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September 12, 2011

Review – Resistance 3

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , — Brad Johnson @ 8:45 am

Resistance 3
After the death of Nathan Hale in Resistance 2, Joseph Capelli has gone underground. Having sworn off the seemingly hopeless fight against the Chimaera, Resistance 3 sees him forced back into the fray—but in a way that’s decidedly more grounded in the story of one man than the clash of warring armies.

This sequel is a much-appreciated respite from the thunderous, flag-waving epics of many other triple-A shooters. It’s a campaign without patriotism, without battlecries, without hooahs; Joseph Capelli doesn’t represent a country, a world, an ISA or UNSC—he’s a man on a truly miserable roadtrip to protect his family.

Though, like many triple-A shooters, the title suffers from a relatively thin story, it mitigates this with a well-crafted atmospheric tone that makes it unique among its contemporaries, and offers a handful of poignant, choice moments that serve to elevate the narrative.

Capelli is unique among modern shooter protagonists in that he is aware of his morality. The Master Chief, Marcus Fenix—these guys don’t talk about dying, except perhaps in some poetic, vaguely glorious way, but Joseph Capelli doesn’t want to die, and doesn’t want to leave his family. Though his feats are as super-heroic as his competition, it’s touches like this that afford him a simple humanness to endear him to the player.

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September 11, 2011

Review – BloodRayne: Betrayal

Review BloodRayne Betrayal
I am fail.

While that conclusion will come as no surprise to some, the suspicion was finally confirmed for me after clearing the first of Betrayal’s stages, wherein I was awarded an “F” grade, and the designation of “wormfood”. That the same reward awaited me at the end of every stage would seemingly suggest that WayForward’s resurrection of Majesco’s dhampir vixen is a difficult affair. And while plenty of voices across the Internet support this argument, it’s simply not accurate.

The near infinite supply of health, unlimited lives, consistently well placed checkpoints, wide-sweeping attacks, and even a laser cannon that spreads across the entire screen, make it ridiculous to suggest that Rayne’s 2D debut reaches anywhere close to the difficulty of nostalgic side-scrolling titles that kept gamers grinding their teeth and stores selling a steady supply of replacement controllers back in the day.

Betrayal does liberally sprinkle stages with cheap trickery however, situations that depend as much on luck as a mastery of the controls – split evenly between platforming sections that unleash floating projectiles while requiring precision jumping, and arena areas where waves of enemies work to drain the blood with the advantage of restricted space.

The real difficulty of Betrayal is in reconciling the shortfalls that leave a promising release far less the experience it could have been, delivering a digital title where every element that makes it excel also directly causes it to disappoint – where the high point of Betrayal causes direct gameplay hiccups that undermine the effort and expose the under-developed nature of the entire game.

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September 4, 2011

Review – Catherine

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , — Jamie Love @ 1:20 pm

Review Catherine
A monstrous baby and grotesque sexual mutations of the female form cast ominous and destructive shadows over the nightmares of Vincent Brooks, who finds himself dragged into a dark dream world each night – a nightmare realm where men seem to be punished for the crime of living wasted lives. Aside from the philosophical attachment, the weight of this crime is the way in which Vincent’s indecision and resistance to adulthood cause others to suffer, specifically his long-term girlfriend, Katherine.

Having followed the development of Atlus’ original HD title for some time, I’d anticipated finding plenty to discuss in these manifestations of male fears, seemingly stepping out of the mind of David Cronenberg and so dramatically intent on literally crushing Vincent beneath the weight of their significance – and in that regard I was certainly not disappointed or left wanting for words.

And yet, the truly frightening part of watching Vincent’s fears of a relationship with girlfriend Katherine, and the way that fear feeds a sudden affair when the mysterious and seductive Catherine appears, hits a note so personal, that the academic leanings must give way. The most terrifying element of Catherine is the similarities I’ve drawn between Vincent and myself.

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Review – Hector: Badge of Carnage
Episode 2: Senseless Acts of Justice

Hector Badge of Carnage Episode 2 Senseless Acts of Justice
Hector: Badge of Carnage, Episode 2 – Senseless Acts of Justice, which I’ll just be calling “Episode 2” for the duration of this review, is the long-awaited followup to Straandlooper’s iPhone point-and-click adventure game Hector: Episode 1; however, if you played the PC, Mac, or iPad versions of the game, the wait was of short to moderate length.

Either way, Clapper Wreake’s finest obese, alcoholic curmudgeon of a constable is back to hunt down a terrorist, wallow in depravity, and grumble about everything.

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August 31, 2011

Review – Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , , — Brad Johnson @ 8:46 am

Deus Ex Human Revolution
I spend most of my days waiting for games like Deus Ex: Human Revolution to come along; games that do science fiction well, and authentically.

William Gibson has said that all great science fiction isn’t really about the future, it’s about the present—and that’s part of the strength of Deus Ex. At the heart of Human Revolution is the augmentation debate, and within it are shades of modern day quandaries, reflections of the everyday arguments of politics, science, and religion.

Care has been taken here to craft a genuine, believable world. This game doesn’t feel like a caricature; the ideas and conflicts feel true to life, and so does the argument the game hinges on. That fidelity informs Revolution down to its core, and makes it successful.

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August 11, 2011

Review – Red Faction: Armageddon

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , — Brad Johnson @ 12:17 am

Red Faction Armageddon
Red Faction: Armageddon—the latest in Volition’s series of destruction-centric shooters—picks up with Darius Mason, descendant of the previous entry’s protagonist, and the colonists of Mars trapped underneath the surface following the destruction of the planet’s terraformer.

To make matters worse, Darius has accidentally unleashed a horde of alien monsters that seek to… well, it’s not really clear what the aliens want. They do appear intelligent (intelligent enough to destroy machinery Darius is trying to use against them), but they possess no character or story to speak of, instead assuming the role of predictably mute monsters to turn into paste.

The story is soft and more than a little dumb at times, with a cast of bland characters that, though voice acted quite capably, don’t have a scrap of personality between them. One could argue that it’s refreshing not to be fighting yet another revolution in a Red Faction game, but I felt the title lost some of its identity by choosing to go the fairly standard alien invasion route.

Of course, the real cause for concern is the switch to the closed, scaled-down environments—moving away from what made Red Faction: Guerrilla such a success. With its new setting, Armageddon eschews the wide open expanses of Guerrilla for a series of tunnels and chambers. Darius will occasionally visit the surface, but always in closed environments.

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July 19, 2011

Review – Call of Juarez: The Cartel

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — Brad Johnson @ 9:00 am

Call of Juarez The Cartel
Out today is Ubisoft’s latest entry in the Call of Juarez series, The Cartel. Following an inter-agency task force designed to bring down a rising drug cartel responsible for a recent terrorist attack (that’s right; it’s street crime plus terrorism), the game offers three playable characters; a DEA agent, FBI agent, and LAPD officer—all of whom are preposterously corrupt and ultimately grossly incompetent.

As the story progresses, the three (supposed) law enforcement agents concoct a series of deeply stupid and massively illegal (never mind immoral) strategies for bringing down the Cartel (and achieving a handful of additional goals), most of which fail miserably—which is not surprising, on account of their flawed and nonsensical nature.

Meanwhile, a complex story of cops and gangsters with multiple agendas and conflicting (and frequently changing) agendas is weaved. Now, for clarity: this is not a story that is complex in the engaging, labyrinthine way, but rather the messy and highly confusing way. It’s never entirely clear who’s doing what, and for what reason; the only absolute is that everybody is doing something you don’t know about, and it’s going to bite you in the ass.

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