Half-Life, the PS2 port, reviewed

The year was 1998 and first-person shooters were just starting to gain a foothold in gaming popularity thanks to Duke Nukem 3D, Goldeneye and Quake. Now those had little plot, mostly kill the bad guys and that was it.  Sure Goldeneye had the illusions of plot and brains but as long as you did a few things, you could spend the whole game just killing everyone but I digress since the mood was about to change.  A game was released that focused more on plot and more realistic-stuff.  That game was Half-Life and I'm about to review the PS2 port.

Gordon Freeman was just your typical scientist working at Black Mesa.  It was going to be a normal day of doing some science by pushing a button and pushing a cart into something but then everything changed.  The cart had a sample that opened up a dimensional riff that led to an alien invasion in which they start killing everyone.  But fear not, the military has sent a rescue team to help save you and by save you I mean kill everything to keep this covered up.  So Gordon has to fight his way through the aliens and soldiers to get help, stop the invasion and figure out the mystery of some guy who keeps watching you.

The main selling point of this game was its total immersion.  Aside from 30 seconds, you are always in control.  And it really hammers it in during the first 15 minutes when you're riding a tram on the way to work where you can control Gordon's eyes and see the world of Black Mesa.  It may be a bit much but it works as you check out all the neat stuff the institute has.  Then it really kicks in once you unleashed the alien invasion happens.  If this game only did one thing right it was in writing one hell of a first chapter.  As you go through the initial stages of the invasion, you see dead bodies and falling infrastructure as you try to make sense of it all.  It really is quite an adrenaline rush but it kinda fades when the military starts to come into play but before that....man what a rush.

However, this game has not really aged all that well.  A fair amount is it being copied to death and back but there are some elements that are kinda hokey no matter what.  At times, you can easily wind up stuck wondering where you need to go and it degenerates into a pixel hunt finding a vent to crawl up to.  The amount of "broken bridges" you need to fix gets to be a bit annoying around the half-way mark especially when you need to turn on some equipment to fry a tentacle monster.  Those things just take away from the atmosphere and intensity of the rest of the game.

Despite it showing its age, Half-Life is still a very good game.  The atmosphere is electric, the action exciting and at times it's really tense.  Sure it hasn't aged very well, the controls are a bit loose and the loading times & frequency is a bit annoying but it is worth playing.  It does its job very well.  Now since this the PS2 port, it comes with an expansion port, Half-Life: Decay.  How is it you may ask?  You really need two players like the game suggests since doing it with one player is just tedious and excruciating.

8/10

Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters review

As you guys should probably know by now, I'm a big fan of the Ratchet and Clank series.  At the very least, these games have provided some great entertainment even if it got off to a rocky start with the first, not-quite-good game.  But those PS2 games from Going Commando to even Deadlocked were all good games.  Then the future happened and the games started going to the PS3 but in between the PS2 era and the PS3 era, there were two games made for the PSP that were ported over to the PS2 and today, I'm talking about the first one Size Matters...the PS2 port of course.

After the events of all the games, Ratchet and Clank are taking a well-deserved vacation and hope to not be kidnapped and forced into a gladiator-reality TV show.  However, a little girl comes up to them and wants the duo to do some hero stuff for her school project and, of course, they say yes.  But then robots come and kidnap the girl with the only clue is an artifact from Technomites, beings that created technology.  So now their vacation is cut short as Ratchet and Clank must find this little girl and learn about the Technomites.  Oh, Captain Qwark is here looking for his real parents for some reason.

Since this is a PSP port, you do have to expect some things to not as good.  For one thing, the graphics are pretty weak.  The colors are all washed-out, the FMV's are fuzzy and it's not as graphically busy as the other games but you expect that with these kinds of ports.  What people should never, EVER expect are piss-poor controls.  There's this sense that something is just off...and then you jump.  That's where the problems begin when jumping is a bit slippery.  Then you try to glide and that is utterly pathetic, you're pretty much going into a near-vertical fall without going forward.  Not to mention that you don't get the rockets but the helicopter...but that's just personal preference.

But what is not personal preference is how bad the camera controls are, as in it works when it feels like it.  And when you do need the camera to work, that's when it doesn't feel like working.  Then you get attacked or you fall through a pit.  And then we get to the skyboarding parts of the game, the obligatory gameplay where you don't go around shooting everything that moves which were always fun distractions.  Not here in which the horrible controls unleash their horrible....uhh...horribleness!  It takes you from a world where the controls may be horrible, but at least they made sense into something where rules no longer apply.  One wrong flick of the analog stick goes you flying 90 degrees into the wrong direction...into a wall...where you wait while everyone else passes you by.  I hate those levels.

However, there are good things in this and all of them relate to the writing.  If nothing else, the story is wonderfully paced and it moves at a very quick clip.  There isn't much chance for boredom to develop.  Also, the duo still has their charms and chemistry to keep things from being a bit too dire.  There's even a couple levels that are actually awesome and work quite well in the confines of a PSP game: a journey into Ratchet's mind and when Ratchet has to go inside Clank to reboot him.  Both levels showcase great visual inventions and even nice throwbacks to the previous games, which makes them the only two levels that are worthwhile.

Alright, despite what I'm saying and that it's even worse than the first game...it's still not all bad.  The game is short enough to not wear out it's welcome, keeping frustration to a manageable level.  Ratchet and Clank still are as fun and as hilarious as ever.  Even the levels are OK with the two aforementioned levels being awesome.  It's a bit sad that the controls don't measure up with the previous games, which gets me thinking if things are this bad with the PS2.  How bad is it with the PSP since I don't think it has an analog stick?  But I digress, you won't suffer too much playing it but it can be safely skipped.

6/10

Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones reviewed....kind of

Here we are, the end of the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time trilogy, well if you discount The Forgotten Sands which I don't know if I do since I never played it.  The story all comes together in this installment, The Two Thrones where it even attempts to weave the unnecessary manliness of Warrior Within without a retcon.  But there has to be something to mess up the works, and here I literally can not beat the Stone Guardian due to some undiscovered glitch where the Speed Kill just doesn't come up or I'm that incompetent.  And since this is around the half-way mark, I flat-out refused to do a new game so I read the game script online to finish the story and here we are.  Now let's get going with this review of Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones....kind of.

You have come back from the Island of Time where the Prince changed his fate from being destroyed by The Dahaka creature.  Now it's time to head back to Babylon and rest up...except that Babylon's ON FIRE!  And there's a war going on led by the evil Vizier from the first game that you killed...wait.  Well, thanks to the WACKY HIJINKS in the last game, you never did the events of The Sands of Time which explains why the Vizier is here killing off Babylon but that's not all!  The Vizier also wishes to be a God which he accomplishes by killing Kaileena, that chick from the last game who's also the Empress of Time and in her death, she becomes The Sands of Time which makes The Vizier a God!  And The Prince also gets corrupted by The Sands which gives him a split personality that acts like Warrior Within's Prince.

It's very refreshing to see this game go back to what made Sands of Time work when it did, the fun acrobatics.  They have the same fun and fast-paced derring-do from Sand of Time without being a total chore to slog through like in Warrior Within.  There's color and life in this game again and best of all, the Prince is interesting again.  The Prince makes jokes but this time, there's pathos and depression when he looks over the destruction of his home.  It also helps that he has someone to banter with his dark side.  They have great chemistry together as the dark side wants to finish off The Vizier as quickly as possible and The Prince slowly regains his selflessness as he helps and fights for others beside himself.  But, The Dark Prince isn't voiced by the guy who voiced The Prince in Warrior Within which would have been awesome.  Not saying the guy who does voice is bad or anything but bringing in the Warrior Within guy would have been a great Continuity Nod.

But then again, there's the combat.  Once again, it's a frustrating experience when you're surrounded and the enemies keep attacking you.  But this time, blocking and dodging don't work very often.  There's too many times where I blocked only to be beaten down.  And if you want to throw your secondary weapon...good luck.  Most times you throw it in the opposite direction and that's if you were quick enough to throw it at all.  But, there is a new thing that makes combat a bit more bearable, the speed kill.  It's your stealth kill that's akin to God of War's Quick-Time Events which makes it easy and fast for you to kill the bad guys.  Granted, the timing is a bit too tight but it's a great system.

This game is actually good but barely...or at least the first half and the script is.  This rediscovers the joys of jumping with more techniques.  The voice-acting is amazing with great chemistry between the two princes.  How it weaves in Warrior Within's story is extremely clever.  The battle system still needs work but the speed kills are a great addition.  It's a pity that I couldn't beat the game but whatever, I'll live happily ever after.

7/10

Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits reviewed

Sometimes you go out and you'll wandering around some game store, you stumble upon a game you never heard of or if you had then it was only in passing.  Such is the case of today's game, where I somewhat knew of the franchise Arc the Lad from my brother saying that these games are awesome around ten years ago.  I blew it off and thought nothing more of it.  Then a couple weeks ago, I was wandering around Gamestop when I stumbled upon Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits for $5.  I figured I had nothing to lose so I bought it and now let's dig into Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits.

This is a game of two stories for the two main races in this game, humans and deimos or humanized monsters.  On the human front is Kharg, the leader of Yewbell's Defense Corps who vows to destroy all deimos after the death of his mentor.  On the deimos front is Darc, who vows to be the king of all deimos by being the strongest deimos ever and then destroy all humans.  To achieve their goals, they need to find the Five Great Spirit Stones to get the unlimited power necessary.  Of course things can never be that simple since the evil Dilzweld Empire also wants the stones to be the greatest country on whatever planet this takes place in.

And I just scratched the surface on the story.  It has such rich themes that, while cliched, are told in ways that really fire up the imagination.  The main theme is that there are two sides to every story and wow, it goes out of its way to tell it but in a good way.  One of the deimos allies had his wife and child killed by Kharg's mentor who then gets killed by that deimos which leads to him vowing to kill all humans, eventually teaming up with Darc, and Kharg vowing to kill all deimos.  It's also told at a blistering speed where time has no meaning.  I beat this game in 34 hours and it literally felt like 8.  I think the last time I had that feeling was when I was playing Super Mario RPG back in 1996 or 1997. 


Now, I do have to pick apart a few flaws in this.  The first off is that it's a tactical RPG with all the things I never liked.  I don't like having to waste a turn to pick up an item half the time.  I don't like how the guys who actually do something get the experience.  I don't like having to move my characters to get close enough to attack.  And no, I didn't know it was a tactical RPG when I got this.  But it does play much better than other such games and it is a lot more fun to play so those gripes are pretty minor.  However, on the story front, I do think at times the story moved too fast.  The climax is a bit rushed and some of the villains don't achieve that critical mass they need for you to really enjoy killing them slowly.  But frankly, the most severe problem is the main women in your parties, Paulette and Delma.  I'll give you the short version, they are both morons with very little of value coming out of their mouths or actions.

This game is awesome!  The story is great.  It's told with lots of layers and very rich themes told at a fast, at times too fast, pace.  The game has decent graphics and good voice-acting.  It may be a tactical RPG with all its trappings but don't let that stop you since it's a better made example of the genre.  Finally, while it may help to play the other games in the franchise since there are some references to them but you don't have to since it  stands alone pretty well.  This is probably the best totally, utterly blind buy that I got.

8/10

Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves

It looks like we have come full circle on the Sly Cooper franchise from the breezy fun to the first Sly Cooper game to the horrible disappointment of the second Sly Cooper game.  So that leads us to the third and maybe final game of the whole series, Sly 3: Band of Thieves.  Now what was my reaction to this you wonder?  Was it the thrill of the chase like the first or the somewhat boring Ocean's 11 capers of the second?  Well, the answer in this case lies somewhere in between so let's dive into Sly 3.

It's been some time after the events of Sly 2 where the evil Clockwerk is finally destroyed but things weren't looking up.  Bentley got severely injured and is now confined to a wheelchair, Murray blames himself for this and he has left the group on a quest for peace and the beloved team van is gone.  But some time later, an old associate of Sly's father, McSweeney, comes by and tells Sly of the family vault where all the wealth of the various Coopers are stored on some island where the insane Dr. M has spent years trying to break into.  With this knowledge, Sly is out on his biggest caper he has ever been in but first he's going to need help, a lot of help.

Now there is good news and bad news about the gameplay here.  The bad news is that you still are doing those Ocean's 11 style capers but the good news is that they are entertaining to play this time.  You don't have to worry about finding clue bottles and safes this time around.  I'm sure you'll miss them but that feeling won't last long when you realized how much it sucked finding those things in the second game.  Also, the cast of playable has expanded greatly.  There's a cast of about 7 guys you can play as each guy has there own skill set to use to complete your various capers. 

But I think the biggest improvement from the second game to this game is how much more fun everything is.  Granted, it's still not as fun as the first game but it is close.  The graphics still have that same cartoon-like, breezy atmosphere that the other games had.  The voice-acting finally clicks where everyone gets into the skin of their characters, well except for Carmelita Fox who gets another voice-actress.  The dialogue is fun and there's some great lines in there especially when The Murray is talking especially about flossing his teeth with a bad guy's spine!

However, there's an aspect of this game in where the mere inclusion of it blew my mind.  This game has certain aspects in 3-D!  No, not the graphics or the game itself but the 3-D where you put those glasses on your face and stuff pops out of the screen!  The main problem with putting 3-D in games that has 3-D space is that the camera is constantly moving and there's many focal points for the 3-D to come at the player.  In movies, there's only one and we can handle that.  Thankfully, playing in 3-D is entirely optional and it was even more optional for me when I didn't get the 3-D glasses.  But I did get it used so what did I expect...except it had the original box and manual in it.

So while this game is better than the second, it's not as good as the first one.  The voice-acting is mostly good, the dialogue is fun.  The capers actually make sense and there's almost a tangible effect to what you're doing this time.  The gameplay and graphics still have that breezy quality to them.  The 3-D....it's there and I think it's stupid that it was even attempted but since it's optional, I can't hold it against the game.  Now the question remains after play all three Sly Cooper games, if there was going to be a fourth Sly Cooper game would I want to play it?  The answer is when it's cheap.  They're perfectly fine but not something I'd get right away.

7/10

Sly Cooper and the Thievius Racoonus reviewed

When I purchased Sly Cooper and the Thievius Racoonus I didn't know what I was really getting myself into.  All I knew about the game was that it existed, it was part of a franchise and it was ten dollars.  I thought it was cheap enough for me to give this a go and see if I would want to play the other two games in the Sly Cooper franchise.  So do I want to play the other two Sly Cooper games?  Did I have a good amount of fun playing the first one?  Let's answer these questions as we dive into Sly Cooper and the Thievius Racoonus.

Sly Cooper is a lovable scamp that comes from a long, long, horrifically long line of master thieves.  All of the Coopers have created and contributed to the book of the Thievius Racoonus, which is the tools and tricks for thieves to become master thieves.  However, on the day Sly is set to inherit the Thievius Racoonus the evil Fiendish Five breaks in the house, kills Sly's dad, steals the Thiefivius Racoonus and rips it apart to scatter it across the world.  Sly is taken to the orphanage where he meets Bentley, a turtle that does the intel, and Murray, a hippo that drives the van, to help him with Sly's thieving.  So now that Sly is a man, he's out to get back his book and to exact some revenge.  And there's this cop, Carmelita Fox,

The shining element in Sly Cooper is the look of the game.  It's all done in cel-shading, similar to Viewtiful Joe but not wasted in a crappy, overrated game.  It has the look and feel of a film noir in a way that's respectful but parodying it at the same time.  There's very well-animated, er...animated interludes between the missions.  The voice-work is awesome with everyone playing their role to utter perfection.  As a treat for the eyes, this game really gets top marks.  If there is a flaw, the game does suffer from slowdown quite a bit and it is a bit frustrating but it never lasts terribly long.

Well the game somewhat falters is the gameplay.  The main gameplay is the platforming/stealth levels and those are really good.  You runaround, whacking things with your cane and hiding from lasers & searchlights as you get the plot device...I mean treasure keys.  However, there are other types of games for variety.  There's a couple racing levels that features Murray which aren't very good since controlling the van is a bit of a hassle.  There's some levels that are like Robotron 2084 where the left analog stick and fire with the right analog stick...it didn't work then and it doesn't work now.  There's a couple levels where Murray has to run around getting the treasure key and you have to provide cover fire, which is pretty good.  All in all, this game is the Jack of all Trades but the Master of None.

This game is pretty good.  It's cute.  It's amusing.  The graphics are pretty good.  The game is funny and the voice work is good.  If the gameplay was improved then this game would really be something instead of just being mildly amusing.  I had fun playing this and I do want to play the other games so the first game has done its job.  Also, the game is a bit short as you can finish this in a day or two and get 100% in a week or two.  I think the short length may suck but for this game it does work since any longer and the game ran the risk of the style losing its luster.  It's a good diversion but not much more.

7/10

Final Fantasy X reviewed

So my experience with the Final Fantasy franchise has been littered with half-finished attempts at beating some of the games.  Let's see, I quit playing Final Fantasy I cause it was stupid with a broken battle system.  I quit playing IV cause getting money was way too tedious but to be fair I played the PS port.  I quit playing VI for some reason that I don't know.  I quit playing VII because I got a bit too scared.  I quit playing the VIII demo cause it was too hard....and history has shown that it wasn't worth my time anyways.  And while I don't want to say I quit playing XII...I probably have because it got way too overwhelming for me.  Now for some reason, I got it in my head that X was going to be the Final Fantasy game that I was going to beat going as far as vowing to do so in the public, twittering my progress on my twitter account....which you should be following and even buying Final Fantasy X-2 to ensure that I did beat X.  So what are my thoughts on this?  Let's find out as we dig into Final Fantasy X.

So you start off as Tidus, the best blitzballer that's currently alive since the best blitzballer ever, Tidus's father Jecht, has been missing for 10 years.  So as Tidus's starts proving his awesomeness in a game, some evil being called Sin comes by and destroys the city but lucky for Tidus, his guardian Auron comes by and helps him kick some ass before they get swallowed up by Sin into the land of Spira.  But before long Tidus has to have his butt saved by the savage Al Bhed led by the non-savage and really sexy Rikku who can speak English.  But before long Sin attacks and you're thrown to some other place where you meet the lovable moron Wakka and through some hijinks, I don't think that they're wacky hijinks, you meet the really sexy Yuna, the really sexy Lulu and the beast man Kihmari.  With everyone together, you journey on to find a way to kill the hell out of Sin so he can stop his reign of terror.

The story of X is a bit flawed but it has its moments.  The first strike is that 80% of the game is told pretty much through flashback.  That means everything is a fore-gone conclusion, there isn't any tension on who's going to live or die and you don't get much chance to explore the world as you run around in a very linear manner.  It isn't until very late in the game that you can get an airship and explore the world but even then it's just a list of places you can go instead of flying the thing.  Then it takes about 10 hours before the story stops sucking with lack of transitions, various ass-pulls and some spinning wheels but once it gets going then it gets really good with decent entertainment and emotional moments.

The thing that the Square team really trumpeted was that it was introducing voice-acting to the world of Final Fantasy.  It's somewhat used like how King's Quest V used the new toy of voice acting which was all the time with mostly competent acting but with a couple exceptions.  So our exceptions in X is our two main characters, Tidus and Yuna....which is kinda bad since they're important because they have the most emotional content in their stories.  Tidus is voiced by the guy who does Ratchet from the Ratchet and Clank series...after the first game but that doesn't count.  Unfortunately, there is no difference between Tidus and Ratchet making it very weird to hear, I kept expecting Clank to show up and school Tidus with his robot intelligence.  It's just not a good voice for me to hear coming out of a human's mouth.  Then there's Yuna, while I may be too harsh on Tidus, I can never ever be harsh enough on Yuna.  She sounds like a malfunctioning robot with weird inflection and Shatner-esque pauses that don't work at all.  Almost every emotional power that could happen doesn't since Yuna's voice just is unable to convey emotion, it's sad.  Everyone else is at least competent and some are even good.

Also, this game does away with all those fancy experience points like the rest of the Final Fantasy games.  It has sphere points which are kind of like experience points but they're spheres.  And when you gain a level, you don't have all your stats increased like the rest of the FF games.  You get a sphere grid where you can choose what stat you want to increase and what abilities you want to learn...even though progression is mostly linear.  The fatal flaw is that you gain levels way too fast and it is quite easy for you to be over-leveled and overpowered.  That's not a bad thing but it makes the game a bit too easy most of the time.  To be fair it is a great idea and FFXII will tweak the idea into something usable, balanced and awesome with the licensing system.

This game is flawed but there are enough moments for me to not make this a waste of time.  The voice acting is good, but not great other than Tidus and Yuna.  The story takes a while for it get good but when it does it gets really good.  The battle system is a great throwback to the old-school Final Fantasy games where you didn't have this ATB crap to worry about as you choose your strategy wisely.  The sphere grid was a nice idea but a bit poorly executed.  Then there's blitzball....which is a horrible game with poor controls and it sucks and you suck for liking it!  Thankfully I just played it twice before I realized how useless it was.  But it will always be the first Final Fantasy game I ever beaten and that does make me a bit proud.

7/10

Kingdom Hearts reviewed

I want you to imagine two things, the first thing is that you are back in the year 2001.  Then I want you to imagine you first hearing that Disney and Square were teaming up to make a video game where Donald Duck was a magician and Goofy was a knight.  And then the hero's weapon was a huge key that functioned as a sword.  Futhermore, some Final Fantasy characters were going to be there as well!  You would be thinking that would be the end of Square and make Disney a bigger laughing stock they were then.  In fact, you probably wanted to buy it just to see how laughable this game but there was one problem.  The game wasn't laughable at all....it was pretty awesome.  With your mind blown, let's dig into Kingdom Hearts.

The universe is in pretty deep trouble.  Evil shadowy creatures called The Heartless has been destroying the borders that kept the worlds separate.  Then with the walls gone The Heartless found the keyholes to the various worlds which they flood and destroy erasing that world.  Well, King Mickey Mouse isn't going to have any of that but he disappears and mails a letter to Donald and Goofy to find the Keybearer and save the universe.  Meanwhile, we have our main character Sora from Destiny Islands with his best friends Riku and Kairi.  However, The Heartless destroys the islands which sends Sora into the same path as Donald and Goofy...also, he's the Keybearer.  So now it's a quest to save the universe, find King Micky and find Riku & Kairi.

You got all that?  As you can see this game is pretty epic.  Now what sets that apart from every other epic RPG?  It doesn't start off that way.  I'm not saying it starts off as fluffy since there's nothing fluffy about a destroyed homeland and being separated from your friends but it starts off more humorous than epic with Donald and Goofy's wacky antics.  Even the early worlds don't really advance the plot that much as you just solve whatever worlds problems.  However, around halfway through the humor stops, the plot goes into full-tilt darkness and the relationships between Riku & Kairi have radically changed.  The change is almost so subtle that you won't notice it when it's happening but only when thinking about it.

Another strength of the game is the battle system.  It's like a combination of Legend of Zelda's 3-D batle system and Secret of Mana's in which there's no battle screen but you do have your stats and some rudimentary decisions to make like what magic and items to use.  You could just mash the attack button and you would be able to do fine, not great but good enough to live.  Now some may think that button mashing is a bad thing and while it is to an extent, here that's not the case since the enemies have enough variety to them to still provide some challenge.

Hell, I even think the gummi ship levels are pretty cool.  I know most people don't like them and they have their own extremely valid reasons but it's not so bad once you get the warp piece and the best engine making those levels immeasurably shorter.  What really gets me about these levels are the backgrounds, as you go deeper in it gets darker and more nightmarish as all color slowly drains away into the darkest place known to man.  Yeah, people do complain it's too slow and too Star-Foxy but those are easily overcome flaws in the bigger scope of things.

This game is pretty damn awesome considering it's pedigree and how it came together.  The battle system is one of the best I played.  The story is awesome, especially as it gets towards the end.  The voice-work is pretty good since they have some of the original voice-overs, great imitators and Billy Zane, which is awesome.  If I really wanted to I could nitpick like some of the weak voices-acting, the weak camera, some dangling plot threads and the beginning of the gummi levels but they're not big enough deals for me to hate on.  If you haven't played this game yet....geez, you're more behind the curve than I am.

10/10

Alien Hominid reviewed

The year was 2002 and the website was Newgrounds when Alien Hominid made his first appearance anywhere. It was the combined talents of Tom Fulp, the site leader who gave us the infamous Pico's School, and Dan Paladin aka Synj, who made several imaginative animations on the site. It was posted on Newgrounds and everybody just went crazy despite it being really hard, hard-to-follow and just having one stage but with more to come. But little did we know that that more was coming as a video game and not more installments on Newgrounds. So without further delay, let's dig in to the PS2 version of Alien Hominid.

You are this alien flying around in your little saucer when you fly towards Earth. This guy freaks out and shoots you down right into the middle of FBI territory. So now you have to go, find your ship and kill everything that stands in your way. Then the Russians steal your ship so you have to go to Russia and leave a whole bunch of dead Commies in your wake before Area 51 comes and steals your ship. So now you have to go and kill the Area 51 guys and then you get your ship back. Also, along the way you see kids with orange hats worn backwards who help you for some reason but I'm not complaining.

The controls here are fluid and easy to use. There's no weird configuration or any delay when you press a button, just good old fashion finger on the trigger action. And you will be shooting a lot of things because they never ever stop coming. This leads me to the difficulty level of this game. This game is pretty brutal in it's relentless ways to kill the alien. However, most of the time this is good difficulty, real difficulty that isn't unfair with it's camera screws or cheating AI. I do say most of the time for there are a few times that this game is a bit unfair. There's two levels where you have to mess up the highway and railroad tracks. You have to be aware of everything which is overwhelming resulting in you dying a lot. Also, all the boss and mini-boss fights quickly turn into a war of attrition as they have beam-spamming capabilities.

But if you beat the game(which will take a few hours at the most if you're good), then there's a few mini-games on there to keep your interest. There is a game where you're a Russian missile where you fly off to nuke America. I have no idea what the point of the game is or why I should be bothered to play it, nuking America does get old people. There's a challenge mode to get points on a few areas. There's a game where you have to get candy and you get candy by killing robots and a pinata. There's a two-player game Neutron Ball where you're playing violent soccer. The crown jewel of the mini-games is some game where you go from one door to the next, getting fruit and killing people. It's strangely addictive.

This game is pretty good, especially for first-timers like Fulp and Synj and the rest of the guys who made the games. There's always little details that one can see if you're willing to look hard enough. The game play is very entertaining and action-packed. It can be a bit hard at times but I do chalk that up to rookie mistakes. And in the end, this make me excited for any console game projects they make in the future like Castle Crashers(probably out now).

7/10

Devil May Cry 3 reviewed

About a month ago, I reviewed the first Devil May Cry game. I was not too kind to the game for very good reasons, in the fact that it was way too unfair to actually be any fun. But I did concede that could be a great game in this franchise but the first one wasn't it. So I went looking for the sequels, ok just 2 and 3 since I don't have a PS3 to play 4 and I found Devil May Cry 3. Now, I don't want to play things out of order but I do know that nobody, not gamers or even Capcom, acknowledge 2's existence I felt that I wasn't missing much. But I will find Devil May Cry 2, I will play it and I will review it mark my words(it's coming on the first or second Sunday in November, depending on if I can read Eclipse, Twilight III). So without further delay, let's dig into Devil May Cry 3: The Special Edition.

This game begins 10 years before the first game. Dante is setting up his demon killing shop when this bald guy with some sort of mark on half his face named Arkham, who also has two different colored eyes, comes in. Arkham says that Dante's twin brother Vergil has invited Dante to something in some huge tower that magically pops up in a crowded city. Oh and the invite itself is a demon army that wants to kill Dante...we all know that's going to happen here. So Dante goes to the tower and finds out Vergil wants to take over the world using his demon blood to open the portal between the human world and the demon world. Then there's this lady named Lady(not her real name, long story. It makes sense in context) who has two different colored eyes, like Arkham! I wonder if there's a relationship there?

So like I said before, I knew that the Devil May Cry franchise could make a great game and this is it. Playing this game and the first Devil May Cry is almost like night and day. The cameras here are very much improved. There are very few horrible camera angles designed to screw up jumping in this installment. There's even some places where you can move the camera around. It's not the best or fastest moving camera system but it is good enough to get the job done. There's also some styles in this game that let you do some things like dodge efficiently and block! Two of the most frustrating things from the first game were the lack of blocking and bad dodging so to see something done here is nice even though you can only have one style on out of six but it's still a step in the right direction.

There's a good news and bad news about the cutscenes. The bad news is that everything is competently made. There's no horrible acting, writing and only a few times does delivery stumble but nothing too severe. So there's no So Bad It's Good mentality that the first game had and that means there's no WITH LIIIIIIiiiiiiGGGgggGGGHHHhhhhHHHTTTTt!!!! But the good news is that everything is calibrated for maximum awesomeness. In this game, sitting on a chair and answering the phone is awesome. The act on putting on your coat is awesome. The act of eating pizza is awesome. The act of killing everything is awesome....more awesome than usual!

However, all is not perfect in this game. Like the other Devil May Cry's, you find some weapons to help you in your quest to kick ass. However, you will never EVER use those since your basic sword and pistols is all you need. It's like why have these weapons when you never use them. Another flaw is that the last two bosses are pretty cheap, which is frustrating coming from the fairness of the rest of the game but it's not horrible, it's just very jarring.

So you may be thinking what's so special about the Special Edition you played. So the difficulty for the Normal Edition was harder than the Japanese version in where Japanese Normal was turned into American Hard and what not. I think I would be pissed if I played that. The Special Edition makes Japan and American difficulty levels the same so Japanese Normal is now American Normal which is nice. When you beat the game, you can play the game as Vergil but apparently, it's pretty much the same game with some minor differences(I haven't played the Vergil side yet) but I'm disappointed that you don't play the game as Lady. She's awesome and I would love to see her story exclusively. The last major difference is that there's a bonus boss, Jester, who was in the Normal Edition as a character who becomes important(anything more and that's spoiling). However, the boss fights lead to a slew of plot holes and such but you do get stuff from the fights so it's not all bad.

So it is my great pleasure to say that Devil May Cry 3 is a great game. The game is pure fun, the awesomeness is through the roof and it is never boring to play. There's plenty of replay value and this game is something I will play again. And to think that the franchise all began with a hideously overrated game.

8/10

Devil May Cry reviewed

At the turn of the millennium, Capcom was hard at work at making Resident Evil 4. However, they found out it wasn't really developing into a real Resident Evil game but Capcom decided to spin this game off into its own entity. That entity became Devil May Cry and it launched a franchise of over-the-top...well everything. However, why there was a franchise ever happened is questionable cause this game is, without a doubt, the most overrated game made for the PS2. So let's dig in to Devil May Cry as we find out why.

So a thousand years ago, the evil demon king of the Underworld, Mundus, was out to take over the world. So the great warrior Sparda goes out to stop Mundus's evil plot with his trusty big-ass sword Sparda and Martial Arts & he succeeds magnificently. A thousand years later, his son Dante is out running a demon killing business when some chick named Trish literally comes crashing through the front door and says she can get him to the guys who killed Sparda. It's at some castle at some island and Dante is thrust into a situation where he has to kill everything with his big-ass sword, his handguns and Martial Arts.

Graphically, this game does hold up. The character models are pretty good but there is one flaw, Trish's hands. In once close-up near the end of the game, it's really off-model and it looks really bony and not in a good way either. Other than that, the models are distinctive and there's pretty good effects with some of the enemies like fire and a shimmery, ghostliness that some of the ghosts have. The setting itself has a very palatable atmosphere and there are a few instances of the player getting goosebumps, especially in the mirror world and the Underworld. The graphics were never really revolutionary but they do the job in a very well-done manner.

One of the greatest strengths of Devil May Cry is that it is a loving tribute to B-movie sensibilities. The dialogue is amusingly horrible, the action is frenetic cheese, Trish is either your friend or enemy whenever the plot says she she is and the voice acting is equally cheesy. I'll tell you two example of it's awesome camp. At the start of the game, well the first part after the introductory voice-over with Sparda, has Trish jumping down onto some street by the Devil May Cry building. Somehow she gets a motorcycle and, like I said before, crashes into the building. Dante, without missing a beat, says that the bathroom is in the back. Then they talk and then Trish throws Dante's sword at his heart! Then she goes and throws the motorcycle! But Dante uses his demon powers to stop the motorcycle and shots it away with his guns! The second scene happens at the end of the game...well, to explain it in detail would be spoiling it. But there is a line of dialogue so woefully delivered it's become infamous, the "I was the one who was supposed to fill your dark soul with LLLLLLllllllIIIIIIiiiIIIIIGGGgggHHHHttttttTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!" I think I may gotten a running gag....maybe, we'll see.

So with all this praise I've been giving it, why do I call this the most overrated game for the PS2? Simple, the game play is absolutely, positively and undeniably horrible. The first thing is that game is repetitive, both in structure and in attacks. The game is mission based and it's basically "Get this item and place it at some spot to advance." The attacks are either hack-hack- slash, shoot-shoot-shoot and punch-punch-kick and while there are some special moves, they're not that important and hard to work, I can never get that Round Trip to work and you just hold the damn circle button. The camera is just broken with the old-school Resident Evil cameras, where it's just one static shot that changes when you cross some invisible threshold and that's fine for Resident Evil. You're not jumping or actually in close-combat situations, you're running away from things. But in Devil, the cameras make it near-impossible to make jumps as well as you need to and make things much harder when you're fighting whatever it is you're fighting.

Also, remember that multitasking problem I talked about in my review of Musashi: Samurai Legend? Yeah, that problem appears here as well and it's even worse here cause the combat is intense enough where you really can't wait for the pause screen to come up or you'll die a horrible death. This isn't the 8-bit era, these things should not be happening with our fancy new systems. And speaking of intense combat, you know that blocking thing that we all love....yeah, you can't block here. That's right, with all that combat Capcom thrusted upon the player they thought "Hey, blocking's overrated anyways." I mean what would God of War be if you couldn't block...or had Devil May Cry's camera system? It would be that Hades level all the time, remember how much that sucked? But the fatal flaw for Devil May Cry is that it's way too freaking hard. Now, like I said before that a hard game is not a bad game. Look at Jak II, that was hard but it wasn't frustrating. You can power through the hard stuff in that game with enough fore-knowledge of the game. In Devil May Cry, the game takes sadistic delight in beating you up and cheating while doing so. You never get the feeling that this game plays fair at any point in the game...ever. You only kill something when the game feels like throwing you a bone.

Like I said, people truly love this game. I just think that those people have never played the game or just saw the cutscenes on the internet. Those people have never know the horrors of trying to do a precise jump or not dying needlessly through savage beatings due to a pause screen that never comes. It's just sad that everything that isn't about the gameplay is awesome. The graphics, the cutscenes, the dialogue in it's own way are great so why can't the game itself be great? Also, I guess I would play the sequels cause I know there's a great game there. It's just not in this game.

4/10

Beyond Good and Evil reviewed

In 2003, Beyond Good and Evil was released on many platforms(I'm reviewing the PS2 port, FYI) and nobody bought it. In 2004, people flipped their lids in praising this game and saying it's one of the best ever. After playing this three times, I've decided that those people must be the most easily amused people to ever play video games for it's a fairly good game...and that's it, just fairly good.

On the planet of Hillys, the evil DomZ has been attacking the peaceful planet for a while now. The Alpha Sections has been protecting Hillys for a while now...but are they doing it to the best of their supposed ability? The "evil" IRIS Network says no but they're "terrorists" so who cares what they think. So in comes Jade, plucky reporter that you control, who embarks on a path to the truth, the moon and hitting things with a staff for some reason.

This isn't much of a game but more of an interactive movie. This is by no means a bad thing cause it's a pretty good movie and there is still enough lee-way for you to play and explore the world which the characters do make kind of fun. The chemistry between Jade and her pig-man uncle Pey'J is unforced, natural and loving. Then when Double H, an IRIS member joins in there's also great chemistry between him and Jade. The voice acting in this game is awesome in it, there's not a note of any false emotions or flatness. Which is good cause they make us care when there's an awesome action set piece, from driving a hovercraft into a slaughterhouse while a mechanical spider is firing lasers at you or you're on a rooftop being chased by soldiers while things explode around you or you fighting the DomZ with a stick....THAT'S ON FIRE! But the game's biggest asset is the music. It's like a film score where it doesn't feel the need to play every second of the game. When it does play it makes an impression and it is quite beautiful. Then the original songs are catchy even if they are a hodgepodge of various languages like English, Hungarian and Spanish.

But on the flip side flaws do exist that bring this game down. The game does create its own living world but it's pathetically small. There's a tiny city, a few islands, some caves and a couple industrial buildings, that's it. Once you can explore the whole planet, it takes a few minutes to explore every square inch of the surface. And then the game is way too short, once the game actually gets going it's 3/4's done and you're wanting more which is why you never want to explicitly make a trilogy. But the biggest insult is how the game hypes up themes and moral shades of grey but in the end, all the twists are sickeningly obvious, sickeningly simple and just as black-and-white as any other narrative that has the black-and-white mentality.

I mean it's a perfectly good game but it's the French(who pretty much made the game) were trying to too hard to be all smart and have contempt for something. I don't know what but it's further proof that nobody cares what the French thinks cause they are the Butt Monkeys of the world. Now I know there's a sequel coming out and maybe that will realize the potential that Beyond Good and Evil has but for right now, it is an ambitious game that didn't quite make it but the end result is still worth it.

7/10

James Bond: Everything or Nothing reviewed

You know the name. You know the number. And you also that it was pretty much the swan song for the Pierce Brosnan era of James Bond, just before Daniel Craig came running through a wall making us Pierce who? As a swan song, it's not that bad but it could've been better. Come on, I'll tell you what I mean.

So the plot is like what Bond would do. He first has to save woman scientist...Katya Nadamov(as played by Heidi Klum) for some reason, I forgot what but you don't get have sex with her cause she's EVIL. She's teamed up with Diavolo(as played by Willem Dafoe), who wants vengeance against Bond for Bond killed Max Zorin, you remember him from A View to a Kill...right? Come on, he was played by Christopher Walken! And he dyed his hair ultra-blonde! Anyways, Diavolo was Zorin's student so that's where the vengeance thing comes in. So for some reason you have to go to Peru...wait, I remember the reason, you have to go and find Agent 003 who is investigating Diavolo but he dies since he's not James Bond. Then you go to New Orleans and then back to Peru and finally to Russia to finally stop Diavolo's evil plan to unleash metal-eating nanobots. Oh, and Jaws from The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker is back as the evil henchman...I don't know why and he's not awesome enough in it to make me not question it. Then there's Shannon Elizabeth and formerly popular R&B singer Mya who are also in it for conquests or something like that.

So it's more like a James Bond movie than most of the James Bond games but with inferior writing and acting, well mostly the writing. Let's start with the obvious, Diavolo. Sure Willem Dafoe amps it up with a fun Russian accent but man is his character extremely cliched. Let's see his evilness: he's Russian, he's megalomaniacal and he's dapper which are the three characteristics to run away from fast. Pierce Brosnan still does fine even though the one-liners do get a bit ridiculous. Judi Dench is pretty much wasted as M were 85% of her dialogue involves the words Bond, stop, not or allow. John Cleese does good...but he's John Cleese so anything he does is good. As for the Bond Girls, well Heidi Klum is a supermodel/host of Project Runway for extremely obvious reasons. Shannon Elizabeth proves why she has no career despite her being hot. Mya.....well she's a former singer who also assaults the gamers ears with the title song. And if you were under the mistaken impression that the "Die Another Day" song was bad...oh boy are you in for a treat.

The game play is pretty good. It's your basic third-person James Bond shooter that doesn't really do anything new or daring with one exception. The hand-to-hand combat is pretty fun. You feel like Bond when you start punching people left and right which is nice. But there is a fatal flaw in this, you punch someone and then you have to pull out your gun which takes a couple seconds and you're probably getting shot at with automatic weapons which isn't fun at all. The driving levels, mostly the motorcycle ones, are really fun though. You get to drive fast and blow things up and make super impossible jumps and really, who doesn't love that.

This game doesn't really do anything wrong, but it doesn't do anything right either. The acting is usually defeated by the weak writing and the game should've been more fun to play. So in the end, it fills a basic need to be James Bond again and it's at least better than Nightfire, but it's no Goldeneye or From Russia with Love.

6/10

God of War reviewed

The Gods of Olympus have abandoned me, now there is no hope!

And Kratos cast himself from the highest mountain in all of Greece. After ten years of suffering, ten years of endless nightmares, it would finally come to an end, death, would be his escape from madness.

And so began one of the greatest games ever made for the PS2, God of War. It was a game that reveled in brutality and blood so much that it became a Refugee of Audacity. It was a game that spawned a successful franchise. But back when this game was first released, we didn't know those things. All we had was decent box-art and then word-of-mouth as we popped this in our PS2's. So how awesome was this game? Well, then let's see.

Like the quote above suggests, the game begins with Kratos jumping off the highest mountain into The Aegean Sea. Then we flashback to how we got there as Kratos is off killing the Hydra as part of his 10-year servitude to the Hydra, which he does, awesomely I might add. After that, Athena has one final task for Kratos for him to seek his redemption. Kill the God of War, Ares, who has declared war on Athena's city Athens out of petty jealousy. So begins Kratos's quest to kill Ares, find Pandora's box so he can kill Ares and then harbor his revenge against Ares, I'm not going to tell you why so play the game if you haven't. If you have, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

I would like to talk about Kratos for a few minutes. In almost any other game he would be the villain. His deeds before he became the servant of the Gods were deplorable and his present self is not that much better. The only thing that's keeping him from being a Complete Monster is his plight and the few times he is introspective & feels regret for what he has done. Now contrast this to the God of War II Kratos where he's been Flanderized into a guy who screams and stabs at everything...and yes, there's a very good reason for that. It also helps that Kratos is a badass who rips up low-level mooks with his bare hands.

And while I don't want to be one of those people who points out how the sequel to things is inferior to the original, I do want to talk about the geography of the game. In here, you know exactly where you are, how you got there and how each area related to one another. It is a truly, living world filled with a few people you can talk to(not many but there are some) and impressive architecture, complete with awesome yet impractically-made statues. The second game pretty much degenerated this idea into set-pieces, granted they were very impressive set-pieces it just didn't have that feel of the first one.

Anyways, like I said the game is impressive in every areas. The game looks great and it's extremely seamless with extremely low loading times. The voice-over work is fantastic, especially Kratos and the Narrator(yes, the one played by Linda Hunt who narrates this like the second coming of The Illiad). The game has a great and easy-to-use combat system filled with lots and lots of dead bodies. If you're not playing this game you should go out and get it. If you don't have a PS2, get that too!

10/10

Jak II reviewed

So last week I reviewed the first Jak and Daxter game. Sure I liked it but it was very flawed and derivative. In short, something needed to change if the franchise wasn't going to be a series of diminishing returns. Well something did change...everything you ever loved in the first game. In it's wake came, not only my favorite game of the series, but one of my favorite games ever so let's begin.

If you actually got 100% in the first game, you were about to open the Rift Gate. This picks up on that as you're about to drive into the gate using some conveniently built roller-coaster car and somehow using energy to activate the gate. After that, it's all a case of It Got Worse. Monsters come out and start screwing up your stuff, you go in and flung into a cyberpunk world where Jak is jailed and pumped full of dark eco. Two years later, Daxter finally rescues Jak...but Jak has been changed into an angry young man who occasionally hulks out into some God-forsaken beast.....and he can talk! So now you're free, you made yourself a revenge list...okay just one person and now you work for some people to get closer to fulfilling your revenge.

Now for the first game, it was pretty much a rip-off of Super Mario 64 but Jak II is ripping off some high-class games...ok, pretty much a simplified Grand Theft Auto. There's a map, an open-ended world and you can easily raise the ire of the cops or Krimzon Guards, just like Grand Theft Auto but I never did say originality was any of the Jak games strong suit. That's not to say that this is the only improvement for the sequel, oh hell no. The script is much better, characters are actually introduced, the plot twists are decent even if a few are sickeningly obvious, and we kinda care about the people now. Daxter is also improved for he's actually funny instead of being a boring deadpan snarker. This game also shook things up by letting Jak talk. Sure Jak talks like an average action hero who only plays by his rules but it allowed a whole new world of dialogue. It allowed Jak and Daxter to bounce off each other and allowed the love story between Jak and Keira to open up much more.

There's also the fact that you can pretty much just make this your own extended action movie. You can jump 50 feet in the air to hijack somebody's vehicle, then piss off the guards you chase you and shoot you as you race to escape them! Then as you vehicle gets enough damage you can jump out, hijack another vehicle as you watch your old vehicle explode....without ever touching the ground! And there's the small fact you actually have a gun with four mods: a shotgun, a rifle, a machine gun and the standard BFG. You can like punch or kick something than shoot it...its very awesome. It may the best pure action game ever with all the things you can do...and it never gets old.

But I hear you crying "Isn't this game supposed to be unforgivably hard?" Normally I would just tell you to suck less and then be on my merry way. But not this time, you are right for this game is difficult. Now just because a game's hard doesn't make it hard, but a game being hard and unfair does make it bad. Luckily, I never felt that Jak II was ever unfair cause each thing can be powered through with patience and shooting things until they die. But don't get me wrong, this game doesn't mess around. If you do one thing wrong you will be beaten up like a bully beats up a small child.

So in the end, the direction changed in a extremely radical way but it was all for the better. There is no light anywhere to be found, the world you knew is destroyed, the Big Bads from the first game are thankfully never seen again in this or any other Jak game and the woman still don't believe in long shirts...cause you know, for kids(notices the T rating)...oh yeah. It's Naughty Dog decided that Jak and Daxter was just going to serve as a irrelevant prologue to the series and just make Jak II the proper beginning, so you're probably better off just starting with this game instead of Jak and Daxter.

10/10

Jak and Daxter reviewed

Once again, I'm embarking on yet another mini journey with the Jak series, or more specifically,the first two. I did have the third and Jak X but they have somehow disappeared...my brother probably took them because I'm pretty sure that I didn't sell them. Anyways, in 2001 Naughty Dog, still riding high on the success of Crash Bandicoot decided to give Crash up and work on something new. This something turned out to be the Jak and Daxter series that is one of the most surprising franchises on the PS2 but you wouldn't know it from the first game. Oh, and Crash Bandicoot moved to other developers where it began its long and painful decline.

So the story begins with our two heroes, Jak and Daxter, who's still a human...just a ratty looking one, going to the mysterious Misty Island for some reason, well being mischievous and all but that's no real reason. But through some WACKY EVENTS Daxter falls into some Dark Eco and changes into an Ottsel...that furry thingy. So now you have to quest to see Gol, the Sage of Dark Eco, to try to change Daxter back while collecting power cells to access other places on your flying machine invented by the sexy Keira...you know, for kids and possibly pedophiles! But wouldn't you know it, Gol's turned evil and has kidnapped the other sages so he can pretty much destroy the world with lots of Dark Eco in some silos. So now you have to go and kick his ass...oh, and his sister is also evil and you got to kill her too.

Now I know that really none of the Jak games are exactly original(which I don't care about as long as the product's good...it may be a topic of a future blog) but when you're playing it you get this familiar feeling. You have to find power cells to advance further into the world, there's a bunch of eggs you can get to buy power cells off people, there's some scout flies in all the levels that you have to collect them all to get a power cell and there's some Eco that makes you more powerful. Does any of that sound familiar? My God, it's like Super Mario 64! And that's the main problem with the gameplay, it's so familiar and derivative that while it's competent it's not as fun as it should be. I wouldn't say it's boring cause I never wanted to stop playing but it is dry in the fact that it doesn't really try anything new.

But the game's saving grace is the voice work. The one voice you're going to hear a lot is Daxter, even more so if you playing with the hints on. His voice is annoying and grating but it does fit the character immensely. But the writing does fail Daxter more often than not. The game tries to groom him as a successor to Kazooie from the Banjo-Kazooie games as a Deadpan Snarker. The problem is that Daxter isn't as funny nor as cute as Kazooie. But on the flip side is Samos, your adopted father figure, is hilarious. Sure he's your angry doddering grandfather but the writing is much better for his character like this:

Samos: Looks like the Blue Sage threw a party.
Keira: Oh my, Rock Villiage's on fire!
Samos: One heck of a party.

But the real surprise is that this game has Dee Snider as Gol. Yes, that Dee Snider...the one from Twisted Sister! I wouldn't say it was a coup cause he doesn't have that many lines or appearances but the fact he's there is awesome. I kinda do want him back especially since the game did hint at Gol's survival but seeing how much better the other games are, it's probably for the best.

The graphics themselves are bright and cheery even though it looks like a N64 or PS1 refugee...granted it was released in 2001 so it does have an excuse. But what it also has is that the world is almost totally seamless with minimal loading times in every situation. Granted it isn't as seamless as God of War but in God of War's case you can tell when the game was loading data for the next area with it's featureless paths. In Jak and Daxter's case, there are no featureless paths so it is actually loading while the game is throwing enemies at you which is a bit better than God of War's method.

So all this began the second of Naughty Dog's great franchise. Sure it was pretty much a knock-off of better fetch-quest games, granted a competent knock-off but you knew that somehow this franchise would at least satisfy a base desire. Little did we know what the future games would do....

7/10

Musashi: Samurai Legend reviewed

In 1998, a little game called Brave Fencer Musashi was released but it was overshadowed by the fact that it was packaged with the Final Fantasy VIII demo...you know, back when we didn't know how crappy it would be. I couldn't even beat the demo...anyways, Brave Fencer was a nice, fun game. I didn't beat it but that's cause my brother went to college and took the Playstation with him...mostly cause it was his. So many years later I was at Gamestop and I saw the subject's of today's review. It was new and only $10 so I bought it, hoping that this will be as good as Brave Fencer and it wasn't.

So the evil Gandrake Corporation is attacking Anthedeum, a village on a flying whale...I wish I made that up. So the princess of Anthedeum gets kidnapped but before she does, she summons our hero...but since she can't concentrate due to her being kidnapped or just cause she's a woman, he arrives at the wrong place and unconscious. Then this Asian cat with an eye-patch named Mew finds you and trains in the art of the game...I mean samurai and I also wish I made that part up. Eventually you arrive on the whale village and you are now tasked with finding the five maidens and getting their swords so you can be powerful enough to save the princess and destroy the Gandrake corporation.

So why does this game suck, let's find out. The main problem is that the game is unable to multitask. So you're doing a chain attack and you need to defend, well you can't and you'll probably get hurt. But what's this? You shouldn't be able to do that anyways. Well you may be right but here's something else! You're in a massive battle, you're low on health and you need to pause the game so you can get a healing item. Well you need to stand perfectly still to activate the pause menu...which you can't do since you're getting your ass beaten and then die horribly. Which leads me to my other complaint, there's only one place you can save, which is in Musashi's own room at the flying whale village! What is this, the 90's! And the missions are pretty long so if you die, you have to start all over unless you're lucky enough to get a checkpoint but you can't save on them. Then you have to carry the maidens every time you find them, but for a logical reason cause you just rescued them from some sort of cage so they can't really walk but it happens so often it's kinda annoying. Then, in an optional side quest late in the game, you have to carry the Earth Maiden to get mushrooms. The Earth Maiden who can walk and stand on her power! The Earth Maiden who is capable of picking up her damn mushrooms and you have to carry her! I think this game might be sexist. And the graphics bring horrible pain to the eyes. It's stylized to look like a manga but it's not drawn well at all. Think of the cel-shading from Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker but degrade it a 100 times.

Then there's the voice acting, all but two characters are either painfully wooden or wonderfully over-the-top. So who are these two exceptions, why Mew and Musashi. First off Mew, that has both horrible writing and horrible voice acting to make the portrayal racist to both Asian and cats. It's like your typical Miyagi role but with all the transitional words cut out so it's like "You done well student!". Then he has this verbal tic of going Neow which is a combination of meow and now but why? Why couldn't the game just use Meow if they were going with the cat theme, it would've been clever and just racist to Asians. As for Musashi, you know how some punk kids deepen their voice to be more adult. Yep, it happens here and combined with the voice actress(yes, a chick voiced Musashi) inability to act is a combination that brings horrible pain of the ears.

Now I've been harsh to this game so it may surprise you that there are some good things in the game. The gameplay itself isn't too boring and it does try something new with duplicating techniques. Granted, it does drop the ball with them being irrelevant and 90% of them costing you MP and just have you pressing the circle button. Also, when you're driving something there's a catchy surf theme that plays and it's kinda fun music. And that's pretty much it of the good things in the game.

So this game pretty much suffers from extreme Sequel-itis from the superior Brave Fencer Musashi in pretty much every category. Sure the gameplay isn't too bad but when everything else is this flawed, you better re-invent the wheel to make us forget how bad it is. They didn't, instead we have a germ of a good game then can fill a need for undiscriminating players who don't know any better.

3/10

Destroy All Humans reviewed

Destroy All Humans sounds like an awesome game but something went wrong in development. There's aliens, explosions, Men in Black and a mysterious leader who wears a mask...a human leader, not an alien leader. The script is chuckle-worthy and the cutscenes aren't too bad. But the graphics are horrible and the gameplay is boring and maybe buggy.

So aliens called Furons are having their cloning technology not be efficient and their clones are becoming more and more degraded. Which is bad if they want to attain immortality through cloning....which they do! So Invader Zim....fine, Orthopox sends Jack Nicholson...fine, a Jack Nicholson-impersenator....fine, Cryptospordium to Earth where there's lots of pure Furon DNA. So then Crypto comes and he blows things up, uses his brain to throw things, becomes other people and other invasion things and well...that's it. There's other things to it, people are trying to stop you but the so-called villians just feel tacked on. But that's the least of the game's worries.

The graphics look cheap and grainy, especially the FMV's. I mean, don't get me wrong, I know it's a throwback to 50's sci-fi films so I understand the grain but you put too much and it crosses the line from cute to crap. And this game has major problems with mapping or whatever it's called when you're going somewhere and stuff appears in the distance. When you're in the air, whether you're in the saucer or using your jetpack, stuff just appears randomly in your field of vision. You could be flying around in your jetpack and a building appears right in front of you! Granted it does so far enough away for you to notice and prepare yourself but what if it didn't! Then you would be in a world of hurt. The only good thing graphics-wise is the character design. It looks good, there's a good-enough variety between the models and it works within the context of the game.

The gameplay to this just doesn't work. I mean it's ok when you're blowing stuff up, wrecking havoc and killing every human but it's all cheap thrills, stuff that gets boring fast. But it's a godsend when you have to be stealthy. At first it's fine as you disguise yourself but then you have to read people's thoughts to keep your disguise up and if Pox is speaking to you then the thoughts interrupt him and you have to wait longer for him to finish your mission. It's just bad. And what's worse is that you don't have a real map of the area you're in, just radar which is useful, I guess. You only have a limited space before you leave to go back to your mothership. The game warns you you're leaving and you can go back but a real map with boundaries would really help. And then this game suffers from slow-down whenever there's a big battle going on, there's sound issues, vehicles explode for no reason...well that's awesome but I could go on and on about the weakness of the gameplay but I think you got the idea.

Is there anything in this game that's actually worth it? Yes, the dialogue. It's like all the effort made in making this game was to it and nothing else. It's funny, it's quotable and everybody has their own personality. It's sad to see such a game that includes this line "You're looking a bit...what's the word...constipated." and see it fail at everything else. I mean you want to quit the game but then somebody says something awesome and you can't. It leaves you trapped, like an abused housewife making dinner in the kitchen. Anyways, this game is something I can't recommend but the script is something you should look for so you can read it...and then not play the game. As for the sequels, I'll probably play them eventually cause I know that this has potential to be good, it's just not in this edition.

5/10

24: The Game reviewed

Spoiler Alert: If you have not watch any of 24, there will be spoilers and references which you may or may not get for the show.

At the end of the second season of 24, Jack Bauer stopped terrorism again, but there was a twist. The real masterminds were still at large and as a final act, they tried to assassinate President Palmer using some sort of flesh-eating virus. So we waited until Season 3 to see what would happen....and we were disappointed. It wasn't a direct sequel at all! All we knew is that Palmer lived and there was a throw-away line about those terrorists being brought to justice. But then it was announced that this game was coming and questions will be answered and we were happy. Did this game live up to expectations?

So once again Jack Bauer has to stop some overblown terrorism though some badassery and a few DAMMITS! It involves a vice-presidential assassination, earthquake-power bombs, probably some other things that has to be stopped by our lovable friends at CTU. Oh yeah, I forgot that CTU gets attacked...again. And Kim gets kidnapped.....yet again, thankfully there are no mountian lions in sight but she doesn't not wear a wife-beater while braless. So it's basically like a hodge-podge of the first two seasons but without anyone being a mole or turning evil....so it's got that going for it, which is nice.

The game's greatest success is replicating the look and feel of 24. The cutscenes look like a scene from 24, down to the camera-work and editing. The main characters yell at the tech guys The voice-acting really benefits from everyone and I mean everyone voicing their own characters. But the voice-acting feels flat at some points and Kiefer never really lets loose on the Bauer-isms, out of the five dammits in the game only one of them feels like a real DAMMIT! And the terrorist attack at CTU has that evil Anyone Can Die quality with this quote "If I don't get the harddrive, I will kill someone every 10 minutes...starting now."

But in the gameplay is where things go wrong. It's broken down in four sections: shooter, driving, puzzle and interregation. The shooting levels are fun, pretending your Jack or Chase Edmunds or Tony killing the terrorists and every so often breaking thier necks. However, the camera is clunky and a bit clumsy. The aiming system is decent but it could've been better, you can only free-aim when there's no enemies. If there are enemies, you aim at them regardless if you're close to them or not and then you waste ammo trying to kill them as they easily kill you! The driving levels are basically horrible, the cars have horrible handling. They drive if they were like weeble-woobles and they're very prone to exploding when you ram into a car. The puzzles...simplistic crap but a welcome change of pace. The interragation levels are pretty fun, you yell at people, demand they tell you what you want to know. But the main problem with those is that you don't have that much time and the dialogue goes on a bit longer than it should as the clock keeps ticking down.

Then there's the Kim level, the obligatory Kim story where she bumbles and fumbles about doing stuff. Here she's the sole non-kidnapped CTU personnel during the CTU attack. Also, she's the only one that can get a hard-drive with undercover agents information that the terrorists want. So you're in a stealth mission armed with a taser and you have to get to the data room. So it's a stealth mission since you're not supposed to use real guns you can get from the terrorists since Kim has no weapons training. But you can use the guns and you can use them like you're a pro, most of the time without consequences. Granted if you use them at the last part, you will be responsible for a massacre and you'll get captured but the other times it's fine. And speaking of Kim, there are a few levels where failure equals the death of Kim....by you. Needless to say you will be failing them just to prove who's boss....and they're a bit hard.

In the end though, especially in this stage of 24 this game is like hanging out with some old friends. A good 80% of the people from the show are dead. 10% are still alive but haven't been seen in quite some time. The rest are Jack, Kim, Chloe, Agent Pierce and Tony, but Tony doesn't count since he came back from the dead and became evil, so it's nice to revist the past. As for the game itself, if you're a really forgiving 24 fan, like me, then get this game and think of it as an interactive movie where you can make your own awesome Bauer-ism, mine was shooting three guys in the head with one bullet. If you're not, then give this game a rental or hell, just borrow it from some 24 fan.

7/10

Ratchet: Deadlocked reviewed

Like I promised, here is my review of Ratchet: Deadlocked ending this improvised theme of Ratchet and Clank reviews...barring the Wolverine review/tangent. So this is a very radical departure from the previous Ratchet and Clank games and I mean radical. Hell, radical might not be a strong enough word for this. But by some miracle, this game still works....I'll explain more on the way!

After your heroic exploits from the past games, the evil Gleeman Vox from the evil Vox network(guess what's it making fun of...it rhymes with Vox) has kidnapped Ratchet and Clank...and the tech guy, Al(he's in the first and third game so he's not exactly new) for a show. A show that kills off some heroes like The Running Man, only without Schwarzenegger or puns. Anyways, you have to survive the games with only your robot buddies as your guide...and Clank, who is demoted to side-character that says stuff like "This item does something awesome." and "Do this to beat the level".

So the game strips away 99% of the platforming elements and sticks to action...and a little bit of the fun. Since you don't have Clank you can't glide or do any fancy Clank-based jumps and come on, that was the best thing in the other games. Granted, you don't need to do those things cause you're too busy shooting stuff but the fact that Clank's not with you is sorely missed. But you two robot buddies who help you kill things, like ROBOT ZOMBIES, are surprisingly competent and will shoot anything that needs to die and not shoot you. At least you have your Charge and Gravity Boots even if the Gravity Boots are so very useless in this. Since when do you need to use them in a plot-related manner!

So in a turn-your-mind-off thing, Deadlocked does its job and does it well as you shoot up things with a vengance. But it's differences from the previous games are shocking and a bit jarring. The best thing you can do is to think of this as a side-story that has nothing to do with the main plot or better yet, just a game based off of Annihilation Nation from Up Your Arsenal.

7/10