Travel back to the year 1994. The video game and entertainment world is gearing up for the future of 3D games. I had gotten into gaming on my family’s Macintosh computer and simulation games are taking the world by storm. The extremely addicting Roller Coaster Tycoon is 5 years away and before that game consumed my life, Theme Park from Bullfrog Productions was my first theme park sim:

Story:
A super bored kid in the UK summons the Theme Park Advisor who abducts the family and teleports them into the theme park world. Do you have what it takes to build and run the world’s theme parks?

Imagine watching the intro video with the understanding that Toy Story was at least a year away. Yes, this intro CG was impressive for the time. Oh and voice acting in the intro CG was also rare for the time.

Gameplay:

The gameplay consists of building walkways, rides, stores and park decorations to build your park. You start by building simple rides like the bouncy castle (which always likes to explode) and the spinning tea cups.
You’ll want to hire staff entertainers to keep them happy, mechanics t o repair the rides and handmen to clean the paths. Security guards are less important and are really only necessary when the local gang rides up on motorcycles (vroom vrooooom) to harass park guests, beat up entertainers and actually make rides explode (!).

Pro-tip: set the Handyman patrol route. Build put food/drink stalls in only one section of your park and use one-way roads so trash doesn’t spread all throughout your park.

Building a Better Ride
Once you’ve invested in your R&D (hopefully in new rides or shops), you can build the much more exciting roller coasters and water tubing rides. For these, you lay out the track and connect it to the starting entrance. If you are like me, these are the rides to extend throughout your park and make them super long and super exciting.

Making Money
You have to content with keeping your guests happy while you extort as much cash from them as you can. My first goal was to build a coffee shop at the front entrance, crank up the caffeine level so the guests would run through the park, spending money even faster. The “test of skill” shops are also easy to set the chance of winning very low and set a high prize value to lure in costumers. You know, just how it’s done at the carnivals.

Like all real theme parks, you will want to force guests to walk past all the stores, shops and money making attractions to get to the rides. If any guest is leaving with money in their pocket, you are doing it wrong. Add one way roads so you control the flow of guest traffic .

Decorating Your Park:
What’s smellier: the Outhouse or the smell of the Strong man?

There is no right answer. For me, it was a fun milestone to research the park improvements and unlock the Super-Toilet. The Spooky tree was also my favorite because it looks so out of place in the game with only two Halloween themed rides.

Decorations improve guest happiness and factor into your overall theme park ranking. Compared with researching rides and shops, it’s usually my third level research goal.

“Full Sim” Difficulty:
At the Full Sim level, you have to negotiate staff wages, contend with company share prices and deal with the store warehouse inventory. If you fail to negotiate with your staff, they go on strike in front of your park. Pro-tip: worry about the mechanics, so pick one up and place him back inside the park and he will go back to work for a while.
Growing up, I didn’t understand the company stock aspect. As an adult, the screen is still confusing and it’s not apparent how much dividend you will get from rival companies.

Shop and store inventory must be replenished with your warehouse inventory. For me as a kid, the warehouse store inventory actually got overwhelming with my park had so many stores and my inventory would be instantly depleted. I literally would have to play the entire game in this mode and click new shipments every few seconds. I guess I never upgraded my warehouse space!

Mac Game Bug?:
The way the game is programmed, after so many years of in-game time, you park visitors will always plummet down to zero. This seemed to be independent of happiness level, ticket prices and the quality of the park. I could make the ticket prices free and no one would show up. There’s nothing so baffling as having an decked out park and there is no one arriving on a Titanic sized bus.

Playing Theme Park on PC for this review, I didn’t run into the park guest bug. Changing the park admission price did impact guest attendance but it was possible to reduce prices and see the attendance increase again. Is this something that only affects the Mac version?

DS Version
The DS version was developed by EA and was released in 2007. The game added new advisors like a young girl, business woman and young man. As expected, there was touch screen controls that made it easy to jump through the many menus. The classic formula hasn’t changed and there are minor graphical updates for the DS platform.

Wrap Up:
Theme Park is still a lot of fun to play today for someone who grew up playing it. If this were your first time playing, prepare yourself for certain archaic designs like no camera rotation and limited ride customization. So check it out and see if it grows on you.

Images captured on PC using DOS Box

by BlueZero

I jumped on the Battlefield 4 PC bandwagon quite late this year. EA’s Origin sale lured me in with the promise of the Premium version for around $25. As a super-fan of Battlefield 2 and an experienced soldier in Battlefield 3, I knew this was my chance to play the latest version since I had played it at E3 and parachuted off that crumbling building. I give you my thoughts after playing over 50 hours in the multiplayer experience:

Gameplay:

If you’ve played Battlefield 2 or 3 before, you will feel right at home. EA has balanced the overpowered jets and helicopters from the past version. The mortar and grenades have also been nerfed, so players actually get a chance to use guns to take on the other team.

Commander mode makes a return and the changes are for the better. Unfortunately you can’t drop jeeps on enemy snipers anymore or use artillery. Instead you get to command a cruise missile or bomber. I feel a good commander is much less important to turning the tide of battle and it’s much more difficult to score points using only scans, missile/bomber, Evac, and squad orders.

Squadplay has become ever integral to dominating the battlefield. Squads provide portable spawn points and tons of extra points for squad actions like healing, repairing and support. My pro-tip, always be in a squad and switch often if there isn’t a good spawn point. Only if you are a lone wolf sniper, don’t join a squad because you don’t need teammates spawning next to you and giving away your position.

Best Moments in the Game:

• Satisfaction of planned C4 ambushes against your enemies
• When you driving a tank and just narrowly avoid a cruise missile
• Stealing a tank while the enemy jumped out to repair it
• Siege of Shanghai Building Crumbling “Levolution”
• Pistol gameplay

Unlock Hell/Heaven:

If you just started playing, you are severely hindered by the starting guns and the lack of unlocks. I remember being dominated by other players at the start. Thus the first goal is to slog through grinding to open up options to the better guns like MP7, G18 and actual sniper rifle scopes higher than 1x. The worst are the vehicle unlocks. You will need to co-pilot a lot of tanks, helicopters and Infantry Fighting Vehicles to slowly unlock the required unlocks like Active Protection and missiles. I had to give up on jets because I’m getting pity points against enemy units. At least this time they gave jets the initial loadout of heatseeking missiles unlike Battlefield 3 where you started with only the minigun and no flares! Good luck leveling up the jet unlocks there!

If you love unlocking items, then you will have a great time. There are so many things to unlock, you can spend hundreds of hours and likely get 75% completion. You will likely choose your favorite gun and keep it. The current system penalizes you for trying out a variety of weapons.

Battlepacks:

Battlepacks are awarded for leveling your character, accomplishing missions and by purchase. They unlock random items including very vital scope and weapon attachments, customization options and experience boosts. Battlepacks unlock necessary accessories required to compete at the high level play against opponents.
I give EA props for addressing the concern that players can pay to win in their games with the random contents of the Battlepacks. If you were to throw down money for battlepacks, you would likely get nothing useful. For example with battlepacks I’ve been awarded for leveling up, I’ve gotten accessories for guns that I haven’t even unlocked yet!

Lasting Impressions:

Contrary to my gripes above, I do have a lot of fun playing Battlefield 4 and that’s what matters. Tank gameplay is the best I’ve ever played. Helicopter controls make sense. Jet fighting is way out of my league. Capturing control point flags is still wonderfully exhilarating. Enjoy the fun on the battlefield, at least until the Battlefield in 2016 is released.

by BlueZero

In November 2013, GitHub had their second annual Game Jam. The theme was “change”, and over 80 entries were submitted. I worked with a team on the game “Turkey Cooking Simulator”.

The contest challenge can be viewed here: https://github.com/blog/1674-github-game-off-ii

A list of all entries can be found here: http://petarov.github.io/ggo13-viewer/

The winners of the Game Jam can be viewed here: https://github.com/blog/1731-github-game-off-ii-winners

Now that the background is out of the way, let’s discuss. I was very disappointed by how GitHub handled the winners of this Jam. In my experience, Jam Winners have descriptions by the judges of what made those particular games stand out among the crowd. Instead GitHub wrote a listless description of what the game IS, a description that I could sooner find from the game’s readme or by taking 5 seconds to play the game.

In addition, having played nearly all the games before the winners were announced, I would have to say I vehemently disagree with the decisions. Games that I think deserved the crown were nowhere to be found, while some mediocre games made it to the top. In the essence of self-improvement, I am going to pick out a few games and post them below, as well as doing what the judges should have done; give a brief description of what went right, what went wrong, and any glitches found so that future revisions of the game can benefit from third party criticism.

Biased Blog Winners:

1.

Title: Color Quest

What Went Right: Addicting gameplay, further exemplified by the addition of the store. I died, and said “Oh Well”, but then found out that there was a store. OH NO! Now I’m going to have to play forever to unlock all the items. Collectable MegaPixels help give the player that extra bit of carrot to try dangerous maneuvers. The addition of the three power-up types mean that players can determine their own strategy of play, and which pixels they prefer to seek. This game would be ideal for the mobile market, especially given its orientation and screen ratio. Game feels very finished, with boost effects, physics, particles and unique sound cues.

Glitches: After reviving there was a block directly behind and directly in front of the player. The game refused to resume and the player couldn’t move. It was not frozen however, as the on-screen gems/pixels and music continued to play.

2.

Title: The Wizard Hierarchy of Needs

What Went Right: Including a reference to Gauntlet was an obvious and appreciated move. Hits a high note on exposition; most of the instructions can be boiled down to a few words, which the player then uses to solve the puzzle. Zany and chuckle-worthy puzzles, such as being turned into an inanimate object and trying to hide a dead body. Good design economy; doesn’t include more frills than it needs to succeed.

3.

Title: DungeonFall

What Went Right: Maybe this concept has been done many times, but I haven’t seen before. Gameplay felt highly original. Different enemies to fight, and power-ups to build towards kept the gameplay interesting. Plus, completely player designed dungeons means that players decide how easy and hard the levels are. (I think you deserve no potions little dungeon guy!)

What Went Wrong: As the author mentions on his website, the game is lacking sound. More documentation that describes the effects of all the items would help a lot. It isn’t always intuitive and clear where the dungeon crawler is going to move next.

4.

Title: CHANG$

General Comments: It has been two Game Jam’s now where the topic has been ‘change’. I’m sure there isn’t one team involved that hasn’t thought about the very literally interpretation of change with financial dollars. Yet, so far, CHANG$ is the only one I’ve seen, out of probably 100 entries that has been so brazen as to actually go for it. Maybe all the other teams figure the other guy is going to do it literal and thusly, avoid it.

What Went Right: Exactly as imagined, the player is given money to make change with, and an amount to change. Viola! Having limited denominations spices up the action by encouraging the player to not use only familiar coinage. (Example: All Pennies) Keyboard hotkeys ensure quick response times for those who get really proficient. Nice training tool opportunity.

What Went Wrong: The GitHub branding limits some of the off-site appeal. Chiptune music could have been better. I was expecting grocery store/elevator music. Of course, the grocery music would have to get intense! ROCK SOLOOOOOOO! I would argue that restocking bills shouldn’t use time, but instead require a recharging period until they are available again.

Glitches: When some coinage is out, IE no pennies, the player can click on the bill directly above the out-of-stock coin to instantly refill it.

5.

Title: Kitten Beats Depression

What Went Right: Let’s be honest here. No game that heavily advocates *spoiler* had a chance of winning the GitHub Game Jam Competition. However, Biased Blog has no company morals holding it back.

Kitten Beats Depression uses the traditional medium of a side-scrolling platformer well. For example, at the first gap, players have the intrinsic instinct to jump, and blam, Kitten Beats Depression knows how to respond to make the player emotionally invested. “Awww poor kitten”

When the first spoiler showed up, I was paralyzed with laughter for nearly a minute. Such a twist!

What Went Wrong: There isn’t much content, but at the same time, once the joke is played out, there wasn’t much the developers could add. (Make it more morbid I suppose).

Glitches: Some of the music cues seem to activate too late.

Honorable Mentions (No Particular Order):

Title: Super Fantasy Queue

General Comments: The 8-bit art is very plentiful and nice for this game. That being said, it comes from an art pack which I feel spiritually takes away from the principle of a Game Jam. Why am I pickier about art than music/sounds? Well, the barrier to making any kind of music on a computer tends to be higher than just opening Paint and drawing something. Also, it is easier to re-appropriate music, say a classical piece, towards any purpose, vs. art which is very distinct and noticeable. Visual Culture.

What Went Right: Original idea. Running into enemies to defeat them is an effective battle simplification. Unique final battle dialogue after losing once is a nice treat to prevent re-reading repetitious dialogue.

What Went Wrong: Cashier attributes could have had more presence.

Glitches: When getting in line respectfully, enemies that are walking to join that line treat you like you cut them, even though they are 2+ tiles away.

Title: Change the Lightbulb

General Comments: Same as for Super Fantasy Queue; I would have preferred self-created art rather than an art pack.

What Went Right: Tongue in cheek humor from ‘facilitation’ payments to satire of the complex nature of computer password requirements. Well-written E-mails. Cute and clean vectorized art - helps give comic distance. Game saves progress in browser, for coming back to later. Not completely linear – can choose among two levels to continue progress. Death isn’t punishing- softens the unpredictable nature of object physics.

What Went Wrong: GUI for the E-mail program is messy – Needs better borders and text alignment. Telekinesis aura is not visible enough. Difficult to tell when objects, such as blocks, are within the sphere of manipulation and therefore moveable. Shift Key being the telekinesis hold feels awkward. Would have preferred objects be continually held as long as within the sphere of influence. Either that or a toggleable hold command. Needs background music.

Glitches: Player can throw boxes out of reach and become stuck. No level reset button. (Luckily, the game saves browser progress, so limited loss to refresh)

Title: Panic Backlog

What Went Right: I enjoyed this game, maybe because giving orders as a manager makes me feel powerful. “What’s that Bob? You don’t like Firefox programming? Well have a 6-star CSS!” :P If the game was a bit more frantic for task management, it could be super addictive.

What Went Wrong: The music is not long enough; it repeats way too often with a noticeable loop. GUI should include description of power-ups without having to use mouse-over text. (Imagine trying to play it on a mobile device/ignorant uses who don’t understand that mechanic) I know there is some satire here, but pausing should be allowed. I don’t like when games advertise company services in-game.

Title: Flows

What Went Right: I don’t care if it is super simple, this game made me feel smart. Playing with the particles, even if it isn’t leading to a solution, is a treat.

What Went Wrong: Gray Orbs depicting flow should instead be arrows. Would do well with a progress bar on the portals until ‘full’, to give more precise player feedback rather than color shades. More puzzles and sound, I’m thinking color mixing mechanics, like green from blue and yellow.

Title: Corruption

What Went Right: Civilization-esque game of building up resources to conquer a foe is enjoyable. Catchy music. Very engaging and intense, requires lots of micro management. Different varieties of sustainable resources means the player can strategically seek out high yield hexes.

What Went Wrong: Repair and building costs spiral out of control in the late game, which causes a collapsed economy, and eventually submittal to the corruption. Corruption spores feel cheap; Player deserves some kind of devastation attack as well. While documentation exists, the scope of this game severely requires a lot of trial and error to understand the mechanics. An in-game tutorial would have been greatly appreciated. Without it, the barrier to entry is incredibly steep.

Title: Turkey Cooking Simulator

General Comments: If you didn’t read the disclosure at the beginning, this is the game I worked on for the competition.

What Went Right: The game actually uses thermodynamic functions that correspond to a real turkey. So, in essence you could cook a virtual turkey while you cook a real turkey of equivalent weight then time one by the other. Buying things is fun. Stories from Grandpa. Simulation uses player’s computer clock time for the day-night cycle start point.

What Went Wrong: The game is boring. But that was the intent. See: Desert Bus. Needs an intense dose of gamification to keep it interesting. We were making art and gameplay in that direction but ran out of time to integrate it. Dialogue and some items were not designed around Casual mode.
Glitches: Lots of spelling and grammar mistakes. If you slow cook the turkey you can get a ‘fire’ core, yet no explosion animation. Makes sense…yet it doesn’t.

Others:

Title: The Frog Lifecycle

General Comments: I followed this game on Twitter during development and would have preferred more effort towards the fun tadpole stage than the addition of the annoying frog stage.

What Went Right: That country music got my head a waggling, and then the game basically played itself. Clean graphics.

What Went Wrong: Not enough food on screen at once. More food means more hectic in the player’s favor. Also helps mitigate food that spawns on the side where enemies just POP into you. Lily-pad jumping end-game is in-precise and infuriating. Can’t move diagonally.

Glitches: The frog can move opposite to its facing direction if both movement keys are pressed at once.

Title: Room for Change

What Went Right: Unique level manipulation gameplay. Preparing players for one of the dungeons in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.

What Went Wrong: This game just didn’t grab me, I can’t say precisely why. Other things to consider: Controls are a bit floaty. Spider enemies are annoying in the perspective they move. There’s a reason lots of Zelda games use floor shadows to show the position of hanging enemies.

Glitches: Changing rooms with spiders still alive inside can cause them to not update their position. IE, the top of their string will be showing because they are drawn too low.

Title: Changing of the Seasons

What Went Right: There is a nice skill gap. Players can pick up each nut and drop them in one by one, throw them in from across the map, or just stack nuts in a pile for the next round. Randomized branches for each game.

What Went Wrong: The game needs sound, as in crisp autumn leaves and crunchy bouncing acorns. The time limit given is too tight.

Glitches: Out of bound one time, but can’t recall how that happened.

Title: Psiral

What Went Right: Beautiful Art - Clean and vivid colors and shapes. Calming music. The status bar in the top right allows the player to know what is happening at a glance.

What Went Wrong: Super boring and drawn out gameplay, and not for satire like some of the other games. Allow me to pick out specific examples of where the game play went astray.

Firstly, it takes too long for each person’s turn to pass. If a block is changed by a spell for example, it takes about 1-2 additional seconds for the turn to end.

Secondly, each game is too lengthy. While the game may move quickly in the last few turns, the spiral nature of Psiral means it takes a long time approach the center. Additionally, the spiral makes it visually difficult to judge player rankings, meaning the ferocity of the race just isn’t there.

Thirdly, mana is a punishment not a reward. If I had to choose between moving the character and mana, I would choose movement every time. Rolling a three means that not only do I NOT get to move, but I can’t even use the mana I gain that turn. Since spells consume a turn as well, I better hope it stops them for at least 2 turns, because otherwise I probably would have been better off trying for movement.

My suggestion would be to strip mana from the dice and reward pure movement (except the skip-a-turn). Then take the many colored tiles on the board and reward mana for tiles of the player’s color that are passed. Landing on spots of the player’s color can reward double mana. Now instead of wanting to avoid rolling a three, it may be desired so one can not only move, but land on a colored square that will double their mana intake. Also, since the mana is flowing, but movement is much more common, players can use spells freely without fear of falling behind. Now they can slow the opponent on one turn with a spell, then speed ahead with pure movement on the next. They don’t face the risk of fluking on a mana roll.

Glitches: Players can click the CHANCE or SPELL button spots even the GUI is not present to make the clicking noise.

Title: Pakito in Tileland

What Went Right: Conceptually was a good idea, but it would seem 2D puzzles weren’t the way to do it. Tacos are delicious.

What Went Wrong: Many of the ‘puzzles’ can be passed by rapidly jamming the movement button. The changing of the colors doesn’t feel as rewarding as rapidly moving. Ditch the keys, and have the challenge be purely dodging and evading enemies for a real thrill.

Title: CH₃CH₂CH₂CH₂CH₃anges

What Went Right: Raising the water level and melting the ice caps was a bold mechanic.

What Went Wrong: Message was a bit too preachy. That point happened right around the presence of the first ice rectangle. Remedy: remove the water rising, keep the ice that does the same. Don’t have repeat functions. Easy to screw up and make the game unbeatable without realizing it until it is too late. (OMG Moral! Except, not great for gameplay) Controls are very fast and tight, too much so.

Glitches: While idle, character plays flinching animation.

Title: Swap

What Went Right: Allowing the player to skip any level with no penalty. Puzzle mechanics such as the sphere being able to pass through blocks when not controlled was interesting.

What Went Wrong: VERY surprised this game was a winner. Collision detection is fickle. Some of the puzzles require the player to precisely center the spheres within the grid. There should not be sphere seizures when hitting a wall, instead, the sphere should just stop. Recommended action: when the player touches a wall or transfers control away, center the sphere automatically in the center of the grid. Learning curve too steep, should rearrange levels to put death scenarios closer to the end. This way, players are rewarded when they beat thinking puzzles vs. reaction time puzzles. In essence, they can feel smart.

Glitches: You can skip the last stage and are stuck on “You Won” screen. Can’t ‘Space’ the dialogue box away.

Title: Dem Creepers

What Went Right: Blocking enemies with golem bodies. Walking through corpses slows down the player is a nice addition and strategic to boot.

What Went Wrong: Can’t fire the axes in any direction; I can’t think of a reason why axes should be limited to 45 degree axis. Enemies are kind of stupid navigating the golem blocks. Needs more enemy types to keep the gameplay fresh. Lag at round beginning on older computers when they try and compute all the decaying bodies changing.

Glitches: Golems that are partially off screen appear to disappear completely. Might as well always render all enemies no matter their position.

Title: Chromacore

What Went Right: The soundtrack is the ingredient that ties the game together. Similar to SoundShapes, the player collects the orbs along the path and adds to the musical score. Unlike a lot of side-running game’s I’ve seen. Checkpoints are included, providing progressive, vs. punishing gameplay.

What Went Wrong: The changing color is only loosely integrated. It should be progressive rather than jarringly sectional. Animations and controls are unresponsive. Falling down a pit undermines the illusion of walking on buildings, when you see the images cutout.

Glitches: During respawn, the music hitches and the player jumps around sporadically.

Title: Jekyll and Hyde Collide

General Comments: Jekyll and Hyde Collide is too close to Canabalt without enough evolutionary changes. It is almost Chromacore, except that had a musical draw and was more playable. The GitHub judges should have chosen one or the other for runner up.

Glitches: After double jumping as Jekyll then pressing the transform button, the player doesn’t transform into Hyde unless they hit the ground. That may be intended, but it leads to a lot of weird behaviors. After double jumping as Jekyll, the player can hit the button to transform into Hyde, then perform Hyde’s dash attack in the air despite the sprite being Jekyll. After dying as Hyde, the player can still jump and dash. As Jekyll, double jump, transform in air (no sprite change), then hit a pillar, the player will then transform into Hyde and die.

Title: 9 to 5

What Went Right: 9 to 5 gets just the right amount of satire in, from overfeeding and killing your goldfish to turning into a blood seeking wolf. (Wait what?)

What Went Wrong: Unfortunately there isn’t enough stuff to keep the game going. Each day is like the last (satire baby!), but even in those days, there aren’t enough ways to change the outcome. The objective of the werewolf stage is also vague. Object clicking with mouse needs to be touched up; either items need to have a larger hitbox, or be touchable farther from the player character.

Title: ChipChange

What Went Right: I enjoyed the subtle humor with the swearing symbols and the slightly sarcastic text.

What Went Wrong: Difficulty ramps up too quickly. Needs more levels that gradually introduce the lemming’s concept. In the level with the push-able block, it isn’t clear that you can push the block. More tutorials needed. When the counter says x0, then there should be no chips left, not 1 left.

Title: Chaos Slots

What Went Right: Epitomizes chaos. However…

What Went Wrong: WTH, what’s going on? Who am I? What am I doing? What’s this? How do I play? Why can’t I shoot? Why can I shoot? Questions, oh so many questions!

Title: Trans Cube

What Went Right: The pacing for the game was just right, from super easy to mind boggling. Not all solutions required concrete executions.

What Went Wrong: Stylistic decisions such as the blocks disappearing, instead of scrolling, off the sides annoyed me greatly. Also, the changing perspective of ALL the blocks when the player changes direction ruined more than one jump attempt, and is the single biggest annoyance. Very jarring and put me off from playing further.

Title: Contraspective

What Went Right: Running through the black and white pathway searching for the open door was intense with the breaking glass edging closer behind. The rotating room felt straight out of Willy Wonka. Arty style.

What Went Wrong: This ‘game’ is more an art piece than something you can really play. The directions for the rooms are vague and glitches impede progress.

Glitches: Items falling through the floor. Try and drop the watering can, picks up the flower pot automatically. Can’t drop both items, infinite item carry loop.

Title: Green Gauge

What Went Right: Land is randomly generated on each play through. Strategically placing buildings on the hexes is fun (Gotta avoid the global warming!) The programming for the placement is also smart in how it makes the multi-hex structures fit. Addicting to balance the various knobs controlling my plane t- Build one item, then forced to respond with another type to keep the planet going.

What Went Wrong: Vague documentation. No build order control; can’t prioritize important structures to be built. Can’t see building progress. Need power to build power plant? Wut? Can’t prioritize power usage -This means I can’t turn off a research lab or two to put power towards vital infrastructure. Forced to sell buildings I want in a moment. Built structures should not be a list; I don’t want to scroll long pages to find one item. Recommended to group items by type.

Glitches: Some of the music cues seem to activate too late.

Title: BYOBBM

General Comments: Everybody from YTMND's hayday has at least a some emotion that characterizes the Blue Ball Machine. For some it represents nostalgia, for others scorn. Upon playing this game, I immediately felt that tinge of familiarity, but with a twist. What is this? I can make my own?

What Went Right: The art is cute, and the first 8 widgets were fun to see how they reacted. The widget dropping interface works well. Being able to change the ball color is a clear advantage over the original BBM. Rainbows!

What Went Wrong: Not clear which direction the balls will move through the widgets without trial and error. Game does not allow have built in art creation tools. Being able to set the direction of balls moving through custom art widgets would have added a lot of long term appeal for casual players. Without tools, has a I-came-I-saw play depth. Also, this rendition, to my knowledge, lacks music. The breakfast machine music on the original BBM MADE it!

by Zott820

I do not regret playing Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP. The 4 hours spent interacting with its world affirmed the pitfalls of touch-centric mobile applications being ported to non-touch, non-mobile platforms. From here on, I will refer to this game title as "Sworcery" to save breath. (And yes, that is the proper spelling. Sworcery: the most magical, mystical, branch of sorcery.)

Controls:

Sworcery is a mobile game first and a PC game second. The most obvious of concessions for today's smart phones result from the limited buttons available. In targeting those platforms, game mechanics must be designed to be accessible by tapping the screen in some way. For this PC release, as most computers are not yet touch sensitive, all aspects, from combat to GUI navigation, are controllable solely using the mouse, taking over the role of index finger, pinky, or fat thumb. Where traditionally buttons would be used for character movement, holding down the mouse on a path instead guides the character. While it is fanciful on a PC to play an entirely with a mouse, with some nostalgia to the King's Quest games of yore, there is too much dependence on tiresome 'tap and hold' and 'drag' mechanics, where a button equivalent would have more than sufficed. Sadly, with few exceptions, the developers don't give the option to control with buttons: Moving the character not being one. The tactile benefit from touching the game objects is also lost in translation to a mouse. Having touching controls is ok on a touchpad where I can precisely rub a spot, but it just feels tedious using the hand-to-mouse-to-screen channel.

Puzzles:

Puzzles were an unsatisfying affair. Upon coming to a puzzle, I knew it had to do something with touch, but what was I supposed to tap/click? In most cases, it meant tapping objects in a certain order, from large to small, or rubbing certain onscreen objects. For the easiest puzzles, the game highlighted the objects to tap, but more often that I would have liked, finding how to start a puzzle required randomly clicking items on the screen until something reacted, both not requiring any thought. Once the gist of the puzzle was known, determining the solution was the other half of the battle. At the worst of times, when I had 'beaten' the puzzle, I wasn't sure what method I had followed to solve it. Consequently, stumbling upon solutions was harrowing, not enticing, and I found ultimately all puzzles were time-wasting burdens against continuing the story.

Combat:
Maybe combat can make up for the deficiencies of puzzles? Unfortunately, no. Combat is a passive dance between attack and defend commands. The enemy decides its move, and the player responds. The issue is that battles are engaged at an angle of nearly 45° with 2D sprites. Strict rebuttal timing is everything and the in-range engagement zone being partially obscured by the hero's own body hinders this. The player's depth perception of incoming attacks is also tested at that combat perspective inserting a difficulty that is undeserved for the adventure game. Furthermore, the combat proves inconsistent as determining what attacks must be countered via shield or sword is a guess and check effort. On a positive note, the passive response combat allows for great integration with audio cues and the background track. While the visual gives poor timing, the audio cue can be used instead.

Moon Cycle:

Not everything was a casualty of mobility. One of the more original elements of Sworcery is its dependence on the cycles of the moon. Gaining access to the third and forth chapters requires waiting for either a full moon or dark moon, in real time. REAL TIME?! Yes. As a mobile game, the developers expect the player to stop, take a break, get out of work one evening to notice a full moon, then begin to play anew. Compounding this design aspiration was the addition of a plot summary upon starting the next chapter: The game's narrative character, whose cigar smoking antics gave the same vibe of Mass Effect 2's Illusive Man, regales the story up to that point. As a cool addition, the game tracks past conversations and catalogues them according to the moon cycle they were received.

To be honest, I feel the moon breakup is another problem with the PC version. I can only comment on my own experience, but as a PC gamer, I typically sit down to play a game and devote a block of time for that purpose. So when booting Sworcery, I was planning to play until I needed to stop. Upon reaching to the moon cycle barrier, I immediately searched for a workaround. The in-game megatome stated 8 days until the next moon cycle, but screw that! Luckily, there were ways to bypass the real-time wait. Yet… by doing so I completely killed the essence of the moon cycle. The narrator retelling the story. The moon phases tied to the messages. That was all a waste on me. When I scrolled through the chronicled messages, there was no variation in moon wane. The chapter overviews were humorous, but felt out of place hearing them all at once. A terrible waste my gorging, that if ingested in smaller packets would have made a greater emotional impact. It is a shame, as from purely a design perspective, the moon cycle was an original and positive addition.

Graphics:

Sworcery's 2D graphics are purposefully pixilated. The characters are all tall and lanky, with their legs and hands of one pixel width each. Pixel bushes have contrasting pixel leaves, and a pixel dog leads the player through a pixel forest as a guide. The graphics overall are delightful, and while the character faces are but a singular pixel, the emotion still oozes out. When a skeleton warrior takes a hit, it's animation is so fluid as it recoils, that it looks shaped of 3D blocks rather than precise pixel squares. In stark contrast to the pixels are the number of gradient effects, which are very smoothly anti-aliased. Their presence gives the game its modern flare, from sparkles to rainbows (eww rainbows). While Sworcery allows for zooming the camera, the game feels best left at a far view; zooming imparts no added detail. Besides, the benefit of the PC version is its ability to display ALL those pixels. Calmly traversing the pixelated land is second only to the sound as to why I would recommend giving this game a moment's time.

Sound:
We found the game's sounds and music to be bold and we were happy. Why did I just speak in the second person just then? Anyways, together with the pixels, the acoustical choices are the best part of Sworcery. The music has a stirring and surrounding quality that objectively supports the adventure genre. Very fitting as it is, but while soundtracks for videogames try and obscure themselves to support the onscreen action, Sworcery's bold flavor of synthesized instruments and conventional has richness to the quality that grabs you. It really is a soundtrack that could sit on your MP3 player and enhance an event. It doesn't have to be Sworcery. While the soundtrack hovers over the events of the game, I'd say the gameplay probably isn't worth suffering over just to hear the music. Instead, the soundtrack could be enjoyed, not alone, but billowing over anything you want to put with it. Going for an epic walk? *kabloosh*, there you go.

The game's sound effects follow the same style of the music. Actions such as the swinging of the heroine's sword emit a cavernous echo slash. The cry of that heroine is equally cavernous and alarming. Since I'm not often used to having sound effects that stick out so much, I found it rather refreshing. It reminds me that I'm playing a game, and probably better, these sounds feel powerful without resorting to the distorting sizzle of explosions. Not every sound demands voice. As the lagomorphs and deer dart into the brush, and the player brushes the sparkling water, small tinkling musical motifs are played. This is the more relaxing side of Sworcery, away from the pitfalls of puzzles and combat. Indeed, there is an optional segment to jam out to the gentle strumming of a wandering musician. I can recall only one voice-acted character, the woodsman, and he is my favorite part of the game. His awkward banter gives respite and subtle humor. "Oh hey, so uhh did you… hear about that uhh hmmmm… sport?"

Misc:
From the perspective of the impatient gamer who is rewarded in progress, sworcery features too much backtracking. The graphics are beautiful, but I'd rather enjoy them as a wallpaper then be hampered by reprise on my quest. To add to agony, the character's sauntering pace draws more attention to how much backtracking exists. The optimal design would have been to allow instant travel by double-clicking the sides of the screen to jump to the next. When cut scenes are needed on that screen, just disable the fast travel. Easy as that. The game takes about an hour and a half per chapter, but most of the time spent is hostage to traveling.

There isn't much to say about the storyline except that while some may find the quixotic text accompaniment to be annoying, I found it a pleasant distraction. Your interpretation may vary.

Conclusion
In summary: Sworcery has beautiful pixel artwork set against a flavorful soundtrack and audio-scape. Sadly, too much of the backdrop will be seen when backtracking. Puzzles are unrewarding, while combat is inconsistent. The addition of the moon cycle is great, but just not a great fit for a PC release. The same is said for the interactivity from mobile, and the limited control alternatives available. Sworcery would make an excellent audio-visual screensaver, but makes an ok game.

by Zott820

They're rushing your position! Hundreds of tiny plastic soldiers will overtake your toy box in a matter of seconds. Do you pick them off with the careful aim of your sniper tower? Do you blast them from afar with the extended reach of your howitzer? Or do you wait for them come in close only to fall to flame and mustard gas?

These are but a few of the decisions you will make while building your defensive line in Toy Soldiers for the PC. This game started as an Xbox Live Arcade title in 2010, but was ported to the PC in 2012. While the PC incarnation includes both the Xbox's DLC add-ons, 'Invasion' and 'The Kaiser's Battle', it lacks the multiplayer accompaniment. Judging from online comments I've read about the online experience, it isn't a huge loss. Multiplayer was seen as a repetitive rush to build one type of defense, and then use the vehicles to eat away at the opponent.

So, ignoring the absence of multiplayer, what is in this toy box? In the traditional Tower Defense genre, the game gives the user a handful of tower types, to place anywhere they pleased, to prevent a monster horde from reaching a goal. Sometimes there would be upgrades to the towers to expand their various abilities, from slowing mobs, to increasing AoE. Strategic placing of the towers was of upmost concern in blocking paths, and maximizing damage dealt. Recently, tower defense games have been giving the player a more direct role in the confrontation. 'Orcs Must Die', for example, kept the traditional elements, but changed the perspective to a third person character that could take part in the battle. Toy Soldiers adopts similar elements, while lacking in the fundamentals. Following a World War I theme, players must prevent the likes of equestrians, bi-planes, tanks and, of course, toy soldiers from making their way into your base. To combat them, the player chooses from an arsenal of five different types of defensive structures. Over the course of the campaign, additional upgrades are unlocked for the emplacements that expand their capabilities. These upgrades were a tantalizing carrot to the next level. Where Toy Soldiers differs from the traditional tower defense model is two-fold: limited building space and allowing the player to control turrets directly.

The biggest problem with Toy Soldiers stemmed from the limited building spots per level. At the beginning of the match, proper placement and control of the defenses were critical to surviving the initial onslaught. Many levels were restarted by choosing the wrong starting emplacement. Using vehicles, if available, was also mandatory to hold the ground. However, as the available spaces became filled, the defense became self-sustaining. By the middle of most matches I had built in all spots, upgraded them as far as I needed, and the game practically played itself. This was on Hard mind you. The game offers an elite difficulty, where only player-controlled towers actually fire, but at this point, the game is barely fits into the tower defense genre anymore. Furthermore, limiting placement consequently limits placement strategy. Barbed wire can be placed anywhere to slow down soldier movement, but when tanks come rolling through, there was less that could be done to affect the outcome. I would like the ability to wall the enemy in with machine gun nests thank you very much. Odd winning strategies were a draw in tower defense games. What is so weird about pre-defined patterns?

At the click of a button, players can control any of the defenses to boost its effectiveness. The machine gun nest, when controlled, fires twice as fast. Not to mention that as the player you can make better strategic decisions about which units to attack. Where AI controlled emplacements will only fire on units within range, the player has no such limitation to his logic. The game never directly states what the advantages given by player control are but for the machine gun, it was obvious. Similar was the mortar, which is allowed a 3-fire burst compared to a normal one. For the long-range howitzer, however, besides the ability to guide the shot in a 'Bullet Time' way, I didn't feel any more competent than letting the AI do the work for me. I would also have liked a tooltip to detail this player bonus as well as general the statistics for the structures. For some, upgrading was not superior.

In addition to controlling the stationary structures, vehicular assault is possible from both land and air. These special units available on some maps grant both mobility to survey the battle and react to far situations as well as an all round strong defender. Controlling both stationary and mobile forces are mandatory for doing well. While I definitely appreciate DOING something, Toy Soldiers places too much emphasis on controlling the vehicles in the later levels than the emplacements, further removing it from the tower defense games I love. ("Shut up and play a traditional tower defense game", I hear you scream.)

I think the developers were aware of their folly with the limited spots to build structures. To remedy this, they created something sinister, something devious, something that would take all those carefully picked structures and put them to the test. I'm speaking of a BOSS. Bosses are bullet sponges and can crunch your base buildings. While you've probably maxxed out every space, bosses require careful management of all the structures to win. Losing to a boss at the last moment is rage inducing, but my resistance to surrender meant their ruse was working. The snarky notice telling me to try out casual after losing on Hard probably helped. Bosses may have been annoying, but considering placement design, they were necessary to add challenge. Usual tactics for beating bosses include: Building nothing different, and shooting it all to hell.

For the price (I paid $2.50), the game packs greater than ten hours of content. After completing the game once, a Campaign+ offers the same missions using German units, and some remixed levels. Survival maps test how long one can manage defending with the limited building spots and units available. Finally, both DLC packages can be thought of as extensions of the campaign design, with three additional maps in each package, playing mostly the same. The appropriately titled 'Invasion' DLC hints to the fire trucks and space men who have stumbled into the wrong toy box to engage in war, and replace the standard WWI themed units. I was more partial to that DLC than 'The Kaiser's Battle' for changing more than just map design and having a difficulty more challenging and engaging than the standard campaign.

As far as sounds and music: Being greeted on the main menu with era-appropriate music, complete with, vinyl scratches sets the mood for the rest of the game. In game has no music of note, but the sounds of war are gratuitous enough, with the bombastic Mother canon, and sirens of approaching forces. The high-pitched voices attached to the foot soldiers are a cute addition. And how they clumsily trip, giving opportunity for that last sniper shot is just dawwwwww. While I had no problems with the game's sounds, the game apparently did, as it suffered from audio cutout and stutter, even with the most recent patch of 1.1.

The battlefield's graphics are characteristically plastic and diminutive. The tilt-shift blur added to the camera plays a big part in that. Scenic backdrops, such as of a living room, complete with mounted deer's head, complete the effect. The charming display is only muddled by my poor performance. Customary of a port, few graphical options are available to tweak, so I resorted to downsizing the resolution on my 9700m GT to 1024x768 from 1680x1050. A commoner's GPU by today's standards, but considering Toy Soldier's Xbox 360 roots, I was expecting to push the game a little higher.

Overall, for the cheap price, Toy Soldiers' tiny battlefields are a suitable venture for those who enjoy interacting with a tower defense environment, and much less the careful planning of the tower defenses.

by Zott820

Dragon Age: Origins is a third-person perspective RPG with a strong story and dice-rolling combat mechanics. The story summarized follows the origin of a Gray Warden recruit as they form an army to battle the Darkspawn, a terrifying savage foe. Along the way, the player recruits other characters to join them in battle, with four at a time on the field.

This review will focus on the PC version which is not only graphically superior to the others, but suffers from fewer bugs and has the enhancement of easier multi-tasking due to a quick bar and the ability to zoom the camera far out for an overhead viewpoint.

The following list contains what I felt were the strongest and weakest aspects of the game in the order of most to least influential per their sorted list.

The Good:

1. Deep Overarching Plot:

Dragon Age Origins has an incredibly rich back-story involving invasions, former Kings, religious martyrs and more. Just playing through the game you are immersed without drawn out explanation. Characters both directly, through quests, and indirectly, through their catch phrases, banter and clothing represent the land. Templar wear their heavy armor and seek to control rogue magic users. The religious sects wear their sun clothing and pray to Andraste. These are just a taste. There is a lot to take in but the learning process is incremental and the game doesn't require memorization of these elements to proceed. In addition, the dialogue is well written so not every explanation requires a character to play ignorant to the world's laws that they have been living in for years.

For those who want to delve deeper, codex entries can be found and unlocked which summarize the history of Fereldon and in-progress quests. Collecting these codex entries also grants XP, which had me convinced to investigate whole dialogue trees and visit most locations to collect the tribute. While the story uses many familiar concepts, such as dwarves and elves the plot stands strongly on its own merits and creations. The best part is that at the eventually conclusion, player's choices both big and small come together providing a customized epilogue.

2. Characters and Consequences:

The personification of Fereldon culture manifests itself through the several recruitable characters. They are not guaranteed to join you, and if you screw up and piss them off, they may run off, or even try to kill you. As an example to that, one conscriptable character can be left in their cage, and another can be killed BY the player upon meeting them. The decisions here carry some weight to it. At the very worst, the player may find themselves alone at the end of the game.

Now I tend to play a paragon type character who likes to help everyone to be on his good side, but Dragon Age Origins knows this is childish. Not all the companion's desires align, and following one's advice will anger the others. I loved this. The fear of pissing off people with decisions is a natural part of life, and adds weight to the decision making process. Before clicking a choice, I must carefully gauge the outcome on my team, as well as the quest at hand.

To do this means getting to know the characters. Morrigan for example has a sharp tongue and provocative appearance. It doesn't take too much to realize she loves jewelry and other gaudy gifts. Knowing this, I can choose an option to piss her off, knowing full well that perhaps a little bribery later, in the form one of many gifts around the land, can offset the damage.
A shining example of earning companion trust occurs near the end of the game. Without spoiling too much, I made a critical plot decision affecting the endgame, and a companion flat out rejected it because it wasn't what THEY wanted. This led to a completely different ending that I was trying to avoid. I was shocked. Such gall! Unforgettable, but amazing.

3. Voice Acting:

All characters in the game except the player have voice acting. As you can imagine this brings the size of the game up quite a bit, but it is worth it. I tend to skip a lot of dialogue while playing RPGs, but I like to hear the voice and tone of the characters when they speak to peg their personality. Moreover, unlike some games, the personality of the characters definitely comes through in their voices here. What is a rhyming tree that only has a text popup? The wise grizzled tenor of the voice adds so much more! The ramblings of an insane wizard are also more pressing when his threats are read aloud to you with a judder in his voice. If you have the time to spend to listen to all the dialogue, than you should. If you are like me and skip through the vocal portions after digested the text, you will still find yourself hesitating when speaking to new characters to get their voice in your head. The effort that the developers put in is a treat for the ears and soul. Plus they include a sizeable cast of Star Trek Voyager veterans including the talents of Captain Katherine Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) and Tuvok (Tim Russ). How can you say no to voice actors like that? Sadly, Captain Picard was dying in Tamriel and does not lend his voice.

4. Origins:

Each story has a beginning, and unlike many game's that thrust the player into a predestined one, Dragon Age Origins gives the player a choice between six. Each origin takes about 45 minutes to complete before reaching the main same story junction and because they are part of the main quest, they are all well designed, and are not throwaway fetch quests. I would recommend that every player who has completed the game to play the other five origin stories. Not only do they add value, but these origins have legitimate back-story. For example, the dwarf noble origin sets up the events for when the player arrives in the dwarf kingdom of Orzammar later. Someone who only played the human noble origin may hear of the events happening with the dwarves before they arrived, but by choosing another origin, they can go and experience it. Other origins, such as the Dalish elves, should be played for their unique locations that cannot be visited otherwise.

The complexity of including so many origins makes my head spin with delight and awe. One of the origins for the city elf actually changes depending on whether the protagonist is a female or male character. If female, the player and other women are captured and have to plan their escape. If playing as a male city elf, the player must go and rescue those elf women. Later on, origin characters can often be met again through random events or familiar locations. Tackling the shear variability of dialogue trees for each origin, gender and breeds praise. As the game story developed, I enjoyed meeting familiar faces from the beginning of the game to see how they would respond to me as a kick-ass hero.

5. Inventory Management:

Compared to other Bioware games, the inventory system of Dragon Age Origins is a step up from the usual madness. To enhance looting, new items in the inventory are highlighted so the player can see which new pieces of armor he/she has just received. This is not a flawless system however. I often went long stretches collecting items so that the inventory was a full shade of 'new item' yellow. Thankfully, to circumvent this confusion there is now a sort by date option, which heavily helps (persisting each time you enter the menu) finding items. Sadly, despite the enhancements to organization, when new items are received through quests, clicking on the “Items Received” marker only takes the player to their inventory, forcing them to sort through all highlighted icons to figure out which ones they were.

Inventory management also gets some much-needed love for determining what items are better than others. Highlight an inventory item and it will be compared to the currently equipped item of your character providing glanceable stats for both. This time around, Bioware also opted for color-coding, using green for more positive traits, and red for negative modifiers. To compliment these previous two features, a shared backpack removes the potential for a Tetris or Hot potato mini-game, but it's for the best.

All these were great improvements for a Bioware game as I could finally get through one without spending forever in the inventory to figure out if item A was better than item B.

6. Unique Settings:

Castles, forests, hallucinogenic dreams, villages, underground coves, lava filled caverns, magical towers, and more. The settings in this game are varied and each district's feel imposes on the characters that live there to set the overall scene effectively.

7. It's an RPG:

What do I mean by this? I mean that it is a proper RPG, with equipment to use, crafting, and management. This isn't a Mass Effect 2 style RPG, where your innate playing skills will play you through to the end. This RPG is a Dungeons and Dragons dice roller. Inventory management is required. Skill point allocation must be carefully chosen. Squad mates can be ordered to cast spells, and their tactics specified. The game has not been dumbed down.

Regarding tactics, characters can be put into specialized roles, more-so than just their class. By using the built in tactics screen, a mage can be set to prioritize healing itself, or run away from enemies if it is in danger without requiring player input. This becomes especially useful, as with the quantity of battles facing, extreme micromanaging of each one would be tedious. However, for those who are playing on the hardest difficulties, or those who like the true RPG style, the game can be paused and orders directed with pinpoint temporal precision. As mentioned under the difficulty heading, a proper team build is mandatory to make progress through the enemy hordes. The plethora of loot, quests and customizability ensures that it is possible.

8. PC Features - Overhead Camera and Quick Bar:

Unique to the PC version of the game is the ability to zoom the camera from close behind the shoulder camera to a waaaay up in the sky overhead view. This harkens to the days of the sprite based isometric RPG perspective, and it is an appreciated touch. I preferred the closer, more personal, combat view, but a long shot does give opportunity to survey the battlefield and choose targets more effectively when the enemies dog piles the player controlled character.

Another special feature to the PC version is the quick bar. Here you can assign powers and items to 0-9 on the keyboard, as well as a couple extra to click. Not only can you activate spells through the quick bar without having to pause the game, one can also choose dialogue options with keyboard numbers, a handy arthritis soother. If you ask me, having the ability to call down hell at the touch of a button is oh so easy on the PC version with the quick bar that I wouldn't know how to play this game without it on a console version. Hold down a button, and then select the spell? Tedious. Open up the skills menu each time? Hell no! Spells auto-add themselves to the quick bar as you unlock them, up to capacity, so that's another valued time-saving bonus.

Not exactly a PC feature, but an improvement on the PC: Quick Save. Thank goodness for quick save. It works at a button press, loads from the most recent if dead, quick to activate, accompanied by a nice drumbeat and happens automatically at key plot locations and before boss battles. Thank you Bioware for getting this aspect right on the mark.

The Bad

1. Combat brings ennui in droves:

The zenith of all of Dragon Age Origin's problems is the combat. It is just so dull, bland, and repetitive that it almost prevented my finishing of the game (The plot had me hooked though, so I couldn't just stop.) I have tried to decipher why I believe the combat to be so boring, and it may be one of the following:

a) There is too much combat. Mowing down enemies in room after room is tiresome. There are times when you can talk yourself out of combat, but the main enemy is the zombie-like Dark Spawn. The Darkspawn do not negotiate. What his amounts to are a lot of situations that are just impossible to pass without engagements. Yes, you can try to sneak past all of them, but I'll tell you right now that will not work. You can't speech craft your way through the game, you can't puzzle your way through the game, you must fight! This alone can be tolerable if there are enough gameplay mechanics to keep it interesting but…

b) Many of the enemies are cookie-cutters. The vast majority of the enemies are the Darkspawn, and they only come in four main varieties, magic, soldier, archer, and heavy. Sadly, dispatching all of them utilizes the same tactics except for the preferred order of their death (Wizard, archer, melee). Varying topography tries to mix up the strategy but has negligible results.

Most other enemies are dealt with the same as the Darkspawn variations though may have some new powers or weaknesses. I.E. tree enemies have a weakness to fire, and ghosts to magic. Even with these, either it was too late for me to try to specialize, or bulldozing the target with anything was adequate. Now, I'm sure a counter argument could be made that every shooter out there has the player fighting the same way, but perhaps this leads off to the next point.

c) Combat is strict because you just can't specialize any way you want. A team of all archers will rely too much on health giving poultices to stay alive. Eventually they will find themselves running out and having to backtrack to get more from a city, or maybe not. Location traveling brings random encounters that may just finish the unprepared party off. As I found after my first five-hour dungeon crawl, a healing mage is required. Without one, I was forced to kite enemies one at a time to survive. Eventually some rooms made this technique impossible, and that's where the difficulty arose. (See Uneven Difficulty). So, after recruiting a healing mage, the player may find that warriors are awesome. In fact, most melee units are very strong. Archers have some paralyzing abilities, but without a strong tanking warrior, the day is lost. So once there is one warrior, why not make the other three companions melee? It seemed sensible to me. Overall, most of the combat will probably rely on some standard formation of 1 healing units, 1-3 tanks, and perhaps one archer. As mentioned before, units can have multiple sets of equipment to switch between, but I hardly saw the need. Specialize, and dominate. Now, talents granted through leveling were supposed to add more strategy, yet…

d) I found only a couple talents and spells that I would use consistently. The rest were available, and if I had enough stamina/mana to cast them I would, but would rarely change up my cast order. Without leveling willpower to grant extra stamina then the other talents would always be left out.

2. Uneven difficulty:

I ping ponged many times from normal to easy. It was just not possible to go past some arenas on normal no matter how craftily I fought or how many stat-strengthening items I activated. But then, later on in the game on easy I would find my party too strong, never a member falling in combat. Healing potions becoming a commodity.

During scholarly internet pursuits, I had read that Dragon Age has an Oblivion style area leveling system. When a player reaches a zone for the first time, the enemies will be harder or easier depending on the level of the player. In addition, some areas were meant to be tackled later, with challenging gatekeeper enemies to scare off the players. These mechanisms did not work for me. I tried to tank through any zone regardless of my level. Perhaps this is one of the reasons the difficulty felt so uneven. If the developers did not want the average player entering a zone due to difficulty, they should have been more explicit. Bring up a text box that says that this zone is for level 10-20 players. If I choose to ignore it, at least I know the reason for the combat being so tough is my own foolishness.

3. Load Time:

Every instance that the player changes world locations, the game will load. Every time the player enters a house or building, the world will load. These load segments of roughly 10-15 seconds add up considerably over the 36-hour main adventure. In the city of Dwarven city of Ozamar, with many shops and doorways to enter, the load time made me second-guess entering any building. "Do I really need to enter this place?" If someone has to consider the load speed of their computer rather than the thrill of their character storming the shop, then something is wrong for the game.

4. Persistent, why are you not?:

There are persistent powers that continually siphon some amount of stamina or manna to leave active. These should be on all the time unless you tell otherwise, or so goes the hope. When you die however, the game deactivates all of them, and you have to manually reset them. A nuisance unless you have wasted tactic slots to have them be automatically restarted.

5. Graphically Broad:

Dragon Age Origins is graphically somewhere between Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2, two other Bioware games. The motion-capture for the character mouths as they spout their lines is convincing, seeming adopted to or from Mass Effect 2, however most of the other animations are stiff, about on par with Mass Effect 1. The environments were also a mixed bag. Walking into the city of Denarim for the first time, I spotted far off buildings and interesting house design spotting the landscapes. However, most of the ground level details were flat empty space between targets of interest. The actual buildings also visually pop from the landscape as though they had fallen out of the sky, just without the crater. The city of Radcliff tries to remedy the flatness with a mountainous city, but between the buildings are even more curvy grounds of empty. Thankfully, the previously mention Orzammar breaks the trend, uniquely detailed all over with statues and characters. (Orzammar was a scenic highlight of the game of you haven't figured that out yet) The repetitious caverns of the deep roads however take graphics back to the norm.

In most expansive RPGs it is infeasible to model thousands of objects to litter the scenes. However, Dragon Age doesn't allow free-roaming travel, which is why I was hoping the world environments would be more personalized. This struck me especially true for some of the dungeons, where I have visibly entered a duplicate layout of another room except with different items in it. Visually identical characters, and clothing also show up during the adventure making exploring not quite as interesting as it could be for the diverse society that exists.

6. Buggy:

For those of you who hate games that are released in a buggy state, stay far from Dragon Age Origins. This game is buggy to oblivion and back. The game's stability is fair, and crashing was minimal, but within the game, ho boy. I doubt anybody could make it through the game without at least one glitch or bug happening to them. I played the entirety of Dragon Age with the most recent patch of 1.04 and still ran into many oddities. One such problem had me rescuing a companion from a cell during one of the earlier town visits of the game. Although I rescued him, I decided that he was not suitable to be one of my three main companions and so left him back at camp. Later on, I find he is missing, no notification or anything. The game treated him as not being rescued.

Another glitch required internet support to resolve the issue. While in the Fade, a dream environment, the player can recover their companions from their imprisoned stupor. This consisted of talking to the companion, fighting off some kind of demon, and then a cut scene will activate before you can leave. In my case, I could speak to the companion, fight the demon, but the cut scene would not activate. Instead, I could speak to my companion and the entire loop would happen again. This would sometimes lead to hilarity if one of the demons killed had their heads blown off. The demon would reappear alive in the initial companion conversation without a head. Funny but distressing. I eventually discovered from online sources that the trigger for the cut scene is extremely slow, and a player may have to wait upwards of 4 minutes without doing anything before the scripting will execute properly. One of many bugs you can expect to find along the way.

To finish off this topic, a bug that occurred with more regularly than the others was intermittent lag during the cut scenes. Audio would continue to play but the visuals would freeze in place for 10 seconds. This never happened during gameplay, but it does detract from the mood of the story when characters decide to play their own little game of Red Light Green Light.
Overall, I'd hate to play Dragon Age in an un-patched state. Nearly every quest has a couple bugs associated with it. For more specific bugs, check out the Dragon Age wiki, which lists many of the bugs under specific quests and items.

http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Quests

7. GUI Subtleties:

While the inventory management was a step forward, I had mixed experiences with the rest of the graphical interface. Firstly, the game doesn’t introduce interface features. The subtlety that equipping items to characters removes them from the carrying weight and that characters can equip two different item sets is not mentioned, though I’m sure the curious player will wonder what those circular arrows mean on the inventory screen. Also, the tactics screen, a mandatory element to preventing a multi-tasking nightmare, doesn’t inform players that the tactic’s numbered order represents an order priority. Turns out even if you have the tactic in the list, it just doesn’t become active unless the earlier ones have cycled through. Don't assume like I did that just because the character meets the <50% health condition that it'll drop everything to heal itself.

Other GUI problems also exist, the map should prove a flawless and simple design, but I found I could not click-drag to pan it instead I was forced to zoom out to survey the surroundings. Furthermore, in the large city of Denerim, navigating the map proves infuriating, as even if you are at Denerim’s zone border, you have to go to a different map interface screen to reach the world map and escape. I guess I know why the city's elves believed they were in a city prison.

8. Music:

The game has a great theme song that plays on the main menu, and like Bulletstorm, it is very alluring but a main menu song cannot hold your attention for 36 hours. Yet that didn't stop Bioware from trying with the rest of the soundtrack. Whenever the player engages in battle, you will hear the same Dark Spawn battle theme, and the same ending upheaval as all enemies are slain and the game transitions back to exploration mode. I’m sure the audio designers though they were melding moods together with such an apparent song ending but with so many transitions back and forth to battle, it became excessively obvious. Also, most songs were just too similar. There wasn’t the major transition to another instrument group for races/locations like Ocarina of Time did, with the Zora race having harps and the Goran's accompanied by a steady drum beat. The few songs with vocals were the standouts but only appear in a couple cut scenes. Otherwise, back to the battle music with you!

Conclusion:

Dragon Age Origins is a great game for its story. You will enjoy learning about the cultures, settling disputes, and playing the RPG-able aspects. However, the combat is bloody boring. There's way too much of it, and not enough ways to make it interesting. I'd suggest setting the game on easy, and finishing the combat as fast as possible to get back to hearing the wonderful voice acting, exploring the exotic settings and pissing off your companions.

by Zott820

Considering the movie Wreck It Ralph takes place in an arcade universe and features arcade and video game character cameos, this was enough for me to review the movie. I’ve waited until near when the movie launches tonight to post my review, so there will be lots of movie plot spoilers going forward. Insert coin to start:

Background: I had the chance to watch an advance screening of Wreck It Ralph weeks ago before the Nov. 2 premiere. I watched the movie in 3D, which really did not add or subtract much from the viewing experience.

Brief Plot overview:

The beginning portion of the movie focuses heavily on explaining how Ralph is disappointed being the villain since he can’t earn a medal and stand happily at the top of his building. Ralph can’t earn a medal since he is a villain. So Ralph decides to visit another arcade machine, earn a medal and return to show his worth.

Moral: villains never get the girl or the glory. Real life message: If you have a dead-end job, you are stuck with it, enjoy the small moments of pleasure you get.

Marketing Angle for the Movie:

Video game and arcade characters create nostalgia for the first fourth of the movie to bring in the male audience. Then the bait and switch to Disney’s cutesy Sugar Land where childish jokes meet Mario Kart racing.

Lots of SPOILERS for the rest of the article, don't read unless you are fine with complete SPOILERS

Wreck-It Ralph Arcade Cameos

The start of the movie pours on the fanservice with many, many video game cameos. We have the DDR machine girl announcing all the humans have left the arcade. Ken and Ryu stop battling and agree to go get a drink. Later on in the Tapper arcade, we can see them sharing a drink of root beer as Ralph is being served by the Tapper bartender.

The villian support group session features the orange Pac Man ghost, Bowser, Zangief, M. Bison, Doctor Robotnik, Kano and others. Sadly, there isn’t any more Nintendo villain cameos in the movie. The Capcom characters get the best dialogue. M. Bison asks Ralph if he is going “Turbo”, which is priceless since Capcom always makes a turbo edition of Street Fighter. Zangief mulls over why he must be a villain and decided he must be a villain because no one else is going to squeeze the life out of his opponents with their thighs.

In the Game Central Station, we see Q-bert is stranded there since his arcade machine has been disconnected. Paperboy is also there on his bike. Frogger is also seen crossing the station. The biggest cameo in the movie is when Sonic the Hedgehog introduces a huge movie plot point via a Game Central announcement. He states that characters do not respawn if they die when outside their arcade cabinet.

Character Power Level: OP Scale from 0 to 10

I’m going to rate the characters in terms of how much power they have over the arcade universe. OP stands for "over-powered". A score of 0 means the character is normal and can’t affect arcade worlds. A score of 10 means the character is super OP in their arcade machine and/or can alter other arcade universes.

Ralph (3)- His powers are climbing buildings, pounding surfaces flat and moving his hands really fast. He also falls off buildings a lot. His powers are not universe or game breaking, so his OP factor is 3 = normal.

Fix-It Felix, Jr (1), Fix-It Hammer (7)- Fix-It Felix Jr. by himself can only move, jump, DANCE and talk in Q-bert-ese. His fix it hammer can repair his wounds. The hammer’s power must be respected as it could potentially fix anything.

Gene, inhabitant of Fix-It Felix, Jr (0) – He can only move in really cool frame animations like the rest of the city dwellers of Fix-it Felix. Gene really has no powers whatsoever except for serving as the early protagonist to get Ralph on his adventure.

King Candy (10) – King Candy rewrites game code using the Konami Code. The Konami Code is the equivalent of godlike power. This means he can effectively kill characters, wipe their memory or do anything game related like get 99 lives. I’m guessing he has some restraint with tinkering with the code since he just wants to race and this is a Disney movie.

Vanellope von Schweetz (9) – A “glitch”who can pixelate and teleport. She is able to cheat her arcade game and get the best car in Sugar Rush with Ralph’s help. The only reason she isn’t rated a 10 is because she can’t leave her game (glaring and annoying plot point) and her memory was fractured.

A human choosing Vanellope as a racing character still gets the most OP character in the game with teleports and the fastest car.

Sour Bill (1) – He’s sour and a character puts him in his mouth. Sour candy is worth a point.

Sergeant Calhoun (5) – I had to look her name up since she is a generic soldier with “the most tragic backstory ever.” During her marriage, a Cy-bug crashes through the window and eats her husband. She has a mini-gun and takes down a lot of the Cy-bugs during the movie with various guns. Guns in a Disney movie are impressive, so she gets an above average score.

Cy-bugs (10) –This is what happens when Ditto's breed with Space Invaders. They can turn into anything they eat.

If all it takes is for a mindless character to enter another arcade cabinet and multiply, we would have multiple times where entire arcades are threatened. Don’t even start thinking about arcade machines that are connected to the Internet, it only opens a can of worms. Or worse, what happens to the characters when humans reach kill screens like in Pac-Man!!!

Plot Loopholes: The arcade universe has some crazy rules!

So I’m taking the arcade universes as they exist in the movie. Arcade characters can leave their machines when the arcade is closed and there are no humans to see their antics. This works just like Toy Story. The characters can travel to other game worlds via the surge protector’s Game Central Station which acts like a transportation hub to other arcades. The surge protector customs agent is useless in making sure foreign arcade characters and props stay in their universe (like when Ralph removes the Pac-Man cherry early in the movie). Characters must return to their arcade machine or else their machine is going to be lacking those characters when people try to play them.

So far this makes sense, now here’s where it gets complicated. The arcade universe via the Sonic the Hedgehog video screen says if a character “dies” in another machine, they don’t respawn. If a character isn’t in their original arcade machine, they are considered going “turbo” (rogue) by other universe characters. This puts the entire machine at risk as the outside world human operators perceive the arcade machine is malfunctioning. If an arcade machine is removed from the arcade, the characters effectively die.

This is a doomsday scenario considering if one character goes turbo like Ralph is suspected, then the rest of the arcade characters either face their plug being pulled or they choose to live in the surge protector, their game over. Would you choose death or purgatory?

A racer named Turbo chooses a third option. When his game faced the plug being pulled, Turbo decided to enter another game to keep racing. He interferes with the gameplay while humans are playing. This should have caused humans to panic that the game characters are “alive.” Instead, the staff just put up a sign saying the machine is just "out of order" before the machine is removed.

Now the arcade characters definitely know character like Turbo can enter their arcade universe and potentially corrupt their world. Yet no characters were freaking out and closing their doors to other game characters.

At the end of the movie, other foreign characters are invited to live in the Fix-It Felix machine for absolutely no logical reason. Instead of the humans pulling the plug when they see characters like Q-bert in the wrong machine or more appropriately freaking out, everyone wants to play it since it’s popular and nostalgic. Suuuuuure. The arcade copyright lawyers would put the kibosh on that quickly.

Finally Vanellope von Schweetz is a super powerful character who can do things that contradict the laws of the arcade universe. First, she can play the Sugar Rush minigame as a character in the game to customize her racer. I found this scene very entertaining with her pretty much destroying everything and still ending up with the best car covered with candy.

Vanellope von Schweetz can’t leave her arcade since she is considered a glitch. Once her memory has been restored, she should not have the ability to glitch while racing. So then I guess her glitch is really her special ability. Then she still shouldn’t be able to leave her arcade cabinet at the end of the movie to attend the marriage in Hero’s Duty. Also for some reason, Ralph makes it seem like he can't see Vanellope again except for glimpses before he is tossed from the building roof.

If all she has to do is finish the race and the game will restart, why is Ralph so concerned with fighting the Cy-bugs? Just push that little girl across the finish line, let the game reset and then go from there.

Conclusion

The best parts of the movie are the beginning character cameos, Hero’s Duty, Ralph’s disgust with Sugar Rush’s candy world, the unexpected Rainbow Road homage and frightening final boss. The worst parts are Vanellope von Schweetz’s childish jokes about “dooty”, the unnecessary focus on Mario kart racing in Sugar Land for most of the movie and the ending with Ralph returning pretty much to the same way of life.

The movie looked stunning. The arcade cameos were spot on. I laughed at a lot of the unfunny moments. I would recommend video gamers go see the movie for the cameos and smart design. Just ignore most of the Sugar Land portions of the movie. Come for the throwback to Donkey Kong, stay for the brief arcade cameos.

*Images from the Disney Wreck-It Raph website

by BlueZero

Bastion is a near-perfect game. A wonderful masterpiece, who's gameplay is tarnished only by a couple gameplay problems that shall be covered shortly. Even with those, Bastion represents a must-play on anybody's gaming list. I first became aware of the game when I heard glowing reviews of it and its narrator. This narrator would craft the world of the player's actions through his charming interludes. I was interested, but not enough so to purchase the game. I was more intrigued by Indie game Braid, whose time manipulation seemed better for my style. The narrator was also ruined by my watching of videos such as "Skyrim: Bastion Narrator Edition" which combines said narrator with Skyrim. This video does not do the world of Bastion, nor the narrator justice. It is the culmination of its vivid graphics, unique sound, and that narrator that come together to make Bastion worth playing. A humble bundle allowed both Braid and Bastion to come into my possession, and by the end of it, with nearly three completions, and 16 hours in the game, I believe Bastion has come out victorious.

Gameplay:

The player controls "The Kid" a nameless heroine who must battles hordes of minions of a post-apocalyptic world. This is not a nuclear wasteland from Fallout, this is a playground where the land has been split into floating platforms, and the creatures roam free. These floating platforms rise up from the ether as the player gets near, edging them to explore that space further. This works well as a mapping mechanic. Walk towards a ledge and nothing appears, then that must not be the correct path.

The player can equip his character with a multitude of weapons, with nearly one new weapon being introduced per level, of the 15+ levels that exist. Each weapon has enough variation to keep the player interested in trying them all out. The player starts with a hammer, a high damage weapon that can do even more if the player uses it while stationary. He can compliment that with a weapon in his secondary slot, perhaps a bow and arrow for picking off long-range targets. My personal favorite was the mortar, with its range and nearly instant kill force, combined with the scrap musket. I'd first pop out a mortar ball, and then the scrap musket would push enemies back into the falling explosive round. Delicious.

These weapons can be upgraded by finding salvageable through the lands, allowing them to become unbeatable forces of reckoning. Such upgrades can be chosen along two upgrade paths, maybe trading off potential enhancements of damage and spread for rate of fire, or reload speed. The upgrades are not generic 15% damage increases for every weapon and are personalized for the temperament of those weapons. The scrap musket, for example, can have its kickback greatly improved, while the hammer has an enhanced "focus", save attacking for a bit to power up a devastating attack.

Both the weapons variety and possible upgrades add great replayability. Whilst one set can take you through the game, and probably will for the first completion, by the second play through you will be testing out different combos and finding which best suit your style. Your technique with the weapons will also be tested at optional trial stages, where unlocking parts can be rewarded for ace control and finesse under the stage conditions.

Difficulty in the game is handled very intelligently. Rather than a chosen Easy-Medium-Hard constant determining the experience, the player determines the difficulty through a shrine. Here, the player chooses difficulty enhancements that not only increase the challenge, but also the potential reward, with more experience and money from defeating foes. These enhancements come in the form of martyrdom-style grenades upon enemy death or enemies attacking much faster. I've surprised that more games have not adopted this philosophy as it made the otherwise tame first-run through Bastion increasingly thrilling as I consistently upped the challenge to meet my proficiency.

Narrator:

By far the best part of bastion would be the narrator. He is a more personable Riddick; a man who speaks poetically, but doesn't waste breath. His raspy voice serves as part guide, part reward. Not every action that the player does deserves a narrator response, but when the narrator does speak of such things, there's both surprise and glee knowing there's an "audience" looking over the player. The essence of the narrator is best through this dialogue writing. The diction and pacing is just spot-on. The dialogue connection was the problem with the Skyrim video's use of the narrator. They had the voice down, but the writing that describes the actions of the player, was fragmented to fit the video. From the player's smashing of boxes, to the selection of weapons the words are carefully tailored. These bits of spoken word don't just tell you what you know either; they build the background for the world, speaking of marshals and bushmen that the player will never meet. The narrator-story connection becomes closer in challenge dream stages, where the in-game's characters have their back-story told as they battle forward.

The gripes I had with the narrator were that of his non-speaking. He is given a physical form in the game, an elderly man with gray hair. Yet, I could not find this visage connecting to this voice I was hearing. I cannot describe why, but I felt it each time I saw the narrator's shape that this must be someone else. Since, how else could they omnisciently tell what is going on through the levels? Bastion crystal ball? The second problem with the narrator is that he speaks for other characters. There is only one other speaking voice in the game, and even more interestingly, the narrator speaks for them initially, and then nearly at the end they speak for themselves. Why the developers chose to do this I am not sure, but it once more throws me off that the narrator is actually an in-game character.

Music:

The music is not an atmospheric sort here, and is very prominent. Each level has its own song set, and rather than the music complimenting the gameplay, the music makes the gameplay possible. The player is just a puppet to the environment and soundtrack as they trek on. This became clearer when I later listened to the soundtrack disconnected from the game. Alone the songs are ok, but the visceral connection to the art and game world constructs the masterpiece of the tunes. The songs are modern mixed with western flair in instrument choice, but some select pieces do have voice accompaniment that play directly into the game story. The vocals earn mention by the game's narrator for their historical significance but are the highlights of the soundtrack outside the game as well.

Enemies:

Sadly, the low marks that steal the perfection relates to the enemies. While traveling around an uprising tiled world listening to the music jam and narrator speak could make this game, it would be over even quicker than it is. The weapon variety needs to be put to use, and that would be dependent on the enemies. The enemies serve as the impasse to the reward both in their inherent designed difficulty and in problematic choices. Firstly, the variety of enemies is good. There's a point about halfway through the game where every enemy changes to a new version that fits the same category. Floating gas monsters are changed into birds for example.

Problem is the overall sucky attack designs of these enemies are kept during the transition. The main enemies of the first half, gas monsters that look like ghosts, exist in a couple types that change how they attack. Some spin their hammer around, some have a long charge attack, and some have a short charge attack. Most games have a color shift or some visible change to represent a different enemy to alert the player of the differences. For the gas monsters, the developers chose to vary slightly the color of the enemy's hood. This palette swap is so hard to see in motion and pick out, that chosen player tactics could be for the wrong enemy type! Try shield blocking a gas monster's spinning attack, and it turns out to be a stomp that sends the player flying regardless of their shield.

Speaking about the shield, the degree of safety is not easily seen from the layer sprite. There are eight sprites for the player direction, but finding the sweet spot for completely blocking out the damage is not clear when enemies float right up to the player to attack. A personal motto of mine is that shields should either cover 100% of the player if a total shield bubble, or 180° if a forward facing shield. This lets players accurately plan which direction to face the most enemies to block them, rather than some enemies penetrating from an unclear 132° or so point. A sprite based game like this, which doesn't demand the precision of a first person shooter, should especially abide by that rule.

While the multitude of weapons and upgrades are great, I find that the game is bias for the long-range weapons. Some of the enemies when surrounding the player in melee combat are relentless. Their large numbers typically surround the player, preventing accurate feedback about the combat conditions. Their fast movement and stacking covering 2D graphics also add to the confusion.

One type of enemy who is especially irksome is the Stinkeye kamikaze. Their range of detonation is uncertain, and their explosive damage apparently stacks with the martyrdom grenades, which can lead to "What the heck just happened?" - Instantaneous death. Overall, as long as the player sticks with the ranged weaponry, they can partially avoid the game's weaker moments.

Graphics:

Finishing off this review, let's discuss the graphics. This game was initially an Xbox 360 release, so I imagine many of the graphics were made with 720p in mind. However, the PC release does have 1080p support. Whether the graphics were all redone, I could not tell. The style though is very colorful and has a cartoony element to it. I say this because the player and enemies appear as if they are made in a 3D modeling program with their fluidity while the backdrops have a very hand-painted artistic aspect to them. This causes them to stick out from each other quite a bit.

Despite the visible differences between player and background, the camera positioning of Bastion is troublesome. It can cause the player to think he is stepping onto solid ground when he is not, and vice versa. If the player falls off the floating platforms, they take a moderate health penalty and continue playing, so it isn't a one-step death like some games, but tumbling happens more often than I would like. Some enemies also destroy the ground platforms, so seeing where to stand requires some guesswork. Getting the proper angle of attack to hit an enemy also carries the burden of a fickle camera angle. I wouldn't say that adding world rails would fix the problem of the camera, and also removes the strategy granted by an enhancing game tonic, just that this is a natural irritation granted by an almost isometric view.

Conclusion:

Bastion is made for the adventurer who loves his weapons. Whom wants some fun exploring a colorful and unique world while smashing enemies along the way. While doing so, they may find themselves grooving to a soundtrack that makes the world as much as they do. Enemies may prove a bit irritating, but a satisfying narration soothes the pain and satiates the soul with stunning voice and diction. The game is made with minimal worry for equipping and managing RPG-style items. They are there, but the whole game could be beaten without them. The items, and difficulty adjustments give the player flexibility, which can be used to help them progress to hear more words of wisdom. Go, Play, This, Game. At least once…

by Zott820

Congratulations, you have just arrived in Skyloft. This cozy island in the sky will be your worry-free home for the rest of your life. Under the watchful eye of The Goddess, citizens fly around on giant birds, sell items at the bazaar and run ordinary lives. Then BLAM, the game begins.

The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword is Nintendo's latest Zelda game, celebrating the franchise's 25th anniversary. The game is also the first full Zelda adventure designed around the Wii's capabilities, rather than the Twilight Princess port from the GameCube era, and ignoring the mini-game collection that was Link's Crossbow Training.

I played through the game is approximately 32 hours. After completion of the main game, a Hero Mode becomes accessible offering a more difficult but largely unchanged experience from the vanilla game. Since the Nintendo Channel give about a 38 hour completion aggregate, I imagine that few people played through the Hero mode. Since the game is not uber-difficult to begin with, I'd suggest newcomers grab a save file with the Hero mode unlocked and start from there if they want a challenging experience.

Proceed with caution, this review sounds very negative and has some spoilers. Nevertheless, don't let that deter reading more. I constantly battled Skyward Sword to my favorite game in the series, Majora's Mask, in my mind when I wrote this, finding aspects where Skyward Sword has lost the fight with its past. With that disclaimer, if you enjoyed previous 3D Zelda games in the franchise you will probably enjoy this one too.

Controls

The biggest item on everybody's mind for this newest Zelda appears to be the controls. This is the first Zelda game to utilize the Wii-motion Plus accessory, with the expectation of nearly 1:1 sword play, and increased strategy in combat. Put your concerns to bed, the controls work wonderfully. Calibration is done once at the beginning of the game and that's it. In segments of 7-hour play, I never had to re-calibrate the Wii-mote. When using items such as the slingshot, the game automatically centers the cursor depending on where you were pointing when activating the item. This can be a pain for players that don't understand this feature, but for those who do, it eliminates having to press down on the D-pad to re-center the Wii-mote manually and enhances reaction time.

How do the controls work? Slice upward to have Link slice upward. Slide from left to right to have Link cut his sword in the same pattern. Other controls work similarly, with stabbing being the most unique with a forward jab. Shake the nunchuck to block with the shield. These controls are important because the entirety of the game and some puzzles are based around this directional-based swordplay. Enemies block from certain angles, and others require feigning a rightward horizontal slice only to make it a quick leftward one. Once I had grown familiar with the controls over the first few dungeons, never did I have issues with the controls being unresponsive. Instead, I found mistakes in attacking were my own. Players cannot spam slicing attacks with the intent to win. This works on simple enemies that were meant to be fodder, but when facing bosses and stalfos you better not. Being blocked too many times, from attacking at the improper moment or not waiting for an opening, has the enemy respond with a powerful nearly un-dodgeable attack as punishment. Combat may feel slower for those used to the earlier games but is styled with the finesse of proper timing and balance. By the end of the game I could easily resolve battles with enemies that had initially gave me some trouble just by my greater handling of my blade and shield. This is a great feeling because it almost usurped the need for upgrading equipment. Rather than having to earn xp or upgrade my sword with new powers to offset increased enemy strength, I fought with enhanced prowess from actually learning.

Gameplay

Throughout his quest, Link will find himself leaving Skyloft to explore strange new lands. And he will explore these lands many many times. There are only three main worlds, of which each will need to be visited a minimum of three times before the end of the game. Between these worlds is the main overworld, a largely barren space where a lot of downtime will be spent soaring about the clouds. As the game piled on the fetch-quests, the distance between destinations felt lengthier on each voyage, and I wished for a fast-travel option. The game's worlds are well designed though, permitting exploration by different means once new quest items are within Link's arsenal. Furthermore, as new sections of the main worlds are unlocked, these new sections focus on fresh gameplay experience. The forest stage was initially a walkable stage, but what if it had water? Here's that familiar molten magma-landscape, now stealth past those enemies. Nintendo applies a wide range of gameplay mechanics features from its past games as well as some new ones to try to keep the action fresh. Yet, repetition was the deadly hand that Skyward Sword played much too often. After completing a main quest collection quest, I figured the story was progressing. Little did I know (Or maybe I should have guessed it) that I would be forced to return to all three worlds to collect another set of items, and then another. There was also a feeling of "filler" to the 32-hour adventure as one boss is fought three different times. Granted, he acts differently each time but the basic mechanisms to his defeat are the same.

The series' staple of dungeon crawling is less distinct from other games with the main worlds holding the bulk of the challenges. While it might take 4 hours to gain access to the dungeon, the dungeons were much shorter, with only an hour to an hour and a half of solid play. These dungeons however were equally if not better designed than the main worlds, with highlights including rolling on a lava ball and rearranging the entire dungeon's shape. Dungeon design also made full use of Link's equipment, not relying solely on the newest item earned for every puzzle's solution. The bosses however were pitiful, and who's sometimes 4-minute defeat made even the dungeon seem lengthy in comparison.

Catering to an Internet-age that can easily look up info on an FAQ, Skyward Sword does not attempt to hide tips and tricks. A gossip stone in Skyloft will gladly give hints away free on how to defeat the game bosses and how to reach platforms thought impossible. The new addition of dosing also makes finding items as easy as surveying the landscape and listening for the loudening of the ping. Neither element is required to beat the game, but will prevent aimless wandering/exploring on a probably already highly explored terrain. I relied heavily on the dousing to save time but tried to limit my accessing of the gossip lest I ruin the game play. As a warning to that, I was having trouble beating the final boss and so watched the hint video that revealed a tactic that completely slaughtered him.

Skyward sword has a crafting system and like most crafting systems it requires some manner of material to forge the new item, upgrade or thing-a-ma-bob. From tumbleweeds to the skulls of his enemies found through the land, Link savages anything that crosses his blade. Some of the collectables are kind of neat, in that to get a blue feather, Link may have to be crafty at catching a blue bird frolicking about. The vast majority however are found averagely on the ground. Collecting these things were a drag. Upgrading equipment was largely unnecessary and when I wanted too, I was always missing one component. Despite some items supposedly being rare, I would have a bunch of them, while missing the required common items. Given my fatigue of backtracking to the worlds, I hardly ever wanted to search for ANY components, and went on my quest without them. Nothing was more disappointing in the game than when I completed a difficult challenge or mini-game, and rather than be rewarded with Rupees or a heart container, I was given a "rare" crafting item, which I knew I would never use for anything.

The second tier of collectables came from bug collecting. I felt that this replaced the fishing from some of the past 3D Zelda adventures as the behavior of the bugs were modeled very deeply. Quietly sneak close for that capturing strike with the bug net or rush madly at insects as they hop, crawl or bug away, the choice is yours. Though be warned that that running at bugs may lead to unintentional/intentional bug smashing. Watch your step. (And it happens with a cute Pikmin-y ghost too :D) Bugs can also be stunned out of trees with a roll and knocked off nearby walls the same. Sadly, bug collecting only allows for using the bugs in potions or selling them. I was hoping for more to do with this feature as collecting the bugs is more interactive than just finding a collectable ore.

Above all quarrels with collectables, the worse feature was the unwavering reminders of what the items were. The first time a collectable was obtained a bio would be given about what it was. The second time a collectable would be obtained Link just picks it up as easily as a heart container. BUT, each time the game is reset; all these bios are also reset. Nintendo must have thought, "The player turned off his console for 10 minutes, we better remind him of what all the collectables are in case he forgot." I actually had an aversion to picking up collectables to avoid this "HEY!" moment, not knowing if I picked one up earlier in the play-session or not. This is another reason I played the last 15 hours of the game on 7-hour stints. Thank goodness Nintendo had the decency not to do the same with every rupee and heart the player picks up. "Link, you just picked up a heart. This fills your life bar by one heart." "Link, you just picked up a rupee. You might be able to purchase goods and services if you collect enough."

My favorite parts of Zelda games have been ignoring the main quest and just playing around with the world. Majora's Mask got this right for me. The player could obtain many masks that while proposing specific purposes could also be worn just for fun. From there, one could mingle with characters, see how they react, or just roleplay. While the denizens of Skyloft are a cheerful bunch, they lack equivalent characterization. In Majora's Mask, by following a character around all day, the player could understand their temperament as they went about their jobs. In Skyward Sword, the characters are static. While the game has a day-night cycle, it must be player activated and the nighttime is more restrictive than explorative, with only a couple zones being accessible. Performing quests for the citizens yields special oozy crystals that can be exchanged for rare items like rupee holding wallets, so I definitely wanted to complete them. But, many are once again "Go find X" type missions. After their corresponding mission was done, most characters never changed their dialogue again giving little reason to revisit them. Since Skyloft is the main hub of the entire game, I was hoping for more randomness here as well. I do love the jolly shopkeeper, and the glowing eyes of the fortune-teller, which is why I craved more of their wayward interaction. Text is cheap to implement, and Skyward Sword doesn't even have voice acting. As far as other things to do, once the game is over I have surprisingly little urge to continue playing. The backtracking annoyances and collectable annoyances killed most of the desire to explore. The characters become broken records, and that leaves only mini-games to tide one over. Ignoring the reward of the collectables, the mini-games are just average. Many are too shallow, such as Fun Fun Island, and upon reaching the maximum score presented little chance of improvement or desire to try. Others such as the chopping the bamboo are limited by technology. The best mini-game was the pumpkin archery that represents both the beginning and end of the history of Wii-remote games. Overall, the world needs more stuff, but not stuff worth caring about, stuff for random play.

Graphics

The game takes on a watercolor style, complimented by very bright texturing. Far off distances are faded away with a blurring filter. Up close, the characters are detailed with some surprisingly expressive animations for a Zelda game. Overall, the graphics fit and besides the trees being noticeably made up of layered flat textures, they are stylistically and visually good. Good, but good enough? I rather wished the graphics had pushed the game a bit farther. I can tell the game has a very wide draw distance, being able to stand on the top of a tower in the desert and see surrounding areas, but it isn't until a part of the game arrives with upward of 40 enemies on screen do I comment, "Now this is what the Wii is capable of!" I wished I had that feeling all the time.

Music and Sound

Skyward Sword's music plays homage to other musical numbers in the series, having the same house song as Ocarina of Time, and Zelda's Lullaby from A Link to the Past. For those who are unaware at this point, Zelda's lullaby is the Skyward Sword theme in reverse. This new theme is fantastic, and I enjoyed its overarching melody through the game. Some character's themes also have this overlaid treatment, with Groose's theme appearing in several renditions and paces. As a whole though, when Skyward Sword's music is not borrowing from its parents, it falls back to normalcy. Most tunes were emotion-drawing pieces but lack memorability outside the game world. The two exceptions were the themes I mentioned earlier, which I scoured YouTube for renditions. Besides that, the game's bazaar has a great fading effect reminiscent of N64 midis of old, despite Skyward Sword using streaming audio. As Link moves about the bazaar, the songs pacing and instruments shift with the grungy repair shop smoothly transitioning into the flowery item check but keeping the overall structure of the song intact. Many of the songs are noticeably synthesized giving the music a very clean air with every synthesized tinkle audible and keeping with its roots. Link can jazz along with these tunes when he finds the Harp, matching their tempo. Another neat musical touch.

Finally, sound effects for this Zelda are wonderful. Listening to the game with normal speakers gave the same satisfaction as past Zelda's, but when I slid my headphones on; I was surprised at how much better the experience was. All the sound effects were very crisp, from the collection of a rupee to the background music. One of the best uses of sound effects in the game was during the boss fight with Koloktos. (Notice how using the boss name removes any change of spoilers, hah ha!) Picking up the huge sword and swinging it from left to right has the audio 'whoosh' by my head. I did this far more times than were needed to defeat the boss for the satisfaction, I'll admit.

Conclusion

What can a player expect from this Zelda game as a whole? Well, they should grow used to very loose dungeon definition, with easy bosses. They shouldn't be too upset that the game throws them a bone with hints very often. However, they should be concerned about the backtracking and filler of the game. That is not acceptable. Nintendo is a master of level design though, and their clever gameplay will have them keep playing despite it. The tinkle of rupees will have them smile, and the music will be pretty good. The graphics will fit the part, and the characters filling the landscape are ok as quest givers but not much more. When it is all over, players will find that they enjoyed controlling Link as they never have before, with their own motions dictating the blade, but are not sure if they would play the game much longer. Finally, they will play 7-hour sessions, whether it be because of addiction, or because they hate the collectables, that is for them to decide.

I apologize for the low-quality photos in this article. I didn't have the screen-capture card available but wanted original screenshots that aren't just taken from the press kit.

by Zott820

The game is Adobe Flash based and available free off the author's website for those who don't drop some coin on the game. The downloadable version claims the advantages of higher quality video and minimal load, but I'll lay down my own impressions of that in a moment.

Firstly, is the game worth paying for? No, it is not. Is the game worth checking out? If you have time to spare, and can risk not enjoying it. This is a game you'd have to 'feel' to enjoy. I would not come back.

Gameplay consists of searching a landscape made up of pictures and occasionally interacting with mouse clicks. Anybody familiar with Myst will understand the concept immediately, as it is very similar here. The main advantage of Trauma's movement system is that mousing over a possible movement node permits 'peeking' at the next node with that scene's photo tilted in 3D respective to the currently viewed photo, a nice guiding touch. This is what the author's page means when it mentions "3D Technology". Poloroid photos may be spotted along the landscape, interacting with such photos rewards more tidbits of exposition, and hints to movements and endings. Perhaps an unfortunate artifact of using snapshots of real world locations, movement was as, or more, constrained as/than the movement in Myst, as well as connecting nodes not being as logically placed as the player navigates the dream world. The shadow of the camera on the tripod occasionally makes appearances as well, breaking the pure dream motif.

Speaking of dreams, the whole game is one, so if you hated Super Mario 3 for being a dream, you won't like this. Being a dream, the character you are playing has the ability to manipulate the environment with mouse gestures. Most of the gestures are movement based, which I found to be slower and more confusing than clicking on the 3D photos mentioned above. Generally, gestures work, but sometimes miss-recognition occurs. (In the first dream, I raised the ball 4 times on accident when trying to change screens.) Four other special gestures are learned through the four dream scenarios available to the player. The dreams can be played in any order, and replaying dreams with newly learned gestures allowed for finding "hidden" endings. These endings are short and tend to show off 3D graphics overlayed on the photos with a one-line voiceover to fill in story gaps.

The story is completely spoken in metaphor. Interludes of the real world occur in a hospital where the one other character, the doctor, coaxes the player to return to the real world. In honor of the metaphor of the game, I will speak the next section about the downloadable copy in metaphor.

I was blinded by the Flash, as I jittered and juttered still, away from the browsing agent. Could I not go faster? (Still runs in flash in download copy, some lag) I looked and my eyes were fully covered by the window, but blackness covered the sides. (Not Widescreen ratio). A deep fog covered my eyes, only when I closed the window so it was smaller could I see more clearly. Windows are supposed to be clearer than wanderers and cameras are supposed to capture the world as it is. (Not HD graphics, looks best not at full-screen). I waited to enter my dreams. Not as bad as the usual insomnia of the wandering browser, but there were noticeable sittings. (Still noticeable initial load times). My game didn't save? (Sometimes the save data didn't record)

Snap out of it! As might be grasped just now, the downloadable version is not worth it, but if you find the game interesting as played on the website, perhaps you should just donate for the hope of other projects in the same styling.

It's hard to think of trauma as a game, because the world doesn't have distinct goals or objectives, rather it is rather an interactive story. Just like Indigo Prophecy, Trauma should be played for the experience; it isn't something I could see myself coming back for honing skills, improving strategy or just getting overall better at it. Finally, the whole thing could be beaten in roughly an hour with all the story elements found. So, rather than reading a book one day, maybe try Trauma out.

by Zott820

Happy Valentine’s Day and happy Mass Effect 3 demo day! Since the demo is supposed to launch between midnight and 2:00 AM Pacific Standard Time, there is no way I would have time to do a preview in the wee hours of the morning. So instead, I present the long-long-long delayed Mass Effect 2 review (FULL OF SPOILERS) for your enjoyment:

Mass Effect 1 Background:

I completed the first Mass Effect as a male Commander Shepard on my PC and enjoyed it except for the slow running (out of combat) and pointless Mako sections. When I created my character, I choose the gang life story background because I figured it could explain the eyebrow scar I added to my character. I decided to choose Ashley as his love interest and didn’t even know the guy (Kaidan) who died on the planet was a member of my crew! In the end, I saved that miserable Citadel Council, chose Anderson and all the story characters (Wrex, Rachni Queen, Random NPCs) survived their encounter since I played through as a Paragon.

Story:

The universe is in trouble and an ancient race of machines is going to reclaim their right to rule by wiping out all organic life in the galaxy.

The Geth machine race starts out as the primary enemy in the game until we realize the superhuge Reapers were using them as puppets. The Reapers lie dormant on the edge of known space awaiting the time to eradicate all life as part of their programming. In Mass Effect 1, one of the Reapers named Sovereign awoke and wanted to use the Citadel to summon the other Reapers from their slumber. To do this, Sovereign used Saren, once a above –the-law Spectre, as a puppet to interact with organic life and set his plan in motion. Commander Shepard with his influence talked Saren into standing down but not before Saren committed suicide. Sovereign is defeated by the entire space armada and the Citadel Council or hundreds of civilians are killed.

In Mass Effect 2, the game starts with Shepard on the Normandy exploring a random sector of space. His ship is surprise attacked and critically injured. Shepard sacrifices himself so his crewmates can escape and his dead body floats toward a planet. The Cereberus Network picks up his organic pieces and spends many years recreating Shepard. “We can rebuild him. We have the technology”.

Skipping ahead, Shepard is “revived” by a group called Cerberus and given control of a new Normandy by the enigmatic person who calls himself the “Illusive Man.” The Illusive Man believes the Reapers are still a threat and wants Shepard to investigate. Shepard is tasked with building a crew with enough skill and knowledge to eventually survive a trip through the Omega 4 relay, a super dangerous mass effect gateway to Collector space. The Collectors are bug-like aliens who can possess living organisms and are the main threat in Mass Effect 2.

My Playthrough Story:
Welcome back fan favorites like Garrus, Tali, the Doctor and Joker. New faces include the best scientist in the galaxy named Mordin; not only did he create the Genophage which crippled an overpopulated space race, he is a renown singer of Gilbert and Sullivan. The Normandy AI named EDI is hilarious with its banter with Joke over his piloting and annoying habits. Also of note is the “ultimate Krogan lifeform” named Grunt and a Geth team member named Legion (who I barely used). I decided not to use the Cerberus Network to unlock the DLC squad member; I might go back and add him with a near end game save. I also did not buy any of the DLC so I don’t know Liara becomes the Shadow Broker or other possible spoilers.

My Shepard decided to remain faithful to Ashley and informed his assistant there was no chance of romance. I was disappointed there was no real romance between Shepard and Ashley when they met again. Yeah she thought he was dead, but he’s back. Ashley is more likely to accept a zombie human than ever contemplate inter-alien relationships. She is a Xenophobe after all.

With the Miranda/Jack argument, I didn’t have enough Paragon points to remain neutral. I sided with Jack since she has been a prisoner since birth and Miranda is genetically perfect except for her attitude. Thus I lost the loyalty of Miranda and wasn’t able to save her from her future death. With the Tali/Legion argument, I was able to choose the Paragon response and retain both member’s loyalty. I did all the loyalty missions for each character. With the choice to do Legion’s loyalty mission and converted the Geth, I had unknowingly delayed entering the Omega 4 relay and lost most of my crew members.

During the final mission, it was really nail biting because I had the feeling Miranda was going to die with her normal loyalty level. I had acquired all the ship upgrades so I was safe there. I sent Tali as my tech person, Samara as the biotic shielder and had Jacob do all the heavy lifting as the other squad leader since he felt the most military capable. My thought was to minimize Miranda as front-line infantry. Thinking back, I maybe should have sent Miranda with the crew members instead of Legion to keep her alive. Fast forward to the final boss battle, I had fan favorites Garrus and Grunt with me against the T-1000. Yeah, G-Squared > T-1000

As soon as the Illusive Man requested I keep the Collector ship alive to later harvest technology, I thought he was crazy. I mean for me, with the most technological ship and experienced crew, I ended up with a crew of casualties + Miranda. There is no way Cerberus could successfully navigate the Omega 4 relay and use the technology. It just felt so infeasible so I decided to blow up the Collector Ship.

I have a hunch the Illusive Man is the leader of the Geth with his Geth eyes and the ability to huff cigarettes everytime you see him. Plus he used Shepard as bait to get the IIF transponder. He is not going to be happy when he realizes his perfect woman Miranda is gone in Mass Effect 3. At least Miranda has a sister who is also genetically perfect?

Graphics:
The original Mass Effect had the Xbox 360 as their development platform and later ported the game to PC. As a result, first game graphics on 360 suffered from excessive texture pop-in. On PC, the texture popin was eliminated at least on my powerful PC and the overall game was sharper. For the time on PC, some of the graphics ranged from average to high end.

For Mass Effect 2, this game graphics show they were carefully coded to maximize the PC hardware. The game was developed simultaneously on PC and 360 with great results. The faces are much higher quality, the textures, shadows and colors are better. I ran the game on the highest level of graphics at 1440 x 900 with the noise filter off. The game ran really well with usually 30 FPS + on my Core i7 920, ATI 4850, 3 gigs of RAM computer.

Sound:
The guns sound beefy and nightclubs sound bass-y. The voices are crisp and each voice actor puts the necessary emotional inflections to make the game seem realistic. Harbinger’s “TAKING CONTROL” is both disturbing while other times laughable. The music already passes my test by including the same galaxy map music. There is really too much to cover here and is best left to the player to play the game and listen to everything. The sound delivers and is top-notch.

Gameplay:

Gunplay:
The first Mass Effect was full of barren worlds in which Shepard had to run slowly to the next destination or navigate using the annoying Mako ground transport. Combat was very simplified and for most of the game I felt overpowered with my biotic and tech powers. Biotic lift, shotgun blast, throw anyone? I could have easily swept through the game using only the sniper rifle getting headshots ala Yahtzee’s Zero Punctuation review but I decided to continue with pistols on the hard difficulty.

I’m glad BioWare went from their classic die-roll combat to an actual FPS mechanic. It’s not a really visible change. The decision to include ammo over reheating was the best and largest change.

Conversation:
The interactions with NPCs were the best part of the first game and I spent most of the time trying out all options on the dialogue wheel. In the sequel, BioWare added the ability to interrupt conversation with Renegade/Paragon moves which was similar to the first Mass Effect E3 trailer. The dialogue is still well written and there is less repeated conversation trees.

The conversation options lend themselves well to replaying the game as both a Paragon and a Renegade. Examples are usually the loyalty missions like the interrogation with Thane, Tali’s trial, Samara’s daughter dating and other landmark moves like activating Grunt’s stasis tank.

The conversations are more memorable this time with each crewmember having their own personality. Regrettably there are no more “Wrex,” “Shepard,” “Wrex,” “Shepard…” dialogue.

The Bottom Line: More exciting than an all-Elcor cast performing Hamlet…

Harbinger is "Assuming Direct Control" over this review.

"I am Harbinger. Impressive, Shepard. You cannot resist. You are bacteria. You are shortsighted. Pitiful. Nothing stands against us. You cannot escape your destiny, Shepard. We fight as one. We are limitless. Embrace perfection. This is not the conclusion."

by BlueZero

There have been many Call of Duty games released over the years, Black Ops, Modern Warfare, World at War to name a few. With the series selling tens of millions of copies I thought it would be an educational gaming experience to visit the first game bearing the iconic title, and how it holds up by today's gaming standards.

Honestly, a copy of Call of Duty: Game of the Year Edition had actually been sitting around un-played in my home and I just decided to give it a whirl. I am not sure how long it was in my possession before I rescued it from the bottom layer of past plundered videogame booty. Knowing my buying habits, it was probably picked up for no more than 3 dollars on some thrift store excursion.

This article comes after completing the main campaign on the hardened difficulty.

Point # 1: Cheapness

A major problem that this Call of Duty has is overall cheapness. The player is bound to die many ways from unpredictable and unpreventable sources. I find that it is best in games to leave the deaths and failures due to a lack of skill or unfamiliarity, not unfairness. Call of Duty disagrees.

Like any game worth its salt, Call of Duty is programmed not to spawn enemies in front of you. This is good, as it should prevent the player's removal from emersion into the laws of the gaming world. Since this game portrays World War II as it happened, this means a basis of realism, so much that it doesn't step over good gameplay. The implementation of enemies appearing though is garbage. The game spawns enemies behind the player and in sectors previously cleared. I'm not talking about purposeful spawning, such as during backtracking in a level, and finding new enemies awaiting. This is about unexpected spawning to even a knowledgeable player on the level. As a showing of this point, on a boat level, the worst offender, the player could climb a set of stairs and if staring at the next doorway, there would be no enemy present. Stop and rewind. (Or use a save) Walking up that same set of stairs but this time turning to face the wall before the door, would result in the player coming face-to-face with an enemy punching his eyes out. Also bad is clearing out an area, trying to move forward, but now being shot in the back. How did they appear so silently and quickly? It appears that most of this ninja spawning occurs on non-linear areas. For better or worse, most of the levels are linear meaning this occurrence is contained to the few open-spaced levels, Dam, Boat Etc. Could not a better implementation have been done?

Other cheap deaths occur because the AI is incredibly good at picking out your head as you learn out for a quick view. Granted, this may have been factored in because of my playing difficulty, but that doesn't curb the frustration when an enemy solider "activates" and rushes out from behind cover machine gunning the player to death because their reaction time is devastatingly quick. There is no way that they knew I was there! Since the game has many hallways, you have to take EVERY hallway with a quick glance around the corner, or a pre-emptive grenade, to avoid damage.

What else is le cheap? Call of Duty is not a heavily scripted as the other games in the series, but the instances it is are extremely obvious. The worst of the scripting were the on-rails missions. While being ridden around, you are supposed to shoot at the enemy vehicles/infantry and stop them from busting your ride. The drive-by shooting is fine. Call of Duty's methodology for damage distribution is the bothersome portion. Sections of the driving missions can be played without a single shot, and the player will not take any damage. The enemy bullets will plink harmlessly off the vehicle or whiz overhead. On other parts of that same mission, the enemies will snipe the player with deathly precision and magnitude. Whole health bars can be reduced to slivers in seconds. The player can be crouched down hidden from viw, and the enemies show no variation in their striking.

The damage dealt during these "damaging" segments do scale up with the quantity of enemies left standing, yet it is far too difficult to kill every enemy while moving at high speeds past them. On hardened the player must be extremely selective of the targets, waiting for the enemies to disappear in a "passive" moment so you have the full clip of ammo to remove enemies in a "damaging" moment. Having to predict these moments, even dying multiple instances to be forced to play the moment again and again to learn them, is not entertaining, especially since it feels out of the player's control. Instead of epic escapes, these moments were tedious memorization shooting galleries.

Lastly, irking me a lot while completing objectives, the enemies show no remorse. It is as though the level-designers and the AI programmers didn't sort out their objectives. What do I mean? Well, there are a couple occasions where player must sit on a stationary gun emplacement and kill objective targets, usually tanks and planes. Now, these guns are slow, and are meant for their specific targets. I can attempt to kill infantry, but this is very inefficient and I will be overwhelmed quickly by their numbers. Now, I can try to clear out the infantry, before attacking the objectives but this is usually limited by two things. Either A) The enemies infinitely respawn, or B) there is a time shortage. This makes dispensing all the infantry unfeasible. With all these factors in mind, why couldn't the player have been granted some "passive" enemy shots that plink harmlessly? I ask because I died trying to do what the game was telling me to do. The parts are not impossible, as I passed them, but the level of annoyance to pass them far exceeds the reasons for playing them. Thanks to the increasing maturation of gaming, all of the points made up to now have been addressed in more recent offerings from Call of Duty, as well as general gaming.

Point # 2: Graphics

Call of Duty is both blessed and cursed with a long draw distance. This allows for seeing the MG42 firing on the advancing German forces, or the fallschirmjagers protecting a mansion in the evening. This same draw distance affirms the plainness of the levels. Absorb the wide-open landscape of barrenness. The remote tundra of blocks, and the fine blocky architectural marvel of Europe. The Quake III engine was never that great at doing environments. Walls and floors are made primarily out of blocks or curved splines, with some diagonals cut out for flexibility. Such fundamentals result in levels that are noticeably blocky, and so Call of Duty has blocky environments.

To alleviate this visible shortcoming, the Call of Duty developers have added many texture details such as pictures, boxes and rubble, which help to liven up the landscapes. Less blocky models imported into the engine such as trees, characters and ergonomic objects further even out the scene. Some indoor settings will look almost up-to-date graphically, a compliment to the capabilities of the game/developer for the gaming generation. There were times when I also stopped to enjoy the fine texture-work, such as the cobblestones of a building, or a fallen German's paper, of which I could make out the portrait. Sadly, I try to do the same the Rage demo for the PS3 and I find a blurry mess. Are graphics really improving over time? the Rage demo's blurriness could be viewed from quite a distance away, but in Call of Duty I usually had to plug my nose against a surface to see the blur at a resolution of 1680x1050.

Character models were another highlight in the graphics sector. Friend and doe alike would blink and visible breath in and out as they awaited their next motion. They would also react to shots fired by flinching, recovering, and returning fire in smooth motions, having enough animations to keep the enemies interesting. Now some of these animations are a little awkward. I still can't accept the running while couched animation to be natural. It looks like they are hobbling to their destination without functioning knees. Animations also move too fast to be considered possible by a real human. Despite its age, the graphics in Call of Duty are strong enough that you can still hate on the Wii graphics in peace.

Point # 3: Story, what story?

If I had to make a direct comparison of Call of Duty's story to any of the later Call of Duty games, the closest would be Modern Warfare 2. Both games suffer from a severe lack of a clear guided story. In the case of Call of Duty, I could piece the setting with what I knew about World War II history, but that alone doesn't make game compelling. The game includes a few reoccurring named characters which carry along from mission to mission, but most of the soldiers are generic clones. As an interesting design choice, pointing the crosshair at one of these friendly soldiers gives a name and rank, that's color represents health quantity. These names do not make me feel any closer to these characters who disappear or die as easily as I spotted them. In a real military company I would have a moment to ask fellow recruits where they were from, a hobby of theirs, or even just learn their nervous tick. These attributes are what made the movie Saving Private Ryan good, getting to know the characters. You won't find that in this game.

As a demonstration of the failed storytelling, I will now give a SPOILER induced demonstration. After the rescue of Captain Price from a prison, rocking an even more British sounding voice than in later games, we join him on the raid of a German frigate. He is wounded and we are told to go on without him. Upon rallying back at our escape craft, the pilot shouts, "We lost the Captain?". Did the mantra "Show Don't Tell", mean anything to the developers? Captain Price was one of the few characters that received more than three missions worth of screen time, and he was offed as easily as a Star Trek redshirt. What were the particulars of his death? Did he go out guns blazing or succumb to his earlier wounds? This wasn't even a pivotal moment where he may not be truely dead but the player tells the pilot he is, then the player must weight the chosen sacrifice the rest of the game. Without a chance to cash in on the emotional investments, I just stopped caring about what happened on any of the missions. Instead of the game's narrative being fed to the player, the "story" are just the general themes about war based on the perspectives given rather than some overarching plotline.

Building on the poorly constructed story, also just like Modern Warfare 2, the developers chose scenarios that would appear as epic as possible without always constructing the scenario logically to it. One mission might be on a dam, another on a boat, one in a tank, another raiding a prison. These missions are varied but what holds them together is a short pre-mission text. Since the player has to read, yes reading in a Call of Duty game, there is a slowdown of the pacing. Unacceptable! Furthermore, I hardly ever had to look at the objectives list the levels were so linear. I would usually just stumble forward, following allies, until I came to something to blow up or orders were yelled at me. Each level was the same, keep moving forward. The Russian campaign did this better, since the Russians had a known destination they were fighting to, Berlin. The Russian push was also the most dramatic with the scale of the explosions and quantity of allies around the player, but even then, I didn't feel invested. For the American and British campaign, there was little connection between most of the levels except the end of one level might begin the next segment. Even then, those level segment connections only barely explained more than three missions worth of why anything was happening. Even the final American mission did nothing to tie up any apparent story better than any of the ones before. Blow up a V2? Sure why not. Yay, the war is over!

Point # 4: AI and General Gameplay

Breaching a building with comrades beside the player is a thrilling experience and any of the levels where the AI supports the player creates a dynamic battlefield where Call of Duty shines. These allies point out targets and draw the enemy fire to give a chance to strategize and pick targets of interest. When the game is reduced back to a solo-navigating experience the game limps back to mundane standard shooter mechanics. The AI in general is good but with noticeable quirks. One of these quirks is how friendly soldiers will throw grenades with abandon, killing themselves and allies. Their attempts to get out of the way of grenades are also laughable, and nearly always fatal. When it comes to gunplay, the AI is much better. The AI will pop out from behind boxes and corners to take fire. If the player tries to fire on an enemy soldier and misses, the soldier will realistically take cover. This suppression tactic is especially important on some of the later missions indoors, where spraying bullets allows the player and allies to advance. Only one level in the single player acknowledges that suppression works, but it is programmed on all the levels, and is delightful to see being used in unscripted engagements. The AI is also knowledgeable enough to re-man empty machine gun emplacements. For the enemy this isn't so good, since I knowingly waited till they re-maned and then sniped them off as easily as the first guy. However, focusing on other targets and then being fired upon by a previously cleared emplacement keeps the player on their toes to a changing combat zone.

I've already gone through some of the faults of the AI in the cheapness point, so I won't go into detail again about it. Just be reminded that the AI appears out of nothingness to strike the player down, are placed in every hallway to much fatigue, and have insane accuracy.

Most of the gameplay can probably be garnered from what has been previously mentioned, though I wish to call out a special portion of the game that stood out. I'm referring to the Russian tank missions. In this only driving segment, the player commands a Russian T-34 as it kaputs Panzer IVs and mows infantry to their arrowless kneecaps. What made these moments so memorable was the destructibility permitted, drive over trees and they collapse. Shoot at infantry in a building and parts of the building blow off. Not since Battle Tanx had I been allowed such Tank devastation and that was a game especially emphasizing tanks. Comparing to other FPS, I likened the experience to Bad Company, which was still many years from existence. I was glad that when running into a tree the tank/vehicle didn't just stop like Battlefield 2 and other classic first person shooters.

Point #5: Multiplayer

The pacing of Call of Duty's multiplayer is of Quake status and ferocity. There are no perks available, and no World at War style vehicles. Instead, all the soldiers choose from a common set of weapons and duke it out. The kill cam that has become a status quo in all the other Call of Duty games makes its appearance to good results. Since all the equipment comes standard, a couple mechanics make multiplayer interesting. Firstly, there are no claymores as Modern Warfare fans would be aware of, but grenades can be rigged as booby-traps. By sacrificing the ability to throw them, grenades can be attached to the ground, or the wall protecting the flank. Another feature allows bodies to be searched to find replacement equipment, but players don't know what will be found until the search is complete. Scavenging these bodies is generally a waste of time since fallen weapons can be found in great supply on the ground. Lastly, and this took me by surprise, you can shoot people's heads off. The first time I saw it I was shocked, wait…is that a head? Yes, it is Jimmy, that is a man's head. People's heads will pop off if you get a head shot. Considering this effect doesn't even appear in the single player, I found it to be a very unusual choice. It is a bit cartoony to see the heads come off so cleanly, but I appreciate that the developers did not shy away from including due to possible rating. I don't recall any of the other Call of Duties including this cosmetic feature. Why wasn't it in single-player though?

In its classic status Call of Duty should be looked at much differently from modern cinematic shooters. Don't come looking for a well-told story with memorable characters. Instead, if you enjoyed the old arcade feel of gaming with room after room of enemies to slough through than this is the game for you. Just be sure to stick around your allies and keep them alive. Don't find yourself taking the enemies alone and you should have a good time.

by Zott820

Medal of Honor was an attempt by EA to reinvigorate its Medal of Honor franchise by moving the timeline to the modern day and one-upping that, surrounding its story to the still present context of the war in the Middle East. EA went as far as marketing the game around the experience of actual Tier 1 combatants. However, amongst its marketing for realism, Medal of Honor doesn't quite provide the realism nor the fun I was hoping from the game. Luckily, depending on perspective, the game is short and can be completed in one or two sittings. As a bonus, Tier 1 mode takes the campaign, and chooses slices to turn into a time trial mode for those who wish to get a little bit extra out of the solo-experience.

The genre follows standard first person action procedures, but unfortunately, it appears to be using the standard from years back. By this, the game is heavily, in fact 100%, linear and most actions of the game are scripted in precisely. A wandering soul will find many invisible walls, and worse, invisible gunfire. If I tried to progress too far I would be gunned down nearly instantly, even if the enemies were not in sight and I was behind a barrier. Not to stop at gentle guidance, sometimes the scripting would fail (Horrible in a solidly scripted experience), allowing progress far beyond the commentary of allies, or failing to work at all. One instance I was supposed to hide and use stealth, but I was constantly being detected despite many reloads and efforts to follow my ally's instructions exactly.

The game pulls a Call of Duty approach to the narrative, switching between combatants in the war. I must say that the transitions between characters were very smooth, and unlike Call of Duty, do not constantly fly up to an overhead map between each plot line. One transition pops the player from a squad under fire, to the sniper covering them in the hilltops. The various stories are all interlinked, and while some let you escape ground combat by AC-130 bombing, or helicopter runs, all were quite shallow.

For a game with realism in its advertising, I was hoping for paralyzing moral struggles and heavy character development. How about a heavily populated village where you have to avoid collateral damage? How about the hesitation of shooting young teenage soldiers? I only recall about one situation in the story that bothered to approach something other than tension, and it was a polemic to unknowingly bomb some allies. All the other time it was about senseless killing. Perhaps I was supposed to pepper the game with my own morals, being a United States citizen and knowing of the atrocities committed to my home nation, but since the game is linear to a T, I can't even decide to go AWOL or sacrifice a squad member to save another. Worse still, you don't even have to follow the orders of your commanders. While the dialogue may go through the process of getting clearance to fire, you can go ahead and kill people regardless. Nobody debunks you for jumping the gun, which I felt just removes more from the military discipline that game is trying to craft.

Even it comes to describing the parts the player has control over, it too is lacking. I wouldn't choose this game for its single-player shootouts, for which did not depend on skill or technique to surpass. You either just kill all the enemies, or you kill the "special" scripted danger enemies to advance the scene. There are no tactics, and the enemies will either pop endlessly behind rocks, or rush blindly towards their scripted positions. It was times I was out of control of the characters that the game was told best. Had this have been a movie, it may have gotten superior reviews from me, but instead the lulls of the firefights actually cut out the excitement of the cinematic. Having to be revived is a punishment and not a learning experience, one mode space between the next cutscene and me. At least when death does come Medal of Honor has a very short loading time upon first load and reload after death. Why can't more games work this way?

My favorite of the non-interactive sequences would have to be near the game's end. A helicopter comes under fire and all the garrisoned troopers were thrown like they were in a child's Popper Push Toy. This was real. This was something I felt was rarely told and I wanted to experience more. The game's ending was also quite refreshing with a somber attitude and cinematography. Just following it was an exigent final text too forceful for the game it followed.

To wash the flavor of the gunplay out of my mouth, let's talk graphics and sound. The guns and sounds are great. Pow Pow! "Enemy down!" you hear from a nearby squad member, reacting to your combat, while explosions ring out. As you return fire with your rifle, the sounds differ from scoped and no-scoped situations. Voices are of high quality and acting but the effect of the character speaking both next to you and though the mic is jarring. Who is speaking to me? Still, there are many speaking lines as your fellow soldiers chatter, shout out targets and orders. If you are taking heavy fire, they will warn you to take cover. There is a lot of military lingo going on, which helps set up the setting, and is well done overall. Accompanying all these moments are a soundtrack or ambience that is suitable for the situation but will occasionally become too noticeable outside the cutscenes.

Graphics should be better considering the linear-ness and not having to provide a large battleground to render. Some trees are 2D, and not in the sense of being far off and unnoticeable. Rocks and scenery are there for cover and not decoration. Some cover is destroyable under fire, a nice touch, but the specificity ruins the advantage of just hounding fire on a position to flush an enemy out. When it comes to those cowering behind the rocks, we find that the character models look detailed, especially the beard rendering on the soldiers. Following those stone runners as they flee, when you fire on an enemy they have a very clean transition to flinch animation whether they are running, standing or couching. Medal of Honor did this one thing better than others. When I shoot enemies, I should not know if they are dead or not immediately. I should treat the enemy as though they are still alive. Soldiers would fall over and then gradually rise to their feet again to fight back. With lead now scratching bone, they limped, wounded and slow. Disappointingly, the game opts to have soldiers "Goldeneye" their weapons, dropping them to the ground when they die. Had the player needed to rip them from the foe's dead hands, this caution of survival would have been greater.

Enemies also appear to have suppression fire animation. I hadn't seen this before from other games, but it seemed that if I fired on enemy positions when their heads were out, they would visibly cringe and try to dodge. It could have been my imagination, trying to add more to the game than actually exists however. I didn't seem to notice this happening if the enemy was running around as I fired upon them. (Except for the hit animations discussed moments ago.)

Who should play Medal of Honor? Those who enjoyed the senseless shooter. The game that leads them from point A to point B with interesting snippets of uncontrollable visuals to mix it up. If you don't want a thinking game, then Medal of Honor is for you. For some this is fine. Take a couple hours to relax and just shoot up some enemies, get the anger out. May I recommend spamming the knife button as many times as possible? Its rapid stabsure fit my pallet. If you do want something more deep, perhaps Multiplayer is the answer.

Multiplayer:

Initially I hated the multiplayer. Just hated it. I died a lot, and it didn't seem believe it could be fun at all. Comparatively, it reminded me much of Counter Strike, which is not a fan favorite for me. I persevered and here's what I found: You have to slow down. Call of Duty has success with running around and having confrontational battles from 2 ft away from the person. Medal of Honor is about the long range, the covering from point to point as you move and go in for the kill.

Take, for example, the assault class. It is provided with a smoke grenade. Now smoke grenades are very under-utilized in shooters, but in Medal of Honor, it is a powerful asset. Why? Because there is no reaction time for dodging. Pop in the enemy's iron sight and pop, you are dead. Due to bullets still flying, so might be the enemy. The trick then is to engage from proper angles and cover. Throw a smoke grenade, run to new cover and engage and unknowing antagonists from afar. Doing this correctly feels quite rewarding, as you were able to outwit the human enemy.

Nevertheless, this is also what Medal of Honor gets wrong. The maps are too cramped, so maneuvering around the enemy is very limited. The game also throws too many enemies on the map. The best games are those that have fewer than 24 players, and are on maps with lots of cover to move between. Also, teamwork, which would seem vital to this type of game, appears non-existent. Your friends would run out to die and then so would the next guy since you can't easily warn them of the dangers ahead.

The game also commits another misstep by flipping spawns on deathmatch maps, but makes timing predictable. The enemy spawns on the side opposite the majority of the team. This does two things. First, it allows teammates and enemies to spawn camp as long as the rest of the team is elsewhere. Additionally, it spawns enemies behind your team as you advance into enemy territory. You might think you have cleared an area only to be shot in the back. If there were rounds where the spawns changed sides only once, or completely random spawns, these problems would have been better.

There is also a (1/3) fun Combat Mission mode where one team has to defend an objective, and the other tries to destroy or capture it. What makes this mode great is the rush to plant the bombs uninterrupted after a successful assault or the rush to wipe people off the point ASAP. The level of death and ease of killing fits better with the maps in this mode. Sadly, all but Airfield Assault are horribly cramped and camp-havens, making them not quite rated for fun. Even with the good map, these attack-defense games are not suitable for low tallies of players due to the ticket counter not adjusting for player count. The large tickets available for just a few attackers give them a better chance of pulling off their objective than the meat-grinder of an entire army faltering.

With all that advice, find yourself a nice control-point game with about 12 players total and you should have a great time leveling up the three distinct classes. Both Assault and Special Ops are similar with varying side weaponry that makes them good for situations like crowd control or anti-tank. Sniper is the most diverse, but also probably the hardest, except on large maps where it is unnaturally cheap.

Racking up a set amount of points yields a bonus power, either team-based or offensively oriented. The team-actions are very subtle, with flak jackets seemingly adding nothing, and match ammo taking the enemy out with perhaps one fewer bullet. Offensive actions allow the calling down of mortar strikes and missiles on specific positions. All of these powers while devastating if used correctly don't really change the flow due to the game's short respawn timer.

One neat surprise the multiplayer takes towards realism over the single player is by killing the player for jumping off even a one-story height. Novice players will be taken aback by this, and yet it feels ok over time. Light tanks are also severely limited in power and can be dispatched easily, glass cannons of the game. Yet, even with the attempts towards realism, the game keeps the regenerating health. Coupled with the 1-4 bullet kill, and even double-KOs from still-flying bullets, the heath recovery only serves to prep you for the next fight and is fine in the multiplayer environment. Voices from the single-player remain, and now serve extra tactically. Take note of your own language, for as the enemy reloads, he may announce it to his teammates, just in time for you to identify his position and seal his blunder with lead. (Or maybe an airstrike)

Graphically, the multiplayer segment seems stronger than the single-player offerings. This may be due to the multiplayer using a different graphics engine, though I'd imagine the assets should be the same. The landscape appears more detailed, with littered debris around and objects to interact with. Also, noting the graphics being dull colors, it is surprisingly easy to identify foe from team-mate, which is mandatory for this game, where twitch action does matter.

Multiplayer has more life to it. There are levels to advance, allowing more weaponry choices, and an alternative skin for high-level players. Level and weapons largely make little impact, and your success in the multiplayer will depend on how well you can react to forces, and pick them out of the environment. If you are looking for a counter-strike experience with different game-types and setting Medal of Honor may be what you are looking for.

by Zott820

Bulletstorm is a first person shooter, mashing a point earning system into the killing of enemies. I had low expectations from the game even though other reviews had crafted favorable impressions. The feeling I could not shake was that any game made by Epic was going to be another Unreal Tournament or Gears of War clone, and I had little interest in such things. To my utter surprise, the game led me to movements of genuine glee and amazement. Perhaps the setpieces were crafted just right or the character's consistent dick jokes wore me down, but I grew an attraction to the game.

The game has a couple modes. There is a single player campaign which follows Grayson Hunt and troope as they lead countless innocents to death, countless enemies to slaughter and revenge at every possible moment.

Echos takes single player levels, breaks them down into chewable bits and makes a fine Call of Duty-Esque Time Trial/Operations mode.

Anarchy is the multiplayer component, though a solo version is available. The player and buddies fight in close combat against spawning enemies. Netting the proper skillpoints rewards the player with progression into the next round.

The following shall be a list of the best and worst of the game summarized in list form. Items to the beginning of the list are more of a benefit or nuisance depending on which list they belong

The Best:

1. Points Points Points: This game revolves around killing the enemy in absurd and original ways accompanied by equally absurd taglines. Games have been rewarding points for the killing of enemies for ages, from way back in the NES era and before. What makes Bulletstorm fresh is that it rewards the points not only for just killing enemies but the finesse of the kill. Similar to Madworld, kills earn points through the method of mutilation, but differs in that Bulletstorm doesn't give combos based on kills/time. Instead the game awards more skillpoints for original kills, rather than repetition. I felt this was superior because it didn't force me to try and rush to the next kill as soon as possible to keep the combo up. Instead there was a strategy to lining the enemy next to hazardous objects in return for a more profitable kill. There are over 125 skillshots, the game's identifier for the means of murder. More difficult to achieve kills are awarded with more skillpoints. There are general skillshots available at any time, and there are those that are specific for weapons of mass destruction. This was a strong design choice coupled with the unique bonuses for fresh skillshots. It makes players want to try out every weapon, and experiment with killing the enemy different ways. I often consulted the in-game guide that lists the skillshots so that I might unlock them all. This is a game you can enjoy to play rather than rush through the rooms and stages as fast as possible to clear the next room.

2. Outrageous Zany Fun: The game throws in the whole kitchen sink when it comes to action. At one point your characters outrun a giant wheel while on a train. That's right, one of the bosses is a wheel, a giant. rolling. wheel. If I haven't won you over with that awesomeness yet, have I mentioned you get to pilot a robot dinosaur? How about drunk fighting? No? Drunk fighting in a disco? Monorails, helicopters exploding, and a zombie-enemy type! The game even knows what it is. One part has a setup for a boss battle, hinting of it over and over and over again. When the enemy appears, it dies on its own, no action required. At this point it is should clear that the game did not grow stale in its offerings even if the game is just about killing enemies at heart.

3. Weapons of Mayham: There's no hiding it that the weapons in Bulletstorm are overpowered. THAT is in comparison to any other shooter out there. But Bulletstorm can get away with it precisely due to the design element mentoned. You don't just want to kill the enemies, you want to specialize in the weapon, and because of how powerful each weapon is, you can still enjoy harnessing exploding bombs and 2-hit kill magnums with glee. Luckily the game's weapons are not so unbalanced in that you won't be able to pull of the tricks on still breathing bodies, but enough that if you wanted too, and there's an achievement for it, you could just run and gun your way through the levels easily. The weapons themselves are varied and feature alternative fire that usually takes the base feature of the gun and adds Michael Bay explosions to it: Exploding sniper rounds, bouncing bombs, explosive flares, and the occasional liquefy effect. I had a special spot (In the heads of the enemy) for the sniper weapon as you could guide it towards targets ala the movie Wanted. Heck, the gravity defiance was so much that sniper bullets could almost pull 90° turns around the chosen target.

4. Slick Controls: For a console/gamepad game, and especially for a shooter, I found the controls to be incredibly precise. I never struggled with want I wanted to do that was control based. There is natural lock-on as you aim towards enemies, but this was soft enough to permit headshots and specific body parts being targeted on the fly.

5. Piss Boot-licking Dick Llama: The dialogue in the game is just as outrageous as some of the levels. I've heard "Dick" more times in this game than any other. Its vulgarity borders on satire though. What the characters attempt to speak as insult comes out as an overly grandiose way of saying "You Suck". I'm not a big fan of games with swearing in them, feeling them unnecessary, but this game's blatant overuse of them and in such non-seriousness made it entertaining to listen too. I don't think it quite takes the cake from Mafia II in terms of overall swears, but it sure took a shot at that game. In this vein it once again echos Duke Nukem, and makes a suitable replacement for successor. If you don't know what to say, add more Dick. Here's a flowchart for what the developers used to design most of the insults.

Past the kitsch swearing, the overall creativity and wittiness of the dialogue was strong. Sure most involved the most commonly referenced bodily organs in comedy, but it felt fresh through the whole game with plenty of commentary on most of the game's happenings.

6. Time distorting fun: I have to call out this one feature for being innovative. Leashing, booting or sliding into an enemy will result in them flying into the air. Now normally in any other game the gravity would pull them back down to the planet following proper kinematic formulas. However in Bulletstorm, the enemies glow with a blue hue and will float for about 2 seconds in the air. What purpose could this defiance of Newton possibly give? Reaction time. The player now has the opportunity to line up enemies for special skillshots, enemy bowling, juggling and more. The effect isn't quite like the gravity gun in Half Life 2 however, the one downside. You can't grab any object, just make them hover in front of you momentarily. If you leash a far off explosive container, it will fly towards you and slow down in front of you, but you can't hold it there. So you have to work fast! The advantage is a strong one, but its advantage keeps you on your toes.

7. Le Boot and Leash: Some individuals on the interweb drew the connection between the Duke Nukem inspiration of the boot from Duke Nukem 3D. Others christened that Bulletstorm was the superior Duke Nukem Forever, with equally crass humor, but with the fabled Duke Boot (absent from Forever), to back it up. Without playing enough Duke Nukem, I won't argue except booting the enemies of Bulletstorm was fun and rewarding as I smashed their bodies into cactus neetles. Besides Mr. Boot, Grayson Hunt is also equipped with a leash, a device allowing mild gravity manipulation. Leash enemies to pull them towards the player, boot them push them away. Grayson Hunt also features a power slide, which works much like you'd expect, slide on the ground towards the enemy to trip them. The trippy part was not the sliding, but just how fast you go. It's like the player has wheels on their butt, moving incredibly fast, but also very maneuverable, zipping around corners with ease. Sliding was my preferred travel method through open areas. Vrooom!

8. Sensational Environments: Bulletstorm has beautiful environments. I say that sincerely. Arriving in new environments, the developers often perch the player on cliffs overlooking expanses of land which the player will be exploring later. The views are immense and detailed, and since the gameplay will likely take you to those places, it isn't just for show, but preparing you mentally for the journey ahead.

9. Collectables Suckas: Bulletstorm has functional collectables, not just wall ornaments. What is meant by functional? Think about Battlefield Bad company 2 and its gold bars or communication stations that you collected, did they do anything? No. They had really no point in the game at all. Bulletstorm has three primary collectables, electric-flies, Coffe…Beer, and news robots. Electric-flies will kill enemies that you can throw into them, and better yet, they are a little hunting/accuracy minigame as each fly killed in the swarm yields slightly more skillpoints until the whole swarm is finished off. Destroying them all in the game yields a trophy/achievement, though that, ala gold bars, are not the carrot to killing them. The beer also results in skillpoints, but in a different manner. Blast the bottle and net a boring 100 skillpoints. But consume the bottle and you have a drunken-murder simulator that seems to be oh-so prevalent in the news these days. Your drunken rage nets the skillshot "intoxicated" and moves Hunt wobbly through the levels. And the Newsbots? They felt like homages to the cleaning robot from Time Splitters: Future Perfect, but besides that they were explosive little chatterboxes. Collecting these collectables is no onus, but something you WANT to do, because it is fun, and that is the strongest point there is to make.

10. Bitchin' Theme Song: The first time I got the game I popped in the game disk and left the room to tend to something of a non-videogame nature. About 10 minutes later I heard noise. A noise I could not identify that sounded like choir music. But no, what was it? It was very triumphant and enchanting I moved close and closer to its origin until I discovered it was Bulletstorm's main menu theme. I stopped immediately what I was doing elsewhere and moved to play the game. That's right, the main menu music immediately drew at least 3 hours of gameplay out of me. If only the music can do that, then you know it has hit its mark.. In fact, hopefully you listened to the theme that I placed at the top of the article and it convinced you to read more!

The Worst:

1. Network Woes: When I attempted to play Bulletstorm online I was met with long waiting times in the lobby. It would take approximately ten minutes or more to get into a game. Worse yet was when some online peeps and I were smashing the enemy together online. I would become disconnected from the Playstation network about 6-7 rounds in. This was infuriating as I couldn't get just start at higher levels in Anarchy mode online. Luckily, the game retained my level progress despite the disconnections. However, this was not true for Echo's progress. After one such disconnection, I took to playing Echos, earning my 3 stars on a bounty of the levels. I left the game and came back with an internet connection. The game decided that the internet progress was different and all my off-line work went to waste. Perhaps they didn't want hacking the scores by syncing, but I did not like losing my hard fought Echos star earning process!

2. Buggy: Occasionally the player may get stuck on objects by sliding onto them. They can usually slide off of them though, and so the trouble is not game-breaking. What was game-breaking was the failure of the game to trigger its level scripts. In one Anarchy match I could not continue because 2 enemies wouldn't spawn. On some single player missions and Echos levels, the enemies may be dead, but the NPCs guiding the player won't activate the next section of the game. Compared to the network annoyance, most of the bugs were quite tame, and I didn't notice many until I reached the latter section of the game. It is an annoyance though to lose progress on new skillshots unlocked and be forced a checkpoint reload because the scripts didn't activate correctly.

3. Cliffhanger Ending: This is not a game that deserves any kind of sequel. If the developers wants to add more skillshots, weapons, enemies they can do it on the DLC side, which they have already begun doing. The engine is competent enough for pretty much of anything, using the Unreal 3 engine which has proven itself thus far. I was slightly peeved by how what seems to be the end of the game plays a Battle LA type move (the movie version), giving all the signs that the game is over, and then revving the engine for one more go. I don't want to say that the game was stale at that point, but the addendum before the true cliffhanger ending didn't really add much except for an excuse of 15 more minutes of gameplay and a chance for a sequel if sales were good.

4. Pop-in: This can't be written into the good category, but it isn't that bad. Pop-in is when the textures load after the surface is visible. I'm sure there is some processing benefit to it, and the Unreal 3 engine is synonymous with the name pop-in. Bulletstorm is no different but takes an effort to try and minimize the effect. The textures are cut into what appear to be triangles, and various texture passes are made. What happens then is when the player becomes in view of the texture it slowly appears more and more clear over several passes, as if it were materializing in front of you. In any game striving for realism even this would break the immersion. Luckily, Bulletstorm left realism at the door just about the moment the main characters survived a spaceship crash-landing.

6. Uneven graphics: Environments are good, as I discussed but not everything is as good. Many of the textures are overly shiny. Object and their textures become blurry and blocky up close. Character mouth movements are also awkward and unnatural. Blur appears in the wrong places on occasion. If the game had the style of Mad World, with black and white or cartoony textures I might let this slide, but the game goes for some realistic tones. I don't want this game with cartoony graphics, I think the choice they made was a good one, it's just unavoidable factor. For this reason I cannot ignore the inconsistency. The creed of this game is good from afar, but far from good. As long as you play the game and ignore the extreme details you will find the game a large cut above the rest in visual fidelity.

6. Nitpick: You've executed what appears to be a perfect juggle going on, with a couple enemies in the air and you send them flying with some blasteous attack. And when the enemy lands you are given 10 pts, the lowest skill point amount given for kills. What happened? That is the disappointment that sometimes results from this point driven games. Although it looks like a visual feast going on, the game may think that it was just a regular kill, and plop out the petty. On the one side, I wish there had been more skillshots to explain the situation and award special points. Though the game is quite gratuitous with the kills allowed to give points. Perhaps then it is a failure to recognize the proper conditions. I remember having a hard time getting the skillshot where you shoot an enemy in the crotch with a sniper rifle. I looked around online and someone mentioned that it only worked on certain enemies, not all the enemies have "balls" apparently. Also, it is a little unclear when some conditions override others. I've seen then stack, but have come across situations where I'm sure I've done a skillshot, but the game decided it was one but not the other.

• Screenshots are from the Bulletstorm Fansite Kit and so don't match up with this PS3 review exactly. However I did not have access to the capture card for direct PS3 screenshots.

by Zott820

A bit late considering the game came out March of 2010, but who cares anyways.

Unlike other sites who have given it ridiculously high scores, I definitely don’t agree with its high ratings. And certain elements which have been criticized for other games are applauded for in God of War III seem biased, which may be ironic considering we applaud our biases. Those reviewers don’t claim to be biased.

The game is chock full of invisible walls, and Game Trailers, a site that has criticized other games for invisible walls, calls it a streamlined experience that directs you in the right direction. I personally never had an issue with invisible walls in games, but this is just ridiculous.

The game is absolutely linear, and the game play is pretty intense, but it also gets pretty repetitive. Battles are constant with flames, bodies, and blood flying everywhere, but it gets tedious after a while. Furthermore, the weapons are all fairly similar, so play styles won’t really differ much. Once you get the Nemean Cestus, you won’t really use any other weapon.

The controls feel a bit too loose. For a character who’s known for his battle prowess, you would think that Kratos would understand how to be able to roll out during his attack or quickly block half way through his swing. Instead, Kratos has to finish his animations, which lead to a lot of pummeling. I’m used to quick twitch reflexes to move along to the action. Kratos winds up getting beaten mid attacks, or even though you have such long and incredible chains at your disposal, you’re not supposed to make use of them.

Kratos’ character and motivation also make no sense. For a man who seems to be hell bent on retribution, the idea of redemption seems a bit out there. I liked the idea that hope always exists, but the execution was poor and choppy.
Kratos meets Pandora, origin of the Box used in the first game and main focus of the last game. For half of the game, he’s dismissing her, but when he’s told to save her so he can access Pandora’s Box again, it’s only so he can kill Zeus. Somehow, when he finds Pandora beaten, his voice shows remorse and sadness and even tries to save her. There’s really no reasoning behind this. It’s arguable that he sees his daughter in Pandora, but that seems like a far stretch for his character. He’s more like the Saint of Killers from Preacher.

God of War is full of amazing set pieces, but really, it’s putting a lot of style over substance. It’s a good game, not great, and certainly not godly.

God of War III - more like God of Whore: Aphrodite’s Revenge. (Seriously, Hephaestus/Hera/Daedulus/Pandora/Gaia/Zeus/Kratos all die because of her actions.)

by Shihnong

This review is from a long time past. I found it while searching through some old files, written long before BiasedVGBlog came to be. The writing was a little low quality, but I felt it still captured the essence of the game well. It has been a while since I've played the game so I can't do a complete revision, but I will attempt to clean it up with revisions, and expanded sections where possible.

Back when I frequented Hollywood Video in search of game rentals, I chose Trauma Center which had caught my eye earlier. I had played the DS version it was an ok game, it became too difficult to be enjoyable for me. Yet I felt like trying this rendition out. I found out quickly that Second Opinion was a port of the DS Version; Trauma Center: Under the Knife, which scared me initially. As I completed sections, I found that some parts were greatly enhanced and that these enhancements made the game better and superior on the Wii. This game impressed me.

You're in a hospital, the people need you, they are afflicted with afflictions and only you can save them. You reach into your tool bag, and equip the healing salve, magically bringing their vitals into the stable region. What's that? Broken bones? Magic salve those bones back into place like a jigsaw puzzle. Bombs that need defusing? Laser that suckka. It's a well-known fact that surgery in the future is based around cult magic, as don't pick up this game if you were expecting to get certified in the art.

Controls:
There were not very many strong games sharing the shelf space for the Wii when Trauma Center landed. A game that properly used the controller then was appreciated. Second Opinion provided a superb helping of showing off the Wii-mote's accuracy and precision, and was one of the few Wii games I’ve played that made good use of the Nunchuck Attachment. I know that Wario-ware used the nunchuck, and so did Wii-sports for its boxing, but eh, Wii-Sports isn’t really a “Full Game”, and is more a demo application you'd find preloaded on a phone.(Though Golf is pretty deep, though limited in courses, and Bowling is good with friends). This came before the Wii-motion Plus as well, so was especially welcomed.

Trauma Center: Second Opinion, uses the nunchuck to select the tool of operation, playing the part of your nurse And it serves its purpose. The problems I had with it were user-based as I would occasional select the wrong tool because of operation frenzy, not remembering which tool was in which hexagonal location. Second Opinion even makes use of the buttons on the top of the nunchuck for your "Healing Touch", In a few cases it even throws a bone to motion controls as it uses the Nunchuck motion sensor for a defibrillator, with the player pretending to shock the screen. Alas, there was no static discharging bit where you have to rub the Wii-mote and nunchuck together.

Control for the standard Wii-mote was straightforward. Aim at the screen, A/B/A+B button. While it is harder to do some actions on the Wii than the DS, mostly moving to precise locations quickly, Second Opinion's nunchuck tool switch more than fixes this. The benefit sprouts from not having to go to the side of the screen to change tools, thereby giving the player momentum to continue their work in a given area. Additionally actions on the Wii don’t require as much accuracy as the DS, making them easier to perform as well. I attribute this to the Wii having a larger screen and so not being limited by the sensitivity of the touchpad of the DS. An example of this improvement manifests when the player is pulling out the thorns of one strain of GUILT. On the Wii, grabbing is much easier, you press A and B and it's held. The crosshair showing on screen also confirms you're on the thorn. On the DS, you can’t button grab, you must pressure grab, meaning you have to be sure your stylus is on the thorn when you start to pull out, and at all times after, or your attempt will fail to register, or drop the item.

Graphics:
When it came to Second Opinion's modeling, there weren't outstanding qualities to it. Instead, I was more impressed by the non-3D components of the game. Primarily, the Anime style of the characters. When you compare it to Trauma Center: Under the Knife's offerings, the DS version, the characters look much more mature, crisp, and overall superior. The protagonist's sidekick Angie Thompson, as most female characters in the game are drawn super sexy, so the game gets bonus points for that, and you won't find anything new in styling. It makes more sense that adults, rather than children are the educated surgical practitioners, even of the future work. Granted, they do still seem awfully young, but I'll attribute that to how fast kids grow up these days. To build the plot, the faces of these anime characters appear with different emotions similar to Baten Kaitos and other RPGS.

The styling and modeling of the operations were alright, but nothing that would drop your jaw 50 meters. Nothing to make you squirm out of realism either. There was this one mission with replacing a liver that gave me some cringes; Probably due to the shriveling veins, but this was an exception. A nice touch that I don't recall from the DS version: Women models and men models are differentiated. Women have breasts, but they are covered with cloth, while on the men they are exposed and free to the world. Another loving detail; when you're operating on the overweight patients, their character model reflects their gargantuan weight when you go to slice him open. One note on the patients; there is no nudity. Which is on the one hand catering towards a Teen rating, but on the other kind of disappointing. There are no breast augmentation surgeries, and no gender changing surgeries. The developer kept the game clean, and injected a living virus foe that more seeks to remove the player from the real and the monotonous, and no so monotonous surgeries of real life.

Sound:
I wish there was full voice acting. They had the disc space and voice actors so I don’t see why they couldn’t have gone the whole nine yards. They did do full voice acting for the latest Trauma Center game on the Wii, so its absence here was heavily noted. Instead of the full-VO you are granted slogans like "Lets Begin the Operation!" and "We've identified the GUILT!" staples of those making allusions everywhere.

As for the mention of music, there isn't a large selection of music for this title. Key themes will play at key moments, such as a sad song when someone is dying, or boss battle music (Yess, you battle bio-bosses). Of course… there are some slightly inappropriate or perhaps the better word would be, surprising, music choices. For example, when the player returns to Caduceus, the protagonist's organization, there is a tech-beat song that plays. Why this is fitting for a hospital, I have no clue. My friend and I would get a kick out of it every time we heard it though. Most of the music is like this though. Perhaps this is the secret for the organization with almost magic medical skills, techno music for all the employees. (We pay you in beats)

There is also a new title theme that the DS didn't have. I enjoyed both the energetic kick version from the game's intro, and mellow menu-selection theme. Alas, it doesn't carry through the game like a Battlefield game theme besides those two sections, which are rarely sat on for long. Overall, the music is higher quality fare than the provided DS equivalents with a couple of new additions.

Story:
The story is fair with some exceptionally written portions. I was amazed that the dialogue and some of the written portions were conveyed with such imaginable images and emotions. Most of the credits of the game show Japanese names, so I am more amazed that the translator was able to write some of the parts so well and convert the intensions to an American audience. An example? There’s a part with an “Emo” girl, who attempts suicide. This is standard for the genre yet there is some first-class dialogue of how one should look in the mirror and say sorry to that person whom they are hurting, not anybody else. Deep. Another touching life commentary occurs near the end of the game when the Director is infected with GUILT; he convoys how a doctor cannot operate on themselves. It is up to those he taught to prove how good of a doctor that person really was.

One part I found funny was the sexual innuendo when playing a Naomi Mission [The reporter one]. “Nintendo allowed that in a game? Wow!” My friend commented. Of course, this plays off the idea that Nintendo makes all their games and consoles “Child Friendly”. The game is by ATLUS and not Nintendo, but was still kind of rare and fun to see in a T rated game.

Because the game can get verbose at times, you can simply press the (-) button and skip through it. I pat the programmer on the back who put that in. What more, in the menu, after beating a mission, you can choose to skip the story and go straight to the operation. This is a feature other games should take notes from, and then permanently etch that note into their skull. The gamer's time comes first.

Other:
Probably the biggest benefit over the DS version would be the difficulty selection. While the DS version only had one difficulty. (Medium) It could get increasingly hard, making most of the later missions very intense and impossible for people. I have read on some message boards of players having to use two styluses to work their tools fast enough to save the patient. Luckily, the Wii adaptation remedies the stress of being stuck on one mission with an easy option. It largely changes how quickly the health of the patient decreases, with some modifiers for the GUILT's (The classification for the diseases in the game) behavior. The difficulty select helped me pass a few missions for which I had troubles. It carries over to the harder difficulties too, meaning I can switch difficulties on the fly between missions, regardless of what difficulty I passed the earlier levels.

While the realism is bogus in this game, it is supposed to be for the casual gamer, with a strong learning curve for those who really want to master the game. As apparent from the impossible difficultly of the “X” Missions available after completing the main campaign. These were not available in the DS version, and are boss battles from the various chapters of the game who are chock full of extra baddies on adrenaline.

Overall, there is about 8 hours of content for the basic story, and more if you plan to master and get higher than C on every mission.

by Zott820

It was literally just a week or two ago when I was talking with someone how many companies could rip of Call of Duty's name and create a similar game. I remember seeing the Modern Combat demo in the Playstation Store and I was thinking I would name my game Extreme Modern Combat Evolved. Looks like the creators of BulletStorm have already done the work for me by creating Duty Calls. Here are my thoughts about the game:

First the disclaimer this video wasn't recorded by me as I took probably five minutes to beat the campaign versus this guy's 4. There are MAJOR SPOILERS so people who don't want them shouldn't watch the video or read this review (because we all know the Call of Duty story is the main reason people play the game). The core of Duty Calls is it bills itself as a parody when it really is satire since the game intends to wound and make a point about "realistic" shooters.

Story: Notice the very similar dialogue and loading screen with the perplexing musing of if "war has changed". I got a much more Metal Gear Solid 4 vibe from the loading part instead of Call of Duty. Next the soldier gets an important briefing from the general who isn't afraid to skip the unnecessary dialogue and only mention the import mission regarding a nuclear bomb. It's the generic story from Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops redone to make more sense and the game narrative is better from it.

Gameplay: The sign doesn't lie when it says "Entering real-life war scenario", an enemy soldier popped out and announced his intentions. This is a "realistic shooter" as my gun could be saying "boring" and the gameplay is unchanged. A great touch was the addition of the leveling system and from defeating one enemy, I ranked up to "Master Sergeant Shooter Person!". Talk about an increase in pay! I had no idea when I walked around the corner I would be ambushed by another soldier and experience the classic bloody screen. So Real!

The soldier finds a Meaningless Stick which is of course a vital inventory item. Shortly afterwards, the General is here to further brief the player. Notice the General is willing to sacrifice his life by being hit by a jeep at 10MPH. He knows his death increases the drama of the story. The evil guy in the jeep knows about the slow motion bulletime and with his death from two or three bullets, the jeep just has to explode. Next is the obligatory paratrooper cutscene who is also self aware and breaks the 4th wall. His death unlocks the amazing "Sergeant of the Master Sergeants Most Important Person of Extreme Sergeants to the Max!".

The parody/satire level of this game is off the charts. Epic Games really knows how to pump out a full length 5 minute Duty Calls game and still have time to publish BulletStorm. I played the BulletStorm demo on PS3 but with my biased viewpoint, I still have to say Duty Calls is a much more solid game and definitely worth the free price of admission. I give Duty Calls two US firework thumbs up.

• Download the Full Duty Calls Game Free
• Visit Duty Calls Official Site

by BlueZero

Oh boy. It's my duty to navigate the battlefield of video game releases. Once in a while I stumble upon a shiny new gem hidden in the dirt. Other times I just run right into a minefield and set off a mine. Faery: Legends of Avalon is a landmine which will leave you dazed, dizzy and disorganized. Here's what went wrong:

Background: I saw this game on the Playstation Store and decided to download the demo since the trailer made me think it was going to be somewhat similar to the new 3DS Pit game. Faery: Legends of Avalon is priced at $15 and I had to see if this price was justified. The game's story is about saving the land or something and your character was frozen in a gem and now can save the day.

Initial Impressions: The first pain I experienced was the long loading time to get to the start menu of 7 seconds followed by 20 seconds to get into the game which is really bad considering it was installed to the harddrive and the ingame art assets are such low quality. At least the loading sprite of a leprechaun type folk was entertaining. The game prompts you to build a male or female fairy which is really nothing more than selecting like 1 of 8 faces and then using sliding scales to change facial features slightly. For my fairy, who I named Link, I choose the darker looking face with dark tattoos under his eyes. I changed his hair color to a hot pink/purple to be more accurate.

Graphics: Wow, I didn't know this game was being released for PS2. The "graphics" in this game are an insult to 2011 and especially one being sold. I highly doubt the game is using PhysX to any end except for the logo being used on the title screen. The character models are barely passable and look worse than Oblivion's faces. I would say they are at the same level as Morrowind's faces but that's an insult to Morrowind and its huge world. The demo area in Legends of Avalon is bland with the ground texture looking especially unfinished as if it was a placeholder for the game's alpha testing. I usually wouldn't care as much about the graphics if the gameplay was excellent. Let me put this simply, the best artwork is the game is the rendered concept art above used in the storefront to lure unsuspecting people to make a purchase based on a false pretense. It's what invited you into this demo review. Not since the movie cover of Nim's Island have I been mislead into believing a dog turd wrapped in shiny paper is candy.

Screenshot from the developer's website showing the tower in the demo level. So far away the graphics look decent here

Gameplay: Unfortunately the gameplay was boring, which is the opposite of a video game's goal. Fly around, talk to people with uninteresting dialogue wheels ala Mass Effect. Oh the dialogue was functional without being too eloquent. Try and recruit someone to your party by doing quests for mystical creatures/faeries. I didn't even get to the turn based combat section because after 10 minutes, I was ready to delete the demo and reclaim my 560mb so I could play the Mass Effect 2 / Dead Space 2 demo. I didn't even get how turned combat makes sense in this game when the main character can travel at the speed of light yet can get hit by a goblin's tongue. The fairy could easily fly really high and snipe potential enemies without ever getting hit.

Controls: "He flies like an eagle on the wing". Yeah, not how I would describe the flight mechanics. The controllable character's flying is like he is hovering rather than flying. He makes jerky movements left and right and awkwardly moves upward and downward with R1/R2. Yet if you push L3, he takes off like a rocket and goes far too fast. If you hit something, he just kinda gets stuck or goes around it slowly.

The best way to sum up this review is use some lyrics from Bruno Mars's song Grenade:

Game Summary:

Take, take, take it all but you never give. Should of know you was trouble from the first kiss.
…
Tell the devil I said “hey” when you get back to where you're from

For my readers:

I would go through all this pain, take a bullet straight through my brain
….
I'd catch a grenade for ya (yeah, yeah, yeah)
Throw my hand on a blade for ya (yeah, yeah, yeah)
I’d jump in front of a train for ya (yeah, yeah , yeah)
You know I'd do anything for ya (yeah, yeah, yeah)

I took the grenade for ya, so don't pay the $15 dollars for this. Go get one of the same priced triple AAA downloadable titles like Braid, Limbo, Castle Crashers, Super Stardust HD, Geometry Wars, Puzzle Quest, Fat Princess, Wipeout HD, any of the PixelJunk games, Plants vs. Zombies or any of the indie games on PC/Steam. Don't make the mistake of buying this turn based fairy flight dialogue sim; get the Folklore on PS3 for a better fantasy game. I support Indie developers but please at least make me believe this is a finished game instead of a side coding project for a graduate class group project.

by BlueZero

I received Simcity Societies as a Christmas gift long ago in 2007. Considering that I had only played it two times before last month, it must have gotten lost among other games of the time. One day I saw there was a demo for the game, and I wanting to test out my laptop, gave it another whirl. Over the course of my negligence, Simcity Societies received 5 extensive game-changing patches, adding trophies and awards, as well as a strategic mode that focuses less on the creative sector and more on city planning. Since I didn't play the game much during the patching interludes, I can't comment on how good it was originally. Unlike PC Gamer, I review games in the condition I play them, whether 10 minutes after release or 10 years. Therefore, what stands before you are recent experiences with the game.

There are two main modes to the game, strategic, and creative. They have many similarities except that the strategy mode includes maintenance costs and other income-impeding effects, to make the game more challenging. Otherwise, gameplay is largely the same. These first paragraphs will deal with the creative mode of the game.

When a was a child with an imagination, I would play Simcity 2000, cheat to give myself unlimited money, and then build a city with a story that crept out of the bowls of the basal ganglia. There would be the high security prison, surrounded by hydro-pumps, and a moat, with an escapee on a bulldozer. I would name structures in the city names that built up their history. And while the graphics and gameplay would often not reflect what I thought was occurring, my imagination would fill in the rest.

Simcity Societies is an attempt to fix this, taking away the focus on extreme city management, and allowing someone to build a city they way they want it, filling it with a history that they have concocted in their head, and the diversity of art assets to complete it. The Simcity Societies website even had spot to submit stories, where the player could write about their constructed city.

Unfortunately, the game just doesn't go far enough in this way. Despite being able to build the city of their dreams, it feels too shallow.

The population of the city, while getting personality from the buildings placed in the city, are almost faceless. You can click on them and see only a few basic characteristics, displayed as icons rather than need bars, and you can't import sims from The Sims, like you could in Simcity 4. Furthermore, despite being able to track them by clicking on their head, you can't favorite any sims. Once you unclick on them, they get lost in the ether of your city. Yet, even without being able to do much with the population, their appearance, and even gait serve to complete and add semblance of life to otherwise smoldering architecture.
Renaming buildings is good, being able to call restaurant's Bob's or Joe's at a whim, but unlike Simcity 2000, with the huge skyscraping signs, unless you click on the building, you would hardly notice the difference of label.

For a game that plays a little like a dollhouse, I wanted more control. Simcity 4 had driving vehicles, I wanted driving vehicles. How would Sam travel to the Barbershop by my own imagination without being in command? Maybe I want my doll to walk to work. Can I move him around the scenic hills of my city? No, I can't. Simcity Societies should be a game with bits and pieces of both The Sims, having control over a sim, while also including the city building of Simcity. I don't want absolute control over every sim, that would take an insane amount of micromanagement, but I at least want the tools in place to make things happen when I want them too. I want to choose the types of cars on the street, I want to have monks roaming around a western style town. I don't care if it makes sense or not. To have an unhindered creative outlet, I need an unhindered sandbox. Leave the sense to the strategy mode, for those that wish to play Simcity Societies as a game.

The game has six varieties of buildings, such as prosperity, and knowledge. These have no direct benefit to any Sims in the city. For example, building a school does not make sims smarter. Instead they either add or remove from a pool of that type which is needed for the constructing of additional buildings. Having enough points in each pool allow the unlocking of new buildings. Constructing an edifice without the production pool to support it, and the structure will not function. Sadly, if the player is focused on making their city expand, and not on the creative side, the guide to winning is to usually wait until you have enough money, and then build the recently unlocked buildings.

These varieties of buildings also have the effect of transforming your city forwards a focus. Build only spiritual buildings, the music changes, the HUD becomes a mellow green, and the roads become ceramic tiles. Monks begin to traverse the city, spreading their words of wisdom, with an over-pompous walk. This was one part of Sim City Societies I especially liked. It let me know that my actions were having a direct effect on the inhabitants, and that there were distinct city-wide differences depending on choice of what to build. Seeing the HUD change, and the road were an additional surprise, and building cities, I worked to see what each type of city had for these portions.

Alongside the mere constructing a city to look pretty and craft out-of-game plots, there is a strategy to it. Sims need homes, and so the player needs to build them. Sims also need work, and the player also needs to build those for his own checkbook. Sims need venues too, for without those, the Sims will have breakdowns where they will not work and shut down your city. For those focusing on making a city for telling a story, IE Free-play mode, this doesn't matter too much. Except, for reasons I can't understand, the player still has to manage sim's happiness in their city. No utopia here, even if you want your sims to be happy with just a bar, and a tube house to live in. You can't force your sims to me happy, another unfortunate lost link to complete creative immersion, but as long as there is a balance of the three elements listed above, sim happiness usually settles itself.

Except when it doesn't. For strategic mode, the beginning of the game is quite difficult. Later, with a stream of cash in, as long as that balance is maintained, the city is able function cleanly. In early game strategy mode, trying to keep the sims happy is the most stressing. They start off content and then seemingly get sick and refuse to work. The falling of the economy happens soon after. When the citizens of my fair city hit the rogue happiness level, it is game over. I haven't figured out a way to get them out of this state, besides destroying their homes to force them out of the city. Build a hospital so they don't get sick early on? So I do, and yet something else happens, and the economy fails. The beginning of the game then is a trial-and-error process. If you find the city is generating revenue, and the people are happy. Sit on the fast speed, and when enough money is collected, the rest of the city should work out fine. Otherwise, "New Game" and try again. The early game doesn't have the freedom I was hoping for.

This is the biggest problem I had with the Strategy mode. There really wasn't much strategy involved. If the city generated money, it was a cycle of, construct a building that satisfies need, wait for money, build a house, wait for more money, build a venue, money, work, money repeat. If the creative elements were more full as I mentioned, then perhaps I could entertain myself while waiting for the money, but I often walked off, letting the game run. I don't feel this is how a fun game should be played. There wasn't enough intermediary elements in-between the money flow to keep me interested. Some buildings had opportunities that had special functions, but many required money, and others could be set to automatically trigger (Thank you, it would have been annoying for a large city anyways), so there is no need to focus managing those during the downtime.

Management of funds is rudimentary at best, and having been added in a patch post-production, it isn't as sophisticated as I wanted. I wasn't looking for a Tropico-style management textbook, but something better than 5 nearly un-customizable charts would have been nice. It is good to know that I spent $$$ on maintenance, but which buildings are the heavy hitters? Which buildings are making me the most money? As the player you're unable to see this on a global scale without clicking around on each building. Was this what they expected me to do while I wait for the pay-checks? Furthermore, some professions are not worked 7 days a week, but it is difficult to see how this affects the city on a wide scale with the tools available. There are a couple overhead icons that tell the usage of the different trait pools of the buildings, as well as some other proximity effects. Unfortunately, the spinning rings as a means of showing area of effect make no sense to me. Are they meant to show immediate "touching" distance?

Occasionally there are random events, these may hurt or help you. Donations make buildings of a certain type cheaper, while there may be stock crashes, or spiritual holidays that remove income. Besides fires, nothing is too bad. Even fires seem to go out on their own, causing a building to require maintenance to become functioning again, rather than being consumed outright by the inferno. Crippling building leveling disasters are possible, but are only player triggered. Thankfully the patch-added disasters are entertaining; imagine a giant burger sign gone rogue.

Graphically, the game is candy for the eyes. Each building has shadows that move as the day to night transition happens, and at the maximum settings, the city is beautiful. Even on the lowest settings, I was surprised at the level of detail the artists managed to put into the placeables, with smoke rising from smoke-stacks, and burgers roasting on a grill. This comes at a cost however, for a late 2007 game, it needs a fairly recent system to turn on all the settings. I found that the lighting from the sun moving through the sky caused the biggest performance loss, and turning that off allowed most other settings to be maxed at playable frames per seconds on my 9700m GT. The best part? There are a plethora of buildings and architecture to choose from. If I was locked up in a room for 24 hours, I'm not sure I could come up with as many different building varieties as Simcity Societies has. They aren't all contemporary styles either; there are pagodas, and tribal halls, churches, oil refineries and more. For those that play the game for the creativity modes, watching the city buzz with the non-repeated buildings will be a treat.

The sounds are not quite as good. The Sims speak their simglish, but there isn't enough of it. Another symptom of a possible rushed game, I would constantly hear the same simglish noises being emitted from my city. If a game is going to have random noises, I don't want to have my attention drawn to it unless it is important. Each building has its own select sound, why not randomize a couple of those for ambiance? The chatter rising up from the streets brings back memories of the throwing up and coughing sound from Theme Park in its reoccurrence, except it served a purpose in that game, and that game had weaker hardware requirements. There isn't enough music for the ratio spent listening to each song and yet I will let that pass, since each style of city gets its own soundtrack and the Authoritarian one crushed my opposition in concert with my actions.

Before I wrap this review up, let me say that this is a buggy game. It has crashed more than 7 times on me, and you don't know what causes it. It isn't like one particular building or one part of the game that sets it off to die. This makes it all the more frustrating, since its random crashes like to destroy your city building. Thankfully, though this is a somewhat morose thanks, the game has an auto-save, and you can use a slider to choose when to auto-save in minutes, as few as one. I'm not saying you should save every one minute, it isn't THAT bad, but I had my slider to THREE minutes, so consider yourself warned. I can't believe any game that has had 5 patches could be a crashtastic as this one.

In conclusion, Sim City Societies might have fulfilled desires as a means of generating compelling stories. One might use The Sims, for the inside building portions, then hop over to Simcity Societies to record the city in which they frolic. Unfortunately, with limited direct controls over the actual Sims, and not enough copywriting and annotation abilities, it doesn't quite hold up that way. Instead, the strategy portion is what most people will end up playing, and it too is lacking. The early game is too stressful, and slow, while the endgame is too formulaic and repetitive. The management tools needed to run the city properly are missing as well. The real delight of SimCity Societies is being able to construct the city and be dazzled at the structures that exist in it along with the exquisite detail the artists put into it. You may be entertained for a while with the strategy portion, but lacking depth, Simcity Societies is only as good as you are willing to put into the creative aspect of the game.

Misc Note: The game is highly customizable. There is an exchange on the Simcity website to download user created buildings and even people. I'm not sure how difficult it is to make things, but if you are bored with the offerings of the game, you could always try and craft your own items to place game-side. Even if you aren't interest in generating new buildings, it is quite easy to change the settings in the game. I changed the game speed to nearly 3 magnitudes faster since I grew bored of waiting for the days to pass. Be warned, not all the settings you change are safe, and increase the chances of crashing higher than the already far too high rate.

You can find one file to edit many game settings at the following directory of the Simcity Societies base folder: Data\XMLDb\Constants\Constants.xml

by Zott820

Humor and wit are the house guest of Psychonaughts. Platformers in the past could survive just on their gameplay, hopping around with any number of powerups, but I don’t think Psychonaughts would have been half as good if it wasn’t for the richness of the jokes, and the zany world where it can make partial sense. It does stay true to its roots, keeping plenty of jumping and powers, but brings that extra depth that you can't get from a non-speaking protagonist.

I bought the game for $2.00 during a Steam sale. I heard it was good, and like most of my other reviews, I bought it on the opinions of others. Now it is time for you to hear my opinion. It is difficult to capture the humor of the game on paper without reciting the jokes, so the review will be focused mostly on interacting with the game and its world.

Story: Since the biggest draw for the game is indeed the humor, as I have been increasingly stressing, I can explain the plot mostly like this: “Stuff Happens, just enjoy it”. Having read Dr. Seuss when I was younger, and accepted there were green-eggs and ham, I can take this game. But unlike a story book, where everything is presented in short whimsical chronological passages, Psychonaughts' series of plot events are sometimes bewildering, and not just because of the style of the game and humor.

The player embodies Raz, short for Rasputin, who runs away from his parents and sneaks into a psychic camp to became a Psychonaught, something of a Secret Agent. However, despite sneaking in and given allowance to attend until his parents arrive to pick him up, a sinister plot begins to reveal itself. Someone is stealing all the juicy psychic brains of the camp. For some reason Raz is not affected by this, and he must venture forth to rid the world of the brain snatchers and prevent the world from being taken over by a physic army.

That is the basis of the overall plot, and on its own it stands fine. The problem with the storytelling of the game, is that occasionally elements seem to just happen, and are not explained fully within the contexts of the game. Otherwise, the cutscenes that do explain portions of the game, such as why Raz is afraid of water, appear to be played pseudo-randomly, or too late from the topic's introduction compounding the effect.

For example, a cutscene shows a watery hand rising up out of the ocean and waving to Raz. Before this though, I was seeing this hand grab at Raz as he jumped into the water. I did not know why, but attributed this to the cliché of adventure characters being deathly hydrophobic. Turns out, in a dialogue a bit after the cutscene, it is revealed that Raz's family was cursed by gypsies to die in water. At that point, it makes sense, but for constructing a strong connection, it might be wise to show the waving cutscene either before I had the chance to jump into pools of water, or by having the cutscene after the first jump in. Weather this was bad programming or intention, it felt confusing, and more like a gameplay element I was supposed to solve rather than a story-bit.

Furthermore, looking at a Wikipedia article on Psychonaughts, there was a whole back-story about a meteor hitting what is now the game’s campground hub world, and the US government covering it up. I wasn’t aware of ANY of THAT, yet the game was just as enjoyable without it.

Gameplay: The game is controlled from the third person perspective. The player must jump around, collect items, and do most of the standard platforming elements. The initial levels of the game do a merely acceptable job of explaining collectables, another poor bit of storytelling. When you collect a new item, the game will usually describe it to you once through a popup, and that’s it. There are few tutorials and so the learning curve to find out what was meant is steep. Luckily, there isn’t too much penalty for trying things out, but for a while I was lost on what some items did, where they were meant to be found and how to activate specific events.

For example, after acquiring the clairvoyance power, you are told that it could be used on objects to find out their usefulness. However, I didn’t know that you had to have them in your hand to mind read them, and was constantly trying to “activate” them on the inventory menu, where it showed the clairvoyance icon over each item that I had not yet read.

Furthermore, the beginning of the game throws a lot of elements that need to be collected, cobwebs, figments of the imagination, gaining Psi Ranking levels and lost baggage within a short time frame. By the end of the game I understood what these meant, but it wasn’t clear by the explanations in that first level alone how they would prove useful to me. I.E. Gaining levels grants new power, though I didn’t know this until a picture of a man appeared in my HUD, with another brief message telling me to meet with some guy. Wait… where is this guy, WHO is this guy? Beats me, the game just throws you out in the camp, and expects you to know where places are. The tram system is well appreciated, but for most of the beginning part of the game, I hadn’t even been introduced to the characters to know their names, none the less, go to their headquarters to learn new powerups form them.

Going back to the storyline inconsistency; this character I was supposed to meet with, Agent Culler, appears as many different personas around the camp, and only when you meet his “real” self do you get what you need. Once more, the game doesn’t introduce you to things in a gradual manner; perhaps it has the allure of games of old that expected you to explore for hours.

The camp serves as a hub world, and there are few if any main quests on it. Once you get the hang of what items do, and what things are, the game flows much better, becoming more predictable in its direction. The latter half of the game throws Raz into the mental zones of a couple characters, and rarely will Raz spend more than a couple minutes in the “physical” world once that point is reached. In this way, the beginning of the game is a tutorial that calls itself a game, and the end is the actual game.

Going into character's minds is a treat, as each zone has different theme, and style to them. One zone may have you crushing buildings, with little if any jumping around, while another may have the player tight-rope walking as much as possible. In addition, in one psyche the developers even threw a rudimentary RTS in the mix. You will look forward to seeing what the next environment looks like, and seeing how it will play. This keeps the gameplay fresh until the end.

As for items in the game, I can't help but be reminded of Banjo Kazooie, an N64 game from the past. While there aren't "notes" and jiggies, there are quite a few substitutes and complimentary items. As Raz collects 100 figments his PSI Ranking increases. At every 5 or so levels, Raz is granted new abilities and powers. Most of these powers are mandatory to complete the game, but I had no difficulty collecting enough to advance the game, requiring no replaying of past levels. Another way to increase the PSI ranking is by the collecting of mental cobwebs with a mental cobweb duster. This collectable was not quite as rewarding as collecting figments, which came in a variety of entertaining shapes depending on the mental level (think Inception) you inhabited. You just took out your cobweb duster, sucked them up and that was it. When you had enough, they could be redeemed for levels. The cobweb duster is unfortunately mandatory to complete the game requiring yet another currency.

Arrowheads are redeemable from the camp cabin (Where is that, have I been introduced to it?). Most of the items bought are not necessary to complete the game, but the cobweb duster is, and it is pricy. To collect arrowheads, the player must walk around the campground and press the Use button over a shimmering patch to get one. The player may also choose to get a arrowhead detector, allowing the finding of large patches of these arrowheads at once. I guess you could find the arrowheads one at a time to get the cobweb duster, but it would take a patience that would kill the game for most average people (And probably anybody who bought this game on a $2 budget). Collecting arrowheads is boring, and using the detector is only remotely more interesting. Thankfully it was a minor collecting quest.

Only Two ways to get PSI Levels? No, Raz can also find PSI Cores and psycards. Just like the plethora of collectables thus far, making the game seem more like Dinosaur Planet than a Mario clone, they are collected separately. Once a certain number of psycards are found, and a core is held, these can be transmogrified to become a PSI level. I found this method to be the fastest and easiest way to gain levels, yet the figments were definitely the most fun.

For those that LOVE to collect, if you bought this game, you sure must, and are tired of solving people’s problems. you can also play a scavenger hunt around the camp. Find the items and gain some PSI Ranks. I did not do this, but the ones I did find did not just fall into my lap.

Lastly, purely for entertainment collectable are the lost baggage. By finding keys (OMG so many collectables) and the corresponding baggage, the key must be held first, the player gets one step closer to unlocking secrets about the person’s psyche. The player must however collect ALL the lost baggage!

Now that you a lulled to a coma with the fear collecting so much stuff, you might want to hear about the Psi-powers.

Psi Powers: The greatest part of this game, besides the humor, are the psi powers. Each is filled with character and are useful too. Take, for example, Pyrokinesis, the ability to set people on fire. On its own it isn’t largely useful for killing enemies, but use it on friendlies and wild animals and you find yourself laughing. I can’t say I’ve had the ability to collect roast squirrel, collect the plated meal and eat it to regain health before in any game. Just discovering things such as this are a testament to the strong stylized design of the world the characters live in.

In fact, whenever I unlocked a new mental power, the first thing I would do would be to go around and use it on my friendlies. Friendlies don’t get injured, but each person has dialogue specific to their character depending on what attacks and powers you use on them. I won’t spoil it for you, but just wait until you see how the world sees you when using clairvoyance.

Sadly, besides the humor aspect, all the powers are relatively useless for combat. I found myself resorting to the basic smash, and maybe telekinesis when it was required. Only when the game required a specific power to defeat a boss did I pop open my PSI powers menu and choose some other powers to aid in the fight.

Just a note, not all the PSI Powers needed to complete the game are earned through PSI Leveling, some are found in levels too, so don’t freak out too much if you find yourself on a level, and you need a certain PSI power that you don’t yet have. During one portion of the game, you are told you need a PSI power, but it doesn’t emphasize that you can find it on that particular level, another design flaw.

Controls: The game’s controls are your worst enemy, greater than any monster. The ace of destruction and annoyance, you will find yourself wondering how to proceed through the game based on the inadequacy of the controls alone.

The camera control is done by that fine instrument the mouse, proven over many FPS to be a sensitive and reactive tool. The keyboard, specifically the arrow keys/WASD have not. The era of playing FPSes with D-Pads and 4 buttons and all 3D endeavors that require being able to hit a target between 45° and 90° is gone. Raz is moved by the arrow keys. Alone this wouldn’t be suitable at all, being able to run only in 8 directions in a 3D world, but there is hope. That mouse tool that moves the camera, that is the secret, by combining the movement of the camera with the discreteness of keyboard movement, the game can move in all directions. But let me pose another situation to you, two full pressure sensitive controlling axis, too bold? Well the consoles have them, and the PC does not. Here lies the problem. For a console platforming game at heart, the controls occasionally shoot outside the target. I was quite apt at controlling the game’s camera with the mouse, and only really using the front and back arrow keys to move Raz around, like a first person shooter, but there were still times when I would miss the mark. In one case, I might angle the camera so that Raz would jump the correct way and I would lose the depth to figure out how long to push Raz forward. The game also loves its tightropes. Each time Raz would cross a tightrope, trying to catch it by strafing was almost a guaranteed 10 meter drop to repeating a segment of the route. Instead, I would align the camera so the rope moved into the camera, and then jumped forward. This method was effective though doing this thorough the entirety of each level made its usage tired. If you are playing with a controller, consider yourself lucky, since you are likely immune to half the problems I’ve listed and are going to list shortly.

The second biggest problem for the PC controls are inventory. “]” will bring up the inventory, but for a while I didn’t even know of the existence of the inventory except I needed to use an item and the game wasn’t handling it automatically. Selecting items isn’t so bad, but it is obvious it is a console port. Instead of selecting something with your mouse, you have to select the direction of the object on a Crysis-like wheel and then press the equip button. You’d think this isn’t so bad, but the reason Crysis used the mouse for it becomes headache-inducingly obvious. Pushing two keys at once is required to make diagonal angles, but unlike a D-pad, the PC uses buttons. Letting off of one of the directional buttons, even slightly before the other, when attempting to do a diagonal and the game will assume you meant one of the two buttons. This made it infuriatingly annoying to select items that happened to be in corner pockets. What-more, no amount of control rejiggering would be able to remove that issue. See the manual for more of the controls.

http://cdn.steampowered.com/Manuals/3830/Psycho%20PC%20Manual2.pdf?t=1270602386
(Note, the manual spoilers more about the powers and things of the game than I do, so don’t read it if you want to be surprised by things (or lost). Maybe I should have read it before playing the game rather than Post-fact. It seems as though they expected people to read the manual before playing, a poor assumption for any 21st century game, especially considering it is now available primarily through download distribution.)

Since I’m reviewing the PC version, let me tell about some displeasure at changing the PSI powers around. PSI powers are on a similar menu as the inventory so what I stated above still applies. Raz can only have 3 psi-powers equipped at any one time. This makes sense on the console versions with limited button real-estate, but the PC versions has many empty buttons clambering for a slight stroke every now and then besides by accident. Here’s some suggestions, take a bite from an RPG and make the number or F# row quick access to specific psi-powers. The 3 specified powers can remain, but anything that removes the need to choose powers on the annoying selection screen is a bonus. Not withholding, the “m” key should bring up the map. Why must “esc” bring up a general menu, and then I have to slide over to it and select it on a separate menu.

Graphics: The game has surprisingly good graphics for an Xbox 1 port. Perhaps this is the nature of the high resolution I was running it at, but I find the textures to be clean when they needed to be. What-more the characters and objects did not look blocky, unless it was in the nature of the character. The style utilized through the game, something of a mix between a painting and the Dr. Seuss mentioned before, allowed the graphics to outlive many games from that era going for a more realistic projection.

I love little details. A couple that caught my eye in the graphics department include the figments of the imagination mentioned before. These are shaped depending on the personality of the person's mind that Raz is infiltrating. There are a lot of shapes and sizes to these figments, and the notable ones would even give tips as to where to go in a level, showing a figment pointing or holding on a rope. Unfortunately, since they are meant to be blurred and wispy appearance-wise, the increase in resolution for the PC version hasn't been quite as kind to them as overall texture elements, but is wasn't too bad.

Another great little detail is later on in the game, when Raz is in the mind of a painter, who's mind is engulfed in Mexican culture and lucha libre lore. The world is vibrant in neon colors, glowing above the normal pastels. Even Raz gets a new re-skin by entering the world. The detail, and style immediately sets the player in the game world and the idea of dogs painting roses, and bulls racing down the street immediately makes sense. In this world Raz has the opportunity to be kissed by a women behind closed doors. (Among other things?) The develops don't just imply Raz is being kissed, as hearts flow out of the window, as he emerges, lipstick stains dart Raz's face and clothing. Attention to detail, keeping with the style that's what I like.

Raz can't step in water or else the hands will get him. What about underwater? Well, when you do go under the sea for a trip, you'll find that the hands will wait outside Raz's air pocket, waiting to reach in and grab him. I was not expecting this, and it was a strong attention to their plot point that I was surprised to see.

While almost cosmetic, as the story progresses, the campgrounds goes from day to night. Appreciated only for the added sense of urgency that Raz only has the weekend to complete his mission to become a Psychonaught.

My biggest complaint with the graphics was that the cutscenes were pre-recorded videos rather than in-game cinematics. You might be wondering why this matters. Well, the videos are limited in their stored resolution, while in game runs as whatever the engine will allow. This means running the game at high resolutions results in cutscenes that are noticeably blurrier, and detract from the immersion. I can understand that perhaps the developers needed to make the cutscenes into movie files to pull off graphics that the engine running on the Xbox could not handle. This is a PC version, and the appearence that both the movies and in game use the same assets; I would have liked for the cinematics to be rendered in real-time rather than another port checkmark.

Sound and Music: In a word bueno. The voice actor quality is outstanding, and each character’s personality, thanks to Tim Shafer’s witty writing, is only boosted by the skilled actor reading it. What-more, the syncing of the mouths, while seemingly a small aspect of a cartoony game, is well done, with the mouths flapping away in rhythm. Given that characters often have multiple things to read depending on your contextual action with them deserves even more praise. Furthermore, sound design was sound as I did not feel that any choices were out of place.

A specific noteworthy voice acting/programming job was Boyd the Milkman. His lines are naturally memorable, but the better of them is the random generator. Someone went ahead and recorded a bunch of lines, and decided rather than have them read in a specific order, they would shadow the randomness and stuttery speaking of a lunatic. The game will play lines from the character's mouth to form sentences that shouldn't even be together. The Squirrels?! They did it? No wait the five richest families in the country? Listening to this character speak brought back memories of typing to artificial AI and the seemingly oblivious responses they would contribute to the conversation.

As for the music, occasionally good but too repetitious. Unlike some games that go for atmospheric sound, Psychonaughts goes for the repeating background music. On some levels this is fine. Other times, I'm looked for an opposite word that rhymes with bo. Two very specific levels which's levels made me want to turn off the hurt were a Napoleon based one, and a Play. For the Play production, I'm fairly confident that the music director wanted the music to be overly bubbly, and representing of the happiness of the amateur production. For that they succeeded, but it is WAY too obvious. On that level you can turn the stage to one of two forms, playing a different song for both. This makes the music selection worse, as the user constantly hears the start of the two songs, over and over, and over. The songs are not horrible (I even have one set for a ringtone), but their presence and conditions are too widely met. The Napoleon's issue lies also in its repetitiveness. Hearing the 1812 overture remixed is only good for so long. Not to mention the level is filled with torturous platforming means the hate has to go somewhere.

I think for games like Super Mario, having only a select number of tracks is cool, because the levels are short and catchy. For Psychonaughts, the levels are just too long for their respective songs, which themselves are too obvious. Since the songs don't change very often for most levels, that you can be on for over an hour, you hear the songs repeat far too often.

The music overall is good, listened to outside the contexts of the game. Each is imbibed with style as strong as their respective graphics and level themes. For the luchador one, the music has that Mexican flair, and for the rave party, there is a techno beat. The camp grounds have a classical guitar that makes one remember their times around the campfire late at night, one of my favorites in the game.

Humor: For some games, the cutscenes and story are what make the game worth continuing. Others it is the gameplay. For Psychonaughts, the game is the medium to reach more of the jokes, for they will keep you playing. Raz will be exploring the minds of many characters, and the Idiosyncrasy of each prep for the dramatic irony that is bound to come. The cleverness of the writing, of jokes not story, can't be denied. Compared to TV comedies it is similar to The Simpsons than Family guy or South park, with weird situations leading to more weird situations. The jokes also tend to be subtler than a comedy such as Airplane that makes jokes every 30 seconds. You won't be laughing out loud most of the game, it isn't like that, but the develops setting up a situation you wouldn't have imagined, or pushing the bounds of dullness, the overall facetiousness is exemplary. The game also makes a lot of use of visual gags, not all working well.

One particular bad visual gag had to do with timing, holding hands with poor storytelling. Raz is talking to another character, and we see various items being thrown out to catch their attention, except in the scene, it doesn't seem to fit. While the items attempting to angle the pair are peculiar and noteworthy, I wasn't sure why this was happening as a proper villain had not been fully established. When it was revealed there was a giant evil fish, it made slightly more sense, but I couldn't help feel as though they should have made it more apparent that it was a fish ahead of time, or at least a faced villain. A stashed enemy who tries to lure children with a fishing rod, that could be offbeat and funny as long as it was played up right. In this case, I felt the situation could have been done better.

Conclusion: For less than $10.00 Psychonaughts is a steal. While you have to deal with some controls issues, you can, at minimum, change the button configuration. It doesn't fix the accuracy of the keys available but you can play it with a controller pad, highly recommended. The voices are good, and the sounds feel right. The music is quite good, but overly repetitive. Gameplay is a mix between standard 3D platforming, coupled with collecting everything you can get your hands on. The changing environments filled with zany humor and character quirks will keep you motivated to progress through the levels. Gaining new Psi-powers and Psi-levels add reasons to go back to old levels, and allow Raz to execute new tactics from stage to stage. There is a bit too much to collect, but much of it is optional, and the develops have a fine balance between required collectables and extras. The storyline and introduction to concepts are not properly introduced much of the time, but take it as a means to set up jokes and just flow with it, and it won't destroy the game. Graphics are good for PC, but like the controls, have evidence of being ported from a console.

Misc:

For those of you that are interested in saving your games for Psychonaughts, especially considering there is a limited amount of save slots for your usage the save game directory is "…/Psychonaughts/Profiles/Profile 2" The ellipsis depends on where the game is installed. My copy was from steam so it was "D:\Steam\steamapps\common\psychonauts\Profiles\Profile 2". Notice that the folder only has 6 saves in there. It is a little bit of a shame that the game could not have automatically backed up the older saves, 200KB is not that much space, even for a hundred saves, unlike Deus Ex.

by Zott820