Lugaru HD

So I finally finished Lugaru HD on the easiest difficulty. Holy crap was it brutal!

When starting out, go here and watch the bottom video. It will explain how fighting work. It makes a lot of sense, but is quite gaming intuitive, since more games don't get into the nitty gritty of how melee fighting works.

You can fudge your way through quite a few levels, but then you will hit a brick wall referred to as "3 wolves". There are enough forum posts about this specific fight to confirm I was not the only person to get massacred at this fight.

The controls are simple, and combinations of them are the key to performing different moves at different times.

The fighting animations and technical finesse are quite amazing, and the physics was enjoyable. Quite often something would happen that would trigger an explosion of force, so the enemy or you would ragdoll about 50 feet in the air. Hilarious (unless it's you, for the 20th time, again the 3 wolves...)

The graphics are outdated, but enough to get the point across. The moves are well understood when they're happening, the animations blend extremely well on the models.

I really liked that there's more depth in the game than is immediately visible. Wolves tracking by scent, they can smell blood, etc. If you want to ignore the details you can also just pretend they have a sixth sense and try to kill them anyways.


Would I recommend playing this game? Yes, because it's extremely unique and enjoyable once you understand the fighting.

Am I ashamed for not playing this earlier, since I've had this since the first Humble Bundle went live. Yes, yes I am.

Batman: Arkham City

Once again, Rocksteady does an amazing job at making Batman awesome. In this one, you even get to play as Catwoman to change things up a bit. The entire game, including DLC took me about 21 hours to complete.

So instead of my normal review structure, I'm just going to say that it was every bit as good as Arkham Asylum, and then some. I'll now go into the and them some.

What I liked:
Unique gadgets? Yep, they added quite a few, including my all new favorite type of grenade that let's me incapacitate a single enemy in a fight, and take them down last. There are also tons of new enemies. Enemies with body armor you have to focus beat down, or they just keep coming back at you. Enemies with car doors, and you have to knock it out of their hands with a cool move. They also kept all the same ones as before (guns, knives, stun rods, snipers, etc.)

The boss fights step it up to a much better level than the first. There are actually tactics relevant to the boss, and it's not as repetitive. They also look awesome.

What I didn't like:
Zsasz kept calling on a nearby phone whenever I got close to my next objective. Then he'd make me fly across the entire city to answer another phone, just pushing back my progress! Inconsiderate jerk! Well, that's what he's supposed to do, and at least I got my grappling hook speed boost from the VR training. Yes, you should get that as soon as possible, and yes, the VR training are ridiculously hard. Especially VR training #1. If you miss a single target, you fail, they tell you you failed, and you have to run/fly/climb your way back to the start to retry.

The other thing that was a bit annoying was that it wasn't as straight-forward for me to figure out where to go, even with an icon standing over the map. This is probably because the game went from an asylum, with narrow passages, limited pathing to an open city. I'm also really bad at figuring out what a game wants me to do, so there's that. =\

And there were a few fights where it was tight quarters against very tough opponents. Dying a few times, listening to Joker/Strange/etc. tell me I'm dead, and trying again. Still better than just repeatedly fighting 2-3 pseudo-Banes like in the first. =)

The equipment upgrades are good, but after a I got about 1/2 way in, I was just filling out the rest because I had the points.

In summary, if you liked the first one, get on this now. It's amazing and well worth whatever price it's currently listed for.

DLC: Harley's Revenge
2-3 hours of solid story, fights, and trying out a new character. Also much fewer distractions than the main game. Get it.

Journey

I had many people tell me that I should play Journey. I didn't realize what type of game it was until I went to the session on designing Journey by Jenova Chen at GDC13. After I got back home, I bought it and beat it in the same day.


The controls are extremely simple. The left thumbstick moves your character. Tilting the controller or using the right thumbstick turns the camera. Pressing O will put out a small ping with a symbol indicating your name. Holding down O will put out a stronger ping. Pinging is mainly for activating world objects. When powered up you can fly briefly by pressing X. You can get powered up by touching the ribbons in the world, being pinged by another player, or colliding with another player.


The graphics were very good and stylized. There were large deserts with ruins scattered throughout, dark caves, temples, and frozen wastelands. The air physics on the ribbons in the world look really good, also the strong winds that push you back in the cold.

The music and sound affects are very good. The music beautifully sets the tone and the sound affects resonates the mood.

The game also has seamless coop. The way it works is it finds people in your area of the game, and seamlessly joins them into your game so you can see other people on their journey. I ran into a few different people near the start, but then I ran into someone about 10-15 minutes in that seemed to share my way of exploring the world and solving puzzles. Their name was a symbol that looked like two lowercase n's on top, and two vertical lines on the bottom, so that was my only indication that it was the same person.

I played with them to the completion of the game. When monsters were attacking one of us, the other instinctively ran to the other for support. When one of us was being blocked by harsh winds, the other would wait so we could carry on as a team. When we were trudging through the thick snow, forced to walk slower, and slower, the other was right there. There was nothing keeping us tied together except for the desire for us to travel together, and not brave it alone. At the end of the game, it tells you who the other symbols are, this person was SweetCupcake16. If you're out there, thanks.

Normally I would find something to complain about in a game, but I don't really have anything here. The game wasn't too short or too long. I got through it in roughly the time it takes to watch a long movie. On top, I always felt like I was progressing and seeing new things. The controls were concise, the graphics amazing, the sound brilliant.

I highly recommend playing this game. It was a great experience and well worth it. If you have a PS3 and haven't played this game yet, you need to get it right now.

The Binding of Isaac + All DLC

So I tried to pick this back up recently and had the same issues I had before. It's painfully unforgiving. I used JoyToKey, configured for my Xbox360 controller, so it wasn't the controls that made it hard. I even gave this another stab, but felt the same jab of unforgiving gameplay.

It's similar to FTL in it's "you get one chance, and you died, so start from the beginning" mentality, which is horribly frustrating. If I didn't save scum my way through FTL, I would have never seen more than the first phase of the last boss.


Things I liked:
* the power ups were unique and interesting
* keys/bombs/money/health are limited, so you have to spend carefully on possibly good items
* you can jump into the game really quick and just go

Things I didn't like:
* not knowing what the heck an item did. I spent at least as much time on the wiki as I did playing the game
* the graphics of the game are honestly a bit gross
* you can very quickly go from doing amazing to completely dead

After dying repeatedly, even with awesome upgrades, it was time to just mark the game as "will not finish".

An example of one playthrough
* level 1 - got double tears shooting,some bombs, beat boss
* level 2- added tears power, got more money, and bombs, beat boss
* level 3 - got very powerful tears, tons of money, even more bombs, beat boss
* level 4 - got dead cat (you are reduced to 1 heart, but get 9 lives), got stuck behind required room with 6 enemies that do a full heart for damage at range -- lost all 9 lives and died
* flips table

One of my last playthroughs:
* level 1 - split tears, beat boss
* level 2 - faster tears, more powerful, beat boss
* level 3 - beat boss, fought demon, even more powerful tears
* level 4 - slaughtered every room, accidentally found envy boss, died as he humped me into a wall because I wasn't fast enough


Would I recommend this game? I'm not sure. I'm glad I played it, I might talk about it with friends if they bring it up, but overall it was honestly extremely frustrating.

Will I try it again later on? Maybe, but probably not. It really sucks to end on a losing note, but when I have such a crazy long backlog of games, it's really not worth wasting my time on something this frustrating. I think I'll stop while my table is still right-side up.

Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction

Of the many Ratchet & Clank games I've played, this is the second I've beaten.

The controls are like any other third person shooter. Move with left thumbstick, move the camera with the right. Shoot with R1, and hold L2 to strafe. Very intuitive, very easy.

The story gives you some more background into why the Lombax are missing. Not that the story is too deep.

The gameplay is like any other R&C game. Shoot stuff to get bolts, power up your weapons through use, and buy ammo/weapons with bolts. This is the first time I saw the new system of upgrading your weapons with crystals, which was a nice touch. I'm sure this came about in an earlier game, but this is the first I experienced it. Using crystals, you can power up your weapon in a variety of ways - more bolts from kills, more crystals from kills, more ammo, more damage, or something specific to the gun (faster shooting, acid explosions, etc.)

The graphics are good. The keep it a cartoony, so it has the R&C feel to it.

The voice acting is good, and the sound effects are quite nice. I just finished getting myself up to a 3.1 sound system, so I enjoyed the explosions a lot.


Things I need to gripe about:

They use the six-axis in a few unique ways, most of which were not enjoyable to me.
1) In a hacking mini-game, you use it to move a ball around a grid to connect circuits. I'd rather just use the left thumbstick
2) To control a specific weapon's destruction path, which makes controlling your character, your view, and it's path extremely difficult. It's unique, but not really enjoyable. This was the only weapon not at max level by the end of the game.
3) In very short mini-games where you are controlling Ratchet as he skydives down to a planet. Typically I just end up spinning it in a circle, as that avoids most enemies/missiles headed my way.
4) It also plays a small part in a pirate dancing game. This was the only tolerable one.




The checkpoints are abysmal. There were numerous times where a 10-20 minute stretch of the game was extended by 40-50 minutes because I kept falling off a ledge and having to repeat an entire sequence of rail-riding mini-games, or platform jumping nausea.

Falling off ledges and getting thrown back to the last checkpoint is very anti-climactic. I would rather die from getting shot or swarmed by mobs than falling off a ledge. And yes, there are lots of places to easily fall to your death.

Things that were fun:

Leveling up weapons, and blowing up enemies with more and more powerful weapons. That's tons of fun.

Keeping your weapons levels and your bolts on death is also great. This was the only good part of the checkpoint system. I found a great spot early in the game where I could kill a huge group of enemies, then jump off a cliff - keeping my earned bolts, crystals, and weapon levels. I used this exploit to power level 2-3 weapons very early on in the game. Pew pew pew, jump off cliff, repeat.





To borrow from Austin's blog:

What I expected: a simple third person shooter with neat weapons that I could finish in a few days.

What I got: a simple third person shooter with neat weapons, made longer by a horrible checkpoint spacing.

Would I recommend the game? Yes, because despite it's flaws, it was a really fun game.

How could it have been better? Make the six-axis controls optional and fix the spacing of the checkpoints.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution: The Missing Link DLC

Making this a quick and easy to read addition to the Deus Ex review, the DLC was good.

They start the story by taking away all of your Praxis points, but then give you back a bunch soon after. I felt a little cheated by this because I had a ridiculous amount of Praxis points by the time the DLC happens in the main story. AKA: We've replaced your level 20 character with a new level 8 character. =(

They did a good job with the layouts, stealth, and hacking. For some reason, I didn't realize you could drag a guards body over to a laser grid to disable it, just like it does for them as they walk by. This makes sneaking into some places much easier!


I was greatly confused with where the DLC was. It turns out it's a separate game on Steam you have to download. That was confusing.

Also, after playing through more of the same, I will say that the voice acting was still good, but the character animations during dialogs can feel a bit animatronic. Maybe there was a limit on the number of animation gestures they had?

Overall I greatly enjoyed the DLC. I beat it in around 7 hours, and basically in one sitting. I couldn't put it down.

Oh, and I got 9/10 achievements! Because one of the achievements is just insane... I was actually aiming for that achievement when I started until I realized it also requires not spending any Praxis points. Yeah, screw that!

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

So I just finished this game, clocking in around 40 hours of playtime. Wow, that's a work week... Overall it was  really good game, and I would recommend picking it up.

The controls are like any FPS, and handle quite well. It can get a bit tricky if you're trying to do something odd, like jump on top of something in a nook high up, but that's par for all FPS' controls.

The graphics are really good. They do pull you out of gameplay and into a beautifully rendered cutscenes, but it's not that often.

The gameplay is good. Most of the time they let you respond as you can in-game for quests and interactions, which is really awesome. Think Bethesda AI, but no one cares if you steal. The dialog system they use is also really neat, because you have to maneuver your way through conversations, which have multiple outcomes. Most of those outcomes are not good, so that's awesome too. You can also get an enhancement that helps persuade people, but you don't always need this to get what you want.


The hacking mini games can get tedious until you have enough upgrades. Once I got enough, it was tolerable to get through the complex hacking layouts. Hacking stealth and hacking skill are the two enhancements you need. Stealth will prevent the AI from activating, so you have a good chance of getting through undetected, and hacking level will allow you to hack higher level systems. You will still have to reload occasionally, because sometimes a 15% chance of being detected, results in being detected. =\ By the end of the game I had 77 Nuke Virus Softwares and 61 Stop! Worm Softwares collecting dust in my inventory, so they're pretty liberal with those. When the going gets tough, use them!

A noted minor annoyance of the hacking system - whenever successfully hacking a terminal you get experience. The experience notification is on the right side of the screen, preventing you from reading the email text immediately...

The sound effects and voice acting were spot-on. So I really enjoyed hearing the characters talk, and the bones cracking as I silently took down guards. On that note, the stealth enhancement is really useful for maneuvering around guards, or sneaking into a blind spot then shooting 3 guards with the stun gun. The multiple take down enhancement was also useful.




Oh, and there are boss fights. But they're not really fights, as much as lessons in humiliation for not getting the typhoon enhancement. Seriously.

1. Attempt boss fight with guns, fail
2. Attempt boss fight with guns and grenades, fail
3. Attempt boss fight again, changing tactics, fail
4. Attempt boss fight, yet again, using different weapons, and running away a lot, fail
5. Run up and use typhoon weapon a few times... win - W.T.F.
6.  
7.  

I should note that I beat one of the bosses without the typhoon, but it took a lot of head shots, a few grenades, and about 10 reloads. I bee-lined for the typhoon upgrade afterwards.

The story was really good, and I liked how the side-quests inter weaved with the main plot. You don't feel like you were off doing something that didn't even matter. So huge props to Eidos for that.


Oh, and I did a stealth play through, if that wasn't apparent. So I maybe killed 10 people throughout the entire game. I did end up lugging around tons of weapons because I often went out of my way to a vendor and sold it all for cash. Then I used the cash to purchase Praxis points at the LIMB clinic as often as stock allowed. They do have automatic inventory management, so it will pack it in there nice and tight, so you don't have to play Tetris to fit in the new gun you found.

If you haven't figured it out by now, the game is great with a few minor gripes. Pick it up already!