To make a few things clear, the topic was meant to focus on recent games from the last and early current generation of consoles; ones that we can easily trace their inspirations on the games made today. If I had to state an exact time frame I was going for, I would estimate from the launch of the Xbox/Gamecube/PS2 to the starting years of the 360/Wii/PS3 life cycles (so roughly 2001-2007).

What compelled me to write this was a desire to point out a few of the overbearing trends that seem to have such a firm hold on what the video game industry thinks are the “in things” these days. We’re at a point where graphical technology is almost as good as it can get already, which means games for new consoles will have to focus more and more on their own aesthetics, themes, narratives, and game mechanics, and I just don’t want to see a whole new video game generation stagnate and bomb because games start looking all the same.

So… besides being an HD Twilight Princess, what else we got?

For those of you asking what I would have developers do, well to be perfectly clear, I am in no way against looking at our recent past for inspiration moving forward. So, to counteract my previous list, here is another: 5 Games that weren’t exactly trend setters, but still developed a cult following with unique traits that the industry could stand to learn a thing or two from.

Super Mario Sunshine

About time they had a vacation.

This one goes out squarely to the people at Nintendo, specifically the ones making Mario games. No, Super Mario Sunshine was not the best Mario game. It was however, in my opinion, the most original. Chris actually wrote up a retrospective on Sunshine, commenting how it was one of the only Mario games not to take place in the Mushroom Kingdom, and had level designs that took a much needed jump away from the typical meadow, water, lava, ice, dessert, cave, and haunted house tropes every other installment of the main series has succumbed to like they’re going down a chekclist. Sunshine also gets kudos for finally taking off the training wheels (if only for one game) and actually opening with a plot that cannot be summed up with “Princess Peach is kidnapped…again.” (Yeah, she does get kidnapped eventually, but for once, it’s not the main crutch of the story.)

Of course, we all know why this game wasn’t as famous or successful as every other Mario game. No, not because F.L.U.D.D. was occasionally sketchy to control, or because 3D underwater swimming levels still suck no matter what game you’re playing. No, Sunshine got the shaft because it DID take risks and DID make those changes that I listed above. Now, I loved both Mario Galaxy games as much as the next platforming fan, but even I started to notice as the games progressed, that it felt less like “Mario in Space” and more like “Mario in the space version of the Mushroom Kingdom.”

Look, Nintendo, I know fanboys weren’t all too pleased with this game, but you shouldn’t listen to fanboys every single time. You should listen to me. Fanboys are crybabies who whine because Mario had to carry a super soaker and didn’t get to stomp any Goombas. I for one saw the value in a game that, flaws and all, was a refreshing new take on a series that drastically needed it. I don’t know about anyone else, but I am holding up hopes that the next Mario installment for the Wii U does something crazy again. Like Time Travel (Stone Age, Greek, Medieval, Renaissance, Western, Sci-fi Future versions of Mushroom Kingdom? Come on, that’d be fun), or, how ‘bout this: Mario and Luigi actually manage a plumbing factory that is sabotaged by Waluigi (seriously, give that guy a legitimate villain role already).

Final Fantasy X

After a New Years nightcap and a heated battle between the east and the west/story and gameplay, Midnight of January 1st 2012, my otaku friend finally accomplished the ultimate: he got me to cave and play my first Final Fantasy game. So we blew the dust off his PS2 and inserted FFX, and after I spent the first several hours whining and moaning (mostly just in spite of my friend) about how horrendous looking Tidus’ outfit is and how the last ten years have taken a serious toll on the game’s voice acting (Sorry all you FF fans who thought the voice work was revolutionary for the series, but go back. It has not aged well), the game… is actually pretty good. I’m about 20 hours in now, and I’m liking it so far. The plot is very quest-oriented and has a diverse cast that is well developed. The gameplay is turn-based strategy with random encounters, and while that style of gameplay started to grow old for me back in the day, I find myself enjoying the strategy part of it a lot here. As for the highly-coveted Blitzball minigame, while not my cup of tea, I still value its existence in the plot as it breathed a lot of personality into the world and the characters.

This may just be a guess, but around the point Pokemon became this huge hit in the late 90’s and pretty much owned the turn based strategy genre, spawning dozens of hashed out clones, that could be contributed to why turn-based RPG’s started to lose their muster a bit in the last generation and why Square Enix has been so fixated on trying to develop new and interesting combat systems with their latest installments, rather than focusing on what they used to do so well, which was create unique, yet cohesive, quest based stories with endearing characters and gameplay that favors using your mind over your thumbs.

The following plea comes from the request of my friend, a dedicated follower of JRPG’s for years.

Square Enix, we get it. You have proven to us time and again that you can make games look pretty. You can also make RPG combat as fast-paced and interactive as we can possibly ask for. Great and great. But your narratives in recent years have been everywhere from unmemorable mediocrity at best, to overbearing incomprehensible disasters at worse. You actually had something real special going with FFX. We would gladly go back to turn based combat and random encounters if you gave us another story worth playing through.

The same goes for all other developers. Turn based RPG’s don’t all have to be shallow Pokemon knock offs. They can be clever. Paper Mario and the Thousand Year Door was another good one. In fact, I like that one more than its real-time platforming-esque sequel for the Wii.

Lostwinds

Okay, so this game came out in 2008, a little after my aforementioned cut-off date above, but since it’s an indie game that released on the launch of Nintendo’s online network, WiiWare, I think it still counts. Lostwinds is a 2D puzzle platformer, a simple tale about of a boy named Toku on a trek to save his village from an evil spirit polluting the land, all the while aided by a wind spirit named Enril.

While Toku is controlled normally by moving left and right with the analog stick, the wind spirit Enril is controlled with the Wiimote. Having a player interact with two separate characters simultaneously in and of itself is unique, but where this game really shines is how it uses the Wii’s technology to manipulate the winds as a means of platforming. Eventually, Enril learns to manipulate the other elements to solve puzzles: fire, water, earth, you name it.

Last week I mentioned how difficult it was to find a truly worthy motion control experience with depth. Lostwinds, and its sequel Winter Melodies, were the kind of Wii experiences I’ve been looking for. It is the perfect example of a game that makes the most of what the Wii has to offer. Meanwhile, it also looks great and sounds great. Pretty short, but it’s cheep, so it balances out. Any Wii owners out there who have yet to check this out, I highly recommend it. If more motion games played like this, than I’d be way more inclined to believe the industry when they say that motion gaming is here to stay.

Super Smash Bros.

The series that needs to no introduction (because Chris and I may have mentioned it a couple hundred times already), Super Smash Bros. succeeded in completely innovating the fighting game genre. It replaced health meters with damage meters, one-on-one with 4 player battle royales, flat battle maps with a wide variety of unique terrains, and button mashing combos with special moves that are easy to learn but hard to truly master.

The series’ second installment, Super Smash Bros. Melee, went on to be the best selling GameCube game every single year of the console’s life cycle, so by no means was the series unpopular. It had a huge following, so why did this style of fighting games never really expanded to other series, save for official sequels and a few failed attempts? I guess it depends on whether you think SSB is successful do it’s innovative gameplay or because it is a love letter to Nintendo fans with its all star cast spanning 20+ years of video game icons. I want to believe it’s a combination of both.

If another game, movie, or TV series has a strong following, and someone made a polished SSB style fighting game around it, I am positive it will sell. (Here are some ideas of franchises that would work almost perfectly.)

And the Number One Game I would like to see more of is…

Ratchet and Clank

Last week, I mentioned how one of the gaming trends I am sick of this generation happens to be dark gritty shooters staring power armored space marines. Sci-Fi has always been the most popular theme in video games, and it probably always will be. In video game’s origins, it took the form of classic arcades like Asteroids and Space Invaders. Now it takes the form of these juggernaut hits like Halo and Gears of War that tout themselves to be these dramatic space operas with huge open conflicts and “realistic” human characters. All the while the industry has become too naïve to realize that Dark Sci-Fi has become the most formulaic and cookie cutter theme in video games.

But you know what I am not sick of? Whimsical sci-fi platformer-shooter hybrids staring power armored space Lombaxes and their diminutive sarcastic robot partners. Ratchet and Clank make the top of my list of games we need to see more of because they represent a surviving franchise in a style of games that has been all but forgotten in the modern day. In comparison to the other sci-fi universes out there right now, the series’ anthropomorphic characters and very Pixar-like art style and animation make it stand out severely. However, if this franchise started on the Super Nintendo, alongside big Sci-Fi icons of the time like Fox McCloud, Samus Aran, and Mega Man, it probably would have fit right in.

Around the late 90’s/ early 2000’s as platforming adventure games started to make a permanent jump from 2D to 3D, we saw a ginormous slew of new cartoon/animal themed characters launch for all consoles. Unfortunately, due to a combination of gamers getting older and the hardcore trends that the industry introduced to optimize this change, many of these new characters were lucky if they got a whole trilogy of successful titles before they were promptly upstaged by these ultra famous mega hits (like the games I mentioned last week).

So, while Jak, Sly, Banjo, Conker, and Rayman were all left behind in the last two generations, Ratchet’s creators at Insomniac Games endured and moved on to make a whole new trilogy for the PS3 anyway (keep in mind, they were doing this in between making a whole other series that the industry did want, a dark gritty sci-fi alternate WW2 history shooter in Resistance). Graphically, the games’ cartoony characters and art style translated on an HD system to be one of the most vibrant and colorful instances of world building I’ve seen. While the tone of the Ratchet and Clank games has always been pretty lighthearted and witty, I can’t stress enough how pulling off truly clever and well timed humor like this game does is light years harder than writing Oscar bait war dramas like Mass Effect.

For the record, I am not saying that they just need to keep making more Ratchet and Clank. I felt that series was capped off perfectly fine with 2009’s A Crack in Time. Insomniac has done their part. Let them move on to work on Overstrike. No, what I’m saying is that all those other cartoon/animal platform adventurers that were left behind in the last generation need to catch up. Sly Cooper is getting a revival this year. That’s great. I hope Jak and Daxter is soon to follow. I hope Rayman Origins, which came out this holiday, sells well enough so Ubisoft will give Mike Ancel the go to finally make Beyond Good and Evil 2. I’d love to see Banjo-Kazooie have a comeback. I pray every day that Crash Bandicoot will be passed down to a competent developer that will finally know what they’re doing.

Maybe Sonic will finally…um…actually him I have given up on. Sorry, he’s just hurt me too many times in the past.

“Will the Play Station Move continue to struggle and boggle down Sony’s progress? Or was 2010 simply a relapse year before the PS3 gets ready to blow our minds again? Only time will tell.” -Me, Last year.

Well, the time has come. After a pretty uneventful 2010, with God of War 3 and Heavy Rain as the only two exclusives of note, 2011 appeared to be much more encompassing. Sony had a new exclusive scheduled for just about every other month and it seemed the company was well on its way to having what could be its greatest year yet. Now, did it actually turn out that way?

Upon reflection, 2010 now feels like it was the calm before the storm. 2011 certainly was a busy year, though I suppose with as much as they had on their plate, it would be foolish to expect everything to turn out perfect. So let’s take a closer look.

The Greats

Sony began the year with Little Big Planet 2, the follow-up to Media Molecule’s groundbreaking platformer/level making toybox. Sack Person returned to us with a brand new adventure. He’s on a mission to rescue Craftworld from the Negativatron with the help of Sackbots, Cakeinators, Cyborg Camels that spit lasers, and a guy with the coolest name in the entire world: Avalon Centrifuge. Here’s a game that I can never humanly tire from, as there is always new content online from its dedicated community day and night.

And if that weren’t enough, Media Molecule released new bonus content in the form of Toy Story themed level and costume kits. I can honestly say, no matter how hard I try, I cannot possibly think of a franchise that translates to Craft-form as seamless and wonderfully as Toy Story. The levels themselves make whimsical additions to the already diverse world that surrounds our little Sack Hero, not to mention quite challenging. I still have yet to defeat the final boss against Dr. Pork Chop.

We then started our Summer Vacations with our second outing with Cole “Electric Man” McGrath in InFamous 2. Not only did this game improve on the original by overhauling the graphics, giving us a bigger more varied world to explore, and revamping the annoying sidekick character to be an actually useful and all-around more likeable guy, but it also delivered an excellent capper to the story arc they began in the first game. Too often do we see 2’s in the gaming universe finishing their games open ended, or worse, with a flat-out cliffhanger to pave way for an obvious third installment (Halo and God of War being probably the two biggest culprits of all). InFamous 2 did not play that card. At the end of the first game, we were told the big fight was coming. In the second game, it came, and regardless of whether you went good or evil, we finished that fight to the very bitter end, closing up the storyline permanently.

That’s not to say that Sucker Punch is out of ideas for the franchise, oh no. This Halloween, we received InFamous Festival of Blood, a short downloadable game that couldn’t give a flying crap where it’s suppose to fit within the continuity of the storyline, existing simply as an excuse to let us play as Count Cole McGrath with the power to morph into a horde of bats, and I couldn’t love it more for it.

Keeping with the trend of the God of War and Sly Collections last year (I did mention the Sly Cooper Trilogy this year though), Sony rereleased a few more of their classics including God of War Origins (which I very much enjoyed), comprising the two PSP God of War titles by Ready At Dawn, and even more exciting, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. What’s great is that the only small complaint people really had about SotC was that the PS2’s limited horsepower couldn’t keep up with the game’s outlandish visuals. With this HD remake, that gets fixed up no problem.

As far as third installments go, both of Sony’s exclusive FPS franchises, Killzone 3 and Resistance 3, rounded up their storylines this year, and they did not disappoint. Resistance particularly had the challenge of developing a completely different main character for their third installment, seeing as the protagonist of the first two games was now KIA. Yet Insomniac managed to pull it off, as I never doubted they would.

There is also something that bears repeating in regards to Uncharted 3 Drakes Deception. While it may not have succeeded in exceeding the expectations left by its 35 Game-of-the-Year Award Winning predecessor, it was still a fun game in its own right. Given Naughtydog’s patterns with their franchises in the past, if this truly is the final Uncharted game they ever work on, than it was quite a ride and I pray that any and all companies that take on this franchise in the future (I’m looking at you Bend Studio) approach it with the effort and resolve it rightfully deserves.

All those exclusives alone would be more than enough to keep any PS3 owner’s thumbs busy and wallets empty for the whole year, but it just so happens Sony was just as blessed with amazing third party support as ever. Portal 2, Batman Arkham City, and Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim are not only the top games of the year and will certainly win numerous Game of the Year Awards between the three of them, but they are some of the greatest titles of this entire console generation. Me personally, I was much more anxious for to the return of a classic platforming icon in Rayman Origins. After mourning that I missed a chance to play the game upon its release, I finally managed to get a hold of it during the holiday rush. Guess what? It’s awesome.

The Not-so-Great

Okay, so this year was certainly not without its serious financial and critical flops for Sony. For starters, there was the PSN Blackout back in April that shut out the entire online community for weeks. This was one of the biggest pandemics in the gaming community that made the company desperately scramble to consolidate their user basis.

For someone like me who rarely plays online, I almost completely forgot it ever happened several months after the fact, and the free games Sony provided once back online were much appreciated.

No, what I’m more concerned about is the Play Station Move. It’s already been out for over a year now, and it’s still not selling. Why is it not selling? Well, unlike the 360’s Kinect, which has titles like Dance Central and Disney Adventures that sell it as a legit new peripheral, there is still nothing available on the Move that is really worth the hundred dollar price of admission. That’s not to say Sony hasn’t tried, god no. Their two big FPS franchises I mentioned above, Killzone 3 and Resistance 3, both have Move Support, and from what I’ve heard, they play great with it. But no matter how well these titles may use that peripheral, if they play just fine with a regular controller that gamers are already accustomed to, that will indefinably be their default play style of choice. It’s cheaper and less work.

And don’t get me started on games made for the Move from ground up. PlayStation Move Heroes was something that when I first saw last years E3, looked like a dream come true. The poster boys of Naughtydog, Insomniac, and Sucker Punch, all rolled up into one game. In a perfect world, this would be the crossover platforming adventure I’ve been waiting an entire console generation for, with diverse worlds, intriguing plot twists, and hilarious writing that each of these three franchises is known for. I may just get teary-eyed thinking about the possibilities.

Oh what’s that? It’s another bland, uninspired waggle fest with repetitive minigames and an embarrassing plot that is not intriguing, funny, or holds a candle to any of these characters’ solo adventures in the slightest?

On a slightly lighter note, I have heard that Medieval Moves: Deadmund’s Quest did turn out to be pretty awesome. Still, one good game is not enough to sell the whole peripheral for me.

My final word: On the grounds of games alone, Sony was a definite juggernaut this year. Lots of big franchises getting sequels, and not just sequels, but cappers to what were once brand new IP’s at the beginning of this Console Generation. Along with that, some nice new PS2/PSP collections, great downloadable content, and some of the best third party support to date. From a business model standpoint, they are far from ideal, thanks to Network fiascoes like the Blackout, and the Move still failing to provide us anything worthwhile. So, better but not perfect. I give them a B.

Coming Soon

February 14th (which is some holiday, I forget what) sees the beloved return Sony’s longest running exclusive franchise ever. Twisted Metal kicks the adrenaline meter to the curb with all the best kinds of Rush Hour Road Rage, Road Kill, and what have you. Oh yeah, and ice-cream trucks that transform into Decepticons.

Also in February, we get the Jak and Daxter Collection, the HD rerelease of Naughtydog’s second hit trilogy, which at this point may as well be titled, Roger Gus Townson’s Money Dispenser Collection.

Again in February (busy month) on the 22nd, we see the American release (Japan released it last Saturday) of Sony’s next generation portable, the Play Station Vita. I am pleased to say the launch lineup this time around is looking very good, with titles like Gravity Rush, Little Deviants, and of course Uncharted Golden Abyss which, as I hinted earlier, will prove if new developers are capable of handling this property properly.

In a later quarter, The Cooper Gang returns to work after a six-year hiatus in Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time. While not being developed by the original creator, Sucker Punch, would normally concern me, given the trailers and gameplay footage we’ve seen at E3, Sanzaru appears to have a very good grasp on the franchise, so I’m excited.

I would like to believe Team Ico’s The Last Guardian is finally going to come out by the end of this year, given how much it’s already been pushed back, but at this point I don’t want to make any more promises.

On the third party side, we have Mass Effect 3 and Bioshock Infinite, both set to be surefire winners. Here’s also high hopes we hear more about Insomniac’s newest title, Overstrike.

All right, let’s talk a bit about Naughtydog’s next project, which debuted during the VGA’s. The Last of Us.

So apparently, a handful of guys, after completing Uncharted 2, shifted their attention to this while others worked on Uncharted 3, so it’s already been in the works for a while now. That said, it still looks like a very rough draft of what the final product will look like, and I won’t be surprised if it’s not ready by the end of the year.

Concept wise, while I personally wish Naughtydog would return to form from the PS1/PS2 eras and make something more colorful and fantasy like, they did bring on the lead designer of Enslaved: Odyssey to the West (a niche game from 2010 I enjoyed a lot) to work with them, so I am intrigued.

Yeah, I know everyone’s already made the joke that the girl looks exactly like a younger Ellen Page (the character is even named Ellie), but hey, Nathan Drake was first based on Nathan Fillion, so this ain’t too farfetched for them.

And here I thought that 2012 would be another relapse year like 2010. It might still be, as everything looks more exciting from afar. However, the arrival of the Play Station Vita could keep the company and their customers busy for some time now. Good luck.

Well, unless you’re Ron that is.

By now, if you’ve played one LEGO game in the past, odds are you know how these play out: you take a series of popular movies and reenact them as if all their characters, plots, and set pieces were to be performed in the light, whimsical, rigid and plastic (in a literal sense) world that is LEGO. Gameplay itself hasn’t budged an inch either: You alternate playing as a multitude of LEGOised characters from said movies (in this case, Harry, Ron, Hermione, and just about any minor character you can think of), progressing through LEGOised set pieces from said movies (Hogwarts, Diagon Ally, the Ministry of Magic, etc.) by form of platforming, solving puzzles, fighting off enemies from said movies (Dementors, Death Eaters, etc), all the while involving the need of teamwork by implementing each of the characters’ individual abilities and items from their skill set which, more or less, is based on their unique attributes from said movies (Harry’s Invisibility Cloak, Ron’s Weasly gadgets from his brother’s joke shop, Hermione’s pet Crookshanks,what have you).

And yet, as formulaic as these games have gotten, with LEGO Harry Potter it still manages to feel unique and entertaining. In my own opinion, both LEGO Harry Potter games (Years 1-4, and Years 5-7) are probably the best LEGO games. My reasoning behind this is that the source material translates a lot better to this style of play than the other franchises Travelers Tales has attempted to tackle. Case in Point, magic spells and wizarding artifacts from Harry Potter are a lot more fun to play with LEGO style than guns, whips, swords, and blacksmithing from Indiana Jones or Pirates of the Caribbean.

And while all their games have done a great job visually by adapting each of the movies’ set pieces quite faithfully, the level design this time around felt especially well done. Particularly any scene that took place in the Room of Requirements really caught my fancy. That place truly felt like a giant over-cluttered junk-filled hole-in-the-wall.

All joking aside, sometimes the funnest route to completing these games really is to just run around and zap everything zappable and collect all the LEGO bits (Studs) you can. I still don’t really know why, but grabbing a Blue Stud is still one of the most satisfying sounds to hear in every game. Only after everything that is expendable has been expended do you turn on your brain to solve a puzzle or two, which can mean an assortment of things: collect a key, mix a potion, recruiting other characters to assist you with their own unique attributes, things like that. Many of these quote/unquote “puzzle sections” are pretty self explanatory, especially if you’ve already played through Years 1-4 (A game that actually did have one or more places that pretty much stumped my friends and I). I will forgive it though, because it’s trying to make puzzle sequences accessible for kids. I’m 23, and kids half my age should have very little problem progressing through this game. Even kids a third of my age who have their wits about them should be able to learn something.

But at the end of the day, the question of whether or not this game is too easy for older audiences or too hard for younger audience really turns out to be irrelevant, as the biggest selling point in these games is not so much the game play, but the laugh-out-loud cut scenes that humorously pantomime through scenes adapted straight from the films. While the story occasionally takes a few liberties for the sake of level construction, and there is definitely a bigger emphasis on the movies rather than the books (much to the dismay of all you whiny purists out there who won’t stop having a hissy fit that The Burrow never got burned down in The Half Blood Prince), it’s best to think of it as a high-end parody, because that’s what it is. A very well written and masterfully animated parody.

That’s not to say this game is not without its faults. Unfortunately, HP Yrs.5-7 carries on a few of the same technical faults as its predecessors. These LEGO games have a tendency to be occasionally glitchy. When my friends and I were playing, there was one instance when an NPC background character would wander around, then stop directly in front the doorway to the outside, preventing us from exiting to the next portion of the stage. We had to exit through another doorway in the room, then backtrack to see if he went away. In another instance, we had the game freeze up on us during a load screen. Sure, we turned it off and rebooted the game back up just fine, but it’s still tedious.

Those were just two that I experienced first hand. Now these aren’t necessarily glitches, but they are worth mentioning. Your Leviosa spell, which is pretty much your bread and butter when it comes to putting LEGO contraptions together, activating inanimate objects, and throwing blunt force attacks at enemies, has an auto-lock-on feature that in theory should work very easily, but when there is too much stuff on the screen, there is a tendency to not activate the proper target if your avatar is not looking and standing in a very specific direction. Another thing is that many of the other standard spells that all playable characters will have, (Reducto, Lumos, Patronus, Diffendo) all do pretty much the exact same thing (fire a different colored magic beam attack) unless they hit a very specific target that triggers their unique property. The only spell that looks somewhat different is the Aquamente spell, and it’s the one that seems to be the most imprecise when it comes to aiming.

Once all these different colored spells are learned, they are used in a new dueling mechanic. Wizards face off one-on-one and you must attack your opponent with the corresponding colored spell in order to counter them with a quick time event. It’s very simplistic, yet quite intuitive, and does challenge how quick you are to rotate though all your wheel of spells.

To wrap this up, I was surprisingly pleased with how much I enjoyed this game. The prequel, Yrs.1-4, was inherently about the lighter and fun portion of the Potter storyline, so of course it was perfectly fitting for the LEGO universe. Yrs. 5-7 on the other hand is much darker, with far more mature undertones, so I thought it would be a lot more difficult to translate. Turns out, there was nothing to worry about. Travelers Tales found what was fun in these films and road with them regardless of the tone, and the disjuncture of the LEGO backdrop with the dark story almost made it more hilarious.

Seeing as there is not much competition out there, I feel safe staying that LEGO Harry Potter Years 5-7 is possibly the best Harry Potter video game available for the current generation of consoles. It pokes fun at the movies and a bit of the books while also capturing the heart and spirit that made you fall in love with the series in the first place. All of John Williams’ outstanding music scores are present and accounted for. The 2-player Co-op in this game is also done brilliantly. If you are looking to get a game for the Potter fanatic in your life this Christmas, you can’t do much better than this.

Well done, TT Games. Now go make LEGO Spider-Man. {Pranger’s Note: Or LEGO Dragon Ball Z!]

All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night, in the dusty recesses of their mind, wake in the day to find that it was vanity.

But the dreamers of the day, are dangerous men, for they may act out their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.

This. I did.

T.E. Lawrence (1888-1935)

Two years ago, Naughtydog’s Uncharted 2 Among Thieves set a new golden standard for the Triple A Market, wowing critics and fans alike with its griping story, enthralling characters, phenomenal writing, and the absolute best production values in the business. It would go on to win a total of 32 Game of the Year Awards. As a super fan of Naughtydog since the hay days of the PS1, I cannot tell you how enthused I was that the company had received the recognition and praise it worked 14 years and 10 games to achieve. So of course, once the festivities of the 2009 award ceremonies died down, Naughtydog realized they had their work seriously cut out for them. So off they went to do everything in their power to make their third installment, Uncharted 3 Drake’s Deception, live up to every last bit of hype they received.

Drake’s Deception begins with Nathan Drake exploring the mysteries behind his latent ancestor, Sir Francis Drake, and his questionably long six month expedition across the East Indies. As the title suggests, Sir Francis deceived history in an attempt to hide his true findings in those six months: a voyage that would ultimately lead to a “Land of immeasurable wealth, destroyed by God for its arrogance.” Not one to let grass grow under his feet, our hero Nate sets out on a voyage to discover clues to this land, the Atlantis of the Sands, located somewhere in the heart of the Rub’ al Khali desert. Aided by his trusted mentor and father figure Victor Sullivan (Sully), Drake follows clues that take him from the back alleys of London, to the ruins of France and Serbia, and even the city of Yehmen, all the while competing against Katherine Marlowe, leader of a highly secret society that’s been hell-bent on discovering the secrets of Ubar for decades and exploiting it for their own pursuit of power and influence.

Before I go any further, I would like to say how much I wish I could sit here and simply review the game by it’s own merits: a masterfully crafted action adventure romp that blends gunplay, melee combat, puzzles, and platforming like a charm, all the while having a complex story with fun characters to go with it. I understand that some fans have been frustrated how so many reviews insist on comparing it to Uncharted 2, and how unfair that may seem. I get that, but at the same time, that’s just the standard this series has set for itself. Asking us not to compare this to Uncharted 2 would be like asking movie critics not to compare Chris Nolan’s 3rd up-coming Batman movie to The Dark Knight. Ain’t gonna happen.

What this means is that at least 90% of Uncharted 3’s biggest highlights are things that I already knew the game would have a year before I bought it midnight of its opening day. Voice Acting and Mo-cap work: No competition. Story: Epic in scale. Writing: Laugh out loud funny. Set pieces: Huge. Graphics: Honest to god, the best looking game I have ever seen, with cut scenes and gameplay flowing seamlessly with no load times in between.

I’d be lying if I said that Uncharted 3 didn’t add anything new from its previous installments. In fact, the very first chapter of the game is a bar room brawl, and it is specifically crafted to introduce the game’s revamped melee system, which has evolved in ways to make each encounter a surprise by having Drake interact with his surroundings mid fight and use any object he can find at his disposal. Another small but welcomed technique to weapon combat is the ability to intercept grenades thrown at you and rebound them before they explode.

For roughly the first third of the game, there is a much more significant emphasis on puzzles, which were actually very minimal and solved simply by looking in your journal in Uncharted 2. This time, they are a tad more clever than that, and while your journal will give you hints, they won’t just hand you the answer.

Character wise, while there are a few new faces, both good and bad, this is definitely a journey for our long-time heroes. Drake and Sully’s coveted bromance takes center stage with Elena filling in a very solid B-Plot. These three take up the bulk of the emotional depth in this game. Chloe, who was really big in Uncharted 2, shows up for a bit of fan service, but besides showing off that she no longer has that awkward green gleam in her eyes, she is more or less there to be the linchpin that connects Drake and co. to the late yet much appreciated addition to the cast, her [new] boyfriend, Charlie Cutter.

The one thing about this series that I’m no longer able to overlook is how often I repeatedly run into the same ten enemy models. Course, this isn’t different from any other game out there (hell, there is probably more enemy models in this game than half a dozen other shooters out there), but because of the amount of detail and life Uncharted breaths into their main and supporting cast, it makes the clone army I’m fighting look all the more uncanny. One case in particular involves this massive brute guy that I engage in Hand-to-Hand like five times within the course of the game. And it’s literally the same model every time, (with the exception of once when he’s wearing a turban). I suspended my disbelief by convincing myself that he was the exact same guy every time, and he just keeps coming back for rematches. I named him Tiny.

Little things like that, or the very few gaming glitches like when I roll with the circle button when I want to take cover, are pretty petty in the long run, are not really the problem here. What’s really wrong is that the heart that propels this game beyond greatness -as much as it pains me to use this cliché- is two years in the past. There are some truly epic action set pieces in this game: an escape from a burning building, jumping a plane, blowing up said plane, and a horseback ride chase after a convoy. While I’m not trying to say they are carbon copies of what happened in Among Thieves, they still feel like spiritual throwbacks to many of the things we did back then. Ironically enough, the one sequence of Drake’s Deception that actually does feel completely unique to anything we did before –that being the whole shipyard/battle on the waning cruse ship/escape the sinking ship quickly filling with water sequence- is the one part of the game that feels the most detached from the rest of the plot, meaning that this whole sequence could have been easily cut from the campaign, and we the players would have been none the wiser.

And therein leads me to the plot. Drake’s Deception begins with a lot of promise, setting itself up to be the biggest most highest stake plot of the series. Drakes ring is the key that leads to the city of Ubar. We see how Nate out-stole the ring against Marlowe’s society as a child, and in the process left both himself and her in a stalemate that has lasted twenty years. We also get to see how Sully jumped Marlowe’s ship in order to stick his neck out for a young Nathan, betting all his cards on this raw talented kid who would grow up to be not only his greatest disciple, but his best friend. Not only that, there is a darker sense of omission in this adventure. All the clues lead to the conclusion that Sir Francis did not want this secret of this city to be let out, and how there is probably a very good reason why he lied about what he saw. Elena tries so hard to point this out to Nate, yet his own need for the truth and lust for adventure won’t allow him to let go. To top it all off, we get to see Nate in his most vulnerable state ever, as his adversaries this time bring up the one thing that can really strike fear into Drake’s heart.

These are all epic, out there, big idea stuff, and they are exactly what we wanted to see in a third [possibly final] installment to Uncharted (PSVita spinoff not whistanding).

If only they were handled properly.

To begin, the villains, while being inherently and conceptually more interesting than the foes of the past two games, get very little time to fully develop and express themselves. The secret society Kate is a part of turns out to be centuries old, dating all the way back to the Elizabethan era. It all began as a covert group of spies working under the Queen, and of which one of their highest ranking officers was in fact sir-named “Marlow.” So there could be a really neat parallel between both Nate and Kate following the shadows of their supposed ancestors, the problem is that all that stuff I just mentioned never actually plays out in the game. I had to look it up.

Second is Kate’s lieutenant Talbot. From the get go, he is set up to be this badass that can be more than a match for Drake. He’s strong, resourceful, he’s quick and clever, and does a damn good job at one-upping our protagonist at every corner. Yet I can’t tell you for the life of me what his motive is in all this. For perspective, let’s compare him to the side villains of the last two games. Navarro from Drake’s Fortune started off seeming like any other hired gun, yet all along was a very crafty guy bidding his time. He waited for the absolute perfect opportune moment to betray Roman, pop a cap in his head, and make off with El Dorado all to himself.

“I am the only person on this Island who knows what the hell he is doing.”

Flynn from Among Thieves, however, was a complete moron only in it for the perks, and found himself stuck working under Lezarevic out of fear rather than any loyalty.

“Beats working against him, love.”

Then you have Talbot, who is not only very crafty and intelligent, but is still deathly loyal to Marlow, and we never find out why. Time and time again he shows that he would be perfectly capable of finding the city of Ubar all on his own. Where does Talbot’s loyalty to Kate come from? Is there a deeper connection between the two? Does he just have a strong sense of honor? I want to know these things. Also, what’s up with that special toxin of his that allows him to drug people and manipulate them? Where the hell did he get that kind of weapon, and why is it so similar to another toxin that’s found in Ubar?

Big Spoilers from this point onward. To avoid them, skip ahead to the next highlighted area…

The final two chapters of the game, when Nate and Sully finally reach Ubar/Iram of the Pillars/Atlantis of the Sands/Land that has WAY TOO MANY NAMES, that part in particular feels especially rushed. Unlike the Shambala section at the end of Among Thieves, I didn’t really feel like I got the chance to explore this land to its potential. Throughout the game, we get hints that Drake’s one big fear is this foreboding sense of isolation that plagued him as a child before he met Sully. Hypocritically, he abandons his attachment to Elena because his obsession with Francis Drake and this ring comes from his need for a sense of belonging and purpose in the world, when in reality, he may not really be his ancestor at all (yet another interpretation of where the Deception in the title comes from).

All these things are brought up toward the final moments of Drake’s Deception. There is a point when we are lead to believe that Sully is killed by Talbot and Drake’s fear of isolation is realized. The following gameplay really hits that aforementioned fear home and there is a real sense of anguish and distress… but then it disappointingly fizzles out after only 10-20 minutes as Sully abruptly shows back up in the picture and we find out that it was a fear inducing toxin in the spring water that caused Drake to temporarily hallucinate. Why didn’t they keep going with that? Those fire demons that Drake saw in that state were freaking awesome, and I thought a fire demon version of Talbot would show up and we’d have this big epic boss fight. Why did they have to end that development so abruptly? There eventually is a real final confrontation with Talbot, and while it is indeed visually satisfying, it just doesn’t live up to anywhere my imagination was taking me fifteen minutes prior.

To the game’s credit, I did appreciate the one element in the end where Drake does finally overcome this incessant need to follow in his supposed ancestor’s footsteps and is able to let the ring go, and how he finally realizes what a strong companionship he has in Elena.

End of Spoilers.

If this is starting to sound like a “Bad Games That Should Have Been Great” kind of review, please keep note that wasn’t my intention, and it most certainly isn’t the case. It’s more like a “Great Game That Should Have Been Legendary,” kind of deal. Naughtydog overshot themselves almost too far this time. One very reasonable solution is that the game should have been given a longer development cycle (it certainly deserved it.) Not only would it have allowed Naughtydog to take their time and really nail the strongest aspects of this game, it would have given us the fans more time to let go of our predisposed feelings for Uncharted 2, which was still way too fresh in our minds. If given another year, we’d be less anticipating something that would be the successor of Uncharted 2, and simply be more excited to see another Uncharted game entirely. I’m not quite sure if whether it was Sony pushing to get the game out in just under two years, or Naughtydog simply being way too ambitious for their own good, either way, the early release may not have been the best decision.

In retrospective, this is not much different from the results of the Naughtydog’s two previous trilogies. (Crash Bandicoot on the PS1 and Jak on the PS2.) In all three series, the first installment establishes a world and shows what the technology of the console is capable of. The second installment takes that world and the tech that surrounds it to its utmost potential and reinvigorates the entire genre of that generation. And the third installment is a technological marvel that adds maybe a few cool things to the already successful formula, but lacks a bit in the overall awe factor that preceded it.

So, to bring this review back to the metaphor I established at the beginning, no, Naughtydog did not manage to cross the desert that was this game’s hype. If given more time to prepare, they may have had a chance. As it was, they jumped in far too anxiously and got way more sand than they bargained for. But you know what? They still got pretty damn far, even if they didn’t make it all the way. And the best part is they managed to survive this ordeal, and live to make another game. Like Jak 4. Please please please make Jak 4.

Also, if anyone tells you Uncharted 3 Drake’s Deception is a rip-off of Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, tell them to shut up. Just because both stories have flashbacks to the hero’s childhood in his midteens, and there’s a fight on a rocking boat with crazy huge tides, and they find a clue inside a crusader’s coffin, and they escape a burning building, and they get tied up, and there’s a foreign friend that gives them horses so they can chase after a convoy to rescue a certain character who then goes on to die anyway but not really and then they all run for their lives out of a collapsing temple as the foreign friend shows up with the horses that they ride off on during the end of the adventure DOES NOT MAKE THEM EXACTLY THE SAME. Does The Last Crusade have online co-op where you and your friends fight off clowns? I think not.

[Sigh.] That was fun. But seriously, play this game.

For reference, Batman is my excitement level, and the face being kicked is any face within flying kick radius.

I reviewed Arkham Asylum way back when it came out and loved everything about it, utterly devouring the game to the point that there isn’t a single thing left for me to do. However, I didn’t purchase the game. Rather, all of that love was feasible within a two-week period borrowing from my friend Other Chris. A whole new precedence has been set with Arkham City, causing a lot of firsts for me.

In the entire time I’ve owned an Xbox 360, I’ve never once purchased a game Day One. For that matter, I haven’t purchased an Xbox 360 game for full price and certainly haven’t pre-ordered any with the intent of snagging some pre-order bonuses. Arkham City made one heck of an exception as I not only pre-ordered the title (from Best Buy so that I could unlock Robin in the Challenge Maps), I went ahead and picked up my copy at a midnight release. For the past week I’ve been staying up at least two hours past when I should be asleep, all because I can’t get enough of it.

The plot is rather intriguing. Last time we saw Batman, he was on the receiving end of one of the Joker’s biggest schemes, resulting in an asylum-wide breakout that caused some pretty great twists. This time, Batman is thrown into another prison, the massive Arkham City, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear when you first start out. However, the most Batman-lore we really had the chance to experience from the previous game was through the Joker and Harley Quinn, Bane, Killer Croc, and The Scarecrow. The Riddler was there, somewhat, but other than that the most we got were little hints at the rest of the world.

For reference, Batman represents Batman here, and Catwoman represents my desire to let Batman have his way with me.

Things are vastly different this time as Catwoman appears right away, along with Two-Face. The Big Bad orchestrating the overarching plot is Hugo Strange, a rather fascinating choice since I know nothing about the character despite reading my fair share of Batman. The Joker and Harley return, but the revolving door of standout characters is just wonderful. Mr. Freeze, The Penguin, heck, even Calendar Man, all show up and blow me away with their voice acting and character depth.

Before going all crazy for the combat (which I’m about to gush over to the point of having a Batgasm), I need to stop and address the quality of voice acting. Kevin Conroy reprises his role as The Caped Crusader, reminding me why he’s my favorite Batman in any form. Grey DeLisle’s Catwoman has been one of the best parts of the game for me, as is Danny Jacobs’ chilling performance as Zsasz and Wally Wingert’s ever-present Riddler, but we all know the star of the show is Mark Hamill in his (supposedly) very last performance as The Joker. Half the time The Joker isn’t even interacting with Batman directly- you’ll just get voicemails from him as he talks about how Batman never picks up when he calls- but it’s so good that you may begin to fear that some other part of the game has to be lacking with voice acting that’s so Top Shelf.

For reference, The Joker here represents my crazy uncle and, um, I forget, but Mark Hamill wins Joker.

Thankfully, there isn’t a single area that’s feeling under appreciated. Rocksteady claims that the open area of Arkham City is 5 times larger than Arkham Asylum, and after Batmaning around for a while I can just about confirm this. It isn’t the largest overworld ever, but you’ll never feel claustrophobic and there are so many things to do in the space that you won’t have time to look around. Most of the time you’ll intend to quickly head from one side of the map to the other, only to get sidetracked a half-dozen times by Riddler Trophies, side missions, and the unquenchable urge to dive down in the middle of a crowd of thug and start brawling.

Batman returns with all his signature moves from Arkham Asylum’s combat system, probably my single favorite combat engine ever. When a fight starts, Batman transitions into freeflow combat with one button attacking and one button countering. Oh, and a jump button, a stun button, a Baterang button, a Bat Claw button, an electric shock button, an explosive gel button, a series of brutal takedown buttons, and I think a freeze grenade as well? I can’t remember; there’s just so much to keep track of.

The game seems to know you'll want to try out all your moves, so it throws exactly one Bat-ton of fist-fodder your way.

The only downside to the combat system’s kitchen sink approach is that you will forget how to do half of the things the game teaches you, or just won’t find any use once you find some simple habits that get you through all altercations. Still, I greatly prefer the option to have more rather than less, so much so that I’ve been spending more time playing the Challenge Maps than the game’s story mode, though I have to continually go back when I’ve completed all available maps and need to unlock more in the story. Part of it helps that I have both Catwoman and Robin downloaded for Challenge Maps, but your mileage on bonus characters may vary.

To address the choice of Catwoman being unlocked in the game only if you either purchase new or pay $10 online, I’m more than happy she’s included. If you have the option to get Arkham City new, or used from Game Stop since they’ve been putting her codes in anyway, absolutely do it. She plays slightly differently from Batman, and so far I’ve only had a chance to play through two or her four story missions, but I’ve also found that this is my favorite version of Catwoman now, partly due to the costume and partly due to just wanting to play as Catwoman in a legitimately good game.

That phrase “my favorite” may be cropping up a lot, but it’s the best way to describe things here. Even the points where I have to slow down and go into Predator mode to silently take out a room full of armed thugs don’t bother me much, mostly because the further you go through the game, the more options you unlock to take criminals out. Bored of Silent Takedowns? Try locking a guard’s gun from firing and causally walk up to him as he panics. There’s just so much variety that it’s hard to get bored.

For reference, GO BUY THIS GAME.

And that’s the overall theme of the game. There’s so much to do that it’s difficult to find a point where you’ll get cheated. Even if you don’t feel like advancing the game’s plot, there are Riddler Trophies, Joker Balloons, security cameras, interesting side quests, character bios, Challenge Maps, and a whole separate part of the game with Catwoman. Plus I hear that Nightwing is showing up on November 1st? I’m sold. Again.

I can’t say enough nice things about Arkham City. The game is as close to perfection as I feel it ever needs to strive for, proven by my giddy interest levels staying at their peak for over a week now even after playing every chance I get. There’s no need for a score here as the score is “Batman.” Go buy Arkham City- buy it new even- and you’ll thank me.

And oh snaps, I just got Dark Souls from Other Chris today! Looks like I’ve got a lot more torment in my future!

• 2006: Resistance: Fall of Man
• 2007: Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction
• 2008: Resistance 2, AND the downloadable Ratchet and Clank Future: Quest for Booty
• 2009: Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time

2010 Was the first time in five years the company took a break, but then they made up for that by releasing two full-length games in 2011. This September, we saw the release of Resistance 3, a more than superb capper to a surprisingly unique trilogy of shooters, and now, Ratchet and Clank All 4 One releases along side the already raved-about Batman Arkham City as something more suiting for a younger, more casual audience. A ballsy move to be sure. Can this series’ timeless charm and consistently high quality keep it in the running against such a juggernaut of a contender?

Now I’m going to be perfectly honest here, I love the Ratchet and Clank series. Just about every single entry thus far (save for maybe Deadlocked) has been a perfect combination of platforming, shooting, exploration, wonderfully refreshing writing, memorable characters, and the most unique library of weapons in all of video games, bar none. Likewise for the series’ latest installment, 2009’s A Crack In Time. In fact, I loved that game so much and how well it concluded the R&C Future Trilogy that I would have been perfectly fine with that being the very last game of the series. And as All 4 One begins, it almost sounds like Ratchet himself agrees with me.

It all starts with our Lombax hero and his diminutive robot partner Clank confessing their retirement from the hero business, leaving matters concerning the still-at-large Dr. Nefarious in the hands of Solana Galaxy’s newly elected president. Unfortunately, said president happens to be our very own inept super hero, Copernicus Quark (don’t ask how he got elected, I really couldn’t tell you), and wouldn’t you know it, it doesn’t take long for him to botcher things up and lead himself, our long time heroes, and their greatest adversary, all to get captured, dragged to a galaxy far from anywhere any of them have ever been, surrounded by creatures unlike any they have ever witnessed, forced to band together against a force unlike any they have ever… well you get the point.

The first thing people should know about this game is that it is an unusual derail from the original Ratchet and Clank’s single player adventure formula. All 4 One was built from the ground up as a 4-player Co-Op Platformer, and the gameplay is made to take advantage of that new game type. You and one to three friends take on the roles of Ratchet, Clank, Quark, and/or Nefarious to uncover the secrets behind this whole new Galaxy that’s being converted into a breeding ground for giant alien monsters.

After playing through a good chunk of the game myself, I can say that the co-op aspect of this game works very well. Battles and puzzles are made to take advantage of multiple players working together. You can play with others either offline or online, but seeing as entering a game already in process means your partners have to reboot to the most recent previous checkpoint, that can get a little cumbersome, so I didn’t bother much with that. No, this is a party game in the works, and playing with your buddies in the same room is where it’s at. I played with just one of my friends, with another watching on the sidelines, and that alone was a lot of laughs. There is a very simple joy that comes from combining weapon attacks for an extra powerful blast.

The weapons themselves, while nothing new, come in a very wide variety. Among them you have your classic automatic combustor, grenade launcher, rocket launcher, fire ice and electric guns, a highly dedicated miniature assist mecha named Mr. Zurkon, and not to mention the welcomed return of the critter creator (it turns your enemies into pigs. No joke). In addition, each individual character has one unique weapon all their own, though they all seem to be various forms of defense mechanisms. For instance, Ratchet gets a decoy gadget that allows him to drop targets that divert enemy attacks, while Dr. Nefarious has a cloaking devise that will turn him invisible so he can sneak-attack enemies from behind.

Then there is a whole slew of assist gadgets used to help you traverse the vast platforming realms. These include items like the grappling hook used to tether onto fellow players as you swing across chasms, while another one of the more frequent items is the vacuum gun, which will allow you to pick up your partners and throw them off cliffs to their death launch them across distances normally unreachable.

It’s only funny until Clank takes advantage of Quark’s trust and drops his conceited green butt down a hive of tetramites. Then it’s hilarious.

While I appreciate the franchise for taking risks and trying something new with it’s formula, All 4 One does have some serious missteps that are sure to turn off the more hardcore dedicated fans of the series, first being the weapon upgrade system. In previous games, weapons leveled up with use and experience, whereas in this game, all ammo and power upgrades are collected through purchase. What this means is that players are no longer encouraged to cycle through each of their weapons like they were before. Players can simply spend all their money upgrading one or two of their weapons, and that is all they will ever need.

The second problem is a little more generic. Every aspect of the game seems to be toned down for a younger audience. There are instructions for the simplest of tasks, such as what health boxes look like. Many of the quote/unquote “puzzle sections” are so easy that they are hardly puzzles at all. Then there is the writing. While not bad, and it does have funny moments, when put side-by-side with the series’ edgy, unique, and brilliant origins, the dialogue here feels disappointingly mild.

The best way to sum up All 4 One is that it is the Post-Trilogy-Party Game. A good example would be when Naughty Dog completed their third Crash Bandicoot game on the PS1, then decided to make their fourth game a kart racer, Crash Team Racing. Naughty Dog then went on to follow that same formula with their Jak series on the PS2. To a certain extent, Insomniac attempted this formula on the PS2 as well, following their first three Ratchet and Clank games with Ratchet Deadlocked, an ill-fated response to the rise in popularity of online competitive multiplayer. Is All 4 One as much of a let down as Deadlocked? Not entirely, but it does share a similar stigma of being the slump after a perfectly satisfying climax with their prior installment.

Despite the game’s faults, my friends and I still had a blast with this game. The co-op platforming and shooting sections work like a charm. There are also plenty of additional gameplay types like jet-packing and rail-grinding challenges to break up the monotony and keep the game fresh. The campaign itself is quite lengthy, so there is plenty of content to keep you and your friends busy competing for who can snatch the most bolts for some time.

If you have kids with a PS3 and are looking for a good gift this Christmas, you can’t do much better than All 4 One. If you are a series regular, level your expectations accordingly, grab a friend (or two or three), and take a load off. If you’re new to the Ratchet and Clank franchise, might I suggest opting out of this installment and starting with either Tools of Destruction, or if you have a PS2, go out and find copies of the second and third installments, Going Commando and Up Your Arsenal.

Seriously, do Ratchet and Clank games have the greatest sub-titles or what?

However, I am in no way against re-releasing the God of War spinoff games from the PSP to a platform I actually have. And that is exactly what we got with one of the PS3’s latest combo packs, The God of War Origins Collection.

To clarify, this collection contains the two PSP God of War games known as Chains of Olympus (2008) and Ghost of Sparta (2010). These games were made, not by Santa Monica, but by Ready at Dawn Studios, who made their debut to the industry with a frequently well-received PSP platformer, Daxter (2006), of which also happened to be a handheld spinoff of another popular PS2 franchise at the time. Formalities aside, rest assured the developers have stayed true and blue to the series’ roots, as the controls are roughly one button press away from being exact replicas of any of the three console games. Even more so for the Collection, as they have accommodated for the controller’s second analog stick to apply for Kratos’ rolling dodge move. (Originally done on the handheld by holding both shoulder buttons and then moving.)

Likewise can be said for the gameplay itself, which follows the exact same ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it formula from every other game in the series: bloody fight, solve a puzzle, bloody fight, platforming, bloody fight, sex minigame, bloodier boss fight, cue Linda Hunt Oscar-winning narration, repeat. Not to say that this is bad by any means, it just means there is very little to be had as far as real surprises go. Sure we run into a few new classic Greek creatures and characters: a Basilisk, Scylla, a Persian army, Charon, King Midas, even the grunt fighters, the satyrs, seem more quicker and lethal than normal. But none of these fights come close to being as gripping as the opening Hydra battle in the first God of War, or as mind warping and elaborate as the battle with the Sisters of Fate in God of War II.

When these games first released, I did not think there would be much of a story to them. The first God of War had an excellent story, God of War 2 and 3, however, at their bare bones, combine to be an elongated revenge tale for a guy who ceases to be sympathetic at all. I assumed the PSP games, seeing as they had to fit stories in-between games that already existed, they would just be something simple and generic to serve as an excuse for fans to get their hack-n-slash fix on a handheld. I am very please to say that was a mistake. The origin stories of these games, even more than the familiar gameplay, should be the real selling point. They fit excellently within the continuity of the console games and, oddly enough, are the moments where Kratos feels the most fleshed out and human he’s ever been.

Chains of Olympus

Chains of Olympus is a prequel to the first God of War, taking place sometime during Kratos’ ten-year service to the gods to atone for his sins. Still believing they will get rid of his nightmares, he answers the call of the gods when he witnesses first-hand the sun plummet from the sky. Helios the sun god has been taken deep under the earth, and the rest of the world, even the other gods, are all falling into a deep slumber at the hands of the dream god Morpheus.

There are two things the plot of Chains of Olympus does really well. First, there are a couple unexplained plot elements from the console games…

• The Titan Atlas blaming Kratos for his sentence to carry the earth on his shoulders. (GoW2)
• Hades accusing Kratos for the murder of his queen, Persephone. (GoW3)
• Helios offering Kratos repayment for rescuing him in exchange to spare his life. (Also GoW3)

…all of which get explained in the climax of this game.

The second thing is, as I said earlier, we get to see Kratos in probably his most vulnerable state yet. At this point in the story, he is still extremely guilt ridden for the crimes he committed against his family. So when the Queen of the Underworld offers him a chance to live in Elysium with his daughter Calliope at the cost of relinquishing all his weapons, he takes it in a heartbeat, in complete disregard to what Persephone’s motives behind said gesture may be.

If it’s not already obvious yet, Persephone is the puppeteer behind everything in Chains of Olympus. Not only that, she is probably the series’ most sympathetic main villain. Her back-story is glossed over in the game, but she doesn’t need much more than that, because we’ve all heard her tragic tale ever since we first read it in middle school. (Or was I the only one paying attention?)

Ghost of Sparta

Moving onto the second game, Ghost of Sparta is a prequel to God of War II. Upon defeating Ares, Kratos has been appointed as the new God of War. While the Gods refused to rid the nightmares about his wife and daughter, Kratos turns his focus on other demons of his past the games have yet to bring up. In his youth, Kratos had a younger brother named Deimos whom he failed to protect and was taken away from him. Kratos, still believing his brother to be alive, seeks answers at the Temple of Poseidon in the city of Atlantis. There he learns of his brother’s imprisonment in a purgatory guarded by the god of death, Thanatos.

While the inclusion of Kratos having a long lost brother may seem a bit out of nowhere, this was actually one of the very earliest ideas Santa Monica had when first considering plots for a sequel (back when they were directed by David Jaffe). For anyone who owns the original God of War, there is a bonus feature upon beating the game where it plays a little teaser comic that essentially highlighted what then “could” have been a possible plot to a sequel, but is now a very real plot to the sequel’s prequel (confused yet?). Another speculated plot development from way back that crops up is the inclusion of Kratos’ mother Callisto, who finally confirms to her son that his father is in fact the king of the gods. Zeus, of course, had forbidden her from ever revealing the truth to him, and by doing so, she is cursed, and turns into a… um… well… this.

One of the most fascinating things about Kratos is how his story is literally worn on his character design. His ghostly white skin, the chains wielded to his arms, the stab wound in his abdomen, his golden fleece, all tell stories. Ghost of Sparta continues this trend by showing us both where the scar across his right eye came from, as well as the symbolism behind the red tattoo across the left side of his face and chest.

At this point I realized I have already spoiled quite a bit of the game’s opening. I won’t give away any more, though I will say that looking back at it, Ghost of Sparta is probably what the plot of God of War II should have been. It makes Kratos’ anger and hate for the gods, specifically Zeus, a lot more justified, and then they could have saved the “revenge against Zeus” plot strictly for God of War III.

If there were any problems I ran into these games, it’s that there were a few random load times. I don’t know if the portable versions were like that, or if this was a result of remastering all these images for colossal HD televisions. Either way, it is a very minor complaint that isn’t too distracting and would only happen during lulls in the action when progressing from one area to another.

All said and done, I must say I did enjoy Ghost of Sparta slightly more than Chains of Olympus. There is a bit of a graphical upgrade, and while both games do sport plenty of the same old “been there, done that” combat, Ghost of Sparta did take place in an active volcano for a chunk of its game, and as such there were a couple really fast pace run/jump/climb/swing race-against-time sequences. Of all the new weapons and power-ups, I really enjoyed the Arms of Sparta (a classic spear and shield combination).

For not being the original developers, Ready At Dawn have crafted two competent and perfectly serviceable additions to the franchise. If you had fun with the other God of War games, I’d definitely say this collection is worth a play through. Length wise, Chains of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta are roughly 4-5 hours each, which combines to be the length of any one of the console games. As always, it makes an excellent rental game.

And while I did say the franchise is best laid to rest and for Sony and Santa Monica to move onto something new, I would not be completely against the idea of Ready At Dawn making maybe one more installment for the Play Station Vita.

But that’s it! No more after that!

You have probably heard the basic premise of Rockstar’s latest interactive movie-game: As L.A.P.D. detective Cole Phelps, you sleuth and gumshoe your way around golden age Los Angeles, solving crimes, leaning on witnesses, chasing down hoods, and rising the ranks. And yes, you probably heard about the astonishing new facial graphics by Team Bondi and how this new feature is vital to ferreting out lies and leads for your investigations.

And there will naturally be many lies to ferret out.

But where did Rockstar cut corners? Well, in the same places as usual, I’m afraid. Let’s break it down in categories:

Story

A game’s immersive tale is always where I start. Contrary to popular belief, the story is what should make a game most interactive. And since this is the game that boasts Hollywood-worthy scripting and performance, one would expect the story to shine.

It wasn’t spectacular. Someone in charge of the narrative could not decide between one-shot episodes (revolving around individual crimes) or an ongoing plot involving corruption and intrigue. So, they decided to weave the two together by forcing macguffins, shoehorning in some split-second character development, and outright stealing devices from a rather good movie called L.A. Confidential.

I never got the chance to grow attached to Cole Phelps because I saw no real development. Oh, and Rockstar should really cut back on a very obvious crutch of theirs (MINOR SPOILERS HERE, PEOPLE. CUT TO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH TO AVOID): When the main character has run out of steam, has been sidetracked, or just can’t continue, Rockstar simply shifts the hapless player over to another lead character. In Red Dead Redemption, John Marston died in a hail of gunfire, so we had to play as his braying ass of a son for the remainder of the game. Now, in L.A. Noire, Phelps is booted to the low-ranking Arson Desk in order to keep him away from a conspiracy. This is a good twist in the game that is wasted when the player must start playing as Jack Kelso, mere insurance investigator and all-around piss-pot. Sorry, but if the story can’t be contained to one playable character, change it. I don’t want to trade in my shiny new detective just when I got used to him, especially if I’m getting a backfiring Volvo in return.

Do you want me to like this guy or not?

Another lazy and unnecessary inclusion to the story is the cutscene of every victim getting stalked and killed before I get my investigation. This caused me to roll my eyes and mutter to myself like a real homicide detective, “Well, now I know the killer is a man of small to medium build and I know what the weapon was and the time of day she was killed. Thanks, cutscene. I thought I was gonna hafta search for clues, or some such crap.” This wouldn’t be so bad if the game was mainly a shooter, but the investigation stories are the driving focus, so I feel cheated by simple laziness.

To summarize (after all, I could write an entire article about this dense of a story), I found the individual cases exciting and immersive enough to keep playing. I was very disappointed with the over-arching plot. So, I’ll call it a draw, no points for or against.

Graphics

Everyone loved the Team Bondi facial graphics in this game. They were new, impressive, and actually used with a purpose. Big thumbs up from me. I just wish the rest of the graphics could have gotten the same care and attention. When I played long enough, it didn’t seem to distract me, but right away I felt jarred by the photo-realism of actors’ faces superimposed on very stiff, garden variety motion-capture bodies. It was like taking an episode of The Sopranos from the necks up and layering it on top of the graphics from Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, which wasn’t bad at all but does seem lazy by comparison.

And someone is always yelling for some reason. No one is ever happy.

The city looks very specifically textured and appropriately active. NPCs in the street are dynamic and independent of the player and car damage is very specific. I can’t help but mention that all of this was very impressive three years ago when Grand Theft Auto IV came out, and this new game was probably easier to accomplish the same goal because of the pastel coloration, smaller virtual community, and less-detailed scenery.

One small note, and I’m not even sure this belongs in graphics discussion, but here it goes: When Cole gets into a fight, or a chase, or some situation where a man’s fedora would be knocked off his melon, it happens. Cole loses his hat and it looks so realistic and natural that it helps to sell the realism of this pulp novel. When it first happened, I got concerned that I lost my hat permanently and that the game had glitched. Then I walked up to my hat, helplessly, and Cole simply picked it up and plopped it back on his head. This doesn’t sound very remarkable, I know, but it was a simple detail that scored faith points from me as a player. I could rest easy knowing that my ever-present fedora could be swept away but would realistically return to me. And this didn’t happen in a static animation complete with a scripted one-liner. I very fluidly controlled Cole through the whole process of walking over, picking up the hat, and putting it back on. Sometimes it really is the little things.

I thought the majority of the graphics were good, but not great. The facial graphics won me over, though, and just like in hockey, the hat trick earns respect. That’s a big plus one for L.A. Noire.

Gameplay

Ooooh, boy. This was the big discussion for me. This game had great “investigation” devices like free-roaming the location for clues, referring to evidence to trap a suspect in a lie, and the notebook menu worked seamlessly to help me along without giving me the answer completely. There were problems: clues were too easy to find thanks to controller-vibrations when I walked over one. The interrogations had ambiguous choices for me to make (I decide to believe the statement, doubt it, or call it out as a lie. But what if I believe the statement is partially true? Should I believe it, or doubt it?). To be frank, I’ve played very similar games that handled the investigation gameplay better, but with shoddy graphics. But a Rockstar game has to be taken more seriously by gamers than a CSI or Law and Order game. Sad.

Whoa, close one, they almost didn't find a way to get guns involved in this one everywhere.

L.A. Noire isn’t just a mystery puzzle, though. Here lies the rub, bub. There are also car chases, foot chases, shootouts, and stealthy games of cat and mouse. And all of these are just plain mediocre. Shooting is the same Rage engine third-person affair with a bollocks cover system. Yep, same from GTA IV, same from Red Dead. Driving gameplay was clearly the lowest priority, which sucks so hard considering the gargantuan amount of driving that is required. All cars in the game maneuver too sensitively and are top-heavy. Traffic in the game is just terrible. In GTA IV, traffic was an obstacle to surmount; in L.A. Noire traffic is a nuisance that gets in your way at ALL times. Not just when it is least convenient (it does that), not just when you are trying to correct a steering error (it does that), but at ALL TIMES. Tailing suspects in stealth mode (both in-car and out) is frustrating. While the Assassin’s Creed games have perfected the blend-in mechanics, L.A. Noire included two useless choices for blending. They are useless because by the time you get into the proper position, your subject is around a corner.

Bottom line, I applaud the developers for trying to seamlessly integrate three or four different game genres into one genre-busting extravaganza. I mourn the fact that L.A. Noire doesn’t bust through genre borders so much as it hitchhikes and limps between them. Four bad fields of gameplay and one decent one do not make a kickass “something-for-everyone.” Additional demerits for recycling from GTA IV gameplay…again. This is a firm stance for me: one point against.

Other Stuff

I’ll just wrap the smaller issues into one focus. The actors’ performances were pretty damn good for a game, aka not very bad for a film. I firmly blame the scriptwriters for Cole wildly switching between mild-mannered and pit bull, and I’d like to see more of Aaron Stanton. Some great stuff came from character actors like Greg Grunberg and Michael McGrady.

I should comment on a few limitations of the software that I found quaint. First off, there are three discs. This game comes on three discs, like a Playstation One game from 1997. More sophisticated games than L.A. Noire can fit on a single disc, so…what gives?

On top of that, the Free Roam mode is splintered into increments based on your progress through the story mode, and these increments happen to be separated by the discs. Did I mention that Free Roam can only be accessed from the main menu, as opposed to the traditional system (always in Free Roam, start a story mission by traveling to the start point)? That kind of takes a player out of the interactive immersion. It’s things like this that kept me from feeling like I was Phelps, or even feeling anything for Phelps.

Speaking of which, glitches and bugs galore! Several times I had to restart an entire investigation because my character just couldn’t run past that idiot bystander who stopped for a smoke. Games can infuriate me, and that’s okay. It just means that the media got an emotional response from me. But when a tech worker gets paid more than I do and his failure to catch a glitch is what infuriates me, we have a consumer-to-producer problem.

I should be looking for clues, not your sloppy gliches.

Final Verdict

Some serious problems with this game could have been easily avoided if only developers could curb their need to make games cinematic with a capital C. If more focus went into L.A. Noire as a game instead of a good marketing trailer, it might be better remembered than it will be. As it stands, what could have been my favorite game yet…isn’t. But for all my bitching, it’s still pretty good.

If we tally up my arbitrary scoring, we get a vague sense that I really liked aspects of this game, even if it didn’t follow through on the implied awesomeness attached. I expect groundbreaking stuff from Rockstar because they bandy about that reputation in between blockbuster games. This game was fun, and I’m glad I played it, but L.A. Noire is not close to groundbreaking. It is more than mundane, but less than thrilling. I say, give it a try. If you aren’t interested by the end of the first two hours, you will not enjoy the rest. Really, it all comes down to a matter of taste.

Want more game reviews? Check these out:

-Lightning and Fire and Ice, Oh My: A Review of InFamous 2

-All Outta Gum: A Review of Duke Nukem Forever

-Sweetly Familiar: A Review of Brink

Short answer: Pretty darn close. Here’s why.

Courtesy, from your ambiguously friendly neighborhood Electric Man.

I will say right now that as I write this review, I have yet to completely finish the game, (nor have I got the chance to explore the user made content, so I won’t be commenting on that). However, I have played at least more than half of my first run of the campaign, and believe I am more than ready to comment on the game’s quality and overall appeal. To begin, veterans of the first game will quickly realize the immense overhaul in the graphic department. On a scale of 1-10, 1 being Pong, and 10 being Uncharted 2, the animations and facial features have gone from a 6 in InFamous to a 9 in Infamous 2. The comic-book style story clips do make a return, however. The game also has some actual cut scenes this time around, which do help create more character depth that just wasn’t possible before.

Speaking of characters, Cole McGrath and Zeke “Jedadia” Dumblar are the only familiar faces, yet both have changed substantially since their last outing (though in different ways). Cole’s got a new voice actor, and thankfully, he no longer sounds like a wannabe Christian Bale Batman/Solid Snake/Rorschach who speaks out of the back of his throat. Fortunately his new voice isn’t too distracting and does fit real nicely with his character. For all of you who threw a hissy fit at Cole’s new makeover which they débuted last year, you can rest easy that Cole has been re-re-modeled to look, more or less, exactly like he did in the first game.

As for Zeke, same voice actor, same overall personality, but last time he was not only completely pointless, but in fact hindered our progress in more ways than one, making him the character everyone was hoping would die in the sequel. This time he’s actually useful and calls you for important stuff, so way to go Sucker Punch for making an obsolete character legit. (As I said, I haven’t played all the way through yet, but if Zeke does end up dyeing at the end of this game now that he’s actually trying to be helpful, that would be a “Sucker Punch” to the face if I ever felt one.)

Now, I may be the only one, but I actually liked a handful of the minor characters from InFamous 1. I was particularly curious what would become of Sasha and Alden (the two supervillians that supposedly didn’t die at the end of the game), and while Moya did annoy me almost more than Zeke did, I was still curious what her next move in tracking you down would be. But sometimes you have to give a little to get a lot. Like they say: Out with the old, and in with the new.

New city, new powers, new Zeke. Good start.

Once again, the plot is made to take advantage of what these games do best: crazy awesome superpowers. After getting his ass kicked and losing all of Empire City to the very monster you were training to destroy, Cole [and Zeke] set out to New Marais to meet with a guy named Wolf, the one responsible for creating the Ray Sphere that gave Cole his powers in the first place. Wolf informs our hero of the blast cores hidden across the city that he can use to enhance his powers so that he’ll be ready for his next confrontation with The Beast. Unfortunately, said blast cores are scattered across the city, heavily guarded by the city Militia, which just so happens to be run by this hick fascist named Bertrand.

The Morality System returns once again, however this time, instead of Cole simply thinking to himself about his options, your options are presented to you in the form of two new characters: Kuo, a former secret agent, and Nix, a city outcast. Cole spends the early portions of the game working back and forth with both women, slowly getting to know each of them, but quickly realizes they have very different ideals, which lead to drastically contrasting ways of handling the Militia and getting the blast cores they need. It won’t be long before you have to choose a side.

How can you not choose the Asian chick? She's so...cool. Oh come on, you were thinking it too.

Whether you choose a certain side based on what kind of powers you want to develop, who you want to work with further, or simply following your own sense of justice, all these different elements are what make the morality system much more interesting this time around. I, being the goody-goody I am, went with Kuo for my first play through and gained a handful of ice abilities that were used in very tactile missions. I got a glimpse of my brother’s game, and he sided with Nix, which gained him fire abilities that were downright devastating. As much as being an asshole (even in simulated form) irritates me, especially when there are more logical, reasonable methods available, I can’t deny that it does look fun to let loose.

The one thing I can say about the duality in this game is it pulls Cole in one of two directions with no middle ground, as the strongest powers can only be used at the highest karma levels at either end of the spectrum. I can see why some people can have a problem with that, as it paints a very black and white outlook on what’s good and what’s evil, yet within the compounds of this game, I think it’s for the best if it keeps this game fun. It also helps that Cole’s character comes out surprisingly consistent either way you pull him.

Ice or Fire? Precision or Destruction? Saint or Psycopath? Choices.

While Sucker Punch has done a lot to improve many of the setbacks from the first game while still keeping all the stuff that was awesome (the story’s dynamic, the characters are wonderful, the town New Marais is far more vibrant and unique than Empire City), there are maybe three glaring nitpicky things I have to comment on. For starters, the game starts off by quickly introducing us to a wide variety of enemies, from the Militia, to these corrupted swamp monsters, and then these burrow digging Ravagers, but it almost feels like the game toots its horn too quickly. The further we get in the game, the fewer new enemies we see, which can cut down the pacing as we zap through the same old guards and monsters to get to the next mission.

Second the camera has occasional freak-outs during high intensive battles. If you’re too reckless when you barrel into a fight, it is very easy to be blindsided as your vision is easily blurred by grenade explosions, rocket launcher explosions, monster sludge, blood, black and white filters, eh, you get the point. Just be careful and know when it gets chaotic, it gets REAL chaotic.

And finally, there are some game glitches I spotted, though very few, like unresponding character sprites getting stuck or missions that wont load. Nothing game breaking, but they do prevent the experience from reaching that level of immersion the developers were seeking.

Still satisfying.

Still, there is so much I love about this game. I love that the power system is far more evolved from last time and gives the player a ton more variety. I love how they created ways to get on top of buildings faster so that I won’t always be climbing. I love how the game encourages completing stunts and side missions to unlock new abilities. I love how the Kinetic Pulse allows me to lift trucks and chuck them at helicopters. I love the new Amp weapon Zeke made for me that makes melee combat awesome. I love how even after I beat the game, I get to go back to play it again and experience a whole new batch of powers.

InFamous 2 is just plain fun. Uncharted 2? Not quite, but definitely in the right direction. Now if you excuse me, I have some more blast cores to find before The Beast shows up again.

Need some games to play this summer? Why not try these:

-Huge Success: A Review of Portal 2

-Get Over Here and Play: A Review of Mortal Kombat (2011)

-Today’s Forecast: Sunny With A Review of Bulletstorm

So much ugly. An indication of things to come?

Gearbox Studios are in a tough spot. Initially, they were applauded for stepping up and fulfilling just about every gamer’s wish to make sure Duke Nukem Forever became something real, tangible, and most importantly playable. For that, we were ready to support them wholeheartedly. Except now we see what they did when everyone was rooting for them. They didn’t make a good game, not even close, but they also didn’t manage to make a bad game that’s so bad it’s worth playing. Rather, they just made a bad game, period.

The single player campaign sees Duke come out of retirement to fight a group of ugly aliens because they’ve stolen all of Earth’s women. Why do the aliens need our women? To inseminate, of course. You will see female residents of the Uncanny Valley get raped for humor’s sake in Duke Nukem Forever. Let me remind you, we supported Gearbox Studios during their time as developers and cried out, “No, Duke Nukem’s not sexist or misogynistic! It’s parody! It’s meant to be a commentary!” Our faith was rewarded with rape jokes. Rape. Jokes. I haven’t facepalmed this hard since Resident Evil 5’s swamp levels.

Boy, we've sure come a long way since our immature past, haven't we?

For a game that’s all-too-comfortable ripping on the big popular FPS titles of our generation (Halo and Call of Duty), it seems to have no problem boggarting game mechanics wholesale, such as regenerating health and the two-guns-only style of modern games. I can’t tell you how disappointed I am with this, both as a gamer who longs for the “good ol’ days” of gaming (health meters and all the guns you can carry), but also as someone who can’t stand smugness. Taking shots at Call of Duty? Fine, I’m totally on board for that. Then proceeding to imitate what you’re mocking? No me gusta.

Other reviewers are going to tell you that the game looks dated. Other reviewers are right. Duke Nukem Forever isn’t the prettiest thing out there, nor is it exactly the worst. Rather, it just looks lazy. Graphics are inconsistent, indicating a lack of polish to the game, an aspect that’s frankly puzzling seeing as the game’s been in development for longer than every current system’s even been out. Who cares if it would have taken another year to get things spotless? We could have waited a while longer if it meant you were going to do your job correctly, Gearbox!

Hey look at that! It's "Not-Halo!"

The biggest feeling I have about Duke Nukem Forever is that of betrayal. Not necessarily by the game itself, or even Gearbox. No, I feel betrayed by the gaming industry itself. Since reappearing at PAX Prime, Duke Nukem Forever was heralded as a fantastic and amazing spectacle to behold. All major gaming sites began devoting any space available to talking about every little PR move Duke Nukem went through, all the while cheering it on and expecting it to be the greatest game that ever was and ever will be. It wasn’t until last week that every game site began doing an about-face and decided that Duke Nukem Forever suddenly wasn’t that good of a thing, game or otherwise. So now I’m sitting here in my living room reading my various favorite game sites and just thinking, “Who do I believe anymore? Do any game sites have any credibility anymore?”

That’s how bad Duke Nukem Forever actually is. It’s called into question all that I believe about video games. I was absolutely ready to go out and buy it Day One, scrounging together any money I had in savings just to get a chance to see what all the hype was about. I’m thankful I was able to abstain as all that’s left is morbid curiosity. I’d even been excited after playing the demo when it was reannounced, but now there’s nothing left to care about.

This is sort of how I feel right now.

If you’re looking for a piece of gaming history, then Duke Nukem Forever is a good place to start. It doesn’t function well as a game, or even an artistic statement, but it does serve to educate anyone why video games aren’t moving past their current maturity level for at least another decade. We asked for this, and now we have to live with it. Forever.

Want more game reviews? Check these out:

-Sweetly Familiar: A Review of Brink

-Rush N Attack and Yar’s Revenge, visiting some old friends

-Huge Success: A Review of Portal 2

Big guy with a chaingun? So far so good.

Brink comes to us from the minds of developer Splash Damage as an FPS that takes a lot of unique elements from a bunch of other games and combines them into something new here. I’m actually really receptive to a game that takes elements from other games as long as it does so in order to bring about a fusion that feels fairly new. Brink is pretty good at taking three distinct games, Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2, and surprisingly Mirror’s Edge, and forming the mashed-up child of the three into one cohesive game. And it somewhat works.

The other half of this equation, the half that pushes me away, is the lack of any sort of real single-player option worth caring about. Why would I purchase a title that is going to require me to pay a subscription fee, at least on the Xbox 360? Stop, I know I’m not the only type of gamer here, but let me explain the faults with the single player game and then with the multiplayer mode.

In terms of a narrative, Brink is set in a future world where you must choose between two factions. One supports this government-run thing called the Ark, the other opposes it and is labeled as the rebels. There is a loose story mode to play through, but to attempt it just by yourself is virtually impossible as your team’s AI is so broken it makes Halo 3’s NPCs look brilliant by comparison (spoiler for those who haven’t played the Halo series: They have some of the worst teammate AI). There is the option to allow online co-op players to drop into the single player mode, thus alleviating the stress, but then it soon becomes exactly what the multiplayer mode is, begging me to ask, “What was the point?”

You'll be too busy capping online opponents to remember that there's a single-player option anyway.

Therefore, skip the single-player option entirely and just stick to multiplayer, which by itself is incredibly fun up to a certain point. That certain point happens to be the laughably low level cap of 20, a goal you can reach in just a few hours of serious play. Once you reach level 20, there’s nothing more for your character to learn and all XP just feels wasted.

You wouldn’t feel so bad wasting that XP if the game hadn’t already done a great job of encouraging you to do everything via the XP system in the first place. You get XP for doing just about anything, including shooting enemy forces, reviving teammates, or even just laying down some suppressing fire. So when this constant rewarding loses all effect, the need to do anything other than shoot everyone also loses some appeal. Would you rather run around healing people or would you rather be the guy dealing the damage?

Even with the low level cap, Brink lets you have such a great time playing around with customizable weapons and character outfits. I really like Brink’s art style as it’s very reminiscent of Borderlands. The characters have a lot of personality and the color scheme is allowed to show all colors instead of just the usual grays and browns. There’s life here amongst the death, and that’s the real draw of Brink. That and the four character classes, leading into that desire to try new things and help wherever possible.

Still, you’ll constantly be on the verge of rage-quitting as some multiplayer objectives show that they aren’t nearly polished enough. At times you’ll discover that the only way to succeed with a mission is to go through one specific path in a level, allowing for the perfect funnel that the enemy will naturally figure out and stand at the end, mowing you down without even trying. Future patches could very well fix a lot of the maps’ flaws, but right now it feels like more time needed to be spent testing the logistics of the objectives alongside the maps.

Then again, adding an element of platforming to an FPS is a step towards convincing me to reconsider the downsides.

As Brink currently stands, I’m disappointed. This isn’t the game that will get me to renew my Xbox Live Gold account, but it sure did try. I hear that the PC version is the best, as the PC version tends to be for team-based games (why do us console gamers hate working as teams?), but the PS3 version is essentially unplayable because of the PSN blackout, though that should be obvious what with the multiplayer game being incapable of going online.

There you have it, that’s my final verdict on Brink. I’d enjoy playing with a friend, but I’m not sold on the final product. Rent it if you’ve got the online account, but until a few patches come down the pipe, it’s a pass. That’s just me (as always). What do you guys think? Is Brink on the list of Must Have titles? Leave a comment and let me know. C’mon, we’ve got to make this online thing work, for the sake of games everywhere!

Want more reviews? Check these out:

-Rush N Attack and Yar’s Revenge, visiting some old friends

-Huge Success: A Review of Portal 2

-Get Over Here and Play: A Review of Mortal Kombat (2011)

Well, so far it still looks like Portal. That's a good sign.

The big change Portal 2 is making over its predecessor is the most simple, and that’s by becoming a stand-alone title rather than just an additive to another game. This aspect, the $60 price tag on the PS3 and Xbox 360 (or $50 on the PC), is what has been motivating a lot of gamers to become insanely frustrated with the amount of content the game itself actually delivers. That said, if you’ve been fine paying top dollar for the usual type of AAA games coming out, the value Portal 2 exudes should feel amazing.

While the first Portal was strictly a single-player adventure through the various rooms of Aperture Science, Portal 2 includes both a single-player adventure and a co-op adventure, and while you may think one is just a copy of the other with a friend, you’d be mistaken. The two are entirely unique, showing that Valve knows how to get the most out of its design team.

When it comes to the single-player story, Chell is back, sadly re-awoken in Aperture Science again and quickly learning that GLaDOS is, yes, still alive. Time to escape once again utilizing the Portal Gun, but new are gels that can change physics, such as a blue gel that allows you to bounce higher and an orange gel that makes you move faster. Very simple additions that the game gets a lot out of.

Sometimes all we really need is a room, a gun that can make portals, and a laser or two.

And that’s Portal 2’s main draw, just like the first title. Instead of making everything about nonstop action, you have to take your time and think about how to get out of the current room, usually through trial-and-error. If you hate having to play a game like that, then just go ahead and skip Portal 2 as it just doesn’t sound like a game you’ll get much enjoyment out of. If, however, you thrive on games such as this, you’ll be rewarded with more of the best writing in the industry as GLaDOS does her thing talking as you work around the challenge rooms and saying hilarious nonsense every step of the way. Seriously, there’s a high chance that you’ll feel the price was justified just to get a chance to hear how good the humor works in Portal 2.

Then there’s the co-op mode where you and a friend play as two Aperture Science robots running through more challenge rooms. The trick here is that one robot has the orange Portal Gun and the other has the blue Portal Gun. This forces you to work together to the best of your abilities to find the room’s solution, all the while getting the chance to experience the game with a friend. There are even controls available to perform such actions as “hug it out” when you just want to share a moment with your partner.

Remember, both of these modes are included in their entirety right out of the box, each half worthy of being its own game, instead paired together for your enjoyment. There is already DLC, but all it consists of is more buddy actions for the co-op robots and other cosmetic (read: unimportant) choices, meaning passing up the option doesn’t hinder your enjoyment of the game one fraction (unless, maybe, you like robots in silly hats).

Portal 2 is the type of game that’s almost too simple to write about. I can blindly guess an aspect to describe a video game and every answer will basically be “Yeah, Portal 2 is great.” Music? Perfect for the atmosphere. Graphics? Fits the style of the game. Controls? Flawless in execution and simple to learn. Only downside is that you may get tired of some of the environments as they do tend to look similar, but even then I can’t find much to dock points on as the whole point of the game is that you’re contained to a science lab the entire time, so of course things are going to look similar.

Robot buddies. You can't beat that, end of review.

All reviewing aside, Portal 2 is the type of game that’s made specifically for people who enjoy video games. This is a treat to everyone who decided they were more comfortable holding a controller in their hands rather than a tennis racket. Go out and give it a shot, or at least play a demo to convince yourself that yes, Portal 2 is worth it. This is one franchise you’ll want to see more of.

Want more game reviews? Check these out:

-Get Over Here and Play: A Review of Mortal Kombat (2011)

-Smartphone gaming kills time, but that’s about it

-Hard To Say, Easy To Appreciate: A Review of Final Fantasy Dissidia 012 [Duodecim]

My clahhange is finding images that aren't overly bloody and gory. I have my work cut out for me.

Mortal Kombat is the perfect definition of a full remake of a classic game. Those familiar with Mortal Kombat 1, 2, and 3 will be pleased to discover that this new title is actually a retelling of the original trilogy, including all the characters and stages, with HD graphics and serious control-balancing. What gets my interested peaked is the story mode, in which the convoluted and somewhat confusing tale is retold with cutscenes in such a way that it’s nearly impossible to get lost.

Why the story mode gets me so excited has to do with my usual feelings towards fighting titles. Fighters surprisingly have some of the best stories in video games with characters that have interesting backstories worthy of their own games, but the fashion that all fighters play out- one match at a time, sometimes in just a tournament format- doesn’t leave the story much room to explain itself, if any. I’m always sad when I can’t get into a fighter purely because of this handicap, so knowing that Mortal Kombat is doing everything in its power to alleviate my frustration is wonderful news to me.

Regardless of story, the winner here comes down to the fighting mechanics. Mortal Kombat games in the past emphasized shock value over strong gameplay, relying more on the novelty of the Fatalities rather than precise controls. At last we have both the shocking gore fused with extremely solid gameplay in the perfect fusion, meaning that you can eat your cake and have it as well. Assuming your cake has blood for frosting. And limbs for candles. And is filled with souls. I’m getting off track. My bad.

Part of the improvement to the gameplay comes in the form of a new super meter on the bottom of the screen. As players perform well, their meter will fill up into three sections. Filling up the first section will allow you to affect your special attacks and make them stronger, filling two sections allows you to break opponent’s combos (which you’ll want to do now that air-juggling has been improved), and filling the meter entirely lets you unleash X-Ray Mode, a game-changing super attack that will steal the show for most players.

Better than a Falcon Punch if you ask me.

In X-Ray Mode, your character will grab their opponent and pulverize them with ridiculously powerful attacks while showing you the physical breakdown via X-Ray of how much damage is being done. For instance, Jax will grab an opponent and break his back over his knee, zooming into their backbone with an X-Ray perspective to let you see the bones break. It’s like adding another Fatality to all the characters, making you want to see every character’s X-Ray Mode attack as well as all their Fatalities. The only drawback I see is that it sort of breaks the believability as characters don’t instantly die from these mini-Fatalities. Baraka stabs characters through the eye socket, but they aren’t dead unless their health meters are chipped away by the end of their attack. Not a deal-breaker by any means, but it’ll make you chuckle. Then again, you’re fighting in an otherworldly tournament in a place called “NeatherRealm,” so realism isn’t where your priorities should lie.

Exclusive to the PS3 version is the inclusion of Kratos as a character. You know, the star of the God of War series, as if you needed a reminder. My initial reaction was to recoil at the sound of Kratos’ name (as we’re not on very good speaking terms right now), but upon seeing how well he fits in with the game itself, everything makes sense. He’s allowed to be overly violent and decapitate opponents in just the way you’d prefer, so his inclusion is great. It is saddening that the Xbox 360 version doesn’t have a special exclusive character, but then again who else besides Kratos can get away with being in Mortal Kombat-levels of violence?

For a fighter, there’s also a ton of extra content to keep you going, most prevalent of these is the Challenge Tower, a series of 300 challenges that range from matches with funky handicaps to all manner of mini-games, such as Test Your Might or a variation of Three-Card Monty with skulls. The purpose of playing through is to win coins that can then be used to purchase concept art, alternate costumes, and new Fatalities for characters. Simply, you’ll have a lot to keep you going.

It'll be seriously difficult to disappoint MK fans with how well this game's been made.

Mortal Kombat is definitely set to please the fans, both as a single-player experience as well as a multiplayer experience. Naturally, this is one of the best titles available for couch play with friends, but the online component is just as rich. In fact, you can even spectate online matches, something that should really be standard in all fighters these days.

Those waiting for a winning Mortal Kombat update, here it is. Pretty much every aspect is running at top efficiency here, allowing you to feel confident in your purchase. Go forth and buy Mortal Kombat with the knowledge that you will be pleased in your choice. Right now though, I need to go brush up on my Fatalities.

Want to read more of our game reviews? Check these out:

-Smartphone gaming kills time, but that’s about it

-Hard To Say, Easy To Appreciate: A Review of Final Fantasy Dissidia 012 [Duodecim]

-Back to Basics: A Review of Pokemon Black and White Versions

I am so ready to let Tyson break my nose again. Bring it!

Fight Night is a series built around an extremely complicated set of controls to master. Each new iteration tries to tweak the controls in such a way to make them more accessible to every new gamer, but they’re still complicated to learn, purely because there isn’t a single other game I can think of that controls like Fight Night games do. You throw punches by flicking the left thumbstick, jabbing by pressing upward, sending hooks by flicking to the side, that sort of thing. I was brought up on Round 3, but the controls have changed drastically since then. This will be an issue for me, but I’ll explain that later.

The big addition here is the story mode, a first for the series but a very welcome first. Besides just playing through a career mode as whomever you want to box as, be they real boxers or someone you made up, the game lets you play through the rise and fall of Andre Bishop. The game begins with you controlling Bishop in a boxing match in prison before tossing you around points of his career to learn how he was framed and tossed in jail and then eventually got out and climbed the ranks of professional fighters once more. This is the selling point for Champion in my book as the story is actually pretty compelling for a boxing story, mostly due to how brutal it actually is with real cursing and corruption, as you’d expect the world of boxing to be.

I was amazed to hear that EA was going to allow one of their sports titles to be rated M, but it really works here. The M rating mostly comes as a result of the language used, but hell, boxers get destroyed in the ring even more devastatingly than they ever have thanks to the graphics getting yet another major kick. Cuts can open in just about any spot on a character’s body and begin bleeding, making the damage appear graphically realistic beyond any previous entry in the Fight Night series. If you’re looking for a game’s graphics to impress you, Fight Night Champion will not disappoint.

Suddenly my desire to get into real boxing has evaporated.

Another place the M rating goes to work is the soundtrack, allowing for mostly unedited versions of the tracks played over the course of the game. The soundtrack is its usual appropriate self with a lot of hip-hop setting the tone very well, but the sound doesn’t just stop at the music. The sound effects for gloves colliding with faces and bodies taking unrelenting punishment sound as glorious and powerful as you’d hope, making every knockout satisfying from a perspective of sound.

Still, the controls have been simplified just a hair since Round 4 and play so much different from Round 3 that if you’re like me and still pop in Round 3 now and again, you’re going to have to relearn the controls all over again, something that may be a pain if all you really want to do is just hop right in and take full advantage of the better graphics and story mode. However, the biggest improvement over all previous titles is the in-between rounds damage recovery. There are no more mini games or points to spend on recovering, instead just recovering your boxer comparable to how well you did in the round, meaning you’ll recover more if you killed in the round and recover less if your face has been turned to ground beef. I couldn’t be happier with that change as it really emphasizes playing well over just learning the healing system better than your opponent.

And that’s the real draw of Fight Night Champion: You get out of it what you put in. If you take the time to learn the controls and practice getting smarter with your strategies, seeking to understand the nuances of the sport, you’re going to get a lot out of the title. Sure, place the difficulty at a lower level and you can flick the thumbstick all over the place and still enjoy yourself, but if you want to see the depth Champion has to offer, give it time and let it grow on you.

You learn the controls, not only do you enjoy the game more but you feel better about yourself, too.

When it comes right down to it, I currently still prefer Round 3 over Champion, but that all has to do with my knowledge of the controls. The addition of the story mode and not having to worry about anything between rounds goes a long way to make me really want Fight Night Champion, but in the end it’s all up to your decision. If you’ve never played a Fight Night game, this is a great one to start with, but if you have Round 3, maybe look me up and we’ll go a few rounds online.

So then, what do you guys think? Who out there is looking to pick up Fight Night Champion? And who feels like passing? Leave a comment and let me know. In the meantime, I have a lot of training to do.

Want more game reviews? Check these out:

-Today’s Forecast: Sunny With a Review of Bulletstorm

-Doing The PS3 Proud:  A Review of Killzone 3

-The Old Is Still New: A Review of Dragon Quest VI

A symphony of destruction. From the creators of Gears of War and Painkiller.

You are Grayson Hunt, the once proud cool-headed leader of Dead Echo; a once proud and proficient black ops team ran by the 26th Century Confederation of Planets. But not any more. Turns out Echo’s boss, General Serrano, (who could only be properly defined with words that are far too inappropriate for Toy-TMA) was using their talents to enforce his own totalitarian brand of peacekeeping on the real good guys; something our guys weren’t too happy to find out. Fast forward ten years later, where Captain Hunt is now a guilt ridden drunk of a space pirate and the most wanted man in the galaxy, and all his Dead Echo buddies are… well… dead mostly, save for one, Ishi Sato. After ramming their ship into the engine of Serrano’s precious flagship Ulysses (the Roman name of the Greek warrior Odysseus) our broken antiheroes (Grey mentally, Ishi physically) find themselves crash landing on the abandon resort planet Stygia. And hilarity ensues.

Contrary to popular belief, this is not a Marvel/DC crossover staring Wolverine and Cyborg.

So no, this story isn’t doing anything groundbreaking for an FPS by any stretch of the imagination, but I do feel that it’s worth mentioning that Bulletstorm feels like it purposely sought to be very tongue and cheek. It is almost the opposite effect of the Killzone 3 story, a game that tries so hard to create this huge epic drama on war while keeping a straight face, even when its performance just isn’t up for the task. Bulletstorm however, had no intentions of taking itself seriously, instead letting the gameplay take the reigns, yet the slightest hints of development in these very familiar gaming troupes that define our protagonists felt surprisingly genuine. Remember how I said the flagship was called Ulysses? Well I myself am sensing just a little symbolism with the Odyssey, with Grey being the broken captain in a decade-long mission that leads all of his allies to death.

At the very least, its plot and writing is a heck of a lot more enjoyable than the Gears of War games.

"#%^&, this thing is pissed! What did you do, kill its babies?” “No… wait… maybe?”

You know what IS unique about this game? The setting. Planet Stygia is literally an entire resort planet. Think of it as a rundown Las Vegas: plenty of sunny skies, beautiful waterfalls, miles of countryside, hotels on every corner, exotic plant life, VERY exotic plant life, rampaging thousand-foot-tall monsters, oh yeah, and every single human resident on the planet has mutated into savage gangsters, or worse, cannibals. Have fun.

And fun is exactly what this game delivers. The shooting element of this game runs on a Skill Point system where you score points on all the unique and interesting ways you kill your enemies. Grayson is armed with an electron leash that reels enemies in, as well as both a kick and slide technique, that can all be used to line your target up in slow motion for certain skill shots. If you just try to play this game conservatively like other competitive shooters (or rushing in guns blazing for that matter), you’re going to have some problems. See, your progression relies on your will to experiment, as these skill points are needed for you to pay for new weapons, upgrades, and ammo. Sure there are the typical points for head shot, crotch shot, burn, electrocute, impale, but there’s also points for kicking people off cliffs, throwing them into cacti, feeding them to man-eating-plants, poisoning them with anger toxin so they attack themselves, and let;s not forget the X-Ray.

How many games let you de-fleshitize noobs and NPCs alike? That’s right, one.

For those of you into the online multiplayer crowd, this may seem like a refreshing change of pace. Now, you are not scored by your body count, but more on your style. Yeah, that’s a swell massage to teach gamers: “It’s not about how many people you kill, it’s how you kill them.”

Its already obvious, but I’ll say it anyway. This game is definitely not for kids. It is violent to the third power and the language is unabashedly profane. If you are someone who is even the slightest bit uncomfortable with harsh language, then might I consider spending your time and money elsewhere.

So the game showcases some excellent ideas and amazing action set pieces. A whole lot of them, like the chase from the Ferris wheel in the desert, and the boss fight with the giant plant, are spaced out pretty well in the beginning and middle of the campaign. Too bad the final act doesn’t have anything that really matches those moments. Instead, it jacks up the difficulty by increasing the enemy count, adds some Quick-Time-Events, and calls it a climax. The story’s conclusion, I was pretty much fine with, yet the post-credit scene kind of weirded me out.

Despite all that, I still had a blast with Bulletstorm, and that’s coming from someone who isn’t the biggest FPS fan. I liked the protagonists. I hated the antagonist (in the way you are suppose to). The dialogue, if you can handle it, is colorful and hilarious in its own way. Plus, how can you not have fun with a game that gives you a remote-controlled-robot-T-Rex with laser beams attached to its head?

Want more game reviews? Check these out:

-Doing The PS3 Proud: A Review of Killzone 3

-The Old Is Still New: A Review of Dragon Quest VI

-For The Win: A Review of Marvel vs Capcom 3

Let's fight the good fight Sony fans.

Sony and Guerilla Games took a lot of flack regarding Killzone 2 and how the actual game’s graphics looked a lot less polished than the trailers showed. This time around there isn’t a problem as Killzone 3 looks about as good as a game can look while still functioning. Before the story or controls or anything else, you’ll be looking at the graphics here and finding yourself impressed. The effect gets amplified tenfold if you happen to have a TV capable of displaying 3D images as Killzone 3 is 3D enabled. In the simplest terms, this is a game that will make graphics-fans pleased.

Okay, so now we talk story. Compared to the previous Killzone title, the story takes a slight dip in presentation, mostly due to the characters lacking much to really relate to and attach yourself to. Consensus states that Killzone 2 did a better job with characters and story, but that doesn’t instantly mean that Killzone 3 has a bad story or bad characters. It’s just that neither aspects were as good as they were previously. Gah, I’m talking in circles, it’s all subjective here. Go experience the story yourself to determine your opinion there.

The controls though, those got a tweak toward the right direction. Aiming feels less floaty, allowing for much greater control over your crosshairs and the feel of taking out the enemy soldiers or other players. Guerilla Games also included a lot of cringe-worthy melee kills for those into that sort of thing. I personally find the eye-gouging melee kill to be particularly nice in an awful sort of way. That ultra-violence is here in spades, so everyone will be happy.

It just feels so satisfying wasting your enemies left and right, doesn't it?

What Killzone 3 does best, besides the graphics, is the presentation. You could consider those the same things, so I’ll let you, but the details go a long way to help the title really stick out among the First Person Shooter genre as something noteworthy. The little touch of having your character look at the gun while reloading, swaying the camera accurately while climbing, and other such simple details like that make for a final product that needs to be praised for its accomplishment. The tone fits with the graphics and the style and despite being a shooter set in an area that has the usual industrial-type setting, I can’t quite place why but everything sort of pops here, visually speaking. Yeah, I like the graphics here, final say on that.

Probably one of the biggest selling points for the FPS crowd is the multiplayer. And Killzone 3’s multiplayer is excellent. On a downside, while you can play the campaign with a co-op partner on a single TV, you can’t play online, a strange omission, but that’s about the only negative for the multiplayer experience. The progression of leveling up doesn’t favor the high-level players over the newcomers, meaning that everyone starting at level 1 has just as much of a chance to succeed as the players already hitting max stats. Even better, when playing matches against bots, you can play as a max-leveled character, allowing you to test out the options available to you during your normal run of leveling up. That right there is a smart option for this sort of multiplayer experience.

Biggest downside of the title is, however, the Move support. There is a control scheme that allows you to use the Move controller to aim and move around, but the PS3 controller works a heck of a lot better, placing the Move support squarely in the “Gimmick” section of the game. It’s a shame, too, because it makes you wonder what more they could have put in the game had they not been forced to spend the time and effort on Move controls. More levels? More guns? Who knows? Such a shame.

At the very least, the package we get here is as polished as it can be.

Inevitably though, someone is going to ask if this is better than Call of Duty. I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer. Killzone 3 is it’s own thing separate from Call of Duty. If you prefer Killzone 3, awesome, then it’s perfect for you. If you decide you still prefer Call of Duty, more power to you. Basically, Killzone 3’s existence doesn’t negate Call of Duty’s and vice versa. Both can co-exist simultaneously in the world and be at peace with one another. Play what you feel is fun and leave it at that.

PS3 fanboys, do us a favor and don’t use Killzone 3 as ammunition against fanboys of any other systems. Rather, enjoy the hell out of Killzone 3 when you have the chance. You’ve earned it. And with that, Killzone 3 has been reviewed. Go buy it.

Want more game reviews? Check these out:

-The Old Is Still New: A Review of Dragon Quest VI

-For The Win: A Review of Marvel vs Capcom 3

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Prepare to own the competition all over again.

Easily the first thing to talk about is the character selection. Are all the old fighters back? No, not everyone made the cut, with some mainstays like Cyclops, Cable, and even Mega Man getting eliminated from the roster. Instead, a handful of new fighters like Chris Redfield, Viewtiful Joe, Deadpool, and Taskmaster show up to brawl it out in 3-on-3 matches. While some of the choices are odd now, it’s hard to feel too worried that your favorites won’t show up eventually via DLC. But I’m getting ahead of myself; we’ll get to DLC later.

Graphically, MvC 3 is vastly different from MvC 2 since the new title has full 3D graphics, a style that surprisingly works really well here. The initial hesitation that the incredibly fast fighter wouldn’t look right is a fear you can put out of your mind. It looks amazing and plays just as smoothly (by which I mean speedily) as the games that have come before it.

The sound quality is also at an exceptional level with characters and sound effects exuding the lovely charms needed for a game of this type. Every character has a handful of pre-match trash talk they cycle through, some of which is even worth just playing match after match to hear, such as pretty much anything Deadpool has to say. Then again, would you expect anything less from the Merc with a Mouth?

At the very least, fighting is once again a total blast.

If you’ve been playing MvC 2 to get in shape for 3, you’re going to be woefully disoriented as the two games play vastly different. The controls are simplistic this time compared to other technical fighters, even going so far as to add a game-changer meter called the “X-Factor.” What X-Factor does when activated is crank your character’s speed and attack for a short period of time (longer if they’re the last of your team left fighting), allowing you to entirely reverse a match in the Eleventh Hour without much difficulty. While this is something I’m okay with as a casual fan of fighting games, this completely breaks any chance at high-level tournament play. Seriously, if you enter X-Factor with five full bars of power and you’re playing as, oh, let’s say Iron Man, your opponent has no chance to beat you as you spam your Big-Ass Blaster (pretty sure that’s his attack’s name).

The plus side to all the changes is the excellent balance added to the character list. Instead of nerfing some of the stronger characters, every returning character got better, a tactic I’m really happy about. Each character plays different enough that you’ll have your work cut out for you learning the specialties of each. However, this is aided by one of the best features the game has to offer: A training mode specifically designed to teach you how to effectively use each character. How this works is there are specific challenges exclusive to each character that you can train through and pass, typically resulting in a newfound understanding of how that character functions in critical situations. I’m the type that needs tons of help when figuring out fighting games, so this is pretty much the biggest selling point for me.

However, the deal breaker may be the relatively small roster. MvC 2 had 56 characters (that’s insane!), whereas MvC 3 has only 36 to begin with. Two have been announced as DLC (Jill Valentine and Shuma-Gorath), included in the special edition version, but who exactly will appear in future DLC packs is a mystery. The worry here is that these DLC characters won’t be free (extremely doubtful), meaning for a completed roster you’ll have to continually plunk down the cash for new characters, lest you find yourself unable to compete online at a proper skill level. The looming threat of DLC is what will keep me from buying this game right now in favor of picking up the “Super Special Edition” in about a year or so when Capcom does a remake/re-release for the title. And don’t say they won’t do it because they did it for both Resident Evil 5 and Street Fighter IV.

Honestly, I'd be perfectly happy with the grouping they have currently.

For what you’re paying for, there’s a lot here to entertain both the casual and the hardcore fighting fans. Marvel vs Capcom 3 is at its best when you’re playing against your friends, but even solo you’ve got a great game to learn and play through. I highly recommend giving MvC 3 a serious rent at the very least, though there’s a high chance you’ll just like it too much and want to keep it around past the rental period. You make the call, but don’t forget about Capcom’s remake/re-release history. The threat is ever-present.

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Well, horrors beyond horror have appeared again. What's an unlikely hero to do?

Visceral Games has thus far given us two games worth noting, the first Dead Space, a completely unexpected hit, and Dante’s Inferno, a game best not talked about any more now that I just remembered it. Taking everything from the first game and fine-tuning it for the sequel, Visceral Games has managed to craft a second game in a series worth existing and certainly worth the typical asking price for a Triple A title.

Back is Isaac Clarke, the unlikely hero from the first game, except now he’s a little off his gourd with some mild insanity and hallucinations and whatnot that you’d expect from someone whom saw all manner of unspeakable horrors previously. He’s on a space station called the Sprawl, and as you’d expect, Bad Things Happen. Specifically, Necromorphs return in spades and seek to throw him into a tailspin of nightmares.

So does Visceral Games succeed in nightmare-worthy throwing? Yes. Dead Space 2 is packed to the rafters with Monster Closets (events you trigger purposefully for a monster to jump out and go “BOO!”), but it doesn’t feel like the usual schlock here, mostly because encounters with enemies aren’t just simple, “Oh, I shot you and now you’re dead” battles. The controls are tight, which you’ll need since each extended encounter with enemies can leave you physically winded in the real world after you realize you’ve been panicking as a result of tough fights in-game. Basically, the Monster Closets only add to the stress and “horror” of being ill prepared for a fight against the looming threat of more and more Necromorphs.

Really though, if these things began jumping out at me in real life, I'd be pretty terrified.

Much like the early Resident Evil titles, ammo drops are a bit less frequent than you’d probably feel safe having, meaning you’ll have to be more careful with your shots and with what weapons you use. If you use just the first weapon, the Plasma Cutter (making its glorious return from the first Dead Space), for the extent of the game, you’ll pretty much only get ammo drops for that weapon, but if you decide to mix things up and try all the weapons out, ammo drops will start coming in a wider variety, meaning you’ll have ammo for everything but only a little bit for each. Take your pick which is better between sticking to one gun or having a chronic lack of ammo.

The presentation is what sells Dead Space 2 more than anything. Graphically (I don’t care about these whatsoever on average but people want to know), the game looks excellent. No one should be throwing any sort of hissy fits about textures or shadows or other random unimportant features as everything here is flawless. The sound, too, is in a league of its own, though at times it can be difficult to hear characters talking over the loudness of the rest of the sound mix, so be aware that you may need to adjust some settings to get things just right.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, but Dead Space 2 is surprisingly not for children. Blood flies everywhere, body parts litter the screen like clouds in the sky, and incredibly graphic fatalities occur to both the warped enemies and Isaac himself. No kids allowed on Sprawl! Go home and keep playing Call of Duty or whatever it is you kids play these days.

Little kids, you wouldn't get the level of character development that's going on here anyway.

To cap things off, there is a multiplayer mode to the game that just sort of exists for no other reason than to be the standard multiplayer experience now required in games. The single-player campaign will last you between eight to 12 hours, but the multiplayer modes will probably wear thin after one or two. They just aren’t very good, pitting human characters against other players controlling Necromorphs. Both sides can level up with a progression system, but it’s really not worth the effort to continue playing this portion of the game. Stick to the single-player and you’ll be fine, though if you enjoy the multiplayer, more power to you.

And that’s it. Dead Space 2 is worth a rent, a buy, or a- well I guess those are the only two options, aren’t there? You can pick this up for the PS3, Xbox 360, or PC, and each version works perfectly fine, so get out there and start fighting Necromorphs. Your sanity depends on it.

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Ha! “Hop.” I see what you did there Sackboy.

I’ll be perfectly honest; the first Little Big Planet was the third game I got when I first bought my PS3 back in 2008 (the first two were Uncharted and Ratchet and Clank Future), and after I completed the story mode of that game, one of the first thoughts that came to me was “There’s NO WAY this game is getting a sequel. It’s too complete and replayable just the way it is.” And you know what, for quite a while I was pretty much right. Media Molecule never did intend on making a sequel and merely wanted to use the game as a launch point to just add more content over time. Over the next two years, we were given oodles of goodies that kept us coming back, including a set of level and costume kits based on Metal Gear Solid, Pirates of the Caribbean, and even Marvel Comics.

Then, somewhere down the rabbit hole, Media Molecule discovered that the tools they created still had a limit to what they were able to accomplish. Thus a sequel was born: new story, new characters, and a whole mess of tools that allow the players to create and share all new game types. I wish I could tell you all about those new game types, but to be perfectly honest, I spent the whole last week just completing the story mode, and afterwards I felt like I’d barely scratched the surface of what the game is capable of. But gosh darn it, I’m going to try anyway.

So much to love. So little time.

The story mode in LBP2 involves Sackboy (now called “Sackthing” as not to be gender specific) once again on a carefree stroll through Craftworld, a land where the ideas and thoughts of all humankind gather to take shape. But danger is afoot as an embodiment of selfishness, insecurity, arrogance, and fear (and anger, hate, and suffering while I’m at it) known as the Negativatron descends upon Craftworld to suck it all away. And I do mean that quite literally as the Negativatron is in fact a giant inter-dimensional vacuum. Lucky for you, your everyday scientist made of paper mache named Larry Da Vinci whisks you to safety and prepares Sackthing to join the Alliance. (The good Alliance. Not the Alliance from Firefly. Those guys are jerks.) As you meet each new member of the Alliance, each of them has their own themed levels that you must traverse in your mission to snuff out the Negativatron’s influence.

That may sound very similar to the structure of the first game’s story mode, and once you start playing through the levels, it pretty much is. Yet you will quickly notice that the sense of story telling is light-years ahead of its predecessor. It’s not deeper or more intricate by any means, but there is a huge overhaul in characterization. Each member of the Alliance you meet is bursting with personality. There’s a good chunk of voice acting now, and some of the Alliance’s interactions are laugh-out-loud hilarious! Unlike the first game where I felt like I was forced to get involved with the moderator’s troubles, I actually care about the supporting cast this time around.

So that’s the biggest change. All the other changes seem very minor in comparison. The graphics get a slight upgrade. The platforming has improved a bit too, yet it’s still a game based around physics, so the floaty and slippery nature of jumping will take some getting used to for newcomers. From there it’s all about the new items that have been added into the mix. There’s the grappling hook (pretty self explanatory), there are iron gloves that allow Sackthing to now pick up and throw a variety of objects. There’s the addition of Sackbots which can be programmed to run away from you, follow you, fight with you, or even heaven forbid, fight you if that is your will. There are legions of animals to ride, all with their own unique abilities: Bunnies that jump high and ground pound onto enemies, Caterpillars that ride up walls, and a Camel that, I kid you not, spits lasers (FTW!). If that wasn’t awesome enough, there’s the Creatinator: a helmet that can be modified to fire almost anything you can imagine. Just name it; Water, Fire, Electricity, Plasma, Cows, even baked goods. So yeah, while all of these seem like very little changes, in hindsight, they all combine to create a big amount of innovation for the series.

The Cakeinator is not a lie.

Hidden in the story mode is also a huge variety of unlockable multiplayer minigames that pay homage to tons of classic arcade games of yesteryear, plus several new ones. To name a few: Snake, Buster Ball, Pool, Bumper Cars, as well as a QTE button challenge and a battle royale with Creatinators fueled with missiles.

Difficulty-wise, the story levels are fairly simple and can easily be accomplished in 5-6 hours. Yet if you intend on Acing every level (I.E. not dying once) and finding every hidden prize bubble, that’s a whole other story. This game will keep you hardcore players busy for quite some time indeed. Yet no matter how committed you are to the campaign, the big emphasis for this sequel is definitely in the Create category. Anyone who’s ever wished to be a game designer, or has simply had an amazing idea for a game they wish to share, now is your chance to take a crack at it. There is an extensive list of short and sweet tutorials that will tell you anything and everything you need to know to get started.

Or, if you’re like me and not much of the designing type, you can still enjoy the fruits of other player’s labor in a vast user-created network that you are free to explore to your heart’s content.

Think of anything in the world. There’s someone out there who’s bound to make a level for it. And if they haven’t, don’t be afraid to be the first.

As a cherry on top of all of this, it is completely backwards compatible with the first Little Big Planet. Every item you won in the first story, every bit of downloadable content you bought, and the entire community of Two Million+ levels, have all transferred to this game and are looking better than ever before. Seriously guys, Little Big Planet 2 is huge, a breakthrough in fun, class, and versatility. I genuinely feel this is a game for anyone who is comfortable enough to express themselves in the most pure and fundamental way imaginable. And the best part is, it’s only getting started. Do yourself a favor and don’t miss out.

Want more game reviews? Here’s what we thought of these:

-Not Quite An Epic Win: An Epic Mickey Review

-More Like A Tall Tale: A Review Of Fable III

-Well Duh, I Like It: A Review of Super Mario Galaxy 2

What compels a perfectly intelligent person to act so foolishly?

As full disclosure should dictate, I might as well place my Nintendo badge visibly on my shoulder and reflect as to what has made me a Nintendo devotee for so very long. The short story is that I grew up with Nintendo as a system and a brand and everything with their name on it is something I understand and trust. The longer story involves a matching of my ideology with Nintendo’s. Want a clearer explanation? Alright, next paragraph for that.

I hate DLC for games. I hate even more that most games require an investment be made with the assumption that you will play both the single-player and the multiplayer modes, an aspect that costs developmental time to create both aspects of the game, as well as real money to support a good internet connection, a multiplayer subscription (I’m talking Xbox Live here), and generally $10 more as the price of a $60 game is a result of that extra multiplayer mode getting added. Nintendo games don’t have any of those aspects. Smash Bros, Mario, Metroid, Zelda, Donkey Kong, etc were games that shipped as completed projects and delivered more than their worth of $50 to me. I favor fun over realism. I favor fun over graphics. And most importantly, I favor platforming and adventure over First Person Shooters. I am a gamer built for a Wii as I don’t have a huge gaming budget, meaning I can generally afford maybe two or three new games a year, which just so happens to be what people estimate the total of good games released per year on the Wii actually is. All things considered, I enjoy my Wii more than my Xbox 360.

When you provide me with a character who's been kinder to me than Mario, then I'll change my stance.

This isn’t to say that I hate my 360 or that the Wii doesn’t bother me rather frequently. But I’m going to be called a Nintendo fanboy and it’s going to be fairly accurate. I’m excited for the 3DS. I couldn’t give a crap about the PSP2. I think the Kinect and The Move were stupid ideas whereas the Wii was a fantastic step forward. My vision is clouded by the Big N far more than most people. But I’m aware of this fact, an aspect I don’t share with most diehards.

But why do diehards or fanboys even exist in the first place? That’s why we’re really here, isn’t it? As mentioned before with my example, the first reason falls on the perceived nostalgia or a sense of trust built by one particular brand. The other reason is more monetary in nature. Let’s talk about the first reason in greater detail before getting into money.

Nostalgia is a powerful thing, no matter what you’re talking about. A lot of this is because for something to be nostalgic, it has to have some deep connection to you, specifically. To a lot of Sony fans, Sony isn’t just some company that makes a video game console. They’re the company that got you through tough times. They’re a company that provided you with a game that made you cry, that made you laugh, that made you furious but ultimately content and proud of your skills. If you owned a Playstation when you were first getting into video games, the current generation of Playstation is nothing more than an extension of your youth, and for someone to come along and not only disagree with your system but favor a competitor’s product, well that can only be an attack on you and your youth.

And there are a lot of commenters who feel I've attacked their childhood in some way, believe you me.

It is hard to disconnect our lives with others. The universe revolves around us because we can’t conceive of anything otherwise. To this day, I still have a hard time believing anyone could ever prefer the recent incarnations of the Ninja Turtles over the cartoon I grew up with. But not everyone grew up with my life. This is what gets lost with so many gamers these days. Not everyone grew up with a Nintendo, or a Genesis, or a Playstation, and not every kid only had just the one system until he could afford the next iteration. My memories are mine and mine along, something I realize, but those hardcore fanboys I’m talking about? No, to them, by saying that you prefer a system other than the one they prefer is like saying their childhood, their memories, their feelings, are incorrect.

“Your childhood was wrong.”

When said out loud, it really does sound silly. But we as a community don’t typically take that necessary time to think out loud very often, unless of course what we’re thinking is angry and selfish. Were we to recognize that other opinions don’t negate our own, there would be no issue with fanboy rage whenever an attack is perceived.

Nowhere is this more prevalent that on popular gaming websites when a review is published. Take GameTrailers for example. Every time they do a review and give a good game anything less than a perfect 10 (something they’ve never done) swarms of fanboys come out of the wings to cry “conspiracy most foul!” If they give a PS3 game a 9.3, clearly, they must be paid by Microsoft to give a poor review. If a Wii game scores higher than an Xbox 360 title, obviously Nintendo has been bribing the reviewers.

Okay, disregard obvious exceptions.

This logic is so flawed that it hurts. What does a game reviewer stand to gain from a review that makes no sense? If they were to love a game that had clear problems, problems they just don’t address that everyone else has, then how do they expect to get away with it? It’s that fantasy notion that a difference of opinion than your own makes your opinion wrong. Just because someone else gave Red Dead Redemption a Game of the Year award doesn’t mean that your favorite game of the year, Super Mario Galaxy 2, isn’t still your favorite game of the year.

No one wants to feel alone. That’s the core of this strange fear. If enough people strike against your brand, perhaps you will be left alone, an outsider, a pariah, fit only to be friends with the rats and no one else. Once again, when said aloud it sounds silly, but too few fanboys take the time to say it aloud. “I’m never going to be alone with my favorites.”

But then comes the bigger problem: money. Gaming isn’t cheap, now more than ever. If you purchased a PS3 on Day One, you were looking at a $600 investment, plus $60 for a game and another $50 for a second controller. A Day One Xbox 360 would cost you around $500, plus a $60 game and another $50 controller, plus a year of Xbox Live, which was only $50 back then, and naturally, your Xbox would have borked, so you would have had to pay another $400 or $500 for another system. This all equals a hefty investment of real, tangible money. If you spend $1000 in a year on something and someone comes along to say that you made the wrong choice, man, I’d be pretty pissed, too.

But hey, at least it's still backwards compatable, right? Oh...

We’ve hit a point where we just can’t afford to be lax about which system we support. I don’t have the money to be a devoted PS3 fan, and were it not for an awesome wedding gift, I wouldn’t have an Xbox 360 sitting under my TV right now. Take a look at the Sony fanboy rage over Final Fantasy XIII. Squeenix told fans that, as usual, the next Final Fantasy game would not only be the Second Coming, but it would be exclusive to Sony’s new console. Fast-forward and your $600 Day One purchase is constantly justified by that promise…until Squeenix announces that they’re releasing FFXIII on the 360 as well. There is a real sense of betrayal there. For some, you would gladly have saved $100 or more had you known there were other options out there. But no, you were forced to align yourself with one specific choice, so the only way to justify your purchase is to attack any who would suggest you are a fool. “The PS3 version is still clearly superior to the 360 version! It is YOU ALL who are fools!”

Unfortunately, the only two ways to consistently avoid fanboyism are to either have the money to afford whatever you like, or be capable of stepping aside and seeing the situation for the silly bantering it really is, both options that aren’t reasonable for most gamers at this exact moment. And as such, we’re stuck with the world as it currently exists, a place where fanboys and fangirls roam online forums and lash out at anyone with differing opinions.

At least we can all agree that a sequel to Final Fantasy XIII is a bad idea, am I right?

But these are just my personal findings. What do the majority of you feel on the subject? Is fanboyism a real problem? Or is it actually a wonderful thing? Leave a comment and let me know. As for me, I have a Wii that’s calling my name, and screw your console for not having a Nintendo logo on it!

Want to keep Thinking Deep? Check out these articles:

-Let’s Think Deep: The Kinect and What It Means

-Let’s Think Deep: The Great Zelda Schism

-Let’s Think Deep: The Used Games Dilemma