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September 16, 2011

Review – Renegade Ops

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , — Jamie Love @ 8:58 am

Review Renegade Ops
While thumbs are largely celebrated for granting humanity dominance over the planet, those same two stubby digits have also allowed us to sink countless hours into videogames, and are perhaps overdue for a salute on that front considering how such diversions allow us to temporally forget our poor management of that larger inheritance.

Though we were content in ye olde days with games requiring little more than two thumbs for admission, many have gone on to greedily ask players to nearly grow a third hand over the years. Perhaps this is why touchscreen gaming evokes a special kind of Zen, and also why Sega’s latest digital offering strikes an immediate and inviting feeling that leaves me all warm and fuzzy.

Perhaps you’re familiar with the ancient proverb, “Give a man the ability to cause immense destruction, and he shall want for nothing – at least until the ride is over.”

Developer, Avalanche Studios, takes this idea to heart when creating videogames, this time tapping into the imagination at work in the sandbox of my youth, where I once rolled toy tanks into battle while making ridiculous sound effects to simulate the explosions I envisioned.

Though this latest release doesn’t haul out an antiquated franchise from the Sega vault, it definitely stirs nostalgic memories.

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September 13, 2011

Review – Hard Reset

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , — Brad Johnson @ 6:45 pm

Review Hard Reset
I’m going to be honest with you: I have no idea what Hard Reset is about.

Indeed, the problem is even more fundamental and more deeply rooted than that: I have legitimately no idea what is happening in this game.

As a disciple of electronic entertainment simulations, I’ve endured some pretty miserable narrative constructs. I managed to make some kind of broken, incomplete sense out of games like Vanquish, and endured the emotional incompetence of Gears of War, so I feel like I’ve run the gauntlet of bad videogame stories and come out the other side with my sanity mostly intact.

Hard Reset, however, elevates poor storytelling to an artform—though, fortunately, it doesn’t make the game any less fun.

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Review – The Gunstringer

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Jamie Love @ 1:21 pm

Review The Gunstringer
His name had once sent chills through the Internet – the one who sharpened words for weapons and sought to bring meaning to an insensible and lawless land. Along the way, he’d tackled every genre, never backing away from the challenge to ply his trade across every console.

They called him, The Reviewer…

But the years had taken a heavy toll, and he’d eventually succumbed to the sins and excesses of his profession. The Reviewer had sunk into a world where the pixels were as cheap and lifeless as the jaded opinions of the cynics surrounding him at the local haunts, where the only topic of discussion was the good ol’ days of gaming thought long gone.

And though The Reviewer seemed destined to fade away with the last traces of optimism that had led him down this road, it seemed that fate had other plans. Stumbling home one night, he discovered a mysterious package at his door, and tearing it open revealed a copy of The Gunstringer.

Setting skepticism aside, The Reviewer placed the disc into his aging Xbox, which sparked to life with a dull whirring kick like an angry mule. And within five minutes of waving his hands before the glow of the television, The Reviewer felt the old spark within his chest, and knew that it was finally time to write again…

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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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