Call of Duty: Black Ops Playstation 3/Xbox 360 review

The Call of Duty franchise is one of the biggest and best-known out there. I actually had not played the earlier ones, as first person shooters were never one of my favorite genres. But some buddies of mine got me into Modern Warfare 2, and I loved it. Then I started to play a few others and eventually got myself real excited about the recent Black Ops game. Obviously there were videos and stories leading up to its release, and these coupled with a good marketing campaign has led to an amazingly successful launch for the series. So, what’s my take on it? Here goes:

Graphics – 8:

I liked the look and feel better than Modern Warfare overall, but I ran into some odd glitching more often than I cared for, where textures would pop in and out, and lightning effects would mar the otherwise nicely crafted experience. Still, the expressions are often very good, providing good emotional values to the scenes while the environment were varied and in some cases, wonderfully colored and realized.

Sound and Music – 10:

The voice acting was excellent, and the dialog was great as well. It really helped to carry along the story, which I thought was a lot of fun. The music was also generally very good, and in some instances simply amazing in choice and context. There were a wide variety of sound effects that add to both the action and the feel of the storyline itself. This is a game that makes excellent use of my surround system, and is actually helpful in giving away things like footfalls and bullet direction. If I have a pet peeve with any of this, is I have the game on my PS3, but I don’t have a headset for my Playstation. As such, I find myself muting people constantly in the online games because I can’t talk with them – so I sure don’t want to hear them. I found that trying to globally mute other players was a popular question online when I Googled it, whereas it is quite easy to do on the 360 using your personal preferences in Modern Warfare 2 (and from what I read online, easy with this game as well).

Gameplay – 8:

The game controls well – aiming and movement are sharp, and with a quick twitch game such as this – especially with the online mode, that is a must to have. There’s a ton to do as well, and the menus are generally pretty easy to navigate around in, though there were a few control scheme options I think that got neglected. I’ve seen a lot of people online looking for how to unlock perk pluses and not realizing what button they needed to press on the unlocked base perks to see it. Also, the online connectivity is borderline maddening at times. With the online being such an integral part of the package, I’ve found my connectivity most nights being really rough – at least half of the time I try to play, the servers are almost unplayable. I’d think it was me or my connection but I can A) hop on Halo with my 360 and have no problems b) play other online ps3 games and have no issue and c) I’ve been reading about a lot of other people having trouble with it as well. I’ve heard that this issue is being looked into and I am hopefully it’ll be improved upon, but I have to knock off a point or two just based on this.

Intangibles – 9:

The story mode is amazingly fun – but ridiculously short still. This is a common complaint/observation I’ve heard about the series since at lead CoD 4 – and one I levied against Modern Warfare 2 myself. This mission was a bit longer I think, but not by much. Still, the story was excellent, with my older daughter having watched me play through about 85% of it. Why is this significant? A) she’s not a gamer b) she doesn’t have any interested in war movies – but she sat through almost all of this, fascinated with the storyline and even commenting several times that it felt, looked and sounded like ‘one of those war movies you’d watch, dad’ – so kudos to the team for that.

Online is where the majority of people will play this game, and for good reason. The maps are well made, the classes and progression are fun. Instead of relying completely on levels and accomplishments (like in the prior games) to unlock things, you play for ‘currency’ you can spend as well. So at a certain level you may unlock the ability to get a gun, but you still need the credits on hand to purchase it. I suspect this will drag out the game’s playlife a bit for people like me who like to unlike pretty much… everything. This mode is more rewarding for me than Halo: Reach’s rewards system, because there the upgrades are only cosmetic and here they affect gameplay. However, a huge demerit for this mode is the online connectivity issues that appear to be anything but an isolated problem only for me.

Zombie modes are almost starting to annoy me in games. Bad enough that there’s so many ‘zombie’ games out there lately (between the RE series, Dead Rising – even Plants vs. Zombies), and now it’s creeping in as a ‘mode’ in a lot of games (I just saw something on IGN about how the upcoming Yakuza game would have one). Here however, it’s still pretty fun running around blasting zombies with a shotgun while trying to earn credits and repair broken doors and windows. It is not stand-alone game material, but for an add-on it’s pretty solid.

There’s some other pretty cool stuff in here, including an online training mode, a Smash TV-like overhead arcade style shooter, unlockable intel, a zork text game (though playing it on that keyboard they provide you with seems like it would get old and fast) – and this secret thing you can do in the main menu to stand up and walk around to access a computer (and some of these features). There’s a ton of content here, and most of it is very well done. If I could go 2 or 3 weeks without bad online connectivity issues, I’d probably bump the score to a 9.5, and if the online mode had just a *bit* more variety from say, Modern Warfare 2’s online weapon loadouts and options, it would be a 10 in my mind.

Overall – 8.75:

The game feels great overall. I was a day-of-release pickup for it. There’s a handful of things holding it back from complete greatness – online issues, some areas that feel like they’re a bit rehashed and a very short single player campaign mode (I beat it in a day). But there’s a lot going for the game too – from fantastic production values to a variety of modes that really add to the game’s depth. It’s definitely not one for little kids – the violence can be scaled back, which is what I make my son due, but there’s a good deal of strong language to keep the violence company.

More Call of Duty: Black Ops Videos

Read More

Random Odds and Ends

Interesting article on Yahoo! (Internet Archive link) about the Onlive cloud system for playing higher end games on lower end computers. As someone with a fairly low-end cpu, the idea is intriguing - as someone with a 360, Wii and PS3, I'm firmly in the corner of having hardware that just plays games under optimal conditions. Probably not for me, but interesting all the same.

Got my Wii back. The first round of the process did not go so smoothly - my UPS shipping label never arrived, so after about 10 days I flagged them down. The next one got to me 2 days later, it was shipped out, repaired and back 3 days later. So that time the process ran about a week. Having picked up a handful of new Wii games, including one for the kids for Christmas, I'm rather hoping to roll out some Wii reviews again soon. Spent some time tonight playing Wii Sports Resort tonight with my son, rebuilding Mii's and fiddling around with Dr. Mario Online Rx. Good times. :)

Not sure specifically what was wrong with the Wii - they replaced the whole thing it looks like, so it must have been a fairly major failure. Still, $85 shipped, replaced, with a 1 year warranty isn't too bad - and I had heard horror stories about how ds's and wii's could be tough to get your downloaded games back onto. It wasn't bad at all, they associated the new machine with my old, and my prior downloads list was on there, so Mario Party, Ninja Gaiden, Final Fantasy, Pokemon Rumble and more simply had to be downloaded. Perhaps the biggest bummer was the loss of the save data. Makes me want to start using the SD card and see if that's a bit more reliable since between this and my daughter accidentally reformatting it this summer, we've had to rebuild our Smash Bros. and Mario Kart data for the 3rd time now.

Read More

NBA 2K11 Review for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3

I’ve already detailed in length about my interest in sports games, with the Madden series being a long-standing favorite of mine. NBA games however, have always come in at something of a close second for me. It started with the old Tecmo Basketball, which to my knowledge was the first time an NBA game had full seasons, stat keeping and playoffs. Later there were NBA games by EA Sports that captured more unique aspects of the players and their likenesses, and eventually they introduced franchise modes complete with the kind of player progressions that really hooked me into most sports games. EA’s brand was the strongest for years, but then the 2k series started to show up strong around 2k5 (back when my Pistons were on top of the league), and the sales and reviews began to swing in favor of the 2K series. This year, EA was going to scrape its prior recipe for the NBA games and release a new series called “Elite” – that unfortunately got derailed for reasons of timeliness and – according to some sources – quality. So with NBA 2k11 the only contender in the space, did they put forth an All-Star effort or mail it in?

Graphics – 9:

The animations are generally very smooth. NBA games are some of the trickiest of any sport to model. In football or hockey, you tend to be a bit further from the action, so face and hair models don’t generally have to be as precise. They also tend to be covered with bulky gear. Baseball games still show less of the players’ physiques and the number of animations really are not as varied either. People have a tendency to play in space by themselves. This makes what the 2K series’ graphics so impressive –they have to account for facial models, physical accuracy (and things like tattoos), as well as varying playing styles and work it all into the context of a game where these already difficult to manager characters are jostling around and interacting with each other constantly. Sure, it’s not perfect, sometimes slightly canned animations do odd things like have you step out of bounds when you shouldn’t be, and some faces really give you pause.

The arenas look great overall. Crowds don’t do much, but they fill space and look convincing enough. Lighting, floors – all of it just feels very authentic. I also need to give a nod to the replay features. The Sprite Slam Cams, Gatorade Moment of the Game, and Jordan Brand Player of the Game replays all look very slick (I love the player of the game one, which shows various cuts of action from the game, played out against various filters. Rodney’s Stuckey’s whirlwind layup in my last game looked amazing).

Sound and Music – 9:

There is a very good mix of songs that make up the music in this game. In what my wife and her friend once called the greatest invention in a sports game, years ago many games started adding actual songs to the tracklists (apparently my buddy’s wife and mine got tired of the same old music playing over and over and over for hours on end when we were tweaking our Madden or hoops rosters. Who knew?) Hearing The Alan Parsons Project's "Sirius" play when you first fire up the game and take control of Jordan as he enters the court was an amazing video game moment.

The announcing is quite good as well. Of course these games do tend to get a bit redundant. I wish they could work in more variety, and while the contexts are usually quite good, I could only stand to hear the same thing said about my team so many times. If you play as the Wizards, you’ll hear about John Wall a lot – which makes sense, but they have 2 or 3 canned dialogs about him, and odds are, you will hear them each and every game of his rookie season. I haven’t gotten through enough seasons yet to be sure, but I’m curious if they’ll still be talking about him as some hot prospect in 8 years on there or not. Still, overall, the graphics, sound and music bits work wonderfully to create a live TV game environment.

Gameplay 8:

Overall, it handles really well. The movements are pretty good, and it’s easy to navigate around the various menus. There are some quirks though that can get annoying. You take too many shots down low that tend to hit the sides or backside of the backboard, and some of the canned animations can have you stepping out of bounds even if you’re pushing away from the baseline the entire time. Also, there are way too many steals and blocks. I don’t mind tight defense, but using the Pistons I’m getting at least 8-10 blocks a game, and while my steals are only around 5 a game, my opponents pick off at least a dozen a game. If anyone but a guard is dribbling, or you try to throw an outlet pass or a cross court pass regularly, you will be lucky to complete 2 or 3 a game, which is a bit frustrating as I prefer up-tempo (as do most players, which is probably why they’ve added this artificial layer of defense). The post game however is solid – probably the best I’ve seen it in awhile.

In the create a player mode, there’s a lot to do, but the game judges your actions oddly. If my opponent scores a bucket, I can lose an entire bar of ‘grade’ – but if I score one I barely see an increase. And it encourages you to play somewhat selfishly. For example it comes up with 3 challenges for you each game, and when my 7-3 center is asked to take 4 jump shots in the game? That’s hurting my team because it’s not my style, but if I want those 100 skill points, I’ll go ahead and force a few up anyway.

Intangibles – 10:

The integration of Michael Jordan is amazing. I grew up a Pistons fan. As such, I grew up disliking the Bulls a lot. But over the years I’ve come to really appreciate what Jordan did for the game and just how amazing he was, and the Jordan challenges are very cool. The additional Jordan sneakers for completing certain things in game, and then being able to apply them to your create a person is cool too.

There’s a ton of drills and practice modes, and the online is solid too, though it can get a bit laggy at times, and I’ve always felt like it hurts the NBA games more than NFL, NHL and MLB titles just due to the constant action and motion. With timing on jumpers being so critical, any lag can really mess with you – especially if you happen to be playing a perimeter based team.

I really enjoyed the crate a player mode. I sunk a ton of time into last year’s version doing that, and I’m at it again this year. It’s addicting getting those few points to spend where you want them, and telling yourself you’ll get even more on your next outing. The various goals and achievements you can earn by hitting milestones can be cool too.

Most people will spend the majority of their time in The Association/Franchise mode. It’s a solid game of hoops there, with lots to do as both the coach and manager. And the computer seems a lot smarter this year too. I remember last year’s game when the Bucks wound up with something like 5 point guards and 3 shooting guards and were just unable to field a proper team. The trades from what I have seen so far in 2k11 are made with better overall team awareness – from both a positional standpoint and respecting a player’s potential to improve. The trade finder is a cool new innovation too, that can be a real time-saver when you’re trying to tweak your roster or draft picks.

In case this isn’t enough game for your buck, there’s also the blacktop mode with 3-point shootouts and dunk contests too. There’s also quite a few classic teams out there. You won’t run out of things to do any time soon.

Overall – 9:

There’s still a few glitches here and there, and when they happen they can become very frustrating. Overall though, they don’t happen very often and what you do get is a great game of hoops that is brought to you a lot of different ways that help to keep the proceedings fresh and entertaining. At first I was worried that the Jordan stuff would be minimal or gimmicky – just an excuse to slap him on the cover and get a few extra sales, but it really looks like they put the work in this year. If EA’s Elite is hoping to come to market next year, they better bring their best playoff game, because right now 2K looks like the reigning champ for the foreseeable future.

More NBA 2K11 Videos

Read More

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World - Xbox Live and PSN review

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World immediately reminded me of the NES classic River City Ransom – a game that I played through and beat numerous times about 15 to 20 years ago. Based on a movie that had a lot of video game elements, it seems the perfect fit for an Xbox Arcade or PS3 Network game – the question is, how does it hold up?

Graphics – 8:

The style is perfect for what it is. This game is a throwback to 8bit and 16bit beat ‘em ups, and the vivid colors, pixelized characters and blocky yet busy backgrounds fit the theme perfectly. If there’s a complaint to be made about it is if you have too many people playing at once, it can be hard to keep track of what you are doing – the characters are large and visually appealing, but with 3 or 4 players at a time, they take up a lot of the screen’s real estate too.

Sound & Music – 7:

The music and sound all fits – the sound effects are rather bland in my opinion but I thought the music was quite good. A couple of the tunes really stuck in my head afterward and they were lively and matched the often frantic gameplay.

Gameplay – 7:

The controls are simple, but that’s not a bad thing. The game tries very hard to be one of the old-school games that only used 2 or 3 buttons and a special attack. There are times though where I felt like it was not being quite as responsive as I would have liked, and I’d get knocked on my butt. The game’s not impossible by any means, but there are parts where you will die and they can feel a bit cheap, especially if you were trying repeatedly to take a swing at someone and can’t pull it off.

Intangibles – 8:

The nostalgia is hard to ignore, so for me that’s a big one. One of the most endearing things River City Ransom had going for it was your character progression. You bought skills, food, things like that to advance your character. Here, you do the same – you gain levels, new combos and can do things to improve your overall statistics. You can also use this same built-up character (there’s several to choose from at the start of the game) that you can bring in and replay the game with. This plus hidden shops really help the game’s replay value. The multiplayer is fun – my son and I had a great time with it, but there’s a few missed opportunities here too. You can’t drop mid-level it seems, so you have to wait to join in, and the most glaring omission is I don’t see any means of online cooperative play, which is almost baffling for a game that gets so many other small things right.

Overall – 7.5:

Not a bad way to spend some Microsoft Points or PSN wallet dollars, especially if you’re a fan of these kinds of games – which I obviously am (one of my other somewhat recent acquisitions was the Final Fight/Magic Sword release by Capcom in the interest of full disclosure – so this is clearly a genre I enjoy). There’s a few small things that they could have done better, and one or two large ones that just keep the game from being just about perfect, but the challenging achievements and character progressions mean that the replay value gives you pretty good bang for your buck.

More Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game Videos

Read More

Gaming News and Notes from 11-9-10

Been awhile since I've done one of these, but here goes:

Playstation 3 owners finally get to discover the Mass Effect universe - that's old news. but now there's some details released about how they plan to catch you up on the story and what you can expect to get with the Mass Effect 2 release.

Back Ops has been out and kicking butt in sales (while getting some good initial scores from critics) for about half a day now, and there's a secret mode that has already been revealed.

Interested in a Microsoft Kinect? Gamestop expects to be able to keep up with the demand, though one interesting thing I noticed on their online page yesterday when I was peeking at their weekly ad - my local Gamestop was listed as being out of the non-bundled Kinects already.

Anyone else out there a big fan of the Scott Pilgrim Arcade release? I was - and now here's a trailer about new content coming out for the game. Hoping to have a review out there on this game and EA's MMA soon.

Fallout: New Vegas released to pretty good reviews and sales - but was reported to have a ton of bugs including some that could ruin you game save. Yikes. Well, Bethesda has heard the complaints and are planning to release a very large patch for the game soon.

Last and... well, least in my opinion - there's some new games being confirmed - Naughty Bear 2 and Wet 2. Sales on these were okay if not great, and Wet had a lot of issues even getting released so this is a slight surprise, but good news to fans of the two games, which released to lukewarm reviews and sales, with Wet faring slightly better overall.

Read More

Halo: Reach - Xbox 360 game review

Halo has always been one of the more polarizing series over the last decade of gaming. It came to reflect the Microsoft Xbox brand in much the same way Mario has for Nintendo, or Kratos has for Sony or even Sonic did for the Genesis. Thing is – I never played the series. I owned a Playstation 2 at the time, and did not have the budget for multiple gaming systems. So I missed the first couple of Halo games, and never really jumped on board for the Halo 3 and ODST releases either. First person shooters were never really my favorite genre. However, while they still do not top sports and RPG games for me, Modern Warfare 2 did a great job of getting me into first-person shooters and the competitive online aspects of such games.

So, when Reach came out, and a few of my co-workers were getting very excited about it, I was interested. I had let my Xbox Live gold membership lapse back around May of this year as well, with no intention to resume it. Then, Microsoft offered some good deals, including something like a good % off if you signed up during the Halo: Reach launch, and Walmart had a nice deal going where if you bought Reach during launch week, you got a free $20 gift card. So, I combined these deals, did the math and (most importantly) got my wife to agree to let me drop a few extra bucks on it.

Now, this was right around the time I quit writing for my blog here. Halo: Reach was the start of some serious game playing over the last couple of months, plus the kids starting school, plus work getting very busy so… the blog lost out. Well, since then, I’ve spent a good chunk of time playing Halo: Reach and I thought I would share my thoughts on it.

Graphics – 9:

This is one of those areas I see mixed responses on. Some people really love the Halo art style, and others come away very unimpressed. Overall, I liked them though. I found the color palettes appealing, the look of the environments to be engrossing, and characters moved pretty well. An additional detail I liked was that the customizations made to your armor appear to carry over in every aspect, including things like cut scenes. There were a few moments of slow down during some of the more intense scenes, and that is always frustrating, but they are relatively few and far between.

Music & Sound – 9:

I’ve never played any of the other games, but I first fell in love with the Halo theme song when they released a version of it for Guitar Hero 3 as a downloadable a few years ago. Since then, I’ve gone and listened to a lot of the more popular tunes and I’ve come away very impressed. That doesn’t really change for me here – the score fits the often epic feel of the game, and while some of the voice acting is a bit stilted, most of it is pretty good and really helps to advance the story. The surround sound is used to excellent effect as well, as you can hear a laser going off to your right, or hear a gibbering alien coming at you from behind. Excellent stuff all of the way around.

Gameplay - 9:

It’s smooth stuff – and I mean that earnestly. There’s a few different control schemes you can choose from, but they are all pretty intuitive. I picked up the game immediately and dove into the story and then the online modes with no problem. Menus were easy to get around in, and there is just a ton to do. The armor effects were pretty slick as well. I read about these, and they’re all new to the Halo series – but whether you’re using armor lock, jetpack, camouflage – they are all useful in the right circumstances. In the large team battles involving vehicles I find armor lock incredibly handy. In headhunter modes sprint does me a world of good. You versus everyone? Going invisible (or Predator Mode as I like to call it) is super fun. Jetpacks and holograms of your character also add layers of depth (and deception) to the affair.

Intangibles – 9:

The game has a pretty decent single player storyline. I still recall Modern Warfare 2’s being awesome – but really short. I could get through it in about 6 hours. Not so here. There are a ton of multiplayer modes, and that always helps replay value. There’s some custom side games like Firefight to keep you entertained as well. There’s a ton of extra polish here also such as the forge – that has some nice map making/adjusting qualities to it, and theater which lets you save images and video clips to store to your hard drive or upload to the Halo servers (like my entertaining sticky grenade one. It was fun – a guy tried to get away from me, and he leapt up an air/elevator so I launched a sticky that clung to his leg as he neared the next level, and it blew him up. I’d say you had to be there, but you don’t – I’ve uploaded it!). Perhaps my single disappointment is with the customization. It looks awesome, but I found the online rewards for Modern Warfare 2 to be more rewarding. Some people disliked the system of getting new items and attachments, and that sort of thing in Modern Warfare 2 because they felt it gave an advantage to more experienced players who probably didn’t really need said advantage. To me though, it was a lot of fun going through and making several loadouts with customized attachments and perk sets. Halo does have a more level playing field, but some of the game modes restrict the weapons and armor abilities you can have. It’s not a game killer by any means, but it did leave me wanting a little bit more.

Overall – 9:

Easy score to add up, but seriously – this game was a lot of fun and it made me interested in earlier games in the series. My son bought the first Halo for the Xbox awhile back (it retro plays in the 360), and I’ve considered picking up the others in the series to experience them and learn a bit more about the storylines. Tons to do, and a well-made overall game in terms of control, graphics and sound? That’s a recipe for success. Most of the people I work with really enjoy it too. One thing I do find interesting is that for most of them, the game’s not holding as much long term appeal as Modern Warfare 2 did, and most of them are using Halo to tide them over until Black Ops comes out. I’ll be curious to see how many of them, myself included, let Halo slip by less played once that happens this Tuesday.

More Halo: Reach Videos

Read More

It's been quite awhile...

Since I posted. To be honest, I was strongly considering taking some time off from posting here. I may not match my earlier pace - time will tell, but I was trying to post quite regularly and then got very busy irl - and that mixed with the relatively small amount of traffic I get through here made it really easy for me to ignore my blog here. That said, two people emailed me in this past week just to check in and make sure all was well - which I really appreciated. And well, overall I do have a ton of new games to write up about.

I also had both good and frustrating news. I picked up some Wii games like Silent Hill and Metroid and then my Wii died a few days later. So now I'm waiting for my UPS package label so I can send it back - so hey, I can comment on how that process goes. So far? Not too well. We put in a request on 10/23 and finally yesterday emailed them and asked about the label I should have gotten. They agreed to send me a new one and said that I should get it in 4 business days, so if I count today as the first, hopefully I'll have it Wed - maybe Thurs at the latest.

So, that was the bad news. The good news? I won a Playstation Move set, complete with 2 Move controllers, 1 Playstation Eye and Singstar dance and some microphones to go with it. I still will probably want to spring for one of the $30 side-controllers for the move wands, but I'm hoping to get some detailed reviewing out in the somewhat near future. I want to get some time in on it with several games, that sort of thing.

I'm very curious about the Kinect. The release lineup has been getting better reviews and while the Move has always felt like a Wii HD, the Kinect has always felt to me like more impressive tech. Still, at $150 it's going to be a hard sell. Maybe I'll win one of those too. I'm curious if people have had a chance to use either yet and if so, what are your thoughts?

Hopefully I'll get a new review out tonight or tomorrow - I've had a handful of new games on hand: Dead Rising 2, Fable 3, NBA 2k11, MLB The Show 10 and EA MMA.

Read More

Limbo - Xbox Live review for the 360

What is Limbo? Well, here’s one set of definitions:

–noun, plural -bos.

1. ( often initial capital letter ) Roman Catholic Theology . a region on the border of hell or heaven, serving as the abode after death of unbaptized infants (limbo of infants) and of the righteous who died before the coming of Christ (limbo of the fathers or limbo of the patriarchs).

2. a place or state of oblivion to which persons or things are regarded as being relegated when cast aside, forgotten, past, or out of date: My youthful hopes are in the limbo of lost dreams.

3. an intermediate, transitional, or midway state or place.

4. a place or state of imprisonment or confinement.

That said, it’s also an Xbox 360 game that is part puzzler, part platformer and filled with more questions than answers in the end. My oldest daughter is not much of a gamer, and this is a game that caught her eye in one of my Game Informer previews, and then she has since sat and watched me play through about half of the game. It’s a almost disturbingly captivating experience that is far too short but deeply engrossing as well. Here’s my review of the game.

Graphics – 9:

There’s no color. The detail is not amazing, with loads of textures and flashy 3D effects. But visually this game is incredibly unique, and it’s deeply involving. I’ve included some screenshots and the usual video at the bottom. If this is a game you have any interest in at all? Do yourself a favor and check these out. There’s gorgeous play on shadows and light. Darkness and fog. It can be a bit disconcerting at times – a world of shadows and movements, and you will die wandering into the dark now and then. All the same, turn off your lights and play this in a dark room to fully appreciate the contrasting environment.


Music and Sound – 8:

Really almost no music to speak of, but honestly? You don’t miss it in this game. That’s because the environmental effects are so good. They don’t help you in the way that a surround system in Modern Warfare 2 does – you don’t hear a bullet striking near your back, left shoulder or anything like that. But there’s a wide variety of creepy sound effects, squeaking sounds and specific cues that not only effectively assist in presenting a spectacular atmosphere, but are useful in some of the puzzles as well (especially near the end where listening to the beats can help you navigate some very precisely timed puzzles).

Gameplay – 8.5:

The controls, like so much of the presentation, are both simple and yet beautifully implemented. You move your character around, and you have a jump button (that if you hold down can enact a sort of skipping animation that is rather nice) and an ‘action’ button that you press to interact with various things in your environment. That’s it. And while the control scheme itself may look shallow at a glance, its implementation is anything but. That same action button can pull crates, flip switches, activate levers and all of these things tie into the puzzles in their own way. Just when you think you’ve figured out what the game is going to throw at you, it tosses you something new. The difficulty of the puzzles scales nicely, from very simple early on to rather complex by the end of the game, but you very seldom get too frustrated. There were a few puzzles where I died a lot, but the game is very kind in that you respawn at the start of a new puzzle. Now, some puzzles are a bit longer to complete than others, so you may find yourself doing the same thing over and over again as you try to get your timing down, but the game doesn’t cheat – it’s your own fault and your own timing you need to perfect.

Intangibles – 7:

The game has amazing atmosphere. I was lost in it while I played, and it was almost jarring at times when one of my kids would ask me a question or if I had to get up to do something. There’s some unlockables that you can get which are kind of cool. For starters, the achievements are mostly based on finding ‘eggs’ along the way, and most of these are not in plain sight and easy to acquire. You can get a couple of items for your avatar though, if you enjoy changing those around on Xbox live – you can get a “Limbo” shirt (naturally it’s black with white lettering – simple yet fits the theme) for finding an egg, and another item you can get is a little critter as a pet. He’s a little black… well, critter, and you earn him by beating the game. It’s a small set of things, but it’s nice. The puzzles are varied and the game never really bored me. So why only a 7? It’s just too short. Short enough for me to recommend against it? Probably not – I’m very glad to have gotten to play it and I picked it up as part of the Xbox summer of arcade deal – having grabbed 2 other games and getting the bonus 400 Microsoft points. But the came can be beaten in about 3 or 4 hours. 5 if you die lots. In fact, there’s an achievement I haven’t gotten to try yet but plan to where you have to beat the game in a single sitting without dying more than 5 times. Taking a look around the internet and leaderboards, and it looks like quite a few people have done this. For roughly $15/1,200 points, that just doesn’t feel like enough game time. Make it 800 points/$10 and I think it’s a bit more fairly priced.

Overall – 8.2:

This is a very atmospheric game that is a fun blend of platforming and puzzling. It’s just short. Way too short. And without any kind of multiplayer and online, there’s really not much to encourage a 2nd playthrough other than looking for the achievements you missed the first time through. Also it should be noted that the main protagonist is a young boy. This young boy meets a variety of grizzly ends. You don’t see red blood splattered over the place, but you die often and to things such as spiders, buzz saws, drowning and even bear traps. The imagery may not be suitable to young children, especially those prone to nightmares. The game is like a single giant nightmare for a young boy, really.

And then there’s the story. Limbo – one of the definitions from earlier: a region on the border of hell or heaven, serving as the abode after death of unbaptized infants (limbo of infants)

The game starts with a simple cut scene. Keep in mind, there’s no voice narration or even long scrolling blocks of text to detail the story. When you reach the end it’s left a bit ambiguous. The developers have even said as much – that they are leaving it open for interpretation. I know how I took it, but it’s certainly not the way everyone else will – just looking up limbo ending discussion on Google returns tons of theories on it, and I will link these three here – each site/link is different for those curious about it – but it’s left open-ended by the developers for us to draw our own conclusions. It’s open-ended stuff, and there’s plenty of spoilers on those pages. What else can I say about the game? It's a bit too short for its price, but it's a hauntingly beautiful yet eerie one that certainly made an impact on me during and after playing it, and I'm glad I had to chance to do so.

More Limbo Videos

Read More

Gaming News and Notes from 9-17-10

Well, there's been a few interesting odds and ends this week, so here's what I found:

Marvel Vs Capcom 3 is expected to release in March.

The fairly new action MMO APB has already said they are closing down, though there's rumors that Epic may be interested in picking it up.

Team ICO has a release collection for Shadow of the Colossus and Ico (two very cool old school games) - basically getting the God of War collection HD update - with 3d graphic support.

Epic Mickey is expected for Nov 30th.

The developers of Demon's Souls have a new game in the works - and it won't be ps3 exclusive.

There's a new Devil May Cry. Disgaea 4, and Ninja Gaiden 3 all on tap with future releases.

And then for the big gaming elephant in the room, a humble little title called Halo: Reach rolled out this week - to the tune of $200 million in the first 24 hours. Of course not all is roses on this front, as there's been reports of some disc errors. Still, the reviews have been good from most of the critics and it sure seems like Bungie put out a ton of effort for this last release in the series (from them. No doubt Microsoft will keep sequels, prequels and spinoffs coming). Here's a brief article where Bungie discusses their interest in their new contract to work with Activion - largely due to Blizzard's standing as one of the top online entities in gaming. You can read about it here.

And in other Halo news - I too succumbed to it yesterday. A combination of good deals got me on board with it. First, Microsoft is offering 40% off if you upgrade from silver to gold this week - making it $30 instead of the usual $50. And the price goes up in a couple of months to $60, so if you're on the fence for this, it is not a bad idea to consider the upgrade. They are also offering some sort of a helmet/avatar throw-in that you get a code emailed to you in a few weeks. On top of that, Walmart is giving away $20 gift cards if you purchase Halo: Reach this week (one of my co-workers said he got the same deal through Best Buy as well). With it came a code for a helmet addon in-game and it had a nice free 2 day gold code I gave to my son for when he plays.

I haven't touched campaign mode yet - I logged about 5 hours of online last night though, and my impressions are quite favorable so far. I had a lot of fun, but want to dig into some of the other features before making a full post review of it. I'm also close to the end of Limbo and plan to write up a review on that as well, but wanted to beat it and grab a few of the achievements before sharing that review as well - so I should have a couple coming in a matter of days if time allows. Until then - take care.

Read More

Gaming News and Notes from 9-10-10

So, here's some stuff I've seen lately that caught my eye:

Valkyria Chronicles 2 for the PSP has been getting some good reviews (I need to grab this one still), and now there's some free DLC coming soon too - very cool!

I used to be a really heavy World of Warcraft player over two different periods of time, but I quit playing back around the new year. The monthly costs were just starting to get to me. The rather well-received Lord of the Rings Online game however just went free-to-play today. Reviews have been good in the past, and you can apparently download the core game that supports leveling up to 50, and you don't even need a credit card to start playing. You can however purchase in-game items with money if you so choose, and if you want the expansions you do have to shell out for that as well. Still, might well be worth looking into - I believe I will be soon.

IGN had a pretty cool retrospective on one of my favorite video game systems, the Sega Dreamcast. Not exactly new news, but a cool read if you too have fond memories of that ill-fated but well-made system. They did something similar for the Playstation 1, which is 15 years old now.

Apparently the new Xbox 360 has been selling very well of late according to this article.

For those Mac users lacking a PC or console system who have long craved some mayhem, the Grand Theft Auto 3-pack for the Mac may be just what you're looking for. Never been a huge fan of the series myself, but I know a lot of people are, so this may be worth a peek.

Good news of the Dissida: Final Fantasy game for the PSP (this would so very much include me, who is still grinding away at it) - There's going to be a sequel and a couple of characters have been announced. One of them is Lightning from the most recent Final Fantasy 13 game.

Read More

Madden 2011 - Xbox 360/PS3 game review

I sunk a lot of time into this year’s NCAA college football game before posting a review. Well, I probably doubled that for Madden 2011. I’ll start by saying I really like college football and in general, football games, but I am a huge fan of the NFL. I have anywhere from 3-5 fantasy football leagues every year that I participate in. I can name the starting qb and hb and #1 wr for pretty much any team in the league. My first real exposure to football was the dual-discovery of Barry Sanders on Sundays and early Madden and Tecmo Super Bowl games. I spent way too much time using the Lions and/or Buffalo Bills during the Tecmo Super Bowl game for my NES. I would rack up some pretty incredible single season stats. I’m also someone who tends to pick up Madden every year, despite the cries of those who feel that Madden is nothing more than a yearly roster update that should be offered for $10 or $15 downloadable content instead of a full $60 game purchase. So, I will try to look at this game and review from a few different angles, making comparisons to last year’s iteration and this year’s college football at times. I also kept quite a few stats from the majority of my first season of Madden, including comments and notions I jotted down. Basically, I made it a lengthy homework assignment. The aspect of the game I get the most mileage out of is the Franchise mode, but I will touch on the others as well. Here goes:

Graphics – 8.0:

This is sort of a personal preference, but I actually liked the look of NCAA’s player models better. Somehow they looked grittier to me, a bit more real. The Madden models seem so bright in some of their uniforms that they almost look cartoon-like at times to me. That’s not to say that they are bad – just sort of a personal preference/observation. The animations get better all of the time it seems, and this year was no different. Many of the tackling animations looked really good, and there were some really good catch animations. All in all, it looks really good, though I don’t know that it is a huge improvement from last year’s version on this front – but it is better. I did see some weird stuff going no with hands from time to time – but that’s probably to be expected. Still, every now and then you see hands going through a player’s body, or a ball ‘sticking’ to a hand that has some transparent space between them, which makes the fingers look oddly unrealistic as well. Still, this is nitpicking an overall great engine.

Sound and Music – 8.0:

The commentary is good. For those who follow the series, you know it started with John Madden and some of his Bang! and Pow! Maddenisms many years ago, and then over the years they began to layer on actual commentary in response to the action on the field. There have been some ups and downs in this area (including taking the voices overs out completely during the first year’s release on the current gen systems) – but the addition of Gus Johnson was a solid one I think, and I’ve always liked Chris Collinsworth in real life as well, so hearing these two talking about the action on the field is actually quite nice.

However, it’s probably time to update the system in some fashion. Basically pre-recorded ‘clips’ get assigned to the action on the field, and it doesn’t feel as fresh or ‘real’ as it did years ago. They did the same thing for Joe Montana’s talking football many moons ago – a couple of system generations back. Obviously this is much better, but maybe they can find ways to break up the pieces just a bit more and put them together a bit more fluidly. Because right now you hear most of the commentary the game has to offer in a single game or two, and I find many of the same things get said about the same guys over and over again. This is probably more pronounced when you do a franchise of some sort than say, online play where you might change the team you are using frequently, because you are using the same players game in and game out.

The music soundtracks they use are just fine – generally consisting of rock music that is a bit older like Crazy Train, but as that is some of my favorite music I can’t say I mind, and many of the songs compliment the game’s hard-hitting action. They primarily play during menu screens or between kickoffs – you don’t really hear it during the game action.

Gameplay – 8.5:

Madden has traditionally been a pretty smooth game to play. You won’t see a ton of innovation here on this front overall. Menus are still easy to navigate, your players control well. The addition of locomotion – using both analog sticks to control your ball carrier’s body a bit more precisely – feels good however. I love running the football. I probably have about a 60 or 65% run rate for my offensive plays, so this was a welcome if somewhat subtle change for me. Raising the game level in difficulty does tend to strain reality a bit once in awhile (watching a middle linebacker pull off a 1-handed stretching interception of a bullet pass on Madden difficulty is one of those blood pressure raising events that Madden has always been able to annoy me with). The blocking has been greatly improved as well. As a fan of pounding the run game down my opponent’s throat – that’s a nice, subtle change as well. Better yet, they seem to have addressed one of my biggest grips from Madden games of years past and even this year’s college football. The pancake numbers seem much more in-line between played teams and simulated ones.

In years past (all but 1 or 2 in fact, once they added/tracked the pancake stat, which is when an offensive player lays out a defensive one with a block), the simulated teams would get tons of pancakes. League leaders would get upward of 150 on the season. Meanwhile played teams might get 1 or 2 a game. 3 if you were really ramming the ball at them 70 or 75 percent of the time. This really affected your player’s development since you could not build up good stats in this area. Now? I’m finding that my mediocre Lions line’s best pancaker is finishing out the season well out of first place, but by a margin that’s a bit more realistic. At the end of year 1, my leading blocker had 6 pancakes. Not a great total, but the Lions line is very ‘meh’. League leader? 23. So the discrepancy is not bad at all. Of course, it may be a moot point if you consider that stats really don’t factor into development now, but I’ll go into that in a bit.

There are a lot of customization here as well – sliders for various aspects of the game for both the player and the computer, difficulty settings, volume controls, etc.

One of the newest features being plugged by EA has been Game Flow. This was a feature I was very skeptical of when I first heard of it. Basically, it’s a dressed-up version of the long-standing “Ask Madden” feature where it tries to select the play from your playbook that best suits the situation. I don’t always find myself agreeing with those choices, but most of the time they’re fine. It also does seem to speed up the game a bit (roughly 10 minutes per game), and does lend more variety to your attacks on offense and defense. This is also a handy feature for newer players, or so I would imagine. It saves having the player fly around the playbook frantically looking for a play that might work while being pressed for time. There’s also a bit of audio commentary with play selection that breaks down what’s happening on the field. I don’t really gain anything from it, but my kids seem to so it serves a purpose depending on your level of skill.

Intangibles – 8.0:

I love Franchise Mode. I take my poor beleaguered Detroit Lions to the Super Bow that they will never likely reach in real life, and watch as their young, high draft picks from recent years turn into amazing NFL superstars. But I don’t feel like there was much change to the franchise mode this season. If anything, some stuff got stripped out. They used to approach player progression in different ways years past. You could do drills before the season or during the week (depending on how far back in the annals of Madden you want to go) to give you some customized development of your young talents. In other years they offered improvement around every 4 weeks or so, based on your statistics. In other years they only did it once, at the end of the year, based on your season stats (in what other world could Joey Harrington become a 99 overall QB? In the one I play football in!). This year sort of strips all of that out though. I much, MUCH preferred the beginning of the year training camp drills with bigger boosts than the much smaller, incremental boosts that came with weekly training. Now? You get neither. Also, the only progression takes place at the end of the year, and from what I’ve seen, it has a lot more to do with their ‘potential’ rating than any impressive (or pathetic) numbers they hung up over the course of the season. I really preferred the every four weeks route myself with a smaller gain at the end of the season, but to have my stats mean little to nothing? It feels cheap, and there’s a lot of people online who insist that stats don’t factor at all – that it’s strictly potential-based, which would be a mistake.

Online Team play is something I don’t do much of, but it’s done pretty well this year. It’s the kind of feature I’d have used more probably in years past when my friends kept up on the current versions of Madden, but they tend to fall into the ‘it should be a yearly $15 roster update’ category. There’s mixed feelings about the ‘boosts’ you can get. For example if you play WR and play it really well, you will gain statistical ‘boosts’ when you play that position in future Online Team games.

Next up is the Superstar mode. This is probably my 2nd favorite mode. So that it, like Franchise Mode, doesn’t feel any different – that’s a pretty big disappointment to me, honestly. I like that you can import your Road to Glory player from NCAA 11 into the Superstar mode, but that’s not a new feature and I’d like to see it get a bit more attention sooner than later.

There’s a new Ultimate Team Mode – think of it as getting virtual football cards to help design a team to play against other teams. It’s a cool concept, but it doesn’t feel like it was fully fleshed out. It also feels like a bit of a money grab from EA in that you can spend actual money to buy more virtual cards. It, like many of the boosts you can buy for your teams (seriously – improved development, keep a player from retiring, etc?) – these are paid for features you can apply to your franchise modes – both offline and it looks like online. I have to speculate on this feature because there’s no way I’m paying more money just to improve my players, but there’s going to be people out there who do, and that’s doubly annoying in my mind, since your opponent may be getting better due to a credit card payment, not actual skill. I have a small complaint about the way Madden and EA in general have been handling these extra money grabs in general – I am a huge opponent to the idea of online passes where you have to buy the game new, or if you want online access you have to go online and pay for a code that grants it to you. I buy almost all of my games used. Madden is one of the few I actually do buy new, but on principle it gets me riled up as they apply it to more games like Mass Effect 2 and the Cerberus network. Anyway, end of rant, but that mode led up to it perfectly. 

There’s a lot to do and there’s a lot of ways to do it. That generally makes Madden a pretty good value. Here’s the question when considering intangibles – do you have last year’s game? If so, then it may not be worth it to you to pick up this year’s game. Most of the new changes are well implemented, but if like me you spend most of your time in a relatively untouched Franchise mode, you’re essentially getting a few general engine changes and a roster update. If you’re someone who likes to play online, then there’s a lot more mileage to get out of the game. If it’s been a couple of years and you have an NFL itch this year? Then you’re looking at a quality game that should keep you entertained for quite some time.

Overall – 8:

Overall, it’s a good game. Is it perfect? No. Is it a huge change and improvement over last year’s game? Not really. I took a lot of note on stats, things that happened, how long games took, etc – to give you an idea of some of the settings as well. I’ll put those down here in the Overall section, in case they’re of interest to you at a glance.

Game #2 of the season (pro difficulty):

Stafford had 17 completions for 357 yards and 5 tds. I had 96 yards running with no TD’s on my primary halfback. Both my TE and #1 WR had over 100 yards and 1 td’s. I won 62-3 and the game took 40 minutes to get through while skipping most of the replays while using Game Flow to make my play selections

Game #4 of the season (pro difficulty):

Stafford ha 8 completions for 239 yards, 5 tds, and my rb had 205 yards, 2 tds. The score was 70-31 and I called my own plays throughout instead of using Game Flow. It took 48 minutes to finish. There were 2 very cool animations in this game:

#1 – A TE tried to make a leaping sideline catch, bouncing up and down on one leg like a human pogo stick as he tried to stay inbounds to make the highlight catch, but was unable to get the 2nd foot down inbounds.

#2 – I threw a bomb to the endzone with a DB and WR jumping up for the ball and colliding in the air, hitting the nearby ref and forcing him to the ground to crawl away as they landed beside him. Cool stuff.

Next game was with all default settings – speed, using Game Flow throughout, watching the replays and Pro difficulty. The results:

I won 52-10. Stafford threw for 11 completions and 171 yards with 3 tds, though no receivers broke 60 yards receiving. My running back, Best, went off for 252 yards on 24 carries and 2 tds. The game took 51 minutes to complete. Some more observations I made while taking notes after the game:

I experienced an audio oddity – after a fumble recovery for a td by my defensive end, Collinsworth went straight from talking about how hard it is to scoop up one of those footballs and run with it, into talking about what a perfect route he ran for a touchdown catch.

There was a cool animation showing a WR getting hit after getting both hands on the ball, and then a 2nd defender came in to knock it out of his hands for the incomplete

Game Flow failed to recognize that the opposing team was doing an onside kick, lining me up for a traditional return, so I had to call a time out and manually call this one play.

Cool yet annoying animation when fielding a deep kickoff in my own endzone – but a would-be blocker motions for my returner to stay in the endzone and down the ball. It was neat-looking, but on the next play I came out anyway and this blocker was now way out of position.

Neat cut scene – it was Rams at Detroit, and there was a fan wearing a Rams’ player’s jersey (Jackson’s) – with 7 seconds left in the 4th during a dead ball. It showed the player wearing the losing team’s jersey shuffling toward the exit , visibly disheartened.

As I increased the difficulty, the scores certainly got closer. In Madden difficulty I had a few games decided by less than a touchdown, so that felt considerably more authentic than the default difficulties, which makes perfect sense really.

More Madden NFL 11 Videos

Read More

Kingdoms of the Lost - 10 year anniversary

So, I'm diverging just a bit from my usual posts - as is very evident by now, I am a huge fan of video games, but I also grew up on tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, etc. Along the way, I discovered text-based online communities called MUDs. I played a few on and off over the years, but then in August of 2010 my wife and I started our own called Kingdoms of the Lost. It's swords and sorcery fare, and we've met and worked with a lot of amazing people over the years. We're actually celebrating our 10 year anniversary at KotL

This type of game's obviously not for everyone. In the day and age of modern MMORGP's like World of Warcraft, Everquest, Lord of the Rings Online - MUDs have fallen off the map somewhat. However, right now we have 12 people on, and last night we had about 20 on - 5 years ago we had 60 on, so while it's dwindled, it hasn't gone away. To see who's on now, you can click here.

Still, it's free. It's a community. It's an opportunity to roleplay, meet new people, kill some time at work (if you're like me and lucky enough to have cpu access) or between classes - whatever. Anyway, there's a lot going on this week, so if you have any interest in taking a peek in, this is a good time to do so. We're giving away lots of free in-game stuff, we've just added a ton of new content and we've seen some of our old friends resurface lately on there as well. 10 years... It's been a long, fun ride.

How to play? Well, you need to connect, either via telnet or by downloading a client - I use GMUD - and directing it to kotl.org port 2222

Here's some more information about the game:

Our website

Our community supported story archive

Our Facebook page

Our Forum

Some information about the game

Read More

Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgment - Xbox 360 review

I remember playing the original Vandal Hearts a very long time ago and enjoying it thoroughly. As I commented recently as well, I really enjoy strategy/rpg games quite a bit, which is why even though I thought some of the aspects of Agarest War could have been better, I'm currently giving it a 2nd playthrough. Well, a couple of months ago there was a deal where you could buy Xbox 360 arcade games at a discounted price, and this game was among them.

Graphics - 4:

I realize it's an arcade game, so the bar tends to be a bit lower, but they are pretty bad here. The combat maps are at least more visually interesting than Record of Agarest War, with different levels and surprisingly expansive terrains. Now, for the cut scenes - what the heck? The disproportionate looking characters are odd to look at and it doesn't look very good either. When people speak, the picture that pops up is very average (at best) as well. At least I was able to appreciate the overall artistic direction of Agarest War. I'm not sure what direction they were going with in Vandal Hearts, but the result was very poor.

Music and Sound - 6:

The music's not bad - I especially like the somewhat chorus-like startup music. They make little comments with voice overs I can actually understand (unlike the Japanese laden voices of Agarest - sorry, I'm going to keep comparing these two as they're similar games I'm playing right now at the same time). There's some varied combat sounds to help keep things from getting too repetitive as well. Still, some of those combat sounds really got on my nerves - especially when you were hitting someone. My wife asked me why my characters were continually kicking dogs at one point, the wolves were making such a horrible whimpering sound every-single-time-I-hit-them. And if you have a spell that hits 3 or 4 guys at once, they all make a loud combined sound that had a tendency to be a bit grating. Plus, while it was nice understanding what my characters were saying, they didn't have a lot of variety in what they said on the map.

Gameplay - 7:

Not bad at all. It's mostly menu-driven stuff, but it is easy enough to navigate them and moving around the map isn't too hard. The camera angles were sometimes a tad bit annoying, but you can spin the camera and tilt the landscape to vary your view, though it seemed like on some maps I was doing this for every single turn, which was a bit annoying. Still, the combat moves along at a brisk pace and things like flanking, terrain types, height of terrain, etc - all of that is a factor, which is very cool.

Intangibles - 7:

I've only beaten it once, but I've heard there's at least 2 different endings so I'm giving it a 2nd play through now. Still, a built-in reason for an extra play is nice. There are questions along the way you are asked to answer - I'm curious to see if these actually change the story or just alter what's said right after - we'll see. The game's not terribly long, but there's hidden maps to find and the system used for character progression is kind of cool - basically the more you use a skill - melee, archery, magic - the better you get in that area, so you can customize a character if you want to, though some of them are predisposed to certain things so it's easier to just continue along that path.

Overall - 6:

The game could be a bit longer - and the graphics really hurt the score. That said, if you're a fan of this type of game, you're not in it for the graphic realism most of the time. It appeals to me the same way Record of Agarest does. Vandal Hearts is not as good - it's not as deep of a game. You won't be playing it nearly as long and there's not as much to do in it. That said, if you're looking for a turn-based strategy game, that's relatively inexpensive (I got it for around $8, and I believe the regular full price rings in about $15 on both Xbox and Playstation 3) - so it's still a pretty good price for what you are getting.

Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgment at IGN.com

Read More