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!

Orcs Must Die! 2

I got to a point where I had a few levels left on the game, but got stuck. Then I gave up and looked at YouTube, then took a break from the game. Today, I came back and finished it up.

The controls are like a typical FPS as far as shooting, and setting up traps is as easy as point and click. Rapid fire would have been kinda nice though. I can only play so much Orcs Must Die before I get defeated by carpal tunnel. Same as when I played Aquaria...

The graphics are basically the same as the first one. Very polished, very stylized, and perfect for the game.



The game play is the same as before, except they seem to like forcing you to defend two rifts. Perhaps as a prod toward co-op... hmm?

The sound effects are the same as well, good feedback when shooting stuff, very good voice overs for the characters. Overall just great.

The one minor annoyance I have is that you have to choose to be the Sorceress or War Mage at the start. As you progress through the game, they have a few traps that are specific to that character, and you hear more of their side of the story (I assume). FYI, the War Mage gets the floor tar trap... that is the best trap ever... and I beat the game without it. *sad face* After I completed the game with the Sorceress, I wondered if I could play with the War Mage and just burn through the game real quick. Nope, you get no skulls from your other character, no trap unlocks, no levels unlocked, nothing.

The one awesome thing they added is the ability to reset what you spent your skulls on, so you can try out enhancing other traps/weapons/trinkets/etc. Or, in most cases, optimize which should be enhanced for the level at hand.

To help prevent you getting stuck I will recommend a few things:
1) sometimes the best traps are no traps (I seriously breezed through a level using only templars and archers)2) you will always have to be involved in the fight, so make sure you're fighting where your defenses are weakest
3)  barricades - you will always need these (see exception in rule #4)
4) the decoy trap is almost required for stopping Trolls, and this goes a lot smoother if you have a weapon that does a lot of damage (enhanced crossbow + head shots)



I would definitely recommend picking it up, especially if you enjoyed the first one.

Batman: Arkham Asylum

So, regardless of my previous post, I did go back and finish this game. Yes, it's that good.

The story is that Arkham Asylum goes to hell and Batman has to save the day. Quick to pull you in, and let you loose and get a feel for how you're Batman.


The controls are solid, with everything keeping you immersed and actually believing you are Batman. Even the mini games work out well, which was completely unexpected. It's unexpected in that there actually was a mini-game, and that they didn't pull me into a separate non-Batman experience to eat up time (Eg: BioShock, Alice: Madness Returns, etc.)

The graphics are amazing, and they used the Unreal engine really well for this game. Cookie cutter enemies you say? Yep, those are henchmen, and you kill many, many of them. The fact that they only look different based on what type they are is extremely helpful when you're fighting 20 of them, and need to pay special attention to particular types. Like the ones with pointy objects, or the other ones that shoot other smaller objects at high velocities.

The sound effects are spot-on, allowing you to hear the thuds of the punches and even the cracks of the ribs/skulls as you deliver the finishing blow. The voice acting was absolutely amazing. I don't think I would have enjoyed it enough to give it another shot if it wasn't for Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill. Then again, I can't imaging any Batman show/game without those two. They're just that good at delivering their characters.

The few things I didn't like about the game were the redundancy of the fights, as far as when you fight a bunch of mobs with a few stronger mobs. You end up doing it quite a few times before the game is over. I understand that you need filler, but the other unique fights, or encounters that are in the game were extremely entertaining. Even the sneak-around-and-take-people-out-silently "fights" were still more entertaining -- even if I did have to die ten times to get past one... Yep, I was doing it wrong.

If you haven't picked this up yet, then you are as bad as I am about playing games when they come out. Go pick it up and play it! Controller required.

I've heard the sequel is even more amazing, and I can't wait to start on it.

FTL

FTL is a single player game rogue-like space game.

You control a space ship, and have to escape star systems before the federation can catch you. You want to explore as much of the system as possible though, so you can collect more awesome things for your ship. The awesome things include additional crew members, scrap (currency), weapons, drones, ship augmentations, and new ship systems and system upgrades.

The controls are just point and click, with a few hotkeys from the keyboard thrown in. Space bar is pause, which you will be using often.

The graphics are basic, but get the job done. Think 16-bit.

The real hook of the game is that when you die, that's it. Here's your high score and you can now start again from the beginning. They allow you to save a continue file, so you can resume later on, but that's deleted when you load it. It's basically for allowing you to take a break and come back later.

You can also unlock in-game achievements that allow you to unlock more ships. I highly recommend pursuing these, because dying and having to restart with the same ship gets boring fast.

Now I played the game legitly for about 10 deaths, then I gave up and started backing up my continue file, and reloading from it whenever I died. I didn't save it every time I visited a new location in a system, but I generally saved it after making it through a system. With this I was finally able to finish the game.

I would highly recommend picking up the game, as it was a ton of fun. I would honestly try to play it the normal way a few times before you give up and backup your save files.

Minecraft

So I finally got around to playing this. I ended up starting in 1.3, and finishing in the 1.4.2 update. I would definitely recommend picking up a copy, even thought it's a $24. The amount of time I've sunk into this game more than makes up for the cost.

Minecraft is a single or multiplayer world building and exploring game. If you've played Terreria, it's the 3D predecessor to that, with more focus on building and less variety of weapons.

The story is as vague as they came make it. They start you off and you begin by punching a tree, and building wooden tools. Then working up to stone tools, then iron, then... and finally diamond. And lots of digging between tiers.

The controls are quite straight-forward, with the normal WASD for movement and mouse looking. Left click hits the object in front of you with what's in your hand, and the right click either activates an interact-able item, puts a block down, or uses a special action on your item.

The graphics are quite simplistic and extremely blocky, but it suits the game. You can set your render distance and a few other options, which is a nice choice to have. You can also load other texture packs, but I didn't try any of them out.

The sound affects are fine. The only annoying thing I will note is that zombie grunts/gargle sounds are audible through walls, so you will hear these often as you dig your tunnels to the center of the world.

The one thing I really liked is that when you craft items, you literally put together a picture of how you would put the item together. Thing about drawing a basic pick in a 3x3 grid, and that's exactly how you build a pick. So simple, I don't know why it took me so long to pick it up. I think it must be because most of the newer games just go with the approach of you can create a pick if you have the mats, with no interaction/assembly needed. Also, the amount of logic and mechanisms you can create in the game is really awesome. I spent a lot of time just tinkering with things and seeing how they work.

The few things I didn't like, made sense. Always dealing with hunger means you need to setup a means for feeding yourself, eg: making cookies from wheat and cocoa beans or feeding wheat to cows, and cooking beef. You could also combine mushrooms to make soup. See

Minecraft_Wiki for any crafting questions; this site is invaluable.

The "last boss fight" was complete BS, and I have no idea how anyone does this without abusing the system (tiny incremental progress -> save and quit, backup save -> continue -> dies instantly -> restore backup save, load game -> try again).

Now I must admit that I did cheat a bit. I never cheated to bypass content or get a tech advancement I didn't deserve. I cheated in the following ways:

1. I spawned two cows with INVedit, because I mistakingly slaughtered all cows within a 100m radius of my base. This was before I realized you could raise cows with wheat.
2. I gave my tools some enchantments with INVedit when I couldn't figure out how the darn enchantment system worked. I built 12 bookshelves near my enchanting table, but couldn't get anything above a level 8 enchantment. BTW, here's a great YouTube video for explaining how it works. So yes, I did figure it out eventually.
3. I gave myself some items for traversing the map quicker, to get a quick view of my surrounding with INVedit
4. After spending an hour looking for my second diamond vein, I just gave up and tool a peak at the world map with Minutor.

Torchlight 2

So, I bought the first Torchlight a while back on a steam sale, and shockingly they were able to make a multiplayer sequel to it before I could get around to playing it. So I just started Torchlight 2 with little to no knowledge of what happened in the first game.

Torchlight 2 is a multiplayer Diablo-style RPG. It has a steam punk, and more cartoony feel than Diablo does, which I think is quite awesome. Your character choices are Embermage, Berserker, Engineer, or Outlander.

The story, as far as I understood it, is that some bad guy is going after some steam punk energy source, and we need to stop him. As far as story goes in these games, it's good enough to bind things together, and picking up new items and new abilities will be carrying my attention through till the end.

The controls of the game are simply point and click, with some keyboard hotkeys to trigger your abilities. I kept most of my abilities to the numbers 1-4, and switched my hotkey for using the best potions from Z and X to Q and W, so my hand could spam those without having to traverse too much of the keyboard.

The graphics are very unique, and I loved what they did. Reading the items and traversing the UI took a while for me to get used to. It really seemed overly busy, but after a while you get the hang of it, and see why they did it that way.

The sound affects were awesome, and the voice acting was pretty good. Nothing amazing in the voice acting, but non-painful is what I grade by. I would like to compliment Torchlight 2 on balancing the VFX sounds versus the other audio. In Diablo III, I had to set the VFX to about 5% or my barbarian cleaving enemies was enough to wake the neighbors, while the dialog was being whispered.

For my first playthrough I picked Engineer. I went with tanky and AOE skills, which worked out really well. The typical fight was just me running into a mob of enemies, stomping, throwing spider mines, stomping, then running away while they all burned to death. It was beautiful.

I'd recommend playing on normal difficulty until you get the feel for things. Ironically, setting the difficulty harder does not give you better loot, faster XP, or anything like that; it's just harder. And it gets much harder at each difficulty level. The trick is that if you're playing any difficulty higher than normal, you need to stack armor reducing equipment so that you can actually do damage.

The only negative thing I had to say about this game is that the loading screens take forever. Or at least seem to, when I really want to get back into the action. The other nit-picky thing I had is that I would like to be able to respec my character completely, without rolling a new one. Yes, I know you can use respec potions, and yes I know you can use the console for this, but I would like a real in-game legit way of doing this.

To quickly go into the things they did absolutely right in this game. They have a crafting vendor that you can use to re-roll jewels, add sockets to items, trade unique items for a chance at a unique item you care about, allow trading in other set items for the chance of getting a set piece you care about. These are incredibly brilliant. I knew I was keeping all that crap in my inventory and shared stash. After looking up the recipes online, my stash was almost empty, except for the awesome pieces I decided to keep for my alts or for a set I'm excited to get closer to completing. The other stuff they did right was being able to dump inventory onto your pet and send it to town to sell and come back, and also pick up some potions, dynamite, and scrolls of identify and town portal. Hells yes.


Overall it was a very enjoyable game that I could play solo or group up with friends. I would highly recommend picking this game up. It took me around 20 hours to beat the game, but as I've said before, I'm a completionist. So I had to spend 3 of those hours hunting down the last few quests, and assembling the robot. Future plans for the game are getting into modding, or rolling another character with all of my epic off sets.

Legend of Grimrock

I heard about Legend of Grimrock through Internet chatter, and picked up a copy on GOG. There was an equal value Steam sale, but I didn't want to have to be online, since my Internet had flaked out a few times before.

Legend of Grimrock is a RPG dungeon crawler. It’s like Eye of the Beholder, with a heavy emphasis on puzzles. There are a few you can skip and miss out on some neat items, but the majority of the puzzles are mandatory. They're also painfully clever. This is my cup of tea, so I loved the game from the start.

The story takes place entirely in the dungeon on Mount Grimrock. Your group was "forgiven" similar to how Spartans forgive stupid messengers, by kicking them into a pit. This pit just happens to be the start of a dungeon.

The controls of the game are quite easy to pick up, but difficult to do when you have to move, shuffle potions, drink potions, cast a spell, and attack all basically at the same time. The game starts you off against slower and fewer enemies, but it gets crazier and crazier as things progress. There is a quick save/load feature, which you should use extensively.

The graphics are very nice; the enemies have smooth animations and look really good. The lighting looks great, and reacts to changes in the environment. Yes, you will need to carry a light with you, unless you think you can fight enemies in the dark. You'll be swapping your torch for one on the wall quite often, because torches burn out if you hold them for too long. If they're on the wall or in a bag, they're perfectly fine... no risk in putting something on fire into your bags... right next to the explosives...

The sound is very good, and extremely useful. Many times you will hear enemies coming from a direction before you can see them. Also, when you hit switches that open secret walls, you can use the sound direction to find where the secret is. Enemies have unique sounds as well, so you can tell what kind of enemy is coming your way. This can actually be a little unnerving, when you hear them through a wall and they’re nowhere near you...

My party was a Human Fighter (Swords/Armors), Human Rogue (Unarmed Combat/Dodge), Minotaur Rogue (Missile Weapons/Dodge), and Insect Mage (Ice Magic/Spellcraft). I got this build from trolling the Grimrock forums, and picking what worked good for people who had already played the game.

A few tips for some things that weren't clear when I started playing the game.

1. You can put notes on the map.
2. You can only heal by resting, or drinking potions.
3. Dodging is much better than armor (no damage vs. reduced damage)
4. If you're not using an item or plan to use an item, drop it. There are no vendors in the game and you can only carry so much (bag item limit, and weight limits). I cried a little when I put down an absolutely awesome dagger...
5. Throwing weapons and missile weapons never miss. Missile weapons will do more damage later on, but you won't find a missile weapon for a few dungeon levels. Missile weapon "ammo" and throwing weapons don't go away; they drop to the ground when the enemy dies.
6. Your mage can cast any spell their magic level allows. The scrolls in the game are for people who refuse to use the Internet to find out the spell combinations in the game.
7. Potions work the same way as spells. All you need are the ingredients and the mixer. The speed potion and healing potion were about all I used, but I'm extremely conservative with potions.
8. Food is important; if you're starving you won't recover health or energy. Make sure you stock up. Later on, there are places where edible enemies spawn infinitely. So don't worry too much about running out.
9. Make sure you always have a few spare rocks and throwing knives for solving puzzles. And always have a few spare torches for light.

I would highly recommend picking up a copy. I couldn't put this game down once I picked it up. I finished it in 15 hours of playtime, but that included a lot of backtracking and solving every puzzle. Including the one I missed 3 floors back.

Useful links:

• List of mage spells (good for deciding which tree you want)
• How to cast any spell
• How to make any potion
• Magic level determines spell damage

inFamous

So a friend at work reviewed my entire purchased games list. The top of his list was inFamous for PS3. I was surprised I hadn't played it yet, since it came with my PS3 when I first got it. I suppose it's not too mysterious that games sit on my shelves for months or years... but still.

The game is a sandbox third person brawler/shooter with RPG elements. Your powers start out quite simple, giving you the ability to zap things, and will likely wear out your trigger finger if you spend too much time doing that. Progressing the plot will open up new powers and I highly recommend crit-pathing the plot for a while until you get some powers that will spare your trigger finger the pain. Doing the missions and taking out enemies with weak powers is just not fun and might lead you to putting the game down.

The story takes place in a city that's been mostly destroyed by a huge explosion, so it has a bit of a post-apocalyptic feel to it. Your character, Cole, was at the epicenter of the blast, and somehow got electricity super-powers as a result. As you help to restore the city, you are confronted with moral decisions that lean you toward the ambivalent hero, or feared bad-ass. Either way, you're helping the town, but people will either love, or fear you. Going with good deeds gives your powers generally more pacifying qualities, while the evil deeds give you more damaging bonuses. It's quite neat to see the civilians react to your good karma and start cheering for you as well as throwing rocks at thugs. I don't know what they do if they fear you, but I assume they would just stay away from as you run by. The story progresses well, but can get a bit monotonous with repeating the same type of quests. This is alleviated by having cool new powers to blow up enemies with, while doing these quests. Following the story to completion actually surprised me with how good it was.The ending literally blew me away.

The controls of the game are quite easy. Move the stick to run around, jump with X, punch with square, the standard hold L1 to switch to third person shooting view, and press other buttons while in this view to shoot various powers at enemies. The only slight frustration with the controls happened for me, when attempting to jump onto a truck underneath a bridge, and Cole did everything in his spider-monkey powers to grab onto the bridge instead of going under it. For every other situation in the game, this is the ideal behavior.

I do have to mention though, it's easy to accidentally attack a nearby civilian. I had multiple situations where I was shooting and beating the crap out of a thug, and suddenly Cole decided I was targeting a nearby cheering civilian, and decked them in the face. It's all okay though, because you can give downed civilians a healing jolt for an easy 3 experience, and some good karma. So yes, punch civilian in face + healing jolt = net good karma. You will probably also heal a bunch of civilians when the easiest way to take down a bunch of bad guys is lobbing 10 grenades into the crowd.

The graphics were really good. You could occasionally see mip levels popping in when traveling around really fast, but otherwise I never noticed it. The audio and sound effects was good, and the voice acting was quite good. The animation on the character while voice acting wasn't top notch, but it got the job done.



Anyways, if you haven't picked it up yet, and own a PS3, do yourself a favor and pick it up. It's on the greatest hits list, so it should only be $20, and is easily worth double that.

Super Robot Taisen OG Saga Endless Frontier

Yep, that's seriously the game name. It's ridiculously long, but a great JRPG overall for the NDS.

The overworld is simple, and allows you to get from A to B. It only gets slightly tricky when they mention you should go to C, and you forgot where C was. I seriously spent at least 30 minutes trying to Google a solid map for this game to no avail. For some reason, the only map on the entire internets had all of the places labeled incorrectly. W.T.F.

The combats are a great blend of tactical planning and skill timing attacks. When it's your characters turn, you can cast as many spells as you want, so long as you have SP. You also have HP, and COM. COM is spent like time units, as far as how many things you can do in your turn. Each attack chain you use costs a specific amount of COM, and you only get 50 COM a turn, with a cap of 100 COM. Simple enough, but it gets really fun when you have to time your attacks and chain attacks with other party members to keep the enemy in the air, and do the most damage. Quite fun! You can also cancel your combos early to put extra points into the frontier gauge, which allows you to do a special attack once it's full.

Regretfully, the combats get a bit repetitive, and so I found that I could run away from most battles so long as I killed the bosses with a special attack, granting me an addional 30% experience. It also helped me explore the dungeons without spending 5 hours in random battles.

The characters are drawn well, and have their own personality and skills/attacks. I personally was using a party of Sazuka, Haken, Reiji, and Kaguya. Kaguya and Sazuka did most of the damage, while Haken and Reiji just fueled up the frontier gauge.

I'd highly recommend picking this up to play in your spare time, but take notes somewhere on where you're supposed to go, or you can easily spend your first while trying to remember, or literally wandering the world map. This is really only an issue in the later game, when you're backtracking, but still.

Infinity Blade

A while back I finished Infinity Blade, but forgot to blog about it. Overall the game was quite simple to learn, harder to master, and a great RPG to spend a few minutes on between other things. Took it on a trip and played it easily for a few  hours in bed, delaying my much needed sleep cycles.

The combats are everything in the game. Dodge is the easiest way to avoid getting hit, you can also block, which takes away your armor points, and you can also perry an incoming attack. Blocking is only useful for punches, which are un-dodge/parry-able. When you do a awesome dodge/block/parry, eventually they give you an opening, and you get to smack them back. Ideally with a 3 or 5 hit combo.

When your character levels up, you get 2 stat points you can spend on armor, health, magic, or attack damage. I spent all of my points in attack damage, because the harder I hit the enemy, the faster they dropped. This basically required me to spend all my time dodging, as my lack of skill in parrying attacks was all to apparent.


Eventually you fight the God king, who starts out level 50, and completely wipes the floor with you. That's okay though, because apparently he sends all of your equipment and levels to your next of kin and you repeat the process. What a nice guy! Eventually you will be strong enough to trod down the road paved with dead ancestors, and beat him for a change.

The main reason I forgot to post about this when I finished the game was because I had gotten myself into a RPG-grinding groove of killing enemies as fast as possible to die at the God king's hand and restart the process. Trouble is, I accidentally killed him on one of my run-throughs. Oops. Well, I guess that was the purpose, but it just kind of felt off to me. After you defeat him, he goes up by 50 levels and you repeat the process. Yeah, I'm good, next game!

Overall, I'm still glad I played it, and it was definitely worth the money spent. So far, this has been the most enjoyable game I've played on the iPad yet.

Diablo III

I just finished Diablo III this weekend. It was a whole lot like Diablo II, except they fixed just about everything I found annoying about Diablo II.Inventory space is ample, picking up gold is super quick, gold is actually used for something, skill selection is progressive and non-permanent, and the graphics are amazing.

The story is what you would expect, but they did an amazing job of keeping things directed in the quests, while still giving the normal feel of a randomized dungeon crawl. I won't spoil anything about the story, but if you haven't figured it out by now...

They also added a neat system where killing larger hordes of creatures gives you an experience boost, so it doesn't feel like as much of a chore. I actually spent about ten solid minutes letting the enemies spawn new mobs to kill just to get a huge boost at the end. I don't remember the number, but it was well over 100.

I would recommend quitting out of the public channel, and can only assume this will become a preference option in the next patch, as opposed to being changed logged into chat by default, which was the last change made to it

Would I recommend picking it up? Yes. Would I recommend playing with your friends? Yes again, although... it does allow your friends to skip dialog and cutscenes by hitting Escape for some reason. So I tried to play through the first time by myself, since after that I would be skipping all cutscenes and other slowdowns on my way to the phat lewts.

Bullet Storm

Bullet Storm is exactly what Duke Nukem was supposed to be. Then it picked it up, kicked it in the dick, and blew it's head off. Yep, that kind of game.

The weapons are brutal, gritty, and fit the game perfectly. The sniping mini game is fun, but can get a bit monotonous if you do it too often, so remember to switch back to the various other ways of killing people. Pulling them into spikes, kicking them into electrified walls, slide kicking them and blowing their head off, kicking them off cliffs, thumping them in the air then shooting them like skeet, etc.

The exposition is really well paced. Everything you do is built right into the environment, and interactive in an immersive way. The sound just makes the game come alive. The only thing that I've seen so far that seemed just a tad off was the animation when I first saw Trishka beat some ass. It was good, but the timing seemed off. Not horrible, just slightly off, like when sound and video gets de-synced by half a second when some streaming video players mess up.

The multiplayer was fun. A friend and I played it for a few weeks solid before I even started on the main campaign. It's more of the same thing you get in the main game, without the story. So it helps you figure out how to do combos and such.

The ending was good, the typical going-to-leave-room-for-a-sequel type of thing, but still wraps up the story. If you watch to the end of the credits, that's where the wrap up happens.

Overall, I'd definitely recommend it. I don't think I'd play through it again, but I might give the sequel a shot if they make it.

Mass Effect 3 - Collector's Edition

So I finally finished Mass Effect 3. I have no idea how much time it took to beat this, but I've been playing it since I got my copy -- the day it was released. I got the collector's edition, so it came with the From Ashes DLC, which includes a jerk Prothean for a teammate, who aside from giving some excellent back story, did not play much of a role in my party. He stayed in his room that I visited once after each mission, and did not get to come out and play for the most part.

Sorry to say it, but unless you're an awesome character that I want to hear kick some ass, I will not choose you. You will be in my party firstmost if I think you have something personal to contribute in banter for this mission, or if I think it applies to you (if you haven't manually butted in already), or if you have awesome powers that may help fight what we're going up against. So typically - sorry Kaiden, Ashley, Jacob, Zaeed, and now James Vega, and Javik.

The story was stellar. Pure amazing. The impact of what decisions I made in Mass Effect 1 and 2 were painfully apparent, and made me carry those decisions (good or bad) forward to the end. The cutscenes were great except for the occasional character's eyes following something offscreen, or even turning their head in some inhuman way. Aside from that, the voice acting was awesome.

The combat was good. They tried to keep it non-repetitive by varying the enemies and making the objectives vary, which was a nice touch. I found playing an infiltrator quite fun. I would like to complain about one fight in particular near the end. Oh my sweet baby Jesus. No other fight before that came close to the level of ridiculous I had to claw my way out of there... The fights in particular are fun enough that I've been delaying writing this review because I've been playing so much multiplayer.

To talk a bit about multiplayer - it's awesome. I will try my hardest not to put money into this, but it has been very, very difficult. Seeing your characters progress, playing with your friends, spending points on packs with random goodies, what's not to love? Simple, cookie-cutter fights have never been executed so well. It gets predictable, but never boring. It's always intense, and friends always want to play. Which as I said, delayed this review. Oh, they also recently gave out a free map pack and added characters. This really didn't help me finish the game...

With multiplayer I have to talk a bit about Origin. It was tough for me to make the switch from Steam to Origin, and I lost almost all friend-awareness when playing Origin - not necessarily a bad thing... That said, the interface is a little clunky, but it gets the job of click-button-play-game done. There's definitely some room to polish it up, so I hope EA throws some polish at it.

Finally, the ending. I can understand why people are upset, but they're coming at this the wrong way. Sure, I wanted more too. Did I feel like I got screwed over? No. Did I feel like they left things unresolved? No, I made my decisions, and saw what became of everything because of it. I would love to see more, and apparently I will.

Jamestown

Ah! I completely forgot I beat this game, and only remembered because I keep a group of "Beaten" in my Steam categories. I picked this up from one of the Humble Bundles, so it came cheap, and made me feel good about donating to charity and indie developers.

So, the story of the game is simple, shoot things and ignore the story screens. The ships you get to pick are unique, with enough variation to allow picking a ship that suits a level quite well.

The real nice part of this game is that you can have four people connect 360 controllers and play multiplayer on the same machine. Essentially allowing me to die repeatedly in a blaze of glory while other people are responsible for keeping us alive, since you only lose a continue if everyone is dead at the same time.

Would I recommend it? Yes. Did I play it for hours during lunch breaks? Yes. 'Nuff said.

ICO

I picked up the ICO and Shadows of the Colossus pack for PS3 and started up ICO, since I beat SotC a year or two back.

The story is good. The game starts with a decent length intro cutscene, with very little dialog. From there, you're on your own to explore and figure out what's going on. You quickly discover a girl, Yorda, and the two of you continue your attempt at escaping, with you being the main driving force behind that.


The gameplay blends seamlessly with the story. Most things you can do, she can't without your help. The special doors you need to get through, she can open but she can't reach them on her own. This goes all the way down to the save mechanics. To save the game, you have to bring her to a stone couch, where only after both of you are sitting does the game allow you to save. Oh, did I mention she's being hunted by weird shadow creatures you have to to fight with a large stick?

The music plays a really important role in setting the tone, as neither character speaks the other's language. The rest of the tone is carried by the limitation of communication, and how you convey the tone through your decisions and facial expressions.


The controls are what you would expect from a climbing puzzle game, and I rarely ever cursed the controls. I did get upset at a few puzzles that were needlessly difficult, but almost in the tone of Braid, the puzzles are unique and you have to bring new ways of thinking to the table to solve them. All while not leaving Yorda behind. If you leave her behind in a room for any decent length of time, the shadow creatures will come steal her, and then you die. So... don't do that. Very rarely you will have to leave her alone for a short while, but if you get too far away, you're doing it wrong.

I would highly recommend this game. The only regrets I have is that I do not have a 3D TV to play this on, and the other regret is that it took me this long to play this game. It was amazing.

Shank

So I got the itch for some side-scroller, beat-em-up, simple, linear action.

Shank met that desire for a scratch with a blood stained shiv. Everything from stabbing people in the face, shotgunning people in the face, or impaling them with the various sharp objects you easily hold on your back. Oh, and you can throw people off cliffs, which I resort to if I'm trying to replay an area quick, because I died, or if something is lobbing grenades at me.So without a question, the gameplay was solid.

The controls were a little finicky at times (aiming up in particular), but once you got used to their nuances, it wasn't a big deal. Just plug in the 360 controller, and go crazy.

The story was good enough to keep me thinking without having to go too deep. Yep, people are going to kill you, but you have pointy things to stop them. If only you could remove the required number of gallons of blood from their body so they stop getting up... but how...

The boss fights were really unique and interesting. I died multiple times at almost every boss fight, but since there was learning to be done (and obvious hints given to you after multiple deaths), I got past them eventually.

For game length, it took just shy of four hours for me to beat the entire game, which was fine by me. I came to this game with an itch, and left quite satisfied.

I would definitely recommend it, and have already queued the second one on my list for a good playthrough when the itch comes back.

Cave Story+

So I played this game back when it was free about 8 years ago. It was awesome then, it's still awesome. The only thing that's changed, is I forgot how difficult it was (or I played it on easy back then...). Anyways, this game is tough.

Do NOT play this game on Hard difficulty unless you love games where normal enemies one-shot you and you die. For some reason it took me quite a good chunk of the game before I realized I wasn't getting health upgrades... Then I replayed in on normal and enjoyed it much more, granted, it was still tough.

I used JoyToKey to allow using my Xbox 360 controller for this game, which made it actually playable. You can also use a gamepad controller, but the 360 controller felt better to me. I also cheated and set a button on the controller to be a turbo-shoot button, so that I don't worsen my inevitable carpal tunnel progression. Also, it's a platform shooter, so having a turbo button allows me to completely own the enemies face as I stand next to them.

So back to the review! The game is really enjoyable, in a nostalgic way. The graphics were updated when they put the game on Steam, and they also redid the soundtrack. They also added a seasonal graphics update which you can enable or disable in the options. All of these are great, and the overall game did not change (it was good then, it's good now).



The story is good, and the presentation of the story fits.

The difficulty options:
* Easy - you take half damage
* Normal - this is what I played it on this time around
* Hard - you get no health upgrades and will be one-shot by quite a few enemies, be prepared to load... a lot

The weapons power up as you collect mini-Triforces dropped by killed enemies, which makes not getting hit doubly important. Also, there are some hidden weapons, if you want to just Google them. Almost every weapon has a good use, and there are a few you have to choose one or the other.

So the only thing I planned to do that I didn't do this completion run, was the optional extra final boss. He is unbelievably difficult to get to, and once you get to him, it's a multiple-stage boss fight and if you lose, you must redo quite a bit of legwork to get back to fighting him. I had the patience 8 years ago, and I'm not sure I still have it.

Ok, quick update. Screw that, it only took about 30 minutes, but I beat the bastard again. Muahahahaa! Done.

Yep, I've been spoiled by modern games. Also, if any game has quick saves, I will quick save enough such that I will never have to repeat:
* Any fight
* Any conversation/choice
* Reopen any door I opened before

Also, if the quick saves are not on a small rotation or single slot implementation, I will most likely fill up my hard drive (stares at The Witcher)

Overall, very enjoyable game filled with awesome nostalgia. If it's your first time through, play it on Easy and enjoy it.