Fallout: New Vegas + Some DLC

I started playing Fallout:New Vegas back in April 2011 and I just now finished it in December 2013, with a total of 86 hours played.

I kept a notepad document open to keep track of what inventory I had stockpiled at Doc Mitchell's house. I had 28+ fission batteries, and 51 conductors by the end... I also had more weapons than I could manage. I picked my current favorite 3 and went with it. My only regret with all this stockpiling is that there isn't much weapon crafting. There was the ability to craft ammo types, but I ignored guns for almost the entire game. I did fist/melee weapons early on, then switched completely to energy weapons. I heard that upgrading bullets is really good though. Weapon repair kits I found to be very useful, because it could safe you a huge repair bill, or you could use them to repair an expensive weapon (eg: super sledge), and then sell it for some much needed caps.

When rolling my initial stats, I ignored luck and perception, and put the points into the other stats. Once you get the companion, E-DE, the perception issue is fixed, and I didn't really need luck. I also worked on the critical skills as fast as possible -- melee weapons, repair, lockpick, sneak -- then speech, medicine, energy weapons, etc.

I didn't play all of the DLCs, but I own them. I might go back and play them at some point, but I'm good just having this story wrapped up for now. Recommendations of which DLCs are worth playing are always welcome.

I'll compare some high level things in Fallout: New Vegas with what was around in Fallout 3 to keep things simple.

The Good
* It has much better UIs for companion interactions, so you can change their tactics, open their inventory, etc. without having to pull up a speech dialog
* You can pick two companions instead of just one companion and the dog
* The companions come with their own perks, have good back stories and side quests. I personally liked having E-DE and Boone as companions
* Much better use of skill checks in dialog -- speech, barter, medicine, etc. I really enjoyed these
* There are a bunch of new weapons in the game for every play style -- melee/fist/energy/pistol/rifle

The Bad
* Invisible walls are everywhere. Instead of creating a mesa you can't get on top of, there is a ridge you could jump on top of with an invisible wall around it...
* There is almost zero weapon crafting. You can make a few bombs, and different ammo types, but no real weapon crafting

The Consistent
* The quest tracking system is still a life-safer, without it, you could not keep track of where you are going, or what part of what quests you had completed
* The UI system for managing inventory is quite clunky. I'm not sure if they added the category filtering in FNV, but that does help quite a bit

Would I recommend playing it? Absolutely. It's great for sharing experiences with friends at work, even years after it's release date.

For the next 9 hours, you can pick up Fallout: New Vegas Ultimate Edition for just under $7 on Steam.

Rogue Legacy

Wow, don't worry about dying, because it will happen. A lot. Tons. Many, many times.

This is a neat twist on rogue-like games. Normally you play until you die, then restart with nothing. In this game when you die, you restart the game, pick your next kin (class/traits), and then spend the money you gained on the last character. It's really sneaky because the compulsion loop is that you get to spend all of your money after you choose to play again.

The game is basically a platform dungeon crawler, and best played with a controller. The graphics are in the realm of SNES games. The audio is mostly sound effects, and about 4-5 ambient background tracks that fit the game really well. Each enemy has a set AI, and learning it will help you avoid taking damage.

There are typically two builds you will be playing, and for 95% of the game, you will use the first.
1) resilient money gaining character - life leach, armor, damage
2) character specifically for beating a boss - high DPS or specific spells that are very effective at a boss, always get life leach if there are things to kill in the boss fight

You'll start out very weak and begin the death cycle quite quickly. As soon as possible, upgrade your weapon so enemies die faster. Don't waste money upgrading stats unless you have nothing else to spent money on before Charon takes it all as an entrance fee.

If you have a chance to purchase new upgrades, always do that. Building out your castle will lead to better classes will make it much easier. If you can ever afford the money upgrade, get it!

My total play time was 15:52, and the total children I played (and died) as was 168.

I'd recommend picking this game up, as you can sink a lot or a little bit of time until you complete it.

If you ever need to stop the game quickly, it will save your progress in the castle, but not your position.

Undercroft

I picked up Undercroft for the iPhone, under the good advice from a friend at work. He recommended it because I had mentioned that I really liked Legend of Grimrock with the grid maps, fights, and puzzles.

The fights in Undercroft are more tactical and less reflexes required. It`s also not as much of a puzzle game, but it works well enough.

The game is a turn based RPG, where you explore and quest in on a grid map. Each turn is either a movement, or an attack/special move. Some special moves can move you as well.

There are a few places where having an AOE attack is really critical, so I recommend picking up at least one. The main attack I used was the warrior`s totem of pain, which is horrendously overpowered if you can get life or mana leach on it. The other major attack power I got was from leveling up retrieve on an assassin so I could throw or shoot at enemies without losing quantity on the projeciles.

I found that a mage could dish out a ton of damage for the cost of chugging mana potions. The damage for a melee assassin was so much lower than a ranged (described above) and also was less useful.

The story is quite simple, and nothing to brag about. It paces the game, and that`s about it.

I`m glad to have a quest tracking system, although it's just a basic system.

Overall it was a great deal for a free game, and a great game when I needed to kill time. The game boots fast, and saving/loading is almost instantaneous. Just like Legend of Grimrock, I'd recommend planning you party well in advance, because after a few chapters in, you really don't want to reroll characters.

Defense Grid: Containment DLC (Kickstarter)

I finally beat the DLC Kickstarter I paid for quite a while ago.

It was really good. Very difficult on some of the later missions, with numerous revert to checkpoints to get it figured out.

No new towers or enemies were added, just more maps and story. The voice actors were excellent, and the levels were great.

Not sure if it was worth the $35 I put into it (hoping for a full sequel), but it's worth the $5 as a DLC.

Plants vs Zombies 2: It's About Time

So I picked this up as soon as I got word that it was out. Both my wife and I have been playing it since.

The sound effects, writing, controls, style, theme are all as awesome as the first. The play style is similar to the original game, with a few new added features and tactics.

The improvements from the first:
* Adding more diverse plants. I won't spoil what they are, but they're quite fun, and really widen the possible tactics.
* Plant food is an amazing feature, it really helps fill the critical times with tactical use, and gives more depth to your tactics and survivability.
* I love the way you see you're progress through the game - completing stages, unlocking new plants, opening gates for new levels. It's a huge improvement from the first.
* Added challenges! They added challenges to the game, which were the most fun part of the first PvZ game. Beat this level without zombies crossing half of the map, protect these plants, only use these plants, only spend this much sun, don't spend sun for X seconds, create X sun before the end of the level, kill X zombies in Y seconds, etc. It was amazing how they incorporated the most fun part of the mini games into the actual story line this time.

The things that didn't feel right:
* It wasn't clear what the purpose of money was, so I hoarded it for quite while, assuming I would spend it on plants or zen garden-y type things. Money is only spent on power-ups or buying plant food in levels, so spend it as necessary.
* Power-ups are a neat system, but they feel very much like cheating. Plant food has it's purpose, and you store it until you need it, but power-ups are just a cheap way of nuking the map.

Things I didn't like:
*  The pinching power-up is very hard to use, and I keep my nails quite short. For my wife it was damn near impossible. Especially on a iPhone (vs iPad) with the size of the screen
* The electricity power-up was difficult because your finger was getting in the way of seeing if what you were zapping was dead. Maybe this is better on the iPad as well?
* There is no PC version of the game - which was done with reason, but still very missed.
* The micro transactions are not micro. It's about $3-4 for each plant. It's not even a buy early scheme like online shooters usually go with. You can complete the game without the plants, but it leaves you feeling your arsenal is incomplete.

I still feel like I should pay for something with this game, since I really enjoyed it, but I'm not sure what's best to spend my money on. So far I haven't needed anything in particular. Perhaps if there was an all-inclusive purchase, so I could pay $20 and get all paid items, that would work. I just know more paid items are going to show up and I'll regret my earlier purchases.

You finish this game after going through the third area. After that you are supposed to fight a boss, who is easier if you have more stars, etc. but he's not in the game yet. So for all practical purposes, the game is done.

Thomas Was Alone

This was highly recommended by my friend Austin, so I had to give it a try.

It started out simple, then adds complexity to show interdependence between characters.

Characters are represented by basic shapes (rectangle, square, taller rectangle, large square, etc.). They start to add more interesting mechanics as the game goes on, but nothing too crazy.

I completely agree with Austin's opinion on the voice narration, it's well done and helps draw you through the story. The game would not be the same without it.

I will say that it gets a bit tedious for my taste at times. I know that it's showing the interdependence between characters, but having to climb each stair with character switching is too much at times. Fortunately these are not the norm, but it does occur enough in the levels overall that it's worth mentioning.

My last complaint about the game is... why the hell are the save files in the registry. This makes no sense! Please use actual save file(s) like every other developer in existence.

That said, it was very enjoyable. Just about 3 hours and the game was done. I never got stuck, there were a few awesome moments, and good pacing overall.

Aquaria (~July 2010)

I picked up Aquaria in one of the early Humble Indie Bundles and amazingly played it almost immediately.

It's been a while since I played this, so apologies in advance if I'm forgetting anything!

The controls are simple. WASD to move, and left click a spot to do a small dash toward the spot.

The gameplay is very much a metroidvania style of game. Instead of weapons you get forms. You can play a sequence of notes to shift forms, or just press the number keys. I didn't realize this for quite some time, and had to sing-shift my way into various forms in the middle of boss fights. Just a small note, your third or fourth form is the faster moving one, so don't quit too early because getting around is slow. Also, until you get that form, you can go quite fast by wall hopping repeatedly.

The audio is extremely good with a very good musical tone to just about everything. What I remember of the voice acting was simple but good. The music and ambient audio is really what shines.

The graphics were very stylized and great looking. The animation was a bit blocky during cutscenes, but great during normal gameplay.

The boss battles were tough but good, I distinctly remember killing my wrist by repeatedly clicking the right mouse button to shoot the enemy for optimal damage. You can also charge your attacks to shoot more powerful homing shots, but spam clicking is more damaging to both your wrist and enemies than charged shots. You can also eat food that doubles your normal shooting damage. So that's highly recommended for boss fights.

There are a few items you can get in the game. I think it's just helmets, but they can be quite helpful. They're also quite well hidden. I really liked the exploration of the game, to find the rare items.

Oh, you can also get pets, which are always nice!

I have installed it on my Ouya from the Humble Bundle app, but I don't know how playable it is. I also know its out for iPad which sounds neat, but I'm not sure about the controls. I played it on PC with keyboard and mouse, and that was perfect for me. I did try using a controller on PC, which was easier for shooting but harder to move around faster and shift forms.

If you haven't played it yet, I very highly recommend it. It's a shame BitBlot is not making any more games.

Mass Effect 3: DLCs - All of Them

Leviathan

I have to say I'm impressed. Instead of just adding more cover-filled levels filled with things to shoot, there's some clever investigation, awesome story development, amazing visuals, and then the levels with cover for shooting enemies.

The story really was top notch, as well as the locations, and new gameplay. It reminded me of what I played Lair of the Shadow Broker back on Mass Effect 2.


Omega

Omega was good, with an extremely heavy focus on tough combat. You get to hear the backstory of Omega, and join in another fight to taking it back.

I'm really glad I picked Infiltrator, and was almost level capped, because that helped making killing guys that much easier. Also, since you get to put points into Aria, it helped starting her with 88 points to spend!

At the end, you get a few new moves, similar to the moves they added to Multiplayer with the new characters I believe.

Citadel

Very good story. Lots of dialog and backstory at the start, then some nice combat with the usual reminder I had the game set to hard difficulty again, and hard means hard. Then some nice non-combat things to do.

All wrapped up with a good final battle, and some awesome back story and conversations to listen in on.

Oh, they added a battle arena. This DLC has just become the best one ever.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

So my friend Matt picked up this game for me. Thanks a ton, because this game was awesome!

The graphics were very good. Enough detail to see what's going on, and a great tactical view for planning out your movement.

 The voice acting was excellent, and tailored perfectly to the character rolls.

The controls are great, with just about every action bound to a hotkey for quick turns.

The gameplay was rock solid. Build a base to make better stuff, to give to soldiers, to kill aliens with, to make money and level up, and build more base. The tactics of combat were well balanced, with enemy AI playing a major role in bringing it all together.



What I would have changed

* Make it so that heavies and snipers can be equiped from dropped alien weapons in the early to mid-game. I ended up using support and assault classes for most of the game.
* Equipment management could have been a bit easier/less tedious in a few screens. The barracks screen was pretty solid
* Body armor felt like a waste of money until the end game. As a matter of fact, I didn't buy body armor until a few missions from the end of the game.


* Add a quick load key in combat that loads you to the start of last round, which can be used mid-alien turn. This would account for 99.999% of the loading I needed to do in combat. Alternatively, allow loading a save mid-alien turn

* Add camera orientation information to save files. This will help avoid disorienting the user on combat save file loading




What I loved
* Pacing of the game was good. Just the right amount of chaos happening at any given time.
* Classes were uniquely defined and well spaced in terms of abilities
* Base building required planning, but wasn't overly complex
* Random events are mostly random. So if you get a bad "random event", you can just repeatedly reload the save before the event occurs until you get a better one. It does seem to draw from a small pool, so you might need to settle for the best of the next 5-6 loads.
* Save files were small (I have well over 100 saves). Combat saves around right under 1MB, and non-combat saves are ~130KB

Overall, I highly recommend this game. It was lots of fun, and a great experience. It took me just around 25 hours to complete the game.

Trine 2

So I finally finished Trine 2 with my friend Owen. I have to say that it was a lot of fun playing a coop game with a friend that was extremely like-minded in terms of collecting every orb while simultaneously trying to break the game's physics.

Let me start by saying the graphics are amazing. A great improvement from the first, and absolutely stunning overall. The animations are a bit rigid, and the physics can be a bit off, but it didn't really detract from anything.

We didn't pick up the DLC "The Complete Story", and yet it wrapped itself up nicely at the end. It's only $5 more, and we might do this later on, but for now, we'll consider this game beaten.

The controls are great, with mouse and keyboard working seamlessly well together. The keyboard is for movement, and the mouse controls your abilities and targeting.

The game play was greatly improved from the first by adding multiplayer, and by removing your magic meter entirely from the game. No longer do you need to keep going back to checkpoints or killing enemies for mana, rejoice! This made the game so much more enjoyable, and avoided many of the slowdowns that occurred in the first. Sadly, they also removed the equipment, which would give you nice effects in the first. The secret chests now contain concept artwork, or poems, so that's... nice?

The AI was also more varied than the first, and enemies had a much larger diversity. I would say that some of the boss fights were a little silly, because they would kill you in a single hit. So it became an evade-the-hit-or-die kind of thing, which doesn't feel like a good boss fight mechanic to me.


The voice acting is on par for the first one. The narrator is good, and the characters are alright.

The puzzles also got a huge improvement from the first, with a large leaning toward cooperative play. I would have to say that it's probably a better two player game than a three player game, because with two people, you get to switch to the off character, which means that the person playing Amadeus can switch to Pontius or Zoya. For reference, I played Amadeus almost entirely, and Pontius in fights, and Owen played Zoya almost exclusively. This worked out extremely well.


I highly recommend picking it up if you're in the mood for an amazing puzzle/coop game. It's fantastic.

To put a value on it, which I try to avoid doing, I would have paid $15-20 for this game in perfect hindsight. Great coop game with easily 8 hours of gameplay.

Antichamber

I picked up Antichamber after hearing very good things about it, and it going on sale with the Steam Summer Sale. The game is amazing.

This is the first time I've seen a menu this immersive. The only thing I've seen that comes close is Fallout 3/New Vegas. There are no menus, pressing Escape takes you to a room with a wall painted with the menu.

The controls are standard FPS, plain and simple (the only part of the game that is).

The graphics minimalistic, with mostly black and white coloring, with touches of color when it matters.

The story is as vague as it can be, with a portal-like picture system for describing interactions, and picture quotes on the walls to give you hints. Some much more useful than others, but almost all useful.

The main focus of this game is puzzles. Some logical, some oddly logical. Sherlock Holmes put it best - "When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." I don't want to get into too much details, but within the first 10 minutes of the game you'll get a feel for how the game plays out. They break every rule of level design, and it's mind-blowing.

The game took me around 7-8 hours to complete. There were only a few areas where I looked up what to do, only to realize I was very close to the solution, and just didn't realize it.

If you haven't tried it out yet, go get it! My only issue with it is that prolonged playing can make you a bit nauseous. About the same as I felt with Portal 1 and 2, or Prey.

Two spoilers below as far as game mechanics, so don't read on if you want to figure it out yourself.
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MINOR MECHANIC SPOILERS BELOW
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Alright then, here's a few tips to get you started and avoiding wasting time.
1) The map on the wall works like this:
* small boxes are solved rooms
* large boxes are unsolved rooms
* short stubs on a room means there's an exit you haven't taken yet
* arrows means it warps you to somewhere else
2) if you come up to blocks of a color that you haven't picked up the gun for, you'll need to come back. Don't waste time trying to solve something you're not equipped for.
3) YouTube will help you solve puzzles, but be warned that it's hard to find a single solution without seeing them play through 3-4 other puzzles on the way there

Bionic Commando Rearmed

So I picked up this game from the Summer Steam sale. Figured a bit of nostalgia would be fun, and it was... mostly.

The controls are standard, the graphics look like XBLA quality, the writing is silly, and the story is close to the original (for all I remember). The sound tracks are revamped versions of the original, so that was really cool.

The nice things they did:
* Allowed switching weapons on the fly
* Added weapon upgrades
* No longer required you to pick the correct com unit per level
* More hits before you're dead

The last level was brutally hard, and you'll use up quite a few lives just getting tot he boss. So I recommend revisiting each of the camps and stocking up on 1ups. This is really my only real gripe about the game.

After beating the game on normal, they unlocked the super hard mode. Yeah... I'm good.

Gunpoint

So I picked up Gunpoint a few days ago on the Steam Summer sales. All it took were the patch notes and the trailer video and I knew I had to play it.


The graphics are about on par with Terreria.

The controls are simple, WASD to move, mouse to leap, and hold Alt to modify circuitry. The toggling to modify circuitry is a bit wonky, but you get used to it.

The sound effects are simple, and quite enjoyable. The sound of defenestration, quick smacking sounds, click/switches, leaping, etc. all work great.

The story was a written very well. It was a bit tough to follow, since it's doing a spy story with secrets and double crosses, etc. so I just went with whatever dialog options seemed enjoyable.

I beat the game in about 2 hours and paid $6 for it. Absolutely worth 2 hours of your time. Go get it.

Pro tip, you can incapacitate the body armor guards by knocking them out windows. Defenestration FTW!

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!