Let me throw two important facts about myself out there before I actually dive into this review. First, I loved Call of Duty 4. Second, I suffer from extreme World War II shooter fatigue—we’ve won the war more times than I can count. All things being what they are, I can honestly say that World at War uses the Call of Duty 4 game engine to overcome my WWII shooter fatigue quite effectively.
Every once in a while you find a game that feels like it was directly catered to your interests, almost as if the developers had peered into your brain and found the exact switches to trigger the anticipation. While I am still awaiting the release of Alan Wake, another one of those seemingly enigmatic games, Mirror’s Edge, was recently released for the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3.
When looking at a game like this from a critical standpoint and not from my seven-year-old self, there can be some discrepancies from my expectations and the final release, however, in the case of Mirror’s Edge, my expectations remained shattered. While fault can be found in certain gameplay quirks and the occasional and often frustrating combat sequences, Mirror’s Edge remains one of the most brilliant games I have played in the last year.
Way back when the PS3 launched, Resistance: Fall of Man launched with it. The first Resistance was a solid launch title, and it attracted the coveted first person shooter fans to the PS3. Here we are just two years later, and Resistance 2 storms onto store shelves in an effort to help Sony triumph in the console war.
Resistance 2 picks up right where Resistance: FoM left off, with the main character, Nathan Hale, getting on a plane to Iceland, and that’s right about where the plot of the single player campaign fizzled out. The plot is almost nonexistent—you know there are evil aliens called Chimera, and you know you should kill them, and that’s about it. You go from place to place, and mission to mission with very little explanation of why you’re going there, or what you’re doing. Apparently, thanks to the actions of some wacky Russian scientist, a friend of yours is now a bad ass Chimera called Daedalus. Oh, and don’t forget, Nathan is going to turn into a crazy big Chimera too! OH TEH NOES!! All joking aside, this could have been an interesting plot had Insomniac put some effort into it. Still, there are a lot of good things about this game, even if the plot isn’t one of them.
Game designer Cliff Bleszinski stated earlier this year at the Games Developer Conference that Gears of War 2 would be “bigger, better, and more badass,” leaving the question of how to improve on an already fantastic game and how they could up the badass level when you could already chainsaw through enemies at your own leisure? However after diving into all that Gears 2 has to offer, I can confirm that:
1. It is Bigger
2. It is Better
3. It is certainly more Badass
Quantum of Solace puts you in the shoes of super spy James Bond, and takes you through the plots of the two most recent Bond movies Casino Royale, and Quantum of Solace, and it does it in style. There are enough action packed gun fights, and intense situations to make you feel like you’re playing a big screen blockbuster rather than a video game. Enemies even die with Hollywood flair, falling over railings, and firing off a few final rounds into the air as you put more holes in them than a pound of Swiss cheese. Throw in the likeness, and voice talents of Daniel Craig, who plays James Bond in the movie this game is named for, and you have a game just oozing with style. Unfortunately, style only gets you so far.
LittleBigPlanet is, at it’s core, a rock solid platformer. It’s got an extensive single player campaign that will keep you engaged for a good long while. Many levels contain hidden items that will require you play the level through more than once. Even after the first two play throughs, I was lacking at least a few items from many of the levels. The game, as a whole, is absolutely oozing with charm. Stephen Fry provides highly amusing, witty, and well delivered narration for all of sackboy’s many adventures, and the visual style of the game creates a whimsical tone for each and every level. Yes, at the core, this game has many good qualities, but they all pale in comparison to the mind blowing level editor.
When I first heard Bethesda was taking on Fallout 3, I was terrified. Not because I thought they’d muck it up or anything like that, but because Oblivion took up over 240 hours of my life. It damaged my interpersonal relationships, brought my productivity to a crawl, and caused my skin to lighten by several shades due to a lack of sunshine. That scenario is likely to repeat itself now that Fallout 3 is here.
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Ahh Spiderman, you and I have gone on so many adventures together. From the comic books of my youth, to the AWESOME animated series in my teen years, to the three movies… well, the first two of the three anyway. Let’s not forget games. I’ve played every one of your games since the days of the PS1. The first Spiderman game on the PS1 was a triumph. It was a beautiful blend of comic book story telling, web slinging, and beat em up fights. Then came the game based on the first movie. It took all of the fine points of the PS1 classic, and polished the hell out of them. It was truly my favorite Spiderman game - until the second movie based game came out. Great efforts were made to make NYC as big and beautiful as possible. There were a lot of places to go and things to do. Those were the halcyon days. Only a short time later came Ultimate Spiderman, which, while still fun, lacked the depth of combat, and the size and scale of the world found in it’s predecessor. Let’s not forget the third movie game, which felt even further dumbed down from Ultimate Spiderman. By the release of Friend or Foe, I lost the rose colored glasses I had viewed Spiderman games through before that point. That game was easily the worst Spiderman game I’ve ever played, and one of the worst over all. Still, I felt a sense of excitement when I first held the Web of Shadows disc in my hands. The missteps the series had taken couldn’t erase the truly wonderful memories of the finer games in the series.
So, with a heart full of hope, I put the disc into my Xbox 360, and prepared to embark on another adventure with my favorite super hero of all time.
Bringing me back to the days of creating toothpick bridges and structures in my middle school industrial arts class, World of Goo is a game that straddles the line between education and fun while achieving great results. In a game that simply has you manipulating little gelatinous goo balls in an effort to transport them through a sprawling system of plumbing, World of Goo provides a game experience based on its superb core game mechanic of building structures with the balls.
The very first major announcement I can remember hearing about Fable 2 was the inclusion of a dog. There may have been major announcements before that, but I have to confess, my brain works kinda like an etch-a-sketch - shake it up a little bit, and it gets wiped of all recently added information. When I heard about the dog, my reaction was sheer skepticism. I can’t name a single game off the top of my head where the main character had a pet I cared about. Before I get to the rest of this review, I want to take a minute and publicly eat some crow. Peter Molyneux promised that gamers everywhere would develop an emotional attachment to their dog, and he delivered. Pretty much right from the start of the game, I genuinely liked the dog - a lot. The dog behaves in a very organic manner. It runs around completely of it’s own volition, and always comes back to you. When you’re standing still, the dog will roll around on it’s back, or chase it’s tail, or any number of other things real dogs do. The dog will help out in combat, point you to treasures, and find spots in the ground where you can dig and uncover various items. It’s hard to explain exactly why the dog is so endearing - it’s really something you have to experience for yourself.
Peter Molyneux made good on his promise about the dog, but what about the rest of the game?
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