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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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July 11, 2011

Review – BlazBlue: Continuum Shift II

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — Nathan White @ 4:01 pm

Review BlazBlue Continuum Shift II 2
Essentially an updated, albeit portable, version of the console original, Continuum Shift 2 brings more of the same 2D fighting flash to series fans… but does this update bring enough to the the table to warrant the purchase?

The answer to that question depends on what kind of fighting game player you are. On one side of the argument, this portable update of the PS3/360 original would be the perfect way to get introduced to the series. It’s a near-flawless handheld recreation that boasts smooth animation, brilliant 2D sprites, tight controls, and even throws in the original game’s DLC characters.

These new-comer perks are also the biggest detriment to series diehards; there are just far to few updates to the console original, aside from the character DLC and a new game mode, to be considered a must have.

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July 5, 2011

Review – Half-Minute Hero: Super Mega Neo Climax

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , — Mister Raroo @ 10:20 pm

Review Half-Minute Hero Super Mega Neo Climax
“Are other RPGs going to seem too slow after playing this?”

My wife posed this question as she watched me play (deep breath) Half-Minute Hero: Super Mega Neo Climax (okay, just typing that takes half a minute, so we’ll shorten it to HMH). Also, her question was definitely valid.

At first glance HMH seems like a typical Japanese RPG. It successfully incorporates all the genre’s staples – namely it takes place in a colorful fantasy world, there’s an impending apocalypse, you play as a humble hero entrusted with saving the world, you level up via random battles, you visit towns and villages to purchase items and upgrades, you can embark on optional side-quests, and more –only it speeds them up to the point that sometimes you’ll feel like you’re watching a time-lapse video of someone playing Dragon Quest.

In other words, it’s like playing an RPG on speed. Well, okay, I don’t use drugs, but I imagine the pace of HMH is akin to seeing the world through the eyes of some junkie on a street corner who pictures himself to be a Native American hunting buffalo as he throws Styrofoam cups at passing cars. It’s no wonder the lovely Missus Raroo worried that other RPGs would be tough to play after HMH.

Just for kicks, I powered up my Nintendo DS to see if Dragon Quest VI would feel sluggish. Thankfully, it didn’t take too long to transition from the lightning speed pace of HMH to the more humble tempo of Dragon Quest, though I will admit that I kept thinking “Hurry up! Don’t waste time! Just run forward into those monsters and move on to the next battle!”

You’d think that this would suggest RPGs have indeed been ruined for me, but by the power of foreshadowing I’ll just say that HMH may not be what it initially appears to be…

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Review – Puzzle Agent 2

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , , — TJ "Kyatt" Cordes @ 5:34 pm

Review Puzzle Agent 2
It’s not even three weeks into summer, and I’m already retreating back to the ominous tundra that is Minnesota, to cool off and play Puzzle Agent 2. The sequel to last year’s Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent again follows FBI agent Nelson Tethers, as he returns to the creepy little town of Scoggins, where he previously solved a mystery armed with nothing but a passion for solving puzzles… well, he was also armed with a gun, but he doesn’t use it for some reason.

Having solved the mystery of the Scoggins Eraser factory in the previous game, Tethers isn’t satisfied with how he left Scoggins, Minnesota, and chooses to return on his own to figure out why so many people in town are now missing and what the hell all of those gnomes are up to, and if he happens to solve a few puzzles along the way, that’s just gravy. In case you were wondering, yes, you really should play Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent (which I’ll just be calling Puzzle Agent 1 for the remainder of this review) before playing this sequel.

The ‘2’ in this game’s title isn’t one of those Street Fighter-style “play this game instead, because it’s so much better that people will think that’s where the series started, even though it has a bloody two in the title”. Puzzle Agent 2 is instead the episodic “we’ll put a couple of sentences in the beginning summarizing the events of the last game, but unless you actually played it, your connection to these characters is going to be slim to nil” type of 2, and since this is an adventure game, you want your connection to everyone to be… fat to infinite. Additionally, by playing Puzzle Agent 1, you get to appreciate how all of the old characters are even more suspicious, paranoid, and just all-around weirder than they were in the first game, which is quite the accomplishment.

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June 30, 2011

Review – Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , — Brad Johnson @ 9:06 am

Transformers Dark of the Moon
After last year’s solid War for Cybertron (my review for which you can read here), I dared to hope that High Moon Studios might once again bring their talent to bear with Dark of the Moon, and perhaps defy the movie tie-in curse.

Of course, it was almost inevitable that the shorter development cycle would hurt the product, and so it has. In many ways, Dark of the Moon is the same game that War for Cybertron was; all the same core pieces are there, but unfortunately the execution is not to that game’s standard, and a handful of missing or altered features make Dark of the Moon a wholly diminished product.

Dark of the Moon serves as a prequel to Michael Bay’s film of the same name (though a largely unnecessary one); throughout the campaign the player will take on the roles of seven distinct transformers, Autobot and Decepticon alike, across seven missions in a roughly five hour campaign.

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