Posts tagged review
Heavy Rain
Feb 24th
How far would you go to save the one you love?
Playstation 3
Enter the world of this new psychological thriller known as Heavy Rain. The Origami Killer is out there, taking the lives of young boys. How far will you go to stop a killer? (This review contains a few spoilers that occur in the beginning of the game).
Heavy Rain starts off with Ethan Mars, happily married, living with his wife and two children. Life seems as though it can’t get any better than it already is. That is until, an unfortunate event unfolds at the local mall. Your son Jason starts to wander off in the mall. Ethan keeps following him but eventually starts to lose him. Jason ends up crossing the street, and just when his father sees him, he decides to run back across. You can probably guess what is going to happen (unless you haven’t already seen the mall gameplay video). Let’s fast forward. You spend time with Shaun, the brother of Jason, at the local park. Suddenly you start to black out, wake up in the middle of the street, and have no idea where Shaun is. Thus, our story begins. You take the role of four different characters throughout the game. Constantly switching between them, you will learn that all of their stories intertwine with one another. You will play as Ethan Mars (Architect), Madison Paige (Photographer), Norman Jayden (FBI Profiler), and Scott Shelby (Private Investigator). This is not your typical game, during action sequences you will have to be quick with your fingers because Heavy Rain is heavily focused around QTE (Quick Time Events). Buttons will constantly appear on the screen, and you must hit them before time runs out. Messing these up could possibly alter what happens to your character, thus altering the entire game itself. Any and all of the four characters can die, and if that happens the game will continue on without them. There are multiple endings and many different choices to choose throughout your gaming experience. Some choices you will NOT want to make. Heavy Rain will make you so attached to the character that you may not want to make a tough decision. I found myself pausing the game at some instances where I had no idea which option I should pick.
Heavy Rain has an amazing graphics engine to it. Everything has such incredible detail that you may find yourself just walking around looking at all the little things and interacting with them. The world you’re in is so beautiful. I personally would have loved to have had a first person button just so I could look around at the little things better. I have to say that I think Heavy Rain has the most outstanding graphics to date.
The four main characters transfer their emotions to you so well that you may feel fully immersed. The facial animations match the dialog so well that you may not even realize you’re playing a video game. At times you may not notice the music playing, but it fits so well in most of the situations. The ambiance, voice acting, and music is all spot on. I have seen no issues at all.
This game has absolutely NO prerendered cutscenes. Everything you see is what you get, it is all ingame. If they were to have prerendered cutscenes, the only difference that we would see is some anti-aliasing, and a solid framerate.
I have only encountered one bug in this game. Sometimes when I was doing some crime scene investigating, my game froze right after Norman finished talking. I could hear the ambiance still, but the screen was frozen and I couldn’t use my controller to do anything. It has a constant autosave so if this happens to you, then you shouldn’t have anything to worry about. This bug doesn’t bother me one bit because I was able to just restart my PS3 and jump right back in where I was.
Heavy Rain is roughly 8-10 hours in length, and has an amazing level of re-playability. You will probably find yourself going to play it again right after you beat it, just to see the other results for different options you choose. Combat is fun, story is amazing, and at some point you’ll find yourself yelling, “WHAT!? I DIDN’T EXPECT THAT!”
Submit Your Own Review!
Jan 4th
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Brutal Legend
Oct 19th
DECAPITATION!
Xbox 360 and PS3
The world of metal has finally come to life. Jack Black gets to use his alter ego for an amazing adventure. The Titans leave behind all they know so that others after them may continue the legacy of metal.
Brutal Legend starts off with the roadie Eddie Riggs. He is the roadie of a tween band that disgraces metal. He finds them sick but he just does his job. One of the band members decides to climb the stage prop and that’s what causes the adventure to begin. Eddie is crushed by the stage prop and a drop of his blood falls into his belt buckle. He is then taken to the world of metal. After acquiring your weapons and meeting up with Ophelia, you make your way to Lars and his little sister Lita. They then embark on many missions to free everyone and create peace. You can acquire new powers for your axe and guitar. You may also upgrade The Deuce (aka The Druid Plow) with new engines, weapons, and armor. Before you can do that though you must access the Motorforge where you meet the Guardian of Metal. The game has MANY collectibles to get, such as Legends, Serpents, Lightning Plug Jumps, and many more.
You will notice that Brutal Legend has a cartoony type style to it. This style fits it very well and looks better than any other that could be done. There are occasional frame rate drops here and there but it’s not a game killer in any way whatsoever. You will find yourself gazing into the sky as they have put a lot of work into their world.
Jack Black (Eddie Riggs) and Jennifer Hale (Ophelia) do a fantastic job. All other voice acting is very well done and everyone’s voices fit. The only complaint I have is when you drive/walk past a group of your allies in the world, they tend to say a quote every single time. I’ve only noticed three different things that they say. I got to the point once where I almost turned off voices. The humor starts to die off after about an hour of game play. It was incredibly disappointing but I could live without it.
The cut scenes and animations look flawless to me. I wouldn’t say that they are seamless between them and game play but you can see the effort they put into the animations.
Online play consists of an RTS type mode that you do in single player. You play as one of the three factions and can have up to seven other people playing with you. You may also just go again and AI which is more fun to me because people online are too good. You play as the leader of a faction and get fans from the geysers in the ground that has the souls of fans coming out of them. You build merch booths around the geysers and that is your form of currency. You use them to get units. Both sides get a stage and the first one to have their stage destroyed, loses. I haven’t put a lot of time into it but it isn’t too interesting.
There are some bugs in the game that I have spotted and they are enough to really irritate you. You can and will get stuck between The Deuce and a wall/rock formation. The only way that I have managed to get around it is to revert to last checkpoint. It doesn’t cause you to lose and progress or collectibles, but it does make you go across the map back to where you last check pointed. It’s usually either a Motorforge or where you just completed a mission.
The game may only be roughly 5 hours, but it was a dam good game at that. I enjoyed all of it and am still enjoying it. I am currently trying to locate all of the collectibles. The humor is good when it is present, the characters are amazing, and the combat is fun and never seems to get old. Rock on Eddie, the Gods of Metal would be proud.
Ghostbusters: The Video Game
Jun 17th
I ain’t ‘fraid of no ghost!
Consoles: Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PS2, PC, DS.
The Ghostbusters were everywhere in the 80s. It went from movies to even video games! The games that they did release came out for multiple systems but all revolved around the same concept and gameplay. They were mainly on the NES. The first game, Ghostbusters, was horrible and just down right awful. Their second game, Ghostbusters II, had been improved yet it still failed to grab everyone’s attention. Now, the year is 2009 and a new game has released. Ghostbusters: The Video Game is what it’s called. I must admit, it isn’t a very creative name but that’s alright. You also get to fight the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. In this review I will give you details on the story, graphics, and overall gameplay.
In a game with the title “Ghostbusters,” I bet you all can guess as to what the object is. Yeah, that’s right. Catching (or “Busting”) ghosts is your main priority. The story takes place after Ghostbusters II. You play as a new recruit, he has no name other than Rookie. You fight along side of Ray, Peter, Egon, and Winston. You go to numerous locations such as the Hotel, the Library, and the Museum. You will encounter a few familiar ghosts such as Slimer and the Grey Lady. Your PKE meter will be very essential in this game. It’s used to detect spiritual entities, cursed artifacts, and take samples. In a few scenes, you will have the Ecto-1 to assist you. You can also upgrade your different streams which I will get into further in the review.
The graphics are solid and nice. You will notice that the cutscenes have a smoother look as well as a nice framerate. At times the framerate will drop and it is usually due to too many things going on at once. The effects on the proton streams are flashy and definitely captures the feeling that you would see in the movies. The only complaint that I have is that there will be an occasional graphical glitch but it isn’t enough to ruin it.
The voice acting is very well done. You will notice that they put in some comic relief at random times. Everyone loves a good laugh, right? The Rookie doesn’t speak at all, giving it the feeling that you are actually in the game. The music in the game will get repetitive. It may not bother you at all but if you pay attention to the little things then it may. Sound effects are spot on and you will recognize many of the noises from the proton pack that are in the movie.
One of the cool things that they added in was the ability to upgrade your weapons and your ghost trap. There are 4 weapons. They are the Proton Stream, Stasis Stream, Slime Blower, and Meson Collider. Each upgrade for the weapons will reduce recoil and increase the amount you can use it before overheating. Upgrades for the ghost trap consists of increasing the capture speed and making it so you can slam dunk a ghost into the trap, thus bypassing the capturing phase.
The cutscenes look good, sound good, have some humor, and even load the next level while you’re watching them! In turn, it creates what looks to be, seamless gameplay. There isn’t much more I can say about them.
While playing online, there are two ways you can play. One way is to join a single match were you play only one of the six jobs. The second way is to play one theme which then chooses three jobs out of the six available for you to play. You can play online with 1-4 players for multiplayer, or 2-4 players for co-op. The jobs are Survival, Containment, Destruction, Protection, Thief, and Slime Dunk. Each one has their own unique objective.
I’ve noticed a few bugs near the end of the game. Such as Ray disappearing and the story continuing to go on. This causes the game to glitch out and making it impossible to continue on with the story without using a Revert to Checkpoint. Another one I discovered was when I went to smash a stone ghost into the ground, it went through the level, and one even went outside of the level where I was barely able to destroy it because it was on the other side of a way. These bugs aren’t that big of a deal and it doesn’t kill the game in any way that I see.
In the end, Ghostbusters is a fun game for all and it may not have too much of a replay value but it does give a lot of fun for the whole family. Whether you’re a casual or hardcore gamer, it’s still for all. The Ghostbusters live on with this marvelous game. As for me, all I have to say is that “We came, we saw, we kicked it’s ass!”
The Godfather II
May 3rd
EA releases yet another game, and this one is The Godfather II.
Xbox 360, PS3, and PC
When I heard about this game I thought nothing of it. Nearing it’s release date, I decided to look more into it and it seemed to be a good game. I decided to purchase it, hoping for the best. I get the game home, start playing, and it seems kinda bland. The more that I played it, the better it got. I started to enjoy being able to take over territories, placing guards, running around with my crew doing missions, and just being able to explore places like New York and Florida. The game itself is very repetitive and you’ll find yourself doing the same things over and over.
Your main objective is to capture territories and controlling all of the cities. You capture a territory, place guards, and move on to the next one. To take over one of the territories, you must scare it’s owner bad enough to let you own it. The ways you can scare them is by smashing their stuff, hanging them over edges, pointing a gun at them, or even slamming them into the wall. There aren’t many options when it comes to it.
Graphics for the game are quite nice. They’re not terrible and they’re not amazing, but they are good enough for my standards. Like it’s been said before, that you shouldn’t judge games by their graphics alone. You will notice some parts of the level loading strangely or even some random floating objects, but they can be overlooked.
In the game you will find that there isn’t much audio. Some music plays occasionally but unless you want to go into one of the disturbing strip clubs, don’t expect much music.
The only awesome thing about this is being able to use the Don’s View and being able to go out and take over territories with a group. While doing those things, it keeps it really fun for me. My favorite thing is to go out and take over everything, one after the other.
There aren’t many cut scenes in the game, which makes it a little stale. It needs more action and face posing. There should have been more effort put into making more animations and cut scenes, but it doesn’t entirely ruin the game.
There are a few bugs that may make you angry at times, but they aren’t bad enough to make you rage quit or anything. Maybe a few patches will fix further bugs that are discovered.
In my personal opinion, I think that The Godfather II is a slightly above average game that deserves more attention. It was highly anticipated by many during it’s announcement, and seemed to die off shortly after. I enjoy the game, but the reply value for it is moderately low, because once you beat it, you won’t want to go back and play it again most likely. In the end, I give The Godfather II:
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