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October 29, 2010

Review – Dead Rising 2

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


In playing open-world games, perhaps the quintessential dilemma is to what extent it is necessary for a game to push players to explore what it offers, and at what cost to player freedom–where at one end of the spectrum the player becomes bored and complacent, and at the other, the game is no longer open at all. I have found it can be far too easy to become mired in endless side-quests and irrelevant mini-games, thus losing a sense of progression and purpose, and while it’s certainly true that the player is ultimately responsible for utilizing the game assets, it is also fair to say that the game is responsible for presenting these assets in an engaging way.

Dead Rising 2’s solution to the problem is to grant the player freedom, but with consequences—the same as you find in the good, old fashioned real world. This is achieved chiefly through demanding that the player manage his or her time. Unlike, for example, Red Dead Redemption, where you could conceivably hunt bounties for a month before choosing to start the next plot event, Dead Rising 2 is characterized by a ticking clock, and story events that occur at specific times on that clock—whether the player is ready or not.

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October 15, 2010

Review – Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I


I never owned a Sega console. I thought I’d come right out and say that, so there’s no confusion. I am not attached to Sonic; indeed, when I was growing up, Sonic was the enemy—the figurehead for those dark, unknown other children, playing their Genesis and carrying out Sega’s terrible bidding.

My encounters with Sonic—The Blue Satan—were largely exclusive to instances where I would commandeer my cousin’s Game Gear on thanksgiving. It had color; Tetris could not compete for my attention. Now I’m a little older and a little more polytheistic with regards to my console allegiances, but I still may not be the ideal test subject for the coherent nostalgia beam conjured by Sega’s latest Sonic release, the wholly digital Sonic 4.

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October 13, 2010

Review – Alan Wake: The Writer

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — Jamie Love @ 1:53 pm

Alan Wake The Writer
As the second piece of DLC for Remedy’s psychological action thriller, “The Writer” continues Alan’s journey through the darkest of night via the exploration of Wake’s internal state of mind. Picking up where “The Signal” left off, Wake navigates a path through the fractured self exposed by the retail release.

By film or book or videogame, subject matter opens as many possibilities as it does the potential to fall into cliche, and I’ll suggest that once again Alan Wake manages to work within the trappings of the horror genre rather deftly considering how much of a tightrope that proposition creates – my investment in the character of both Wake and the world he is fighting to understand keeps psychological exploration from dipping into cheese.

That doesn’t mean that Wake’s latest outing cuts the fresh path the series seems capable of trailblazing however. But “The Writer” does cut a circular path through the events of the game to date to reach a rather inevitable conclusion, offering players a carnival ride through familiar memories, concerned with finding the significance in character relationships and happenings established by the game proper.

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October 11, 2010

Review – Left 4 Dead 2: The Sacrifice

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Brad Johnson @ 8:33 pm


This past week saw the release of “The Sacrifice,” Valve’s latest add-on for the Left 4 Dead games. This new campaign serves as a prequel to Valve’s previous DLC, “The Passing” which featured an appearance from the original survivors of Left 4 Dead—one man short. “The Sacrifice” gives players the opportunity to experience the events leading to “The Passing,” and the loss of one of their comrades—and not the kind of loss where you pick him up from a hero closet a few minutes later.

To avoid any confusion, “The Sacrifice” is available for both Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2—but the package is slightly different. The version for the original L4D includes only the new campaign, “The Sacrifice,” played with the standard enemies and equipment of that game. Alternatively, the L4D2 version includes the new campaign and an updated version of the “No Mercy” campaign from the original game, with both taking advantage of L4D2’s expanded arsenal and enemies. Regardless of which game you play, you’ll be playing these campaigns as the original survivors.

Considering that the release of Left 4 Dead 2 was not universally supported by fans of the original game, the decision to release this add-on for both products was a pretty sound strategy, likely good for business while also appeasing those who were not supportive of the release of L4D2.

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October 9, 2010

Review – Halo: Reach

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Brad Johnson @ 8:44 am


It’s 2010 now, and at this stage in the videogame universe reviewing a Halo game seems largely unnecessary. You’ve played it. You know what it is. You know if you’re prepared to spend your sixty-dollars for it. Still, there are some things about Reach that deserve to be said, so we’re going to say them, regardless of the fact that you already bought the game on launch day.

When I reviewed StarCraft II I wrote that a level of perfection in the gameplay design allowed the original StarCraft to endure, without sequels, far longer than any game has a right to. The Halo franchise is characterized by a similar condition with opposite results; in this case, a string of fundamentally similar sequels have been produced, capitalizing on the natural strength of the core gameplay mechanic.

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October 7, 2010

The View From Reach

Filed under: Editorial Rants — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Jamie Love @ 5:38 pm

Halo Reach
There’s a fiendish grin on my best girl’s lips, which slips into a smile nearly every time her battle rifle smacks across the face of an Elite.

In the futile rush to push back the Covenant invasion, there were plenty of times we lost track of one another, separating in the rush for cover, but often reunited by familiar Halo bottlenecks that never seem to leave enough ammo lying around when Hunters block the road ahead.

Greener pastures are open spaces where I can rush out to face the horde, pushing them back just as she circles around to catch them from behind with that crack of the rifle that makes her smile so.

Playing Reach constitutes her first steps in a Spartan’s boots, and a very long war seems fresher through her eyes. It gets a little easier to remember the first time I tried Combat Evolved, playing with a friend until my eyes burned from the purple of the Covenant fleet and the fact that the sun was sneaking up and cutting through the windows to glare against the warm glow of the television.

It’s so easy sometimes to treat anything popular with disdain, that I forgot how much I enjoyed playing through most of the damn campaigns in this series.

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July 12, 2010

Review – Transformers: War for Cybertron


My familiarity with High Moon Studios is only through my unpleasant collision with the demo for their previous effort, The Bourne Conspiracy. With that product failing to resonate with me in any way despite my almost physical yearning for a Bourne game (later satisfied by Splinter Cell: Conviction), the discovery that these were the minds behind War for Cybertron was somewhat ominous.

It was encouraging to hear them speak on that game; it filled me with confidence and finally made the reality of the product that much more bitter. If you’ve followed the material released for War for Cybertron, then you may have experienced a similar swell of confidence: they speak as fans, and as you fire up the disc (or immaterial Steam delivery, as the case may be) there is no doubt as to their honesty. To my infinite relief, this release has been calibrated with great care for the Transformers follower, much in the way Arkham Asylum was a love letter to Batman adherents. While War for Cybertron does not quite reach the heights of the latter effort, it represents the game Transfans have long deserved.

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