Bionic Commando

This draft originally written 12/09/2009

This game has a beautiful style and the story is definitely interesting as it works off the NES original, but a lot of gameplay elements make it very frustrating to play as well as tiresome.

For instance, having to hold down the left trigger constantly is not convenient; it makes your hand cramp up less than 20 minutes into the game. There should have been a toggle option for the bionic arm so you didn't have to keep holding the trigger down in order for it to be engaged, especially in instances when you adjust your finger and end up dropping Nathan from a perfectly executed swing.

It was also very frustrating having to re-collect the collectibles and as well as re-do any challenges after dying, and believe me that dying in this game is very easy to do. This game failed in making it easy for people to save their progress whether in auto-save or manual save. If I die, I don't want to have to go through the entire level all over again just to get the collectible icons that I already collected before, and repeat the in-game challenges that I already completed the first time around.

Even Prototype, a game I'm not wholly impressed with but do enjoy playing, auto-saved every time you collected an orb or completed an option side mission. Shouldn't this mechanic have been utilized in Bionic Commando, especially since the gameplay is more complex?

Mini Ninjas: a tale of stealthily cute proportions

I'm a little late to the game (so to speak), but I've recently just finished playing IO Interactive's latest IP, MINI NINJAS. It took me a long time to realize that a demo isn't just a bit taken directly from the game and given to you to play, they are tailor-made to show off some of the best qualities of the game to get you hooked enough to purchase it.

I remember playing the demo for Mini Ninjas two or three times when it first became available and enjoying it immensely, but I'm so glad I finally got the complete game because it was more fun and creative than the demo can display. Although it may initially appear to be targeted towards kids and girls due to its cutesy character renditions and simplified  environments, I think it's got enough to satisfy gamers of any gender who appreciate video games as art. And believe me, video games are art- but that's a whole other argument and post.

Velvet Assassin

I had a lot of hope for Velvet Assassin since it seemed to have a pretty bad-ass female as the protagonist who could take care of herself with no problems. But then I got to play it, and none of that really seemed to matter.

The story is interesting, as it should be since it's loosely based on a true story, and the graphics are decent. It's the combat engine that is really lacking and is obviously something that the developers didn't put a lot of thought into.

I owned this game for about a day and a half and I was very sad to have to take it back. It's the second game I've returned without completing. The combat engine is not user-friendly and is almost impossible to even do correctly. Within the first level, you have to sneak up behind a German soldier and press the 'A' button to kill him. Simple enough, right?. But there's a catch- you can't just stand behind him and then kill him, you have to be a specific distance away from him before the dialogue pops up telling you to push the kill button ( 'A', since I play on Xbox) to take him out.

That's right; you can't just push A whenever you feel you're close enough to kill him, you are only allowed to do so when the game tells you to. This makes it difficult to actually do a kill because you only have a second to push the button right as it pops up before the guy turns around and starts shooting at you, killing you almost instantly since you have no armor to speak of and a measly pistol against his automatic.

This impossibleness is aided by the fact that the game fails to actually give you tips that could help you with this problem. I had to figure out for myself that when I start to get close enough to the enemy the sides of the screen will turn red, and that's how I know that soon the kill dialogue will pop up and allow me to kill the guy. But it took me about five or more deaths to actually notice that.

This game had a lot of potential and it was pretty much ruined by the horrible combat mechanic. Maybe when I'm 50 there will be a remake of it and they'll have actually made it into a better game, the game that I wanted so badly.

This short review is provided by the lack of content to write about. Even though there's a story and an intriguing character, you can hardly get far enough into the game to muster up the energy to actually care about either of those things. The real Violette Summers, Violette Szabo, would be rolling in her grave if she knew what they had done with her life story and how they failed at properly portraying her life as an Allied secret agent who accidentally parachuted into German-occupied France.

Sorry Replay Studios, better luck next time. Unless you're still in insolvency, then I guess not.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

First things first, I would like to say that I am a huge fan of Wolverine, both in comic form and movie form. I think what Hugh Jackman does for the character is complimentary, despite him being too tall. And even though the Wolverine origins movie was kind of crap, I can still appreciate it for being an action movie and think it accomplished what it set out to do.

Hugh Jackman is passionate about the character and has already said that the next installment, which will be set in Japan, will actually be the movie they intended to make first, but because Fox is producing and not Marvel they just couldn't do that.

With that in mind, the X-Men Origins: Wolverine game was a pleasant surprise for me. I think it helps that the game was in production long before the movie, and only became a movie tie-in later. This puts it above the other X-Men movies because it had more time and thought put into it. And this is all apparent when playing the game.

Even more Brutal Legend DLC to melt faces with

Metalheads who picked up Doublefine's Brutal Legend on Rocktober 13th have more DLC to look forward to after the previous "Tears of the Hextadon" map pack.

Coming on December 17th, the next installment of downloadable extras includes a lot more than just maps or a guitar. Titled "Hammer of Infinite Fate", the goods within will provide not only aesthetic qualities to the Druid Plow and Eddie Riggs, but the in-game GPS, "Oculus of the Lost", will guide you to all the collectibles that you may have missed or are tearing your hair out trying to find.

Here's exactly what to expect in the Hammer of Infinite Fate DLC pack:

• Three different oufits for Eddie Riggs so that he may travel in style: Mountain Man (which comes with a beard), Black Metal and Zaulia Threads. This also includes seven new patches to rock.
• Four new paint jobs as well as four more upgrades for the Deuce aka the Druid Plow: Oculus of the Lost; the Eye of Sorrow, a weapon that harnesses the power of the Sea of Black Tears and launches black projectiles of doom at enemies; The Disgorger; and the Coiling Maw. No descriptions for the last two but judging by the names alone they would definitely shine better with the gore filter ON.
• Nine new achievements/trophies become available with correlate with the other DLC
• Six new heads for Mount Rockmore, one of which is Tim Schafer himself. The others are stated as being the busts of Rima, Razputin, Dadbat, Hunter, and Kage the Kannonier.
• And not to ignore the already expanded multiplayer, you can also expect four more maps to rock out and summon those burning zepplins on. Look forward to the Altar of Blood, Coiled Remains, Crucible of the Titans and The Amplified Cliffs maps.

December 17th for the PS3 ($4.99) and Xbox 360 (480 MSP), be there or be left in the dust. Of the Deuce, that is.

Dante's Inferno Demo and Exclusive PS3 edition

For PS3 owners there is a lot to look forward to in the Dante's Inferno aspect, as the playable demo came out on the 10th which includes the entire first level of the game. Xbox Live subscribers won't get their taste of hell until December 24th, an interesting way to spend Christmas Eve. Many people have already alluded to the God of War-like fighting mechanics which seems more like a compliment than anything, and having played the demo myself I can say it's definitely as fun as God of War but certainly much more disturbing visually.

Visceral Games also announced on the 10th that for the PS3 only they have released a special "Divine Edition" of the game which includes lots of extras like commentary tracks, a digital art book, the complete soundtrack as well as a translation of Dante Alighieri’s "Divine Comedy" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a poet who was the first American to translate the epic poem in the mid-1800s.

If you still need more Dante's Inferno to hold you over until the game's release in February, the new comic mini-series has just been launched with issue one, written by Christo Gage and illustrated by Diego Latorre whose art style is very unique and poetic in its own way. A #0 issue was given away at the EA booth at PAX this year where you were able to play an early version of the demo and take photos of the large Dante statue.

If you've played the Dante's Inferno demo already, what did you think? Was it what you expected, and what did you like most about it?

Dante's Inferno: Heresy, sixth circle of Hell

Electronic Arts and and Visceral Games' somewhat controversial game adaptation of Dante Alighieri's Dante's Inferno epic poem is out with a new video, this time focusing on the sixth circle of Hell: Heresy.

In this video the developers talk about designing the level and how important it was to incorporate the religious contexts from the poem into this particular level. They also talk about how your choices as Dante- to save a soul or condemn them- change the way you fight in the game and how, like real life, weighing the pros and cons of your choices can be a burden.

 This morality meter is not uncommon in games, having been integrated into both Fable games (Lionhead Studios) and partially in Fallout 3 (Bethesda Softworks), as well as Bioshock (2k Games) and Mass Effect (Bioware). It makes for a unique game experience every time you play and is certainly something that should be seen in more games.

Look for the demo on PSN and Xbox Live sometime next month. The game is set to be released February 9th, 2010.

Via Kotaku: Dante's Inferno Heresy level looks hot.

Brutal Legend: An action-adventure game

Okay, I'm going to come out and say this right now: Brutal Legend is not a Real-Time Strategy game. I repeat, Brutal Legend IS NOT AN RTS.

There are a lot of people confused right now about where BL stands genre-wise and it's really easy to explain and it's perfectly easy to see that it's an action-adventure. But because there are RTS-like elements in the game, and because the whole of the gameplay stemmed from the multiplayer, people are automatically tagging it as an RTS. It's really not, and here's why.

Real-Time Strategy games are exactly what they sound like. You're playing a game as a commander of an army or resistance and you have to use- here's the key word- strategy and planning to set up defenses and prepare for your initial attack on your enemy in order to win the battle. You can't just run out into the field and start attacking- okay, you can, but it may not be a good idea, especially since in most RTS games you would be leaving one part of your operation vulnerable as your army runs to wherever you tell them to. You can't afford to do that or the enemy will exploit that vulnerability in order to win. Whether you're playing against AI or another person it's the same.

Many people would have you believe that the majority of the BL gameplay is RTS based. These people are wrong. In fact, they are so wrong that they are the main cause of everyone crinkling their brows at BL and going, "Well if it's an RTS then I'm not playing it," causing them to miss out on a truly fun game for all the wrong reasons. I am not denying that there are parts of the game that involve RTS-like portions, but what I am saying is that it is not the entire game

The Darkness

A lot really doesn't need to be said about this game that you won't glean from playing the demo (this is a good thing). This game is a pleasant surprise for people who expect a lame shooter with tentacles. Even though there are tentacles involved, they're not only evil but they eat human hearts to restore health. How can you pass that up?

The storyline is that Jackie Estacado, a known name in the New York mob business, is part of a long line of Estacados who were chosen by an evil entity known only as The Darkness to be its host. It is said that The Darkness could see into the future of the Estacado's bloodline and see the evil that would breed in their hearts, and The Darkness feeds off of that evil; that darkness. 

The Darkness manifests in its hosts as soon as they hit their 21st birthday, and if they have sex and pass on their seed that host will instantly die and the Darkness will have to lay in wait in the new host until their 21st birthday. I'm not sure why it has to be 21, perhaps the Darkness wants its host to be of legal drinking age, who knows.

This game doesn't go into the history of this ancient evil until about the middle of the game, so the entire time you're playing before then you're wondering how it came to be, what makes it this way, and how you can defeat it so you can stop listening to Mike Patton's voice growling through your speakers (which is actually very cool, especially once you know that he did the voices without any special effects added.) 


For fans of the comics, it will be a nice flash-back into the origins of the Darkness but it will also bring something new to the tale as it brings in some of the game elements as well.

Brutal Legend Demothon and more Brutal Legend

The Brutal Legend Demothon was yesterday and it was a blast to watch. This livestream'd inside-look into the makings of Tim Schafer's latest pet project gave a lot of insight and a lot of laughs.

The premise of it was that an ancient god, Ormagoden, contacted Tim via instant message and told him that if there weren't 666 million downloads of the demo (which became available to XBL Gold members on the 24th of September, and all users on October 1st) then everyone in the world would get swineflu.

Here's the video that they just happened to have of the instance:






So in an attempt to avoid world-wide swineflu Tim enacted the official Brutal Legend Demothon, an event that would involve live streaming video from Doublefine Studios, Tim's company which also put out Psychonauts (one of my favourite games which deserves its own post), and time with some of the people behind the making of this metal-tastic game.

If you missed it, sucks for you. But if you were there right as 12pm hit then you and many, many others were anxiously waiting as we saw a Brutal Legend sticker and some random shadows in the background.

Apparently they were having some technical difficulties and didn't get the show started until about 12:30, but that's okay! We fans of metal, as well as video games, were patient as they got their shit together.

Batman: Arkham Asylum -or- Who's afraid of the big bad bat?

photo from defaultprime.com 

Like many bloggers, I have an opinion. Not only that, I have an opinion on video games and I want my opinions to be known to a large audience. Why? I want to contribute like all the other women (and men) out there who want to talk about video games without having to pander to a target audience. And that's why my first game-specific post is going to be about Batman: Arkham Asylum: because it is awesome.

After all, he is the goddamn Batman*.

~*Spoilers Inbound*~

Before B:AA came out and there were only stills and clips floating about, we all knew it was going to be great. The design, the style, the writing, the voice acting; it not only guaranteed a great game but it delivered. This is rare.

First, you have Paul Dini writing the story for the game. This guy is a Writing God, having created some of my favourite cartoons growing up such as Animaniacs, Freakazoid, Tiny Toon Adventures and, yes, Batman: The Animated Series. Those are just the shows that I watched, there are so many more under his belt that it is staggering as well as impressive**.