Gamesugar

April 18, 2011

Gears of War 3 Beta Impressions (Or Tales of Chainsaw Bro Assault)

Filed under: Features — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Brad Johnson @ 6:24 pm

Gears of War 3 Multiplayer Beta
I had the opportunity to get in on the Gears of War 3 multiplayer beta this weekend, and after three days of chainsawing bros and falling victim to body-shattering shotgun assaults, I am now prepared to discuss the matter with you.

Gears, of course, remains ever-Gears: ridiculous wartime linebackers trudge heavily through the warzone, struggling to tame their wild, uncontrollable weapons in an effort to smash the bodies of the enemy soldiers and grunt approvingly.

It can be clumsy and it can be awkward; Gears is not Call of Duty, and you are not an unstoppable precision laser performing actions per minute approaching infinity. Instead, you are a brute. Certainly, this is not for everyone; Gears of War owns frustrating deathstreaks like no other—but there is undeniable charm in this brutal, uncontrolled frenzy, and Gears 3 continues to embrace that.

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April 14, 2011

Review – Crysis 2

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , — Brad Johnson @ 5:40 pm

Crysis 2It’s not difficult to imagine EA sitting down with Crytek, somewhere in the indeterminate space between Crysis and Crysis 2, fingers tented carefully and asking “Can you make it more like Call of Duty?” I don’t mean “It’s a funny joke to think about,” I mean I believe this happened. I believe it occurred in our discrete reality.

Indeed, I believe EA has this conversation with every developer to offer them product.

It’s easy to peer into the product and see the result of this conversation (which I will now portray as a factual historic event); fibers of Call of Duty have been infused in the deep tissue of Crysis, coloring its fundamental layers, its skeleton.

Amazing, then, that it remains, unquestionably, its own game.

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Review – Jikandia: The Timeless Land

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nathan White @ 5:07 pm

Jikandia The Timeless Land
The concept of time travel has been used as a plot device in videogames time and time again, often with sterling results. From Square’s masterpiece, Chrono Trigger, and its follow up, Chrono Cross, to more recent fair such as Atlus’ DS release, Radiant Historia, time travel is nothing new for the medium. And yet as memorable as those titles are, no videogame that I’ve played to date uses the concept of time quite as effectively as Jikandia: The Timeless Land.

On the surface, the story is simple enough. You play a typical high school student who, along with eight of your friends, is magically transported to another world during your daily commute to school. You come to learn that you have been summoned to the world of Jikandia to help save it from destruction. Jikandia, until very recently, was devoid of time – that is until a crop of monstrous baddies began popping up, bringing with them the concept of time, which threatens to unravel the world of Jikandia with the resulting chaos.

In order to get back to your own world, players must uncover the origins of these vile monsters, eliminating them and restoring Jikandia the timeless land to its former state.

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April 10, 2011

Review – Mass Effect 2: Arrival

Filed under: News Feed — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Brad Johnson @ 8:58 am

Mass Effect 2 Arrival
Last week saw the release of Arrival, the final DLC package for Mass Effect 2, leading into the release of Mass Effect 3 (still intolerably far away, I might add). Arrival sees Commander Shepard infiltrating Batarian space to rescue an Alliance operative with evidence on the imminent Reaper invasion.

As has been the standard for Mass Effect 2 DLC, Arrival attempts to put something of a different spin on the gameplay and add something unique to the package. In this instance, it’s a rudimentary stealth mechanic, where players—if they are careful about choosing their route—can avoid enemy positions and complete the first mission without being detected.

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April 7, 2011

Review – Rush’N Attack

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

Rush n Attack Ex Patriot
Having never played the original Rush’N Attack, I approached the sequel, Ex-Patriot, drawing more comparisons to Shadow Complex than any other title; another in a line of products designed to leverage new technology against an old school experience—here, sadly, to not much effect at all.

Rush’N Attack takes place—gasp!—in Russia, where the player is on a mission to rescue a previously captured operative and investigate a possible Russian weapon program. What follows is an offensively bad string of dialogue sequences and awkward, lingering cut scenes that serve only to make the player crinkle his nose.

The plot may be standard NES-era fare, but it’s executed with none of the charm or self-conscious humor that has made modern takes like Explodemon a success, nor with the careful quality that made Shadow Complex an upstanding modern experience.

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April 5, 2011

Review – Moon Diver

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , — Jamie Love @ 9:19 pm

Moon Diver
Moon Diver is an elevator ride that jolts as if the cable might snap at any moment while making quick stops at the bizarre, the surreal, and yes even something wanting for today’s secret word; esoteric.

The title was developed by feelplus with special guest, Strider creator Kouichi Yotsui, which is meant to mean something significant to those that played Strider so many years ago and perhaps were ever able to put a finger to the reasons they might have played it to death.

It’s not an easy point to nail down. Strider is a title often referenced by those creating 2D action titles in the here and now, those hoping to summon a connection to that release as a symbol of something eternal and pure and constant to the fundamental design of any old-school blade-swinging game worth your time and money.

It has to be a sense of control that such shout-outs hope to convince threads of commonality with – that your fingers will feel free for flinging a ninja across the screen, slicing through countless enemies in a sea of chaos while still discovering harmony and zen in the act.

But perhaps Moon Diver is about what the 2D action genre can offer when the man himself comes around, which at the very least is an easier matter to pick apart.

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March 28, 2011

A Rough Start for Crysis 2

Filed under: Editorial Rants — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , — Brad Johnson @ 8:01 pm

Crysis 2
Update 04/04/11: A patch has now been released, aiming to resolve many of the issues described here. Patch notes can be found here. Original post follows:

I’ve been playing Crysis 2 for the past week, and while normally this is about the time you’d be reading my unrelenting logic assault in the form of a review, it’s going to be a while longer before that occurs.

Crysis 2 has had an unhappy launch on the PC, with both the multiplayer and singleplayer components plagued by an entire menagerie of bugs, ranging from the annoying to the nigh-gamebreaking species. While this could fairly be grounds for a resoundingly negative review, I am not entirely comfortable committing such to print at this time, with the knowledge that the digital age affords developers the ability to promptly right such wrongs for all players.

Flaws remain flaws, and should be considered—hence this writing—but I would prefer not to write a review that could, in a week’s time, no longer represent the product. Therefore, I will allow some time to pass in the hopes that a patch will be distributed and the game can be properly reviewed.

In the meantime, however, I would be remiss not to advise players on the matter of the game as it currently exists. As I implied previously, I am playing Crysis 2 on the PC, and thus some or all of the bugs I describe here may not exist on the console versions; I urge players to do their research before making their purchasing decisions.

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