Category Archives: Game Reviews - Page 2

Workin for the Man

Posted by on February 6, 2011 No comments

So here I am working on Super-bowl Sunday.  I have a bit while I wait for some code to compile and figured I would write up an update to say what I have been doing for the last few weeks.  I mean, that’s what the blog is for right?  Lately it seems like my blog is more of a place where I forget to write things.  I guess that’s what Twitter has done to me.  I think ‘Oh I already updated folks on twitter so I don’t need to post to the blog as well”.  The downside to that is that I really like writing.  When I look back at all my posts from last year and beyond I realize that some of them get crazy long.  I see other peoples blog posts and wonder how they can cram so much into so few paragraphs, then I realize that they have left out so much detail.

Perfect case in point for this, I have downloaded and started reading Stepto’s (Stephen Toulouse) new book, “A Microsoft Life”.  It’s a compilation of a number of blog posts he wrote throughout his career at Microsoft.  All of the stories are fascinating, but I am left wanting more details.  Each chapter is a post from the blog but I read one and am left with the feeling that there could be so much more that could be fleshed out.  I guess that could be seen as a complaint about the book, it was so good that I wanted to know more.  If you are a geeky type of person and interested in the more inner workings of the MS world, I highly recommended it.

Meanwhile back on the gaming front, I mentioned last time that I picked up a new laptop.  The ASUS beast, or Tumbler, has been an awesome addition to the house.  I have found myself playing more PC based games in the last month, just because I could.  Yeah, it could be a little more portable, but I love that it’s big and powerful.  Because of this I picked up both Civilization V and Starcraft II.  SCII is great for a quick 30min to 1 hour map, while Civ V is awesome if I want to kiss my weekend goodbye.  It’s amazing, I feel like I have discovered time travel.  Seriously!  I start playing Civ V and suddenly I am teleported to 6 hours in the future where the dog is whining because he wants food and the plants are dying.  I also realized how much I suck at SC II.  I bought the game because I love the storyline and am I steeped in the single player game.  I tried to play Multi-player though and was just swamped.  I guess it’s because I love the building aspect and hate the idea of just fast building stuff to throw at the enemy.  I want to build my troops up so they will survive the attack and that takes time!

On the photography side of the house, I am pining over a new camera.  Unfortunately it doesn’t exist yet.  I have seen lots of rumor reports of a Nikon 5100, and everything I see in the rumors lead me to believe that it’s the perfect camera for me.  I really want to replace my D3000 before DragonCon, so while I still have a few months to figure it out.  I love that the D5000 has the flip out screen and better everything than the D3000, but not as good as the 3100, the D90 is about the right price range, but lacks some of the newer features like an auto-focus while filming movies, the D7000 has all the best features (except the flip out screen) but is well over $1k.  There is a great site that has been helping me compare models of cameras: http://snapsort.com/compare. There is some speculation that the February 9th press conference may bring an announcement, but even more rumors saying that the 5100 won’t be announced for a while still.  Either way, I will be giving the D3000 a true test at PAXEast.

So for now, I sign off.  I hope to finish up here soon and head home for some chili and Super-Bowl action.  Not really a football fan, but I love watching the big game.  Weird right?

Post Con Report

Posted by on September 10, 2010 No comments

Well, I am back from DragonCon and getting back into the swing of things.  The Con was great but I didn’t do some of the more Blog type stuff that I had wanted to.  That’s not to say that I didn’t do more than enough to cover the whole con but I had planned on getting an interview about games with a few of the the folks there, and there just wasn’t time.  The biggest takeaway is of course that there were a bazillion people there!  Ok, not really, but there were certainly more people than I had ever seen before at a Con.  One thing that kind of bugged me a bit was the in-accessibility of some of the stars.  Now, don’t read that the wrong way, I am certainly not expecting some big name stars to be at our beck and call, but when I read that certain names are on the guest list, only to find out that they are only doing limited appearances, ala, 1 panel, maybe a private autograph session, it’s a little sad.  I had really wanted to meet Paul Dini, but when I went to the Artist’s area he was nowhere to be found.  Apparently the Info desk there was well versed in the answer to “Where’s Paul Dini?”  From what we learned, Paul was only doing a few panels and had no table.

Such was also the case with one of my Favorite Mythbusters!  Adam Savage was at the con but only did limited Autograph sessions (and with so many people there, the lines were impossible) and even my favorite part of any Savage sighting is the #adamincognito game he plays.  Adam is an avid costumer so DragonCon is a great place for him.  He will sometimes dress up in Costume and encourage people to find him.  Unfortunately, the con was 5 hotels large with between 30-50,000 people there.  With no location tweeted it was nigh on impossible to change encounter him.  For this one though I blame the lack of Signal that happens when you get that many people in a small area all with smart phones.

(Deep Breath) Ok, now that all my bitching and moaning is over.  What I did get to do at the con was great.  Sarah and I took about 6 costumes each and got to wear most all of them.  I got to meet a lot of the stars I planned on seeing, and of course the visiting with friends and drinking.  All in all, a great con.  Pictures can be found in my gallery.

Now, to get back into my rigorous gaming habit!  Reach comes out next week so I have only a few more days to finish up with Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions.  All I can say so far is that it’s apparent that there will never be a Spider-Man game where the camera isn’t completely hosed while wall crawling.

What are you Playing? (When you aren’t getting ready for a CON)

Posted by on August 19, 2010 3 comments

Hey all, it’s time for another rousing round of What are you Playing!  The last few weeks have been mostly occupied by me procrastinating getting things ready for DragonCon.  In just 2 small weeks I will be living it up in Atlanta rubbing elbows with some of the best costumers and sci-fi geeks on the planet.  I am also really excited about the Guest list this year.  So excited that I have been trying to think up questions that would be game related that I could ask some of our favorite celebrities.  Info that I would bring back and post here on the site.  So I put it to you, there is a huge guest list over on the website Http://www.dragoncon.org. If there is anyone in particular that you would like to know what their gaming habits are, or any questions you think I should toss out there.  I plan on using my phones voice recorder to grab some sound bites from the folks there.  Please feel free to drop questions you want asked into the comments.  (P.S. Apparently, Paul Dini, the writer for the Batman Arkham games will be there, you KNOW I am going to be talking to him!)

As for what I am actually playing…. I finished up Crackdown 2, I bought another new Xbox 360S to replace the E-73 Error-ed out one downstairs so the Rock Band setup is back to normal.  I am hoping to knock out Alan Wakes “The Signal” here soon, but mostly just getting stuff ready for vacation.  What are YOU playing?

Risk Factions, where Zombies rule the earth.

Posted by on August 11, 2010 No comments

I know it’s been a while since I picked up this game but there has bee a ton going on.  It does help that I keep playing it and thinking “Man, I really need to write up the review”.  As a kid we always liked to play various board game.  I always kind of feared the nights where we would play RISK though because of the massive involvement of the game.  A good RISK game could last for hours of hours, and when it’s done there is so much clean up.  Not to mention the RISK of stepping on one of those like roman numerals in the middle of the night.  Once again, the Xbox steps in to simplify the board game genre and add a little spice to it at the same time.

RISK Factions brings all the fun of territorial control and conquering that the original game had but with no clean up, simplified scoring and much faster game play.  The “Factions” portion of the game come in assigning different cartoon characters to the colors of Risk.  Black becomes Zombies, Red for Robots, Yellow for Cats, Green for Humans, and Blue for Yeti’s.  The Single player campaign takes you through the story about how these characters interact, but mostly it’s there to provide a little more eye candy for the grueling dice rolling game play.  They have also added a form of “Fast attack” where the rolls are all done in the back ground and you keep attacking until someone wins.

For those purists who don’t want any taint on their precious game, they preserved the original game play in a “Classic” mode that includes the original cards and structure.  Honestly, I tried to play this way once, and it seemed slow.  I much enjoyed the newer style better.  The turns are faster, the scoring is much easier, and when you are done, no clean up.  This is one of the best family board game ports on the arcade and I highly recommend it!  I give it an VIII out of X

What are you playing? or….The Risk of Cracking Down on your Limbo Skills

Posted by on July 28, 2010 2 comments

It’s that time again to run down what you are playing!  I am slowly but surely working up a review of the XBLA (Xbox Live Arcade) game Risk Factions, which I managed to finish the campaign on.  The nice thing about it is that it’s such a great Family game that we find ourselves playing it as a group all the time.  Also mixed in lately has been Crackdown 2.  Initial impressions of CD 2 are not that great.  I just get the feeling like it’s too much all at once and it’s REALLY hard to focus on the ga…oooo  Agility orb!

The latest add in to the library has been the XBLA game Limbo.  This came out for the Summer of Arcade promo that Xbox does every year.  The game is a hell of a lot like Braid, and if you haven’t played Braid you need to go check it out.  Both are side scrolling puzzle platformers that will twist your brain in loops.  I love it!  Review for Limbo will be after Risk and Crackdown 2 will probably be a while still.  Don’t forget that the first DLC for Alan Wake is out now, The Signal.  My copy of Alan Wake is out on loan right now so I will be getting to that as soon as it comes back.

Outside of that, the workouts are going great, I can already feel a difference and only 36 days left before DragonCon!  I am hoping to maybe squeeze out an interview with one or two celeb’s to see their take on gaming.  And with that I leave you with the amazing Music video from the Guild:  GAME ON!

What are you playing?

Posted by on July 20, 2010 7 comments

I have been thinking of trying to get a weekly post up of what I am playing and maybe put it out to see what you guys are playing as well. I have seen a lot of sites do this to get a good discussion going and maybe get some ideas about a game I wouldn’t normally pick up.  So, seeing as how I am the only one here, I’ll go first.

The past week or two I have been working on some house type stuff and reconfiguring things on my network.  After picking up the new Xbox 360S (I traded in my old 20gb Xbox) I decided to upgrade my router to a Wireless N to use the new Xbox’s N device.  I bought the Belkin Play Dual Band Wireless N router and replaced my crappy Netgear G.  Long story made short, I can’t stream media from my PC to the xbox anymore and have no idea why.  While I am not a hard core network guy, I still know my way around a subnet and have spent the past 2 weeks tweaking and such to figure this out.  It’s kind of a pain.

Outside of that I have been playing some Lego Harry Potter with Sarah.  It’s one of those games where we pretty much only play together.  I believe we are towards the end of Book 3 right now.  the Quick review on it, it’s a Lego game.  Same basic premise and humor.  That’s not a bad thing, because I love the Lego games.  Aside from that I have picked up Risk: Factions from the Xbox Live Arcade.  They found a way to really make a Risk game fun for everyone!  We have played as a family, as well as through the solo campaign.  Enjoyable all around.  May have more of a full review on it up soon.

In the life department, I also picked up an Elliptical machine and am using it to get back into some sort of shape that’s not “round”.  My hope is to turn some of this belly fat into muscle in time for DragonCon at the beginning of September.  We’ll See, as of this morning I was at 192lb.  My target is Around 175lb but I would be happy with a strong 180-185lbs.  The goal is not so much loss but re-distribution.  Wish me luck!

Heavy Rain … Or… Press –> to read this post.

Posted by on July 15, 2010 2 comments

After many hours and many times of screaming “No, not that way!!” and “Damnit I DID hit X” I have finished playing through Heavy Rain, the thriller mystery exclusive for the Playstation 3. It took a little longer than I had originally planned due to some frustration with the control scheme and the ever impeding life thing I have going on (I really should do something about that).

Heavy Rain takes us through the story/mystery of the Origami Killer as if affects a family, the detectives searching, and the journalist reporting on it. Unlike some of the other games of this genre, you get to play as each different character to get their point of view on the story, and ultimately drive the story to a unique ending tailored to your actions. This is one of the story points that really makes Heavy Rain stand out. It’s a cleverly disguised “Choose Your Own Adventure” story where, depending on what choices you made, you may get a completely different ending than someone else. Because of the nature of the story, I hesitate to mention any plot line specifics for fear of spoiling it. Instead we will jump to the likes and dislikes.

Likes:
Great Story – Seems like most of the games I have really gotten into as of late have been driven by a good solid story. Heavy Rain really takes the murder mystery story to a whole new level with the different ways you can drive it, including multiple different outcomes. I have said many times that story is really key to a good game so I won’t spend time on this one. The story was good.
Detailed Graphics – The detail that goes into the characters and settings in Heavy Rain is amazing (in some places). If you get the chance I highly suggest checking out some of the bonus videos on the disk that show the actors that portrayed the characters in the game. The fact that they were able to make the in game faces match so perfectly was astounding.
Innovative control scheme – Heavy Rain really takes immerse control to the extreme where you can interact with so many things and each action is meticulous in it’s implementation. The use of the Six Axis to perform tasks like sliding a door, opening a cupboard, or turning a nob worked really well…..for the first 10 min (Continued Bellow).
Multiple perspectives – As the story played out you get to jump from Ethan (The Father), to Madison (The Journalist), to Norman (The Agent), and to Scott (The P.I.). Because of this it almost felt like you were following four different stories, but they all tied together in an amazing way and it was genius to see the same story from all of the different views.
Solid voice acting – None of the voice acting really felt forced like we have seen in other games. Most of the conversation seems to flow naturally and fit the mood of the game very well. The behind the scenes videos showing how they auditioned some of the actors was a great touch. I love watching voice actors perform.

Dislikes:
Suspension of Disbelief – This stemmed from one of the first scenes in the game, hopefully not much of a spoiler, where Ethan looses track of his son in a mall. He can see him only about 30 feet in front of him but the mall is crowded and it’s hard to catch up, even though you are calling out to your son, he blatantly ignores you for the full 20 min you are chasing him (right behind him BTW). The people in the mall actually move in front of you so it makes it even more difficult to catch up. Also, you can’t run so you are doing this at a walking pace. There were quite a few times in the game where I felt that the “fourth wall” was broken due to something completely unbelievable.
Graphic Glitches – So as nice and detailed as the graphics were, there were still quite a few graphics glitches that really took it from a simple glitch to a full blown annoyance. Things like fabric, the clothes they would put on or take off looked horrible. Like they could stand up on their own. Walking around the rooms made your character look like a strung out marionette. It just seemed that in free walk mode the characters had no fluid motion.
Innovative control scheme – So after the first 10 minutes the control scheme starts to really be tedius and aggravating. For example, at one point I needed to walk over to the fridge, tap the analog stick to the left to open the fridge door, tap up to grab the orange juice, shake the controller to shake the juice, tap up again to drink the juice, tap down to put the juice back and tap right to close the fridge. Now count that. That’s 6 button/stick commands to do a simple act of drinking juice. Between each command there is a pause in gameplay so I can issue the next command. Towards the end of the game it wasn’t quite as bad since you aren’t really searching anymore.

For the most part, I didn’t hate the game. The story kept me going and the way the game played out for me was good for how I played it. I really wish that the dislikes didn’t detract from the game as much as they did because it would have made it that much better. As it was I feel like I spent 20 minutes of every hour playing just doing the control gimmicks and tedious button mashing. Overall I enjoyed playing it and would give it a Solid 7 Origami Cranes out of 10.

Naughty Bear…or….20 minutes of game play I’ll never get back

Posted by on June 30, 2010 No comments

Tuesday is new game release day, and Wednesday is new comic day.  Now I don’t typically buy as many new games as I buy comics, but I tend to keep an eye on what’s getting released in the same way.  This last Tuesday saw two releases that I have been watching for a while now.  Lego Harry Potter, and Naughty Bear.  I knew what to expect with any Lego game, while they may tell different stories, the game play is similar across the board.  The Sleeper was Naughty Bear.  I had seen a number of preview videos and some of the trailers, and to be honest, they did their job well and I was enticed.  It looked funny/cute in a “Happy Tree Friends” sort of way.

Sadly, I was wrong.  I bought Naughty Bear at 7:30pm on Tuesday night, got home and played through the first “episode” and instantly knew that I had made a mistake.  I toughed it out and finished the episode, then packed it up and headed back to Gamestop.  Thankfully the gracious personnel there were nice enough to let me swap it out for Lego Harry Potter.

Side note here.  I was warned, by Erin when I bought Naughty Bear, that it was going to be bad.  I decided to make my own judgment.

So what made it so bad?  Well, The idea was good and funny.  Unfortunately that was the extent of the good.  The Premise was that you played Naughty Bear, the bastard step child of this “Care Bear” style island where everything is puppies and kittens.  Some of the other bears on the island have treated you unfairly and you decide to get back at them by being naughty.  Being Naughty can range from scaring them, sabotaging their stuff, or even bashing their stuffed heads in with a baseball bat.  Who wouldn’t think that could be fun?!

What it ended up being was a series of “Challenges” where you had to sneak around and scare/kill your fellow bears while disrupting their activities.  I guess that you could play the game more Sam Fisher style and sneak in the bushes then pop out and scare them, but after the first time you do that they all know you are there, so no more sneaking will help you.  From there is just becomes “I’m going to run around and hit you with a bat”.  When you finish with the bears, you can gain a few extra points by smashing stuff.  And that was it!  After a while, even the narration is grating.

Now, I think the game may be not as bad as I am making it out to be if it weren’t for one more glaringly bad problem, it was release at the price point of $49.99.  For the same price as something like Lego Harry Potter, you get a game that may have done well as an Xbox Arcade title, for maybe $10-$12 bucks

The Graphics were just ok, the actual game mechanics were horrible.  I had to maneuver myself around and fumble with the view to get into a position where I could actually scare another bear.  Just Awful, one of the worst games I have tried.  This may, and I emphasize MAY, be worth it when the price drops down to like $5, which I have no doubt that it will fall to that.

Alan Wake

Posted by on June 24, 2010 1 comment

Abut a month ago I made this post to Twitter:

Me: Alan wake is a “psychological action thriller”. Sarah: That’s code for “scary as shit!”

Thus began my decent into the darkness that claimed Alan Wake, the latest story driven thriller on the Xbox 360.  I had decided to hold off on playing Alan Wake due to my obsession with Red Dead Redemption.  Since RDR took quite a while to get through the story, it delayed my run of AW.  Of course once I finished AW I had planned to write up my review but my house was set upon by a plague of darkness on it’s own with everyone catching some sort of head cold.  This leaves me behind on quite a few posts, but I will do my best to catch up.

So, Alan Wake lives up to it’s tag line (and thusly, Sarah’s translation).  The main story gets played out as a kind of a Television episodic story that is broken up into 6 parts.  Even though I spread it out over the course of the month, the actual game play was exactly 6 days.  I did this because I really didn’t want to cut off an episode mid way.  Each episode was approximately 2-3 hours of game play, so in hind sight, the whole game was just about 15ish hours of play time.  Some of you would think that is short but trust me, the story is more than worth it.

The story is where Alan Wake really shines.  Most games that come out these days have amazing graphics, outstanding music, etc, etc.  The story is really one part where many games loose it just a little.  Case in point, I loved the story in Red Dead Redemption, but there were enough holes, and missing elements that, as a player, I missed out on.   With Alan Wake, the whole game was very linear so that the string the player follows is the story the developers want to tell.  When the story is done, you may want for more, but it’s not from holes in the story, it’s from the story being so compelling that you want more of it.

Ok, Spoiler time, if you don’t want to know, don’t read any further.

Alan Wake is a troubled writer who, with his wife, vacations to a lake side town of Bright Falls.  Unfortunately, the town has it’s own dramatic flare.  A haunted lake claims Alan’s wife as it’s hostage and forces Alan to write infusing his story with it’s own powers of darkness to gain strength.  Alan escapes the story by writing himself into it (I know, it’s weird but it does make sense, kinda) so that he can rescue his wife.  You spend the bulk of the game racing through town trying to learn about the whereabouts of your wife and following a trail of dropped manuscript pages that “you” wrote for the story.  The really mind blowing meta comes from the last two episodes where you learn that Alan’s Father was trapped by the same lake and forced to write a story that leads to Alan coming to the lake, to get trapped, and forced to write a story where he encounters his father’s story…. I’m going to stop there before my head explodes.

Now, as for the likes and dislikes:

Bright Falls (Likes)

Story - The story was so well written that you really felt like you were playing out a good novel or enjoying a really well written TV show.

Ambiance - In order to set the mood for the story, the ambiance in the town flows with the story both for daytime and night time.

Narration - I loved that Alan was Narrating the whole story as I played it out.  It added more of that “I am in a novel” feeling.

Barry - Your agent comes to “rescue” you in Bright Falls and ends up tagging along on most of the ride through the story.  His comedy relief is a great add to the whole experience.

Night Falls (Dislikes)

Lip Sync - This was the BIGGEST distraction of the game.  The voicing is good by the sync with the character models became such a distraction that I had to force myself to not watch the character faces during cut scenes because it was detracting from the game.

Scavenger Hunt - One of the things you have to do in the story is to hunt around and find various scraps of the manuscript.  Hidden along the way there are also a number of Coffee Thermoses, weapon stashes, and radio/TV shows you can tune into.  The problem I had with this is that I would walk into an area and start searching the areas that were more off the path of the story in order to try and find these things.  In some respect it’s cool, but in many it’s just a distraction.

Over all I felt Alan Wake was an amazing game.  I can’t wait for the next two episodes that are due out as DLC soon.  Hopefully the game won’t suffer in numbers due to being released opposite Red Dead Redemption.  Go Buy It!!

E3 Week and Kinect

Posted by on June 14, 2010 No comments

So this is the start of E3 week and the big news so far is the new Kinect controller, or the Controller formerly known as Natal. We all knew it was coming and now it’s hear. The pictures so far look great. I am not too sure about the list of games though. According to USA Today the release list of games at launch will include:

•Kinectimals lets you train and play with 20 different virtual cats, including a lion, cheetah and tiger.

•Joyride, a racing game, lets players use their hands to hold an imaginary steering wheel — pull your hands toward you and push back out for an acceleration boost — and their bodies to execute jumps and tricks.

•Kinect Sports has six activities including boxing, bowling, beach volleyball, track and field, soccer and table tennis. To serve a volleyball, you mimic the real motion; in soccer, you can kick the ball or do a header.

•Kinect Adventures includes a river-raft time trial and obstacle course, playable by up to four players. On the raft, playing as a duo, you and a partner must lean one way or another to steer. Jumping helps the raft reach special areas for extra points.

•Dance Central, in development by MTV Games, incorporates immersive, full-body dancing without the need for a controller.

•Star Wars characters and iconic Disney favorites will be featured in separate new games being developed at Microsoft in conjunction with LucasArts and Disney.

In other E3 news, some new game trailers have been released for a few games I am really looking forward to seeing.

The Force Unleashed II:

Rock Band 3:

Spiderman Shattered Dimensions:

Yeah, it’s gonna be a fun week!