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1

Review: Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

By
Tony Odett
– March 2, 2012Posted in: PC, PS3, Reviews, Xbox 360

This is where the magic happens.

Note: Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning was released on PS3, PC and Xbox 360. This review was conducted on Xbox 360 with a copy purchased at retail.

Your character awakens in a pile of dead, putrid bodies. Struggling free, they have no memory of what has happened or who they are.  The only thing that is clear, from the very beginning, is that they are special, different from everyone around them. They have the power to change the world, to act outside of their own destiny.  They have been severed from fate.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (KoA) is the triumph of thematic continuity. Fate transcends the game on every level, from combat mechanics to the upgrade system, from the essence of the main character to the deep, engaging storyline. This third-person action RPG is clearly the first must-play RPG of 2012 (and yes, that was a shot at Final Fantasy XIII-2, a game that should never have been made).

Why grandma... what a big stick you have.

KoA is a game about questing, dealing with various factions and people in the world, and solving their problems (or, if you desire, advancing yourself at their expense).  Quests were available everywhere- the game certainly left you no shortage of things to do. There was a main questline, 5 faction questlines (all outstanding in their own right), and a huge number of side quests.  All of the quests I managed to play through were fully voiced and well done, even if they seemed tangential to the main story. This was a world that meant you to go out and do.  The quality of the writing was simply outstanding, though I could have done without the excessively outlandish names.

Any RPG worth its salt requires a good upgrade system, and KoA’s certainly fits the bill.  Each level increase always you to add a point to a skill like Detect Hidden (if you want gold and lots of loot, go here) or Blacksmithing. Then three points are yours to place in the categories of Might, Finesse, and Magic, allowing you to develop your character as you will. This is all pretty standard. What’s not standard is that at any time, you can travel to a Fate Weaver, and pay gold to have all those points redistributed however you see fit.  This allows you to complete transform your gameplay experience at any time, and is a feature other similar games should consider.  There’s nothing like playing a game for 20 hours and realizing that you’ve wasted a third of your skill points in areas you no longer use, and having no recourse. Problem solved.

Nice sword. Trying to make up for something I see.

The weighty combat was very impressive. All sorts of weapons have their own feel, making you feel like a slashing whirlwind with daggers, or giving you the murderous weight of a war hammer.  You can leave two weapons equipped, and each is mapped to its own button, allowing you to switch seamlessly during combat. Abilities are mapped to the right trigger, allowing you to deal death in a variety of ways without much effort. You’ll also spend a lot of time blocking and rolling, and some special upgrades make those defensive skills deadly in their own right.  The combat is well paced and fun. The enemies are also well varied, and some of them are massive in comparison to your character.  Some of the boss fights (while not particularly challenging) are very compelling. But, as seems par for the course in games these days, the final boss was a disappointment. The game built up to the battle so well, leaving me incredibly invested.  But, after the fight, I felt let down.

I can juggled these hula hoops, too.

The world of Amalur is massive, and there is much to do and explore. It’s not quite Skyrim in its scope, but you will find yourself still capable of sinking many, many hours into this game. There is also loot everywhere.  I enjoyed how, whenever I picked up an item, I was instantly able to compare it to my equipment and equip it without entering a menu. It saddened me, though, that there was a loot cap of 70 (upgradable 3 or 4 times via backpacks you could buy at merchants). While that may seem like a lot, with your character carrying 2 weapons, 6 different types of armor, and each individual potion and item counting toward that limit, it was reached far too frequently.  I’d love to see a patch with that limit increased, as I spent a lot of time leaving items on the ground, or searching my inventory for the weakest item to destroy so I could pick up whatever I had just taken from an enemy corpse.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is the game that Fable always wished it was. The game includes weighty combat, a deep, well written story, and a massive world to explore and shape with your decisions. The game includes some fantastic moments, and probes a variety of intellectual questions surrounding the nature of fate and our place in the universe.  KoA is an outstanding effort, and hopefully only the introduction to the world of Amalur.

This is my favorite part of the Thriller Dance.

Pros

  • Great storyline
  • Weighty combat
  • Compelling upgrade system
  • Fate Weavers

Cons

  • Loot management issues
  • Weak final boss fight

5 / 5

0

Review: Shank 2

By
Kyle Baron
– February 22, 2012Posted in: PC, PS3, Reviews, Xbox 360

Aside from some awful graphical glitches, Shank 2 is great to look at

Note: The Playstation 3 version was played for review. Shank 2 is also available on Xbox Live Marketplace and on PC.

Developer Klei Entertainment knows that a difficult game should be fine tuned to a point where players can survive by skill and wit alone. 2010′s downloadable game, Shank, got this right; high level play would have you juggling multiple enemies with huge combos – all a whirl of shanks, chainsaw, and bullets – while dodging enemy attacks and lunging through the air with all the savage splendor of a Rambo movie. Shank 2 unfortunately can’t live up to the well tuned combat of its predecessor, despite a handful of clever new ideas.

So much of that shortcoming is because of very strange design choices. While the first Shank let you switch your secondary weapons on the fly, Shank 2 confusingly buries this option in a menu, which really breaks the quick pacing that the game maintains so well; it also makes it a lot harder to have any great feeling of familiarity with the weapons by the time the single player story ends after a handful of fast paced hours.

Much of Shank 2′s combat is about managing crowds of different enemy types with a mixture of weapons and grappling moves. Unfortunately, there’s a persistent oddity where not every enemy within range of your strikes gets hit; they’re supposed to, but they don’t. After taking out several crowds of enemies and wondering why I was taking damage from foes that were supposed to be stuck in stun animations, I ended up defaulting to hit and run tactics throughout the whole game to avoid taking damage.

Counter attacks are brutal and incredibly satisfying

It’s a shame that the only foolproof way to ace Shank 2′s combat is to skirt around it, especially when it’s obvious that Klei Entertainment wanted to make a lot of changes to the combat that, combined with its great art style, is what has given the series its name. The counter system has been revamped; rather than being a parry move performed after a block, grabbing an enemy when you see the exclamation mark above his head creates a stylishly emphatic blur effect while Shank turns the enemy’s own weapon against them. Sometimes a counter will be a simple break of an enemy’s arm, but most of the time Shank, the character, will brutalize the enemy into a bloody pulp – one counter has Shank taking the baseball bat out of an enemy’s hands, jamming it in their mouth, and then kicking it into the back of their skull with his boot. It’s incredibly satisfying, and this system and all of the minor tweaks continue into the new multiplayer cooperative mode.

Survival, playable with one to two players online or offline, lets you pick from over a dozen unlockable characters, all with unique stats, in order to survive waves of enemies. Money earned from kills can be used to buy weapons and obstacles that, added with the traps found within each level, are absolutely necessary to defend the “supply points” in every stage. The waves become incredibly hard and working together with a friend to activate traps and split up the hordes of enemies is essential. Unfortunately, the inconsistent hit detection with group combat becomes a big problem when every bit of health counts, and this was especially true when I encountered a bug where I couldn’t revive my partner.

Aside from a game-breaking glitch, co-op is a blast

The  bosses and the narrative in the single player campaign aren’t as interesting as the combat, platforming scenarios,  and surprise gameplay twists. Because of this, co-op ends up being the more memorable part of the overall package and shares many of the mutual frustrations and satisfying moments of the single player combat.

The hand drawn art style, animations, and cutscenes all paint the action of the game in a beautiful and uncluttered style, which is key in a difficult game that demands so much of its players. However, I did encounter one glitch during a chase scene where, despite reloading the checkpoint five times, the front half off the screen wouldn’t load in any textures. This led to an odd sequence where I was running away from a giant boulder into a completely black part of the screen, left to puzzle out traps and spikes through trial and error until I got through it.

Judged on its own merits or against those of its fantastic predecessor, Shank 2 is oddly hard to recommend in the face of all of its problems. That’s a real shame when so much of what Klei Entertainment has done with the visuals and combat is a creative step from the previous Shank game. If the problems are fixed with a downloadable patch, this game will be easy to recommend. Until then, it’s a try-before-you-buy at best.

Pros

  • Outstanding art style
  • Great visual effects
  • Co-op can be a ton of fun
Cons
  • Graphical and technical glitches can break the co-op and single player experiences
  • Inconsistent hit detection during group combat and dodging
  • In-game selection of secondary weapons is hidden in the start menu
  • Bland story and uninteresting bosses
2/5

 

0

Review: Gotham City Imposters

By
Don Parsons
– February 19, 2012Posted in: PC, PS3, Reviews, Xbox 360

Somehow, both teams survived taking this picture together

Note: This game was reviewed on the Playstation 3 platform and is also available on the X360 and PC platforms. 

Skating across the map, I tossed a motion sensor down and circled in anticipation of a red blip on my mini-map. As soon as I saw one, I darted off in that direction hoping to catch my opponent off guard. I slowed down, pulled up my sights and as soon as I saw the red-and-white facepaint of the Joker come into view, squeezed off a few rounds of my Partisan assault rifle. Joker fell to the floor, no doubt cursing my name as he watched me skate off in his kill cam. I may not be the Batman, but the biggest difference was the Batman-ensemble I wore was made from a towel for a cape and the cardboard box I used for a cowel. Oh, and I kill people.

Gotham City Imposters, developed by Monolith Studios (last known for F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin), does something most digital first-person-shooters dream of; creating a high-quality and content packed FPS. With a cartoon atmosphere and loaded with laughs, Gotham City Imposters has the ability to lure in people that aren’t usually interested in violent shooters. You play for one of two teams. Instead of Nazis versus Americans, or the USA versus Russia, you are either part of the “Bats” or the “Jokerz”. No matter which side you play for, you also have customization options so you can kill with style.

Probably how Batman dressed pre-corporate funding

The game is primarily online, but there is a Challenge mode. Each map has it’s own challenges, and they increase in difficulty. At first, you are simply trying to hit checkpoints with a certain gadget (ie. grappling hook) in a certain amount of time in order to get a gold, silver or bronze medal. Then, you have to shoot targets and hit checkpoints. You gain some XP for this, but this game mode really plays second fiddle to the bulky, feature-rich online.

People that just enjoy running around mindlessly killing other people (in games) will be happy to see Team Deathmatch. It is what you would think it is; the first team to get x amount of kills wins. There are also two modes that require an increasing amount of teamwork, and give people objectives to secure. Fumagator is very much like Conquest in Battlefield 3. Your objective is to secure flags, and having more flags will make your percentage add up (by taking from theirs). Once your percentage is near 100%, a siren blares signaling the inevitable. Fumes will then spew out everywhere and the match ends.

If only all superheroes used cardboard boxes in their attire.

The third and final competitive mode is Psych Warfare and it is much more involved, requires even more team work, and the matches last quite a bit longer. The game is split into two rounds, and both teams race to a battery that spawns in the middle of the map. Once you have the battery (assuming you get there first), you and your team take it to a machines, plug it in, then defend it for a short amount of time. If it charges up completely, the machine sounds an alarm and the opposing team runs around disoriented and gun-less for less than half a minute. They can still slap you, though, so don’t get too close.

A big draw to Gotham City Imposters is the customization. After every match, you not only earn XP to level up (did I mention there’s 1,000 levels?) but you also earn costume coins. Let these accumulate and you can buy all sorts of outfit pieces to look your best while killing the opposing team.

Loadouts work similar to the Call of Duty formula, but with a little more thought and a few more levels of depth added to them. First, as you level up, you earn unlocks which you can spend freely. So when you get a weapon unlock, you can buy any weapon you don’t own. When you get a weapon mod unlock, you can unlock any weapon mod for any weapon you have unlocked. It’s a brilliant formula that allows for you to get the things you want, and not what the developers want you to get at said-level.

Shredder from the Ninja Turtles even makes an odd cameo

Now, the depth comes from the additions to the loadouts, not how they work. Aside from guns, gadgets and the like, you can pick a body type which amounts to how much speed, health and melee strength you have. It’s a well-balanced feature that gives a variety of players an opportunity to shine. Are you that person that likes to hang back and protect the objective? The bulky characters give you an advantage. Do you like to speed around the back alleys and get to the opponents base and capture it while they are getting the middle one? The lightweight character with roller skates will get you there in a flash.

The game is balanced well-enough so that even people who aren’t into competitive shooters can still enjoy this game. The weapons have a tight, high-quality feel that one would expect from a Call of Duty or Battlefield title. It even has the Call of Duty challenges, giving you bonus points for completing certain things (and even calling card backgrounds and icons at certain milestones).

In whole, the game isn’t missing much. The lack of drop-in game joining (soon to be fixed in an upcoming patch) is really the only issue I had while playing. If the game started out four against five, and people start leaving the already-handicapped side, it’s truly an uphill struggle with no help coming anytime soon. It’s a known problem, though, and soon-to-be-fixed. There is also free DLC coming soon; including costume(s), map(s) and more. So the already jam-packed game will get even more quantity packed in.

If you’ve spent hundreds of hours playing Call of Duty, or Battlefield for that matter, Gotham City Imposters offers a quality substitute that gives you $40 or more worth of content into a $15 package. It may be hard to not just call this a clone of said-games, but it works so well, and has those familiar faces, that it feels justified and even an improvement over what Call of Duty is doing.

Pros:

  • AAA-quality gameplay for a downloadable shooter
  • more content than many retail FPS games
  • hilarious comedy throughout
  • depth of the loadouts and ease of play

Cons:

  • no drop-in game joining (yet)

Score 5/5 

 

4

PC Review: Illyriad

By
Ryan Kenward
– February 16, 2012Posted in: PC, Reviews

A few months ago I was approached by the community manager of a web based MMO called Illyriad. I had some familiarity with the genre as I fumbled around one for a few weeks some years ago. However, some other player put me out of my misery by attacking my territory and utterly wiping me out. I put my bias aside and gave Illyriad a shot, it turned out to be pretty fun after all.

I started out with a small barren piece of land and a few resources. To describe Illyriad, I would compare it to an MMORTS version of Age of Empires. Naturally, as one would expect the objective is to harvest resources, grow your town, expand, research new technology, fight NPCs found around the map, and have a good time in general.

What I liked most about Illyriad was the ability to casually pop in, set a few buildings, queue some military troops, and research technology. On the other side of this coin, if you want to play Illyriad hardcore you can, but it’s going to cost you. I actually became so enamored with Illyriad for a while that I dumped a few dollars into purchasing prestige.

My primary town in Illyriad

Prestige allows you to instantly complete buildings in your queue (for whatever town you select), increase your resource gathering by 20% for a few days, increase the defenses of your troops, and a few other things. Prestige is handy, considering your upper level buildings can take upwards of 12 hours to a day to complete; the instant complete is a nice feature.

Whether you want to play for free or to pay for content is completely up to the player. I did a mixture of both. It is relatively inexpensive, and it can certainly get you up and running quickly.

Another key factor that helped me progress along were the other players. Amazingly, the players of Illyriad are, for the most part, very nice and willing to help you out. I joined an alliance and was sent multiple resource shipments. Perhaps the kind nature of the player base comes from the fact Illyriad is UK based. In all, the other players are an invaluable resource.

Illyriad has a great niche. It’s a simple and fun game that is easy to keep running in a separate browser tab for most of the day. There is plenty to do and I would suggest that everyone with a few minutes goes and checks it out.

 

http://elgea.illyriad.co.uk/

Pros:

  • Free to play, with pay to play option available.
  • Simple to learn, lots to do.
  • Casual game play makes it a fun background game.
  • Great community.

Cons:

  • The time factor, as you progress things take longer and longer and without prestige, you’re going to be doing a lot of waiting.
  • Did not run well on a mobile phone.

3/5

0

Review: Law & Order: Legacies

By
Chris Scott
– February 7, 2012Posted in: Mobile Gaming, PC, Reviews

Note: This review was done using the PC version of the game. It is also available on iOS platforms.

Adventure games, once thought of as a relic of days gone by have been rejuvenated over the past several years by Telltale Games. Their success in the genre is no accident as they combine a volatile formula of great writing, easy to understand gameplay, and strong iconic characters set in beloved franchises. This makes their games stand out from the standard fare the rest of the industry releases.

Telltale’s approach to adventure games lends itself perfectly to the long running franchise, as such Law & Order: Legacies makes perfect sense. For fans of the series, Legacies will follow the movements of Detective Rey Curtis. Curtis retired from the NYPD in 1999 to take care of his terminally ill wife but has now returned to his old job working new cases. Legacies is about more than just the new cases, there is a deeper story underneath it all involving Curtis and his ex-partner, Lenny Briscoe, and a case that the two of them were never able to close out.

As someone that never really watched the show outside of a couple episodes here and there, it all seems pretty convoluted but I expect longtime fans of the show will appreciate the references to past cases and nostalgic touches that are sprinkled throughout. However, as great as the overarching story may or may not be for people, when it all comes down to it, Law & Order: Legacies is a game and it has to succeed on its gameplay merits.

The structure of Law & Order: Legacies is that of its television counterpart. Each case is an individual episode, complete with a cold opening revealing the nature of the case, and a television styled opening credits sequence. The first half of each episode focuses on the police investigation while the second half focuses on prosecution of the suspect and the courtroom drama that accompanies it. The two different approaches juxtapose each other quite nicely.

Police investigations task the player with interviewing suspects and witnesses while also investigating crime scenes. The interviews generally consist of Curtis and his partner asking questions and trying to discern the truth from the answers. While there is no set direction the interviews are forced to go down, the game certainly seems to want you to go in a particular order and sometimes this order does not make logical sense which can break the flow of the conversations. While this may seem like a big deal, it honestly did not detract from my enjoyment at all.

Interviewing suspects and witnesses delivers the sense that you are truly the lead detective on this investigation. Unfortunately, investigating crime scenes does not give you that same feeling. Crime scene investigations are nothing more than elaborate photo hunts complete with a counter of how many turns you have left to find what you are looking for. It is not particularly awful, in fact as a photo hunt it works, but when a game like L.A. Noire has blown the doors off of simplistic investigation, I can only feel somewhat disappointed that Legacies does not do more with its investigations.

Once the police investigation is concluded and the detectives have fingered a suspect, it is up to the District Attorney’s office to do their magic. In a lot of respects, the courtroom drama plays out like the detective interviews but with some added twists that makes this section of Legacies the most enjoyable aspect of the game. That twist of course is the ability to object to the defense team’s line of questioning.

Being able to object is not, in itself, a big deal but needing to know when to do it and why you are doing it is. There is a great feeling of tension that comes from making those decisions and it benefits the game greatly. If your case is going well, the defense may ask to come to the table and present you with a plea deal. Depending upon how strong your case is you can push for a stiffer sentence or roll the dice and let the jury decide. Even more interesting is that sometimes there are strategic reasons to accept a plea deal, such as when I accepted a plea deal from one defendant in return for his testimony against another. Simply put, it is highly satisfying.

Aside from the gameplay being strong, the one thing Law & Order: Legacies had to get right was the look and feel of the show. Each episode lasts about an hour and each case is unique offering something new to the player. From a graphical standpoint, Legacies is highly stylized but I think it works quite well. However, the voice acting is top notch and sounds authentic making the experience that much more engaging. And one certainly cannot forget about the iconic theme song and sounds that are worked to full effect in the game.

As engaging and fun as a lot of the game can be, there are some things that just fall flat and sadly take you out of the experience. Once such issue is that during both the police interviews and the courtroom examinations the game will ask the player trivia questions in relation to the previous line of questioning that have no impact on the investigation as a whole. It just feels like fluff. Another issue is the scoring system, which seemingly seeks to remind you that you did not do that case as perfectly as you could have. It is a problem many people had with L.A. Noire and I feel Law & Order: Legacies suffers even more for it because there is a score sheet for every segment of the game.

Fortunately the problems with the game do not overly detract from the experience and Law & Order: Legacies delivers a solid gaming experience at a budget price.

Pros:

  • Looks and feels like Law & Order
  • Cases are unique and interesting
  • Courtroom drama is finely crafted

Cons

  • Crime scene investigations are simple photo hunts
  • Weird trivia questions that have no bearing on the outcome of the case
  • Scoring system consistently reminds you that this is a game

3 / 5

0

PC Review: Unstoppable Gorg

By
Khristopher Reardon
– February 3, 2012Posted in: PC, Reviews

Unstoppable Gorg puts a new spin on the tower defense genre.

It’s a mishmash that brings old school black and white sci-fi serials like Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon to real time strategy.

You are the brave Captain Adam who is fending off aliens that look like runners up at some homemade costume junket and save his hot blonde girlfriend.

Coloured trails allow you to know the path of attacking aliens

The game is an overhead tower defense game using satellites instead of towers.

Unstoppable Gorg doesn’t necessarily reinvent the wheel, in fact, it’s more of a cross between two different types of tower defense games. The kind which allows you to have unlimited control over where your towers are placed and the kind that limits placement by giving you prescribed spots to build towers in.

Gorg isn’t letting you make a maze out of your satellites, but it will let you shimmy in a few satellites where you need them most.

It does this by letting you place satellites in orbits around the defense point. You can spin the different orbits around to put satellites near the invasion routes.

This lets you have the best of both worlds, though the spots along the orbit are limited you’re allowed to spin the orbit however you like allowing you to make the most of the space and resources you have. You can even follow routes with towers for a few extra hits if it follows your orbit.

The orbit mechanic makes this tower defense game unique, the ability to switch tower positions on the fly without having to wholesale rid yourself of the tower and buy it back in another area.

This mechanic allows for a lot of flexibility, you can place fewer more powerful satellites and divide your attention more towards positioning them, or you can place more satellites which will drain your resources faster but won’t require as much ‘shimmy work’ from the player.

The decision is compounded by the fact that you’re given goals every round to acquire a certain amount of money or research. Reaching these goals allows the player to unlock newer satellites and grant them the ability to upgrade the older satellites by distributing research points before each round.

Research is a triple threat of bad game mojo. To acquire it you need to take up one of your available satellite slots at the beginning of the round with a research centre, then place that non-attacking satellite somewhere in one of your orbits essentially taking the spot of a more useful attacking unit and if you don’t bother with it, you lose that research point for future levels making it really hard for inexperienced players to move further into the game.

Three different alien races make you have to plan for different satellite strategies in order to capitalize on their separate weaknesses but the difference don’t go far enough to force the player to think differently about the satellites they’ll have to choose before a round starts. I found much success with the few towers I stuck to throughout the game, I didn’t really feel the need to switch up drastically at any point once I found that groove.

I really wish this guy sounded like C-3PO.

The space setting makes good use of archive footage and cg to create a story that reads and feels like old school sci-fi, it’ll make you feel the nostalgia whether you’re from that time or not.

The campy 50s serial sci-fi look really drove me through this game at top speeds. Actors in knick-knack costumes play up the cheesiness with cliché serial villains and a cliché serial plot.

This all works wonderfully with inserted archive footage and model work (spliced with some CG) to create this 50s aesthetic.

But watching all of these things on a screen inside a screen is a little bit meta, it makes me wonder if Xzibit lent a hand at working on this game. (I put a monitor in your monitor so you can watch while you watch) I’m not sure but this is probably a holdover from the mobile version but it feels distinctly out of place on the PC.

She's hot and heavy, giant brain in disguise or no.

Music and sound effects are great. The cut scenes are announced by someone who sounds like the voice of out old news reels being played in the 40s.

The alien lords have voice work, though if they flubbed a few lines or sounded terrible it wouldn’t be noticeable with the chosen aesthetic of the game in mind. And they look great, one is a garbage can, the other looks like he was lifted from Mars Attacks! and the other is hot.

Unstoppable Gorg has a great in game soundtrack that’s very boombastic. It’s something you’d expect to hear out of a movie like “Mars Attacks!”

The sound effects from the weapons all have that 50s sci-fi feel.

It’s actually quite a feat to carry me into a story I care about in a tower defense game, which more often than not the ‘story’ tends to be an afterthought.

My biggest gripe about the game is reaching the top of the climb so fast. There are 21 levels in story mode and each one will take you maybe five to 10 minutes if you do it in one try.

You’ll be retrying a few levels countless times because the difficultly will spike unexpectedly. It felt less like I was making mistakes and more like the game didn’t want me to progress further a few times and often after making it through those few patches I would be back to cleaning up levels no problem again.

I reached the end in maybe four to five hours and all of those hours I really enjoyed outside of the spiking difficulty. A challenge mode and arcade mode allow you to keep playing through additional content but none of it is as strong and compelling as the main stuff, I gave both a whirl and found myself not really squeezing any more fun out of the game that way.

It’s a relatively short game but a really good tower defense experience. I hope some kind of follow up or additional content is made for this game because that core experience was a blast.

Pros

  • Blends limited unit placement with unlimited field control
  • Great 50s sci-fi vibe with loads of humour
  • Easy to put down and pick-up again for people with limited playing time

Cons

  • Difficulty spiking can leave players frustrated replaying the same levels again and again
  • TV in TV view detract from the action in cut scenes
  • Research satellites put undo burden newer/inexperienced players

3/5

2

PC Review: Star Wars: The Old Republic

By
Jeremy Goodson
– February 2, 2012Posted in: Jeremy's Blog, PC, Reviews

A long time ag….ah, screw it. The iconic Star Wars opening text is too overdone.

It’s been about three years since the rumors of Bioware developing an MMO based on the Knights of the Old Republic franchise first found their way onto the Internet. Those rumors made me ecstatic from day one. The original Knights of the Old Republic was one of my favorite games of all time, and Star Wars is definitely my favorite IP. To add nerd cred to my profile on that, I actually read the books, graphic novels, and comics. So, for anyone that knows me, it shouldn’t be a surprise that I was eating up any juicy tidbits that developer Bioware and publisher EA threw my way over the past three years about the game.

Lucky for me (and an estimated two million others who picked up the game on launch day), Dec. 20, 2011 marked the end of our wait. And worth it it was.

Now, you won’t be in for any big surprises with how the game controls. Bioware did a very good job mimicking the overall feel of most modern day MMOs. Everquest, World of Warcraft, Everquest 2, Vanguard, and countless others all use the standard “WASD” movement with “1 through =” for your hot keys. This makes it extremely easy for any MMO veteran to dive right into the game. The movements are very fluid and combat flows very well because of it. While the user interface may seem a bit clunky at first, it’s very easy to get used to. The main aspect that bothered me was the top-of-the-screen placement of the chat box, but it’s easily moved to the bottom where it feels more comfortable.

The lack of a full customization of the overall UI, though, really does hurt the game a bit. By the time you hit level 50 you have almost too many abilities, potions, and stims to fit on the maximum number of four hot bars. According to Bioware, there is a big UI customization update coming in the near future, so I do hold out hope that this will be fixed very soon.

Another guaranteed aspect of any MMORPG these days has to be the PvP, and SWTOR performs admirably. From level 10 on, players can compete in three different Warzones, similar to World of Warcraft’s Battlegrounds. These include Alderaan, which is a capture point system similar to Arathi Basin or League of Legends’ Dominion map; Voidstar, which is a Plant the Bomb and move to different objectives map; and a very unique mode called Huttball, which is basically an updated version of Mutant League Football.

The Warzones aside, there are also two areas in the game that are strictly for open world PvP: Ilum, a planet dedicated to the insanity of PvP, and Smuggler’s Den, a Free-for-All area on Tatooine where anything goes at any time of the day. Both of these areas help fuel a fairly health Open PvP environment that hardcore players are looking for.

A very neat addition to the MMORPG genre that is found in SWTOR is the implementation of Companion Characters. These NPCs are your brothers and sisters-in-arms that join your crew as you progress through your personal story arc. They can definitely hold their own on the battlefield and they bring a whole new perspective to solo leveling and even grouping without a full party.

Crafting is also dependent on your Companions. Instead of the normal MMO crafting system where you gather materials and spend time standing in front of a forge or loom to make your gear, SWTOR has you send your companions out to gather materials and making things for you. At the end-game, you can actually have five of your six companions all out working while you go out and quest or PvP. This takes a major stressor for some people and reduces it down to a couple of button clicks instead of a giant time sinck. As a person who absolutely loathes crafting in most other MMOs, I truly enjoy the system in SWTOR.

While all of the previous systems and gameplay mechanics makeup the basics of SWTOR, the real backbone that Bioware built the entire game around is its phenomenal story system. In most MMOs, you get a quest from an NPC and go out and kill things and return for your reward – never really reading what the quest giver had to say. In SWTOR, every single dialogue sequence is fully acted out for you in a cut scene (and yes, you can skip if you choose to). This really helps to make you feel like you have an impact on the world around you, and that your story matters.

Every class in the game has their own personal story. I have played completely through the Sith Warrior and Bounty Hunter stories, and am well on my way through the Sith Inquisitor story at this point and can say that each one has blown me away. They flow so well that I want to keep playing just to see what happens next. I cannot say that about any other MMORPG that I’ve experienced. On top of that, the actual voice acting is top notch. Bioware really spared no expense.

End-game is another spot that I feel the developers really nailed. Right out of the gates they had two Raid Zones (Operations as they’re called here) in place. The first is Eternity Vault, and the second is Karagga’s Palace. Both of these offer three modes of difficulty: normal, hard, and nightmare modes. As of right now, our guild is full clearing hard mode on both, and working our way through nightmare, so I have seen most of what these have to offer. We are having a total blast clearing these out, and the difficulty scales well, allowing for new raiders and veterans alike to experience the content at their own skill levels.

Many might argue that Star Wars: The Old Republic isn’t a breakthrough for the MMORPG genre. While I agree that the basic gameplay takes aspects from the other MMOs on the market, to say that it doesn’t change the way that gamers will look at MMOs from now on would be a lie. The superb story arcs, the changes to the generic crafting system, the updated PvP system,  companion characters, and voice acted questing all add new aspects to an aging subcategory in the gaming world.

SWTOR is one of my favorite games released in the past few years by far, and is definitely my favorite MMORPG since I first picked up Everquest back in 1999. There are some bugs in the game that need to be worked out (and actually lead me to lower the score of the game a bit), but the overall feel of SWTOR is that it is an MMO that is here to stay, and sets a new bar for what other companies need to aim for.

Pros

  • Story that is the best of any other MMORPG
  • Companion characters
  • Re-worked crafting system
  • Fun Ggameplay
  • Great replayability with different classes
  • PvP is well balanced

Cons

  • Lack of UI customization
  • Annoying post-launch bugs
  • No guild bank
  • Inexcusably clunky guild and auction house tools

Overall Score: 4/5

3

Vagary.TV’s 2011 Game of the Year Awards

By
VTV Staff
– January 10, 2012Posted in: Editorials, Guides, News, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii, PC, PS3, Vagary.TV, Xbox 360

You don’t need to listen to some of the podcast deliberations on the site to realize that 2011 has been one of the finest years for gaming in a long while. The year had downloadable titles like Bastion sit next to or above high profile retail games like Portal 2 and surprises like Rayman: Origins and Saint’s Row: The Third. The seldom appreciated and often dust ridden Wii was graced with the latest Nintendo dungeon adventure of Zelda: Skyward Sword.

With all of those games in mind, we locked ourselves in a Google Document and threw emails at each other until we came up with a list of Vagary.TV’s games of the year. Enjoy.

 

The Don Parsons Award for Best Flying Game: Ace Combat Assault Horizon

Don comes down from his mountain to review flight games. In his spare time, he reviews flight games

By: Don Parsons

2011 was a stellar year for flight combat game enthusiasts (see: Me). From the great story-telling of Air Conflicts: Secret Wars to the fantastic plane modeling and dog-fighting of Jane’s Advanced Strike Fighters, there was one that really stood out. Ace Combat: Assault Horizon exceeded all expectations, and not only delivered some great combat in the skies, but also gave us an epic and cinematic story. As if that wasn’t enough, it actually had people playing the game online. Both other games had online modes but, sadly, not a soul could be found playing them. Assault Horizon blew me away with its presentation and deserves to be called the Flying Game of the Year.

 

Best Xbox 360 Exclusive: Gears of War 3

Marcus' du-rag finally comes off. 'Nuff said.

By: Chris Scott

No other series, sans Halo, means as much to the Xbox brand as Gears of War. Knowing that, developer Epic Games had a lot of weight on its shoulders for the finale of the Gears saga to begin with, and Microsoft’s first party lineup of games in 2011 was oddly devoid of many big name games.

Fortunately for both Epic and Microsoft, Gears of War 3 not only delivers on the expectations for the series, it handily exceeds them. The single player campaign, which is also playable in four player co-op, is the best in the series and actually delivers some emotional characterizations to characters many people thought had none. Horde mode was drastically remodeled and delivers one of the best co-op experiences this year and is complimented by Beast mode, an incredibly fun reversal of the Horde formula. The competitive multiplayer is deeper, more balanced, and more fun that it has ever been. Additionally, the game controls better than ever, the new weapons are a ton of fun, and it’s more visually improved and diverse than any Gears game to date. Everything about Gears 3 feels incredibly polished. No game offered the complete package that Gears of War 3 did but, most importantly, it was a hell of a lot of fun to play.

 

Best Playstation 3 Exclusive: Uncharted 3 Drake’s Deception

Drenched in hopelessness and vulnerability without a drop to drink

By: Kyle Baron

Uncharted 3 had plot holes and some contrived sequences that existed in service of gameplay, but none of that even entered my mind when I was playing it. Nathan Drake’s latest and possibly last venture on home consoles is a technical marvel that has you travelling across the world through acrid tombs, under the glaring suns of deserts, and through the often exploding and crumbling action set pieces of ocean liners and ancient castles.

Beneath all of that, Uncharted 3 tells a subtle yet pervasive story of Nathan as a man who is always close to what he wants while he’s about to lose everything else in the process. In and out of all of the gunfights, we see that his love for adventure and treasure is threatening to take the ones he loves away from him; it might be a narrow escape by a friend or the love of his life mumbling about her wedding ring, but that underlying battle is what stuck with me until the end of the game. Uncharted 3 beat out Infamous 2 for this award by one measly vote, and that really speaks to the level of emotion that both games subtly meter out with great effect.

Sure, the Playstation Network outage was an absolute mess, but Playstation 3′s had a great year for great exclusives.

Runner Up: Infamous 2

 

Best Shooter of the Year: Battlefield 3

It's best to just vault over single player into the rest of the game, really.

By: Don Parsons

The battlefield for modern shooters was rough in 2011. There were two camps split down the middle, with a small margin enjoying both Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3. After our staff voting, there was clearly one winner: Battlefield 3. While not a bad thing at all, most people feel like Modern Warfare 3 is just “more Call of Duty,” whereas Battlefield 3 took what made Battlefield: Bad Company 2 great and expanded it.

Everything that makes the Battlefield series great is here. The Conquest and Rush game modes, developer DICE-designed maps [that are always amazing], squad-based teamwork, and epic vehicular combat are all great. There’s also been a few changes that are just grand enough to stand out and make this feel like a step forward instead of the “same old thing.” The biggest of those changes is to the weapon progression system, which has kept me personally invested for dozens of hours. Smaller things like jets and being able to go prone also enhance this beautiful collective package.

Runners Up: Gears of War 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

Game of the Year:  The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim

Not all of our staff were psyched about Skyrim being our game of the year

By: Tony Odett

Over the past few years, I’ve developed what I like to call “video game restraint.” When I was younger, time seemed to disappear when I put a game in my console. I’d forget to eat and sleep. I’d think about the game I was obsessively playing while at work that day, while of course trying to function on the three hours of sleep I had gotten because I had needed to beat just one more level, complete one more quest, or take one more city.  But then I became an adult with a wife, kids, and a big boy job. My gaming obsession was curtailed, and those feelings of addiction were forever lost. Even Mass Effect 2, which I thought was the best game I had ever played, found itself chopped into two hour increments, and never played past 1:00 a.m. I was until complete control.

Until Skyrim.

The real crux of a game, the thing that really matters, the most important factor for anyone isn’t storyline or graphics. It’s not even gameplay. No, the most important quality a game has, deep down, is how playing it makes you feel. Skyrim makes me feel like a kid again. It takes me back to a place in my life I had thought gone forever, where time melts away and I am lost in a new, amazing world.  Skyrim has moved me from jaded disillusionment to utter gaming joy. With deep lore, an addicting leveling system, loads of quests, and the deepest, most populating gaming world I’ve ever seen, I give you Skyrim, Vagary’s 2011 Game of the Year

Runner up: Super Mario 3D Land

0

PC Review: Might and Magic Heroes VI

By
Jeremy Goodson
– January 3, 2012Posted in: PC, Reviews

I have to say that Might and Magic Heroes VI took me by surprise. As an avid lover of RPGs, the Might and Magic Series is one that I strangely overlooked, more so since I don’t play a lot of Strategy games. It is a series that I’ve heard a great deal about, but for some reason or another, always seemed to have an excuse to pass on it. Because of that, though, I was extra excited to give the new game a shot.

I think not knowing much about the series as a whole was a bit of a crutch for me in the beginning. The game is really, really hard. I managed to fail on the first map four times before actually completing it. At first, it was extremely frustrating. Fortunately, as I kept playing I was able to pick up more on the strategy involved. After that, the game became much more enjoyable, and the challenge was something I looked forward to besting.

In fact, as I delved further into the game, I feel that the developers delivered in exactly the way that they meant to. This game isn’t for the weak spirited. It seems they wanted you to strive to do you best, and put in challenges that they knew would give you a sense of satisfaction overcoming. In order to test this theory, and before proceeding further with Heroes VI, I decided to visit my good friend –and wallet’s worst enemy– Steam and test out some older Might and Magic games. (Note: This was a cause of the delay of this review, but I feel was needed to really give the game a fair shake).

The experience was an eye-opener for me, and cleared up any extra confusion that I had about the game and the series. All of the Heroes of Might and Magic games are tough, and also all play very similar. It has now become a series that I’m sorry I avoided for so long.

Might and Magic Heroes VI is a Turn-Based Strategy (TBS) game. Unlike some of its Real-Time Strategy (RTS) brethren, there are rest phases between turns. You get a certain number of moves, and then you rest for a bit while your enemies do the same. The areas are fairly large in size, so you may find this system a little tedious at first. It’s rather easy to get the hang of after a few rounds. This is the case not only during combat, but also on the main map as you’re moving around. This style suits the game very well.

Because of the TBS nature of the game, combat takes some thought. The basic “trash” fights aren’t all that bad and can be fairly swiftly taken out for some easy gold and experience, but the Mini-Boss and Boss fights are where they separate the (figurative) boys from men. This is also where I had really run into trouble even on the first map early on. The developers really but a lot of time, energy, and detail into making these battles seem pretty epic in scale. This is also where that term “strategy” really begins to shine through.

Now, to make this all mean something, there is a story woven into the game. While it is not the most enthralling lore ever created, I found it to be interesting enough to be worthwhile to the overall plot of the game. There is also a build in “Morality” system built in. Some games, like Mass Effect for example, make these choices game altering. In Heroes VI, this isn’t the case. It’s more of a “Do you want this item, or that item?” type of choice. It really just makes for a more customizable experience for your Hero.

My only complaint when it comes to Heroes VI is a common one amongst PC gamers. The DRM (Digital Rights Management) associated with it. In order to play the game at all, you have to log into your Ubisoft account. For anyone whose internet may be down (or in my case, at one point my router stopped working and I had to get a new one), they are out of luck if they want to play. DRM is used to deter piracy, but the problem is that those who pirate the games also use hacks to get around the authentication system. So, forcing people to log into a server just to play your single player game is just creating problems for the legitimate users, not the pirates.

Might and Magic Heroes VI, as a whole, is a very solid game. It introduced me to a series that I had been missing out on for a long time, and for that I am greatful. I plan on finishing up the older games, and will definitely be picking up the future releases. While the DRM has the chance to pose problems to potential players, the story, mechanics, and overall gameplay provide a fun and challenging environment for veterans and newbies alike. Also, there are a few multiplayer modes if you wish to play with friends. For any hardcore strategy fan, this should be towards the top of your lists.

Pros:

- Fun Gameplay

- Looks Great

- Story and Morality system give it a bit of a twist

Cons:

- Can be very challenging at times

- DRM (Requires internet connection for single player gameplay)

Score: 4/5

0

Review: Jane’s Advanced Strike Fighters

By
Don Parsons
– December 12, 2011Posted in: PC, PS3, Reviews, Xbox 360

[Note: This review is for the PS3 version. Multiplayer/co-op may vary per console.]

With the airspace for flying games pretty full this season, what makes Jane’s Advanced Strike Fighters, or JASF for short, stand out from the other flight games? Boasting 30 different jets, online co-op, online multiplayer, and a lengthy campaign to engage in, JASF has a lot to offer fans of the genre.

The campaign takes place in a fictional country, Azbaristan, during a brutal civil war. Your character, a pilot named Razor, steps into the cockpit of some of the worlds finest pieces of machinery to help reclaim the land. The missions mostly range between bombing runs and air-to-sir combat missions, with a few mixing into a “multi-role” format or recon missions. The flow is very back and forth, but the length of them seemed to of dragged on a little too long for my taste. At certain points in these stages I kept thinking “this is a perfect stopping point”, but it turned out to be halfway in.

The forgettable plot is detailed through the voice overs before the missions and through the radio chatter during gameplay. In each stage, you take control of more and more of the fictional country for your side and eventually finish the mission with a “dogfight” against a tank-of-a-plane at the end. Not to spoil things but, sadly, it was far too similiar to Ace Combat for me to take it seriously, and the lack of character during the story segments gave me no sense of emergency for trying to save civilian lives. While the missions themselves are quite fun and enjoyable, the story is anything but.

I played on Normal difficulty and I still died quite a few times. It wasn’t overly difficult, but knowing what plane to choose makes the difference when a 20 minute mission sometimes lasts 40 minutes, especially during some of the early bombing runs. An important part of JASF is picking the right plane for the mission. Doing so will make things a lot easier, which I found out later on. In the beginning, I was simply picking the “coolest looking” plane, which is a terrible idea, mind you.

The planes you choose will change from mission to mission. Later on, you’ll unlock a few amazing multi-role planes that can handle any mission you throw at it. The game advertises 30 planes, but half of them, give or take a few, are variations of the other planes. The variations each have a different paint scheme and different weapon load out, making them usable in other situations. I flew with quite a few different planes, and there are some drastic differences between some of them, but others are similar in certain areas. While they all feel unique enough, it came down to what weapons were on the plane that was the deciding factor. None of them handled or flew bad enough to say, “this plane sucks, I won’t use it.” Instead, I found myself saying “this plane doesn’t have enough ground targeting missiles, I’m using this one instead.”

Some of the best touches in the game are the subtle physics and feedback JASF offers. For example, if you set your controller down, the plane won’t sit on a straight path and just fly. Granted, it won’t veer off in a drastic manner either, but it’s the little swaying motion the plane makes that makes it feel like the wind is a variable. A lot of the missions make you fly under the radar (represented by a fuzzy bar at the top of the screen that starts to turn red when you fly too high), so you’ll be flying low, but if you start getting too low, little vibrations through the controller will scare you into raising altitude just a hair.

Initially, I really disliked the bombing missions. I would pick planes with two different bombs and one set of air-to-air missiles, and the missions would take forever. I fly in third person because, let’s face it, if you’re flying an awesome jet,  you want to see that awesome jet in action. When doing bombing runs, unless you are using guided missiles (which take longer because they are weaker), the plane gets in the way of the targeting reticule used for bombing. Doing some serious dive-bombing, that’s fine, but when fending off other airplanes in the midst of bombing, it gets a little over-complicated. Using the more powerful bombs, I set the view to first-person, which has to be done in the pause menu.

Air-to-air combat is really fun, but the cannons are not only hard to use for a rookie pilot like myself, but the bullets look terrible. Everything else about the game looks fantastic and realistic but as soon as you fire your cannons it looks like the gunfire from a mid-life cycle PS2 flying game. Thankfully, I rarely used the cannons because they were a real eyesore.

Multiplayer is non-existent. Unless you know someone with the game, you won’t be playing online. Period. For the past week, I have gotten online every single night and searched for a lobby, only to find myself creating one. So I would sit in the lobby, and wait five to ten minutes. Nothing. It’s a shame, too, because this game would benefit with co-op. Some of the missions get overwhelming, and having a wingman or two on hand would make things work smoother. Playing through the game, some missions made me think they were designed with co-op in mind, but I never got a chance to test that theory.

On a personal level, it’s irritating when small games like this offer multiplayer and have quite a few multiplayer trophies. I want to play online and I want to accumulate more trophies, but the non-existent online portion of the game keeps me from doing both of those.

Featuring some of the best planes in the sky, and some intense dogfights, JASF flies on its own level in most regards. However, with a plot that leaves a lot to be desired and a lack of active online play, it loses the points that made it special. It still is worth a flight, if flying games are something you enjoy, because the flying is a treat and the planes are top notch.

Pros:

  • beautiful graphics (minus the cannons of course)
  • THE best planes in a flying game on PS3

Cons:

  • lack of imaginative plot
  • no one is playing the competitive or co-op online

Score: 3* out of 5

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