets you control the bullet and steer it. Watching enemies’ heads blow up or legs come off is very satisfying and never gets boring.
While the guns are fun to shoot and feel powerful and satisfying, it’s the time manipulation that pulls the game’s fun factor up. You find the TMD about 20% into the game, and it lets you do a slew of things. Aging enemies into a corpse, bringing back stuff from the time such as destroyed ammo crates, electrical boxes, aging safes to get inside, renewing crumpled staircases, etc. Another ability allows you to create a bubble, and everything inside is slowed down. You can also use telekinetic power to throw objects around, as well as an impulse ability that pushes enemies away. The game allows you to use the TMD in large, epic ways, such as restoring a broken-down train, but you always feel the TMD isn’t used to its full capacity.
You can upgrade the TMD with perks such as longer durations for powers, allowing extra energy when killing enemies, as well as upgrading weapons with more firepower, faster reloading, and bigger clips. While the upgrades are a nice touch, they don’t really make a huge impact like you would think, and the game adapts to these upgrades too fast, so you always feel like you’re not quite powerful enough.
While it’s neat to reverse time and go back in time to stop things from happening, then come back, you always feel the TMD, and the whole time manipulation thing isn’t fleshed out enough. For example, there is a door in front of you that isn’t quite open enough to crouch under, so you age a metal crate, slide it under, then bring it back, and it pushes the door open. Not very creative, and I feel that all of these time elements could have been fleshed out more. This isn’t the only game’s problem, but the biggest one is its looks. It uses Unreal Engine 3 but looks kind of ugly with flat, muddy textures, and the only real thing going for it is the lighting.
The creature design is pretty neat, but there’s not much variety, and the story is very confusing. The game just loses the strong appeal that you get in the beginning towards the end. Singularity is a bunch of gory fun, but it feels like it could have been a lot more if Raven had gotten a bigger budget. If you like FPS games and are a fan of BioShock, Fallout, or Half-Life, then you’ll appreciate what Singularity brings to the table and can forgive its shortcomings.
Fans of the previous games will notice that the series has moved away from the FPS style and gone with an open-world, 3rd-person action game. You play Alec Mason, who is just another miner on Mars, trying to make a living. His brother is involved with the Red Faction, and you get recruited to be the voice of Mars and stop the EDF (Earth Defense Force) from controlling the people. While that may sound pretty standard, it kind of is, and the story never really gets interesting since there aren’t many cutscenes and the game concentrates mainly on the destruction-style gameplay.
The game has an awesome destruction engine in which you can throw charges, detonate them, and watch buildings crumble. I don’t mean pre-cut pieces, but literally, as if it were a real building. You can plant charges and find buildings’ weaknesses, or just use your hammer and wack away at walls until the whole thing crumbles to bits. Some missions require you to destroy a building, and its integrity is displayed on your map, so you get an idea of how much you’ve destroyed. Usually, when you weaken a building enough, it will just collapse. This is really fun and satisfying, and there are so many ways to destroy them. You can ram vehicles into buildings, use a rocket launcher, and even use a nano rifle that eats through metal. While building destruction is the focal point in the game, freedom is as well.
The world is split up into sections, and you must liberate each one by completing story missions, but you must bring the EDF control down to zero before you can begin the last mission for that sector. You will also bring the morality of the people up, but this doesn’t ever seem to really do anything. You can bring control down in many ways through side missions. There are many types, and some will even give you salvage, which can be used for upgrades. Some mission types include demolition, which gives you certain materials to use to bring down a building. Some of these are very challenging, and some you just can’t figure out. There are “time trial”-type driving missions where you have to get a vehicle to a certain safe house in a set amount of time. There are hostage missions, raids, defense, and even one where you sit on a mounted gun on a truck and blow up as much stuff as you can.
While there is a wide variety of missions, it gets dull after the second sector since it’s the same type of thing over and over again. The gameplay may be fun, but it’s not very diverse, and it will make some people stop playing before they even finish the game. The gunplay is a little weak since you can’t aim down sights or anything. You can carry four types of weapons on you at all times, and upgrades include ammo enhancement, new weapons, and even some defensive stuff like armor and the ability to fast travel between safe houses. My main gripe about the game is the difficulty. A lot of missions will bring the alert to level red, and you’ll have dozens of enemies come after you while you have to blow up certain stuff. It’s impossible to keep them off of you, so you just have to run and blow up what you need to without dying. This makes you desperate for vehicles since you heal when you get in them, and you can use them to smash down buildings. A lot of times you’ll also run out of ammo and have to search for an ammo box, and a lot of times there won’t be one.
The game just has a lot of little inconsistencies, like the vehicles being really squirrely, and even though the game is really open, a lot of it is closed off, and you are stuck on paths due to all the steep cliffs and mountains. A lot of times, buildings will collapse on you and kill you, and you’ll get run over by vehicles that barely take any damage. There will be times when an objective is upstairs, and if you destroy the ladder or stairs, you can’t get up there. Things like this make you confused, but other than that, the game is just repetitive, and that’s the biggest issue. The game looks good technically, but the world looks really bland and is just… red. If you love open adventure games, Red Faction is your game; otherwise, stay away.
Sam Fisher is back in a more action-oriented Splinter Cell, and while this may be great for people who hated the series before, fans will be let down. Splinter Cell is known for its stealth-heavy gameplay that relies on shadows, trial and error, and patience. While Conviction still uses this, it’s quicker and feels like Splinter Cell Lite, and this isn’t really so bad.
The story is continued from the series, but only fans will really pick up on it. Sam is still trying to find his daughter after Third Echelon supposedly killed her. In the meantime, he is trying to stop a terrorist organization from setting off EMP bombs and killing the president.
To get to the meat of the game, let’s talk about stealth. Yes, you can use shadows like in previous games, but instead of some sort of meter, the screen just turns gray when you are hidden. The game’s best feature is the new cover system, which lets you jump to cover on the fly by pressing Space and aiming for a new place to hide. This can give you quick access to enemy positions, but it is a little broken. Sometimes there isn’t cover in the right spot, and it’ll force you to use your gadgets and even use headshots. This can really kill certain parts of the game and make them very difficult, especially when you have lots of enemies in the room. In previous games, you could just kill lights and sneak around in the dark, but Conviction confines you to cover. You can climb around things and hang off pipes like before, but the game mainly forces you to use cover.
The best feature by far is the mark and execute system, which lets you target certain enemies, and Sam will quickly kill these guys with headshots without giving away your position. This is great when you have multiple enemies, but you can only get a mark and execute points if you stealth kill someone. This really forces you to sneak around cover and try to kill someone up close. Certain weapons have a different amount of points you can use as well. There is also an interrogation system here, but it’s not much other than pressing C and watching Sam bash up his targets. This could have been a lot more.
The game has a weapon upgrade system, but it’s really cheap and pretty pointless. You can upgrade handguns with more powerful ammo or reflex sight to upgrade accuracy, but there are only three upgrades per weapon, and you usually stick with the same weapon throughout the whole game, so this is really wasted. You get some pretty neat gadgets, such as the sticky camera, which allows you a remote view of an area, makes noise for distraction, and even blows it up. However, the noise distraction rarely works since enemies won’t walk over and check it out, so it just feels like an irritating remote mine. You get your NV goggles late in the game, and they are the same as before, but you can see hidden lasers with them, but they just feel tacked on.
The multiplayer is what you would expect from a Splinter Cell game, but it uses the whole cover system thing, so it’s not as intense as previous games. There’s not much to talk about here, and I’m not really a multiplayer fan, so if you like Splinter Cell multiplayer, it’ll keep you busy for a while.
Conviction just feels too light and has broken stealth elements that they shouldn’t have changed. Even when you do have to shoot, the other weapons feel useless since they can’t hit anything. The story is pretty decent, and the game looks good (what you would expect from UE3). Michael Ironside does an excellent job as Sam, but it feels like Splinter Cell was cored out, and it just feels like a rush job. You still have to have patience in this game, but the elements and patience don’t really mix since this game is more like a Splinter Cell with action elements. Still, the game is worth a playthrough, and you will have a lot of fun.
My name is John Marston, and I’ve lost everything. The US government took them from me and promised my freedom if I helped “establish a civilization” by catching the three crooks I used to ride with.
The first thing I noticed after I got off the train was how beautiful the country looked. Rolling hills, trees, and animals roam wherever you look. People on stagecoaches and even the occasional train. How I learned this new “civilization” was very interesting and even would make a good story.
Day 2
After getting shot by Bill Williamson, I met this lovely lady, Bonnie MacFarlane, and she helped me along the way. Riding horses with her was a good time, and it doesn’t seem too hard. If I kick it too hard with my spurs, it will buck me off unless I bond with it first by riding it often. Keeping speed with her was easy since holding my speed kept me right next to her.
Shooting on the horse was a little difficult, and using my dead eye was almost necessary since everything went by so fast. Controlling a horse and a gun at the same time isn’t very easy. When I focus enough, everything seems to slow down, and I can mark my targets with an X and blast away. I don’t know where I got this trait from, but it sure is handy.
She even showed me how to herd cattle by keeping pace behind the herd and making sure stray animals leave. Taming horses was pretty easy since I just had to lasso them and keep my balance until they were broken. Today was a long day, so I’m going to rest.
Day 3
I left Bonnie after helping her out on some errands. I just follow the yellow route line to my objective, which I put on my map, and it ain’t too hard from there. I can even mark waypoints and travel to them via stagecoach or when I make a camp off the road or away from water. This makes things handy since traveling this vast land can get tiresome.
After shooting some thugs from the wanted poster I picked up, I realized how each bullet affects every part of the body. Hit an arm, and they drop their gun. Hit their leg, and they limp away; hit their chest, and they fall over and crawl away. I found this useful when having to catch criminals with my lasso. Shoot the sucker in the leg so he stops running!
I went to the local market (there are many) and sold some herbs I picked, and after I hunted some deer, wolves, a snake, and some birds, I sold all those parts for some cash and bought myself a new gun. I love my shotgun, sniper rifle, revolver, and other weapons, but I just needed something more powerful. I did buy a new horse as well as some tobacco for focus and some medicine. I’m beat for now, so I’m going to go purchase some property in this town and rest.
Day 7
I’ve learned a lot lately, and one of the biggest things I learned was not to shoot other people or even run over them by accident. I had the law come after me, and I now have a bounty on my head. I can get a pardon letter or pay the bounty, but if I get my honor and fame up by doing good deeds, maybe people won’t be so hasty to tattle.
I tried some gambling to ease my mind today, such as Liar’s Dice, Texas Hold ‘Em, Blackjack, Horse Shoes, Arm Wrestling, and more. These games seemed pretty fun at first, but after a few tries, they bored me, so I was off hunting again. After I caught my kill, I noticed a stranger needing help, so I marked him with a question mark on my map and a purple circle in the area where I could find him later. I’ll tell you to partner these tales and these people with something else.
There are so many things to do here that I can’t describe them all. This place is huge, even with Mexico to the south. Everything here just looks so amazing, and as you can see so far, it’s stunning. Even when I got to the snow-capped mountains and was hunting bears, I felt like I couldn’t get enough of the scenery. The world also sounds beautiful, with birds chirping and the sound of crunching dirt under my feet. It’s refreshing.
Day 28
Well, I don’t know what else to say. This world is so massive, expansive, and gorgeous that it’s like nothing else. There is so much to do here that by the end of my journey, I’ll have felt satisfied, and even roaming around with friends can be pretty fun. So long, partner, and keep the West and the Wild alive.
Brutal. That is the first word that will come out of your mouth when playing this game. This is for the hardcore only, and I strictly warn you before plunking down $40 for this game and regretting the purchase like I did. This isn’t your straight-up hack-and-slash game. Oh no, not by any means. This game is all about level grinding and repetition. You will be punished for even trying to take that last-minute hit. What’s the punishment? Going back to the last save. Ha, if only that were true here. You have to restart the entire level every time you die, and you lose all your souls (XP). Yeah, I screamed as well when I found this out.
The game is also hard to figure out. I had to do some research online to figure out how to play Demon’s Souls because most RPGs aren’t like this. Instead of a story that you follow through and advance through a game, you get stuck in a central hub and have five connecting levels. You have to repeat these levels dozens of times to level up. You can go to any level whenever you want, and each level has four sections with a boss at the end of each section. Just getting through stages 1–1 was a pain in the ass. I died about 20 times before beating that section.
Another thing you will never know how to do is level up. It doesn’t just happen like in most RPGs. You have to get all your souls back to the Nexus (hub) without dying and talk to the Maiden in Black to level up. There are 999 levels, and each time you upgrade an attribute, it bumps you up one level. So if you upgrade strength, vitality, and dexterity, that bumps you up to three levels. So once you figure this out, you have to start soul grinding until you get to a high enough level that you won’t die with every swing.
Don’t panic when you die, though. If you manage to get back to the spot where you died without dying again, you can reclaim all your lost souls, and they will be added to what you currently have. Die before you reach there, and the count is reset. This makes the game so frustrating, and I even almost got an aneurysm from the frustration. A lot of enemies are tough, and the fighting mechanics aren’t all that smooth, so you have to learn them and execute them well. It’s all about skill.
The fighting mechanics are pretty decent. You have a light and heavy attack as well as a block and parry button. All these are mapped to the shoulder buttons. You can switch weapons out with the left and right D-pads (assign them in your menu). Another flaw the game has that doesn’t make any sense is that you can’t sell items but only drop them. You think selling these would make getting souls easier, but From Software just had to make things that much more difficult. On top of this, you have a burden count (think Oblivion), and getting new armor and weapons isn’t easy. You can upgrade weapons and armor by finding stones. These can only be upgraded at the Nexus (as far as I know).
Another flaw this game has is that there’s no pause button. Yeah, what? I couldn’t believe you can’t pause the game; it’s that hardcore. You just have to stand in a safe spot. This game goes out of its way to make you hate it to death. Yet there’s something that makes you keep playing. You just want to keep leveling up, getting the next boss, and fighting your way through the game. This is probably because you get so angry that you just won’t let the game win. This also means you need hours of your day to play this game since this is by no means a pickup-and-play game.
I was so angry about the game that I didn’t even mention the story. The story goes along the lines of a deep fog that has taken over the land of Boletaria, and you must defeat the demons holding it there. It’s not really much to ponder, but it’s enough to keep you going. The voice acting is iffy, and you will spend so much time leveling up that you will probably forget all about the story.
The game does do something unique, and this is its online mode. Instead of having a co-op or anything like that, other people can help everyone else through hidden messages or bloodstains. If you come across a message, you can read it, and it will give you hints to help you through the level. These are pre-made messages that people can enter to help others out. Most of the time, these are helpful, but a lot are tricks. Bloodstains are a player that most recently died in that spot, and you can watch their “ghost” to avoid getting killed yourself. Sometimes you will see white ghosts floating around in real-time, and there are other players that you can watch to give you a hint. This is very unique and innovative, but the frustration of the game makes you quickly forget about it all.
The game looks pretty decent. The graphics are a bit bland in some areas, but they’re technically sound. There are some glitches, like collision detection issues and wonky physics. Overall, Demon’s Souls is for the hardcore only. If you want a hack and slash that’s simple and fun, don’t get this game; stay far away. So why did I give this such a high score if I hate it so much? Because the game is good itself, and I just don’t have the patience for this type of game. I’m not going to punish the game for my inability to play it, so the people who can play it will enjoy it. It’ll take you a good 10-15 hours just to figure out all the stats and how the game is played, another 10-15 to get your bearings and level up enough to attempt the game, and about 50+ just to get through the game. Each boss feels like a triumph and is very rewarding, but this game only rewards the patient.
id Software is famous for creating the FPS genre with Doom and Wolfenstein. Wolfenstein is a little different from your typical WWII game. The game is wrapped around the paranormal, so you’re not going to get another Call of Duty or Medal of Honor. The game is entirely fictional, so it lets the Raven use fact and fiction and kind of mix them. You play BJ Blazkowicz, who is an American secret agent trying to stop the Third Reich from using the Black Sun as a weapon to rule the world. Sounds cliche? Well, it kind of is, but it’s interesting enough and has a very small plot twist at the end that makes the whole story worthwhile. You are working for resistance factions known as the Kraisau Circle and the Golden Dawn.
Wolfenstein isn’t just a linear run-and-gun shooter. In fact, the game is a bit sandboxy in the sense that you can choose your missions, and getting to them requires running around the city, fighting your way through Nazis, and getting the right sections. While I found this kind of pointless since there are only half a dozen side missions, it makes it different from most shooters. The game has four different powers you can use as well as a whole new weapon upgrade system.
The four powers consist of slowing down time, shielding, empowering, and the basic passive power that can let you go through certainly marked walls, climb hidden ladders, and see energy pools, as well as highlight enemies in the dark and reveal their weaker points. You will use all these weapons, but not as often as you’d like. You can upgrade your powers at the Black Market buildings, but finding gold is a pain since it’s all hidden, and the only way to upgrade everything 100% is to find every sack of gold in the game, and there are over 200. The same goes for intelligence files and tomes that let you unlock more power upgrades. I just find hidden items in shooters pointless since you’re concentrating on not dying, yet you’re also supposed to hunt for crap. I don’t like it. The powers must be used during boss fights and to get through some enemies.
Upgrading your weapons is really fun since we have never had a WWII game that uses real WWII weapons that can have silencers attached to them and scopes. Of course, there are fictional weapons such as particle cannons, Tesla guns, and a flak cannon. All these are slowly acquired as you play the game, and each weapon is fun to use. The weapon’s efficiency is solely up to how you upgrade.
The levels are pretty varied, but they all look the same. The graphics are very nice, but there’s not really an art style here. All the levels are pretty much laid out the same: kill these Nazis, figure out how to get past this obstacle, kill more Nazis, blow this up, and kill the boss. Rinse and repeat for about 8–10 hours. This doesn’t mean the game gets boring since everything is scrambled up quite often, so you get the illusion that it’s not the same thing over and over again.
There is some enemy variety in the human form. Each is the same, except some are wearing different uniforms, but it’s the supernatural enemies that you should worry about. There are assassins that will sneak up on you and slash you to death if you don’t use your powers to spot them quickly. There are powerful generals that shoot fireballs and pound the ground, and they will kill you fast. You have sexy Nazi chicks that do extreme melee on you unless you’re fast. There are guys with flamethrowers and particle cannons that must find the weak spots to defeat them. That’s about it, though, and you can throw creepy monkey dogs in there too. The enemy variety is a bit thin, but these guys work.
The boss fights are pretty amusing, and some are just downright hard. You just figure out their weak spot and what weapon works best when it’s easy from there. So overall, the structure of the game is sound, with your main missions branching off the city of Isenstadt, where you go get your missions from the two resistance factions. The game is well worth the purchase, but you won’t really come back to it, not even for multiplayer since no one’s even playing, and even if there were, it’s pretty generic.
Wolfenstein offers great gameplay, a decent story, and just a solid 8–10 hours, but you won’t be coming back to this one unless you really want to find all the hidden items.
Mortal Kombat is one of those series that is loved by all but then pitied. Mortal Kombat has grown over the years but hasn’t quite matured yet, especially in terms of visuals. Armageddon is kind of a potluck stew of every MK character ever dreamed up. This, being the goodbye game to the beloved series, has over 50 fighters and lots of different modes and is bursting at the seams with content. Most people will immediately dive into the arcade kombat mode. You will notice there is every fighter imaginable in the MK universe, and this includes bosses. Once you pick your character, you will see the classic Kombat Ladder, and the fight begins.
Once you start fighting, players of Deadly Alliance and especially Deception will become familiar with the controls. Mortal Kombat is not really a button-mashing fighter, and this is why a lot of people hate the series. Because they have to think before they start throwing punches. You can view a full move list in the pause menu, but when you get your favorite combos and the special moves memorized, you can start kicking ass. Each character has their own real-life martial arts style plus a weapon style. Deception and Deadly Alliance had two fighting styles and a weapon, but one had to be cut for balance issues.
The controls are extremely responsive, and the characters are animated very nicely. While they look a bit like plastic dolls and kind of fight like them, the animations are smooth, and there is no slowdown. New to Deception were arena traps, and this has been transitioned over to Armageddon. You will see either yellow or red lines around certain areas or objects. Yellow means that it’s just a dangerous trap that won’t instantly kill you but will deal some hefty damage. This can be an air duct that will shoot you through a fan, get knocked into a bell, or even into a giant egg and have acid spewed on you. Red lines mean instant kills, and you need to stay away from them. These can be grinders, deadly pits, or anything that can crush. A lot of the arenas are multi-tiered, and these will be marked with yellow lines as well. This really makes fighting intense, not to mention that the areas look awesome.
Fatalities are still here, as always, but with a twist. The MK team decided to do a Kreate-A-Fatality setup in which you don’t have to press any codes to see a staged fatality. The whole system is pretty complicated since there are transition moves and finishers, and each set goes into the other. You can do up to 11 moves, but you have to end with a finisher move for it to register as a fatality. With each move, your timer bar depletes faster and faster, so precision and fast input speed are a must. You can do a few forward chains, such as ripping out a heart, brain, or maybe a punch or two, then decide to go either into a face-down, behind-back, or on-the-knees transition. If you have to put that code in, then decide if you want to finish or continue from a behind-the-back transition set, on the knees, and so on. It becomes very complicated, and a lot of people don’t like this feature, calling it “generic fatalities,” but doing two fatalities for 50+ characters was too daunting, so they needed to figure something out.
Besides your core fighting in here, Konquest mode is back and better than ever. Forget the irritating, ugly, and boring deception. The team used the Shaolin Monks engine, so you get to fight in real-time via grabs, kicks, and heavy and light punches. You acquire power-ups throughout the game as well as perform fatalities by just pressing a button once the enemy is dazed. You can go around collecting relics to unlock hidden stuff in the Krypt, as well as alternate costumes, music, and koins. Sometimes you will run across weapons to hack and slash enemies, as well as do actual kombat with characters you run across.
The story is more interesting than any other MK side story that has a lot of mystery wrapped around it. New characters Taven and Daegon awaken from slumber by the call of Blaze (yeah, that hidden character in Deadly Alliance). Daegon is trying to find his father while discovering why he needs to fight his brother and how to become the new Emperor of Edenia. Overall, the Konquest mode is very entertaining and a welcome treat.
Another questionable mini-game is Motor Kombat, which is a cart racing game. This could have been greatly improved, but it’s entertaining for a while. You pick your favorite MK character (or a select few) and run across a star that will allow you to use your weapon or a lightning bolt, which is a burst of speed. You can bump people left or right into death traps (marked by red lines). There are jumps and the tracks are laid out differently, but there could have been more power-ups instead of just one set for the character, and I would have liked the levels to be more alive. Motor Kombat is fun at best with more players, but other than that, you’ll forget about it after you play all the stages.
I finally came to Kreate-A-Fighter mode, and this has been a huge request by fans since Deadly Alliance. You get a lot of customization options, and you can buy more accessories with the coins you collect from all modes of the game. You can set moves, fighting style, finishing stance, and even write out a bio (pull out that dusty PS2 keyboard!) You can do pretty much anything you want with the character, and there are so many items that no one will look the same. There are even some conspicuous items that look like superheroes or real-life heroes as well. You can take your character online and hone your skills against other people’s characters. As of this review, Xbox LIVE has been shut off, so local play is only possible. Besides, even before, no one was playing online anymore. This feature is greatly welcomed and is a blast to use.
The Krypt returns for a third time, but simpler. Instead of different kinds of colored koins, there’s just one type, and you can unlock tons of stuff. Anything from concept art, videos, sketches, alternate costumes, and music. Armageddon is chock-full of content, but it does have its flaws.
For instance, the visuals. While they look nice, they don’t really push the systems to their limits. The voice acting is terrible in Konquest mode, and like I said before, the characters look a bit like plastic dolls, and the animations are a bit canned. The Kreate-A-Fatality mode is not well received, and I would like to have seen set fatalities for each character. Motor Kombat is pretty lackluster, and it’s obvious the game needs a reboot. I also would have liked to see Chess Kombat and Puzzle Kombat from Deception included here as well, but they are sadly absent. Until then, Armageddon should keep fans and newcomers entertained for hours on end.
I’m not really a traditional sports fan, but when something as outrageous as the Outlaw series passes under my radar, I have no choice but to pick it up. Outlaw Golf 2 is very mature, outrageous, and fun. What makes the series so outrageous are the characters, who range from mentally insane to sexually charged (such as Summer and Autumn). The game has a lot of modes, such as tour, exhibition, driving range, and a couple of mini-games.
The gameplay is pretty simple and plays like most other golf games, but with some twists. When driving down the green, you can switch camera angles to see where your ball is going to fly. You can change the power, and this is also adjusted upon swinging. The game has a swing stick setup, so swinging the analog stick is pretty accurate and not too finicky. If you time the swing right, you can go over 100% and do a power shot, but watch out because you overshoot where you want the ball to land. There are hazards to look out for, so you really need to watch out. If you start doing poorly, your composure meter will drop and bring it back up, and you can play one of two mini-games. These are golf cart games to get a perfect shot, or you can beat up your caddy. They are fun at first, but after a few tries, you get tired of them. One feature I like is that while you get three tries at a guideline, Hit square once, and you’ll see a line to the hole. One feature I love is the Gimme feature, which allows you to just press square during a putting replay to let you go ahead and sink the ball for an extra shot. This is only if your ball is almost in the cup and you didn’t quite make it.
I love the game’s mature commentary and smart alack remarks to the players. The intros and small animations of the characters are either funny or sexy. The best part about the game is that the mature content didn’t get in the way of the game being good. However, the game is very hard to beat, especially in tour mode. Even after trying over 10 times, I still couldn’t beat the first tournament against Killer Miller. You have to get ahead on the first hole, or you’re never going to win. Even if you factor in all the golf aspects like wind, elevation, etc., you still have a hard time winning.
The game looks pretty good, even for today. The courses look great, and the characters look great, so you have something nice to look at. The only issues I saw were some slowdowns due to the PS2’s limitations, but they didn’t hinder gameplay. Since the online servers are shut down (and there’s probably no one playing even if they weren’t), online play couldn’t be tested, but I’m sure it would have been really fun and competitive. There is a lot of extra content, like videos, outfits, clubs, and balls, so you have many hours of gameplay, and there are a lot of characters to play as well. If you’re tired of your traditional golf games, pick up Outlaw Golf 2, and you should have a good time.
Real-time strategy games are one thing, but when you add the words fat, princess, and cake to the title, it becomes something magical. Fat Princess is an RTS that really makes your adrenaline pump. You have different classes such as warriors, wizards, priests, workers, etc., but call this game an RTS lite because the game is all about action.
The main story consists of 15 levels, and each one is different and super fun, with a very interesting fairy tale story that is being told. You slowly unlock different units to use, but how you use them is key. Each unit can be upgraded to use different weapons, such as the warrior, who can use a halberd, the archer, who can use a gun, and the worker, who can use bombs to blow up structures. Your main goal is usually getting the enemy’s princess into your dungeon, so think of this as capturing the flag. You can feed your princess cake to fatten her up so it is harder for the enemy to take her away. The enemy will also try to build ladders near your castle or find shortcuts, so watch out.
Workers have two different resources for upgrading “Hat Machines” or completing different objectives that require them. You can gather wood and metal by hacking away at it and carrying it to your base. Most resources will grow back after a few minutes, but it’s a fight for the best areas. You can capture command posts as well to keep a firm hold on the map.
But like I said, the game is about action, so unit building and all the resource gathering are faster. Each unit is AI-controlled, and you can call some guys to fight by your side and help you escort the princess. You can call an archer, a warrior, or a priest who will have hearts under them, and you can move faster. If the enemy’s princess is too fat, however, you can’t carry her at all.
The fun part about Fat Princess is how the tide of the battle is a tug of war and can be really intense. Choosing what to do is up to you. Do you want to help heal everyone as a priest? Help upgrade the hat machines. Do you want to charge right into the castle yourself and get the princess? While the AI-controlled guys may have some issues going online via infrastructure, that is the icing on the cake. Playing against real people can be a blast since they pretty much know what to do.
Besides all this, you can customize the units of your people and do skirmishes, but other than that, the game is light on modes and extras. Fat Princess is chock-full of internet quotes and game-related nuances, so there are laughs all around. Fat Princess is a wonderful light RTS for pick-up and plays action. Plus, the game looks and sounds great on the PSP and doesn’t lose anything from the PS3 port.
thebinarymessiah.com 
Yep! The fact that I forgot about this game until you made a comment proves that.