Pure Judgment Gaming

26th Entry - Borderlands

2010-03-30T15:44:00.003-04:00

If you're not aware by now that Poke and I are big fans of co-op games, then you're obviously new or you just don't pay attention. Either way, when we heard about a 4 player co-op shooter, i was instantly on board. AND it's post-apocalyptic!? Yessir.

Borderlands - Xbox 360

Borderlands is a post-apocalyptic shooter/RPG abomination (the good kind of abomination) that takes place on desolate Pandora. You're a merc in search of the Vault, a treasure trove of alien weaponry. This is essentially the whole story. The gameplay is all this game has going for it, and fortunately, it's quite fun.

Now, there are four classes to choose from in Borderlands, with a level cap that goes to 50 (61 if you bought the newest DLC).

First is the Soldier, Roland, specializing in shotguns and assault rifles. His special ability is a turret that not only blows away enemies, but it can also eventually drop ammo, fire rockets, refill health, and even resurrect fallen allies. Roland can effectively fullfill a CQB/DPS role, running in with high damage shotguns, or he can fulfill a healer role through a talent that heals allies when you shoot them. This is also the class yours truly played as.

Next is the Hunter, the sniper named Mordecai. He specializes in sniper rifles (durr) and pistols. His special ability is his pet hawk, Bloodwing, which can attack mulitple targets for reasonable damage. Mordecai has talents that emphasize making enemies drop extra loot (whee) as well as making it much easier to one-shot your enemies. Mordecai eventually can learn a talent which allows his sniper shots to skip shields entirely, often causing lethal damage. Poke played to 61 with me as this class.

Brick, the Berserker, specs in launchers and, um, his fists. Brick's talents revolve around pummeling things with his hands harder, faster, and more efficiently. They can also make his launcher skills go through the roof. Brick generally fulfills a tank role, in which he runs in punching things while his friends pick everything else off.

Lilith, the Siren, is an odd mage-esque class that specs in SMGs. Her talents revolve around causing elemental damage, i.e. melting, incinerating, electrocuting and detonating her enemies. Her Phasewalk ability has a fast cooldown, and can be used to inflict huge damage through damage over time (DOT) abilities. She can essentially go full melee or SMG/melee, though i recommend suing SMGs, they are my favorite gun type.

Ah yes. Guns. Borderland's claim to fame is their eleventy bazillion gun types throughout the game. Basically, no matter what, there is a gun for you in this game. Indeed, this is where the game truly shines.

I've found rocket launchers that shoot mortars, assault rifles that fire all forms of fire, acid, lighting and explosive rounds, shotguns that fire rockets, sniper rifles that have a explosion radius, shotgun pistols, an SMG that functions more like a flamethrower, and weapons that fire bullets that bounce off walls as well was weapons that fire curving rounds. Some of the most fun you will have in this game is by experimenting with what you do and don't like. Poke and I thoroughly enjoyed tossing out guns and trying new and different setups until we found out what we really liked.

The game is truly fun all the way through, and though it lacks a complex story, unless you're a Final Fantasy person with no soul, I doubt you'll care.

Aside from the story aspect, little else is wrong with the game itself. There were few if any bugs to be found. The controls can feel a tad loose at times, but it's only a tad bothersome at first. Not much about the game sticks out as bad, honestly.

There were several DLC packs released for Borderlands -

The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned - This is definitely the best DLC pack. Basically you just kill zombies, as well as a few other goofy creatures, and harvest their brains. Some ridiculous guns to be found in this DLC pack. Ned's undead, baby. Ned's undead.

Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot - This DLC pack sucked pretty hard, even if it was Borderlands. The whole thing is a goddamn grindfest, and each tournament takes 2-3 hours of work. Don't buy this, although it does add the in-game bank system, which is important for keeping a collection of guns you like.

The Secret Armory of General Knoxx - A great DLC pack with lots of Crimson Lance to kill, as well as midgets. Lots of midgets. Poke and i had a blast with this one. Enjoy looting the secret armory, it's a bunch of fun.

Bottom line - Borderlands is fun as hell - the more the better. Grab a copy and jump in.
9/10

25th Entry - Modern Warfare 2

2010-03-30T15:00:00.004-04:00

Yep it's a older game, and this isn't a new review. I have neglected this for a very long time now but I'm back again to keep this alive.

We'll start off with Modern Warfare 2, the much anticipated sequel to Call of Duty 4 - Modern Warfare.

I, like so many others, enjoyed COD4's single player and multiplayer very much, and was quite eager to play the sequel.

Call of Duty - Modern Warfare 2 (Xbox 360)

Anywho, when I sat down and popped this in, I was hoping for an awesome single player experience, above all else. I was not disappointed.

The story, even though it may be convoluted and a little goofy at times, is fun and engaging, much like the original Modern Warfare.

There are lots of improvements, such as more weapons and more epic battles. Even on Veteran, I never got too frustrated at dumb level design or something of the like.

Unfortuantely, there is a lot to hate about the single player as well. The AI is mentally retarded, both enemy and friendly. The enemies stand directly out of cover and run into walls fairly often. I don't know what this is a byproduct of, but it's quite distracting. The allied AI runs in front of you at all times, blocking shots fairly often. The so-called "controversy" on the Russian airport level was over-hyped and quite ridiculous, honestly. Aside from these issues, though, the campaign is fun to play.

The Special Ops mode is really awesome, and Poke and I thoroughly enjoyed beating most of it. There is a point where it just gets too damn hard, and this is pretty much where is stops being fun. It goes from holding down a elevated position with sniper rifles and claymores to fighting off 3 juggernauts at a time with only grenade launchers to protect yourself. ON VETERAN. Same issues here though, stupid AI, though at least my co-op partner isn't retarded and can actually play the game.

And multiplayer. Alas, so much to say about it. At its core, it is a well designed operation. Lots of customization and player choice, as well as a fun leveling system. However, the game has been plagued with hacks, updates, errors, server suckage, and general douchebaggery.

First there were the akimbo Model 1887 shotugns, which had the range of several times any other shotgun, and you'd run into jerk-offs every damn game running around and sniping you cross-map with them. Eventually this was patched, but IW dropped the ball and players discovered that adding the FMJ attachment reverted them to their pre patch status. IW eventually patched this too, but months later.

Then there was the care package glitch, in which a player using the Commando, Marathon, and Lightweight perks would pull out the care package killstreak marker, and for some reason it made them run blazingly fast. In this state, players would run around knifing people for entire games, in effect totally breaking what is commonly called the "Knifing" or "Runner" class. Eventually this was patched, but not before it had a long run in online play.

Next was the Danger Close/Javelin glitch, in which a player was able to force the Javelin missile to explode after death, generally killing several people in the process with the resulting explosion. This was a heavily frustrating glitch that was again, patched very late.

Then came the other care package glitch, in which a player was able to call in unlimited care packages, giving them an obvious advantage if left unchecked. After reporting everyone I saw doing this for cheating, IW finally patched this as well, but not before nearly every player on Live had exploited it.

There are no dedicated serves for MW2. This simply sucks major cock, and lag and host transfers are commonplace. IT is also not uncommon to simply be dropped from a game. Massively frustrating.

As for general douchbaggery, the once mature community of Modern Warfare 1 has been overtaken by every asshole with a internet connection. These people are generally identified by having clan tags like WEED, W33D, DANK, HASH, JEWS, and things of the like. These people are also the morons who use titles like High Command, Blunt Trauma, So Baked, Joint Ops, and Pineapple Express. Then there's the people from Halo 3 who think calling everyone in the game room "gay" or a "faggot" is still funny, and still there's the children of about age 13-14 telling me to "fuck off". I'm only sad to see one of my once favorite online communities has been ruined by the general populace.

This all said, I still manage to enjoy the game by playing with my I'm sure little known clan, [IRON]. Look for us online.

[IRON] Go0fyT0oth
[IRON] d4p0k3
[IRON] tehNarwhals
[IRON] McDuck67
[IRON] moarzors
[IRON] Nazg0ul89
[IRON] Trollfus
[IRON] Jeeves 1080
[IRON] RisingAngel

At the end of it all though, if you're a gamer, you basically should own Modern Warfare 2. Simple as that. 9.5/10

24th Entry - Halo 3: ODST

2009-09-24T03:14:00.003-04:00

Well well well. The much anticipated ODST has arrived. Read on my friends, about one of this fall's most definitive releases.

Does Bungie's newest masterpiece really need an introduction? You play a rookie ODST (Orbital Drop Shock Trooper, for those of you living under rocks) and aside from Spartan 117 himself, these guys are the biggest bad-asses this side of the galaxy.

Naturally however, due to the fact that you are no longer a walking, you know, TANK, there are a few changes. The ODSTs do not have a Spartan's speed or jumping ability, nor their super-strength. Your melee attack power is greatly decreased, and is far less useful than when playing as a Spartan. ODSTs also obviously do not have the energy shield of a Spartan. Instead, when you get shot, your screen will gradually grow more red as your character's breathing becomes more labored, and eventually if you keep taking fire your health bar will begin to deplete. This resulted in the return of health packs in ODST, however they are seamlessly integrated and rarely force you to wander searching for a health station.

Additionally, the ODST lacks a radar system, having instead a virtual map of the city of New Mombasa, in addition to the VISR system, which identifies enemies, friendlies, weapons and static objects in different colors. In some ways this is far better than being a Spartan, although the tradeoffs are noticeable.

ODSTs also have some trooper-only weapons at their disposal, like the silenced Automag and the silenced SMG. The Automag is amazing for taking down unshielded targets in rapid succession, but is utterly useless against Brutes and to a lesser extent, Hunters. Despite this, the Automag is an extremely utilitarian weapon and will be a staple. The silenced SMG is reasonably good, better than the Halo 3 SMG only in that it has a scope and can be used at greater range. However, with the absence of the battle rifle entirely, it is a shitty fill-in, as it too is rather useless against shielded targets.

I know it may seem as though the game's best features have been removed (No shield? No super-beatdowns? NO BR?!) but give ODST the chance it deserves. It is an excellent game through and through, no ifs, ands, or buts.

The campaign is short. Very freakin' short. Poke and I played it through on Heroic first time through and beat the game in one night. However, our intense compulsion to beat every Halo game on Legendary will no doubt extend the gameplay. Despite being short, the campaign is extremely fun, with an great combination of stealth, vehicle rape, and general bad-assery to satisfy every Halo fan, myself among them. (Quick example: If you ever play Halo 3's multiplayer, you may have noticed that attached to the C.Q.B. armor's chestpiece is a combat knife. Right, well the ODSTs have a combat knife as well, however unused it may be. In a certain cutscene, we see an ODST stab a Brute Chieftain IN THE NECK with his combat knife. Awesome.)

Without giving too much of the story away, the main campaign consists of you (the rookie) searching for your squadmates who got separated from you during your drop into New Mombasa. As you wander the dark, Brute-infested streets, aided by the city's AI "The Superintendent", you will discover clues that will help you understand what became of your ODST squad.

The graphics are somehow improved from Halo 3, especially on the 2nd campaign level, where I simply had to sit back and say, "That's real purdy." The cinematic sequences, in traditional Bungie style, are near-perfect. The music, as well, is excellent, featuring just the right mix of moody overtones with heart-thumping battle anthems.

Not much else to say about campaign, so moving on to the new mode of Firefight. Firefight lets you and up to 3 friends throw yourselves against insurmountable odds. The mode starts you in a defensible position with a few weapons and some ammo, and 6 lives to share among your squad. The game is played in sets, with 3 rounds per set, and 5 waves per round. The mode starts off simple but rapidly becomes difficult as more and more skulls (which create new rules that increase game difficulty, i.e. the Catch skull, which makes enemies chuck a ridiculous amount of grenades) are added. The sheer number of levels not to mention the random enemy spawns make for a interesting alternative to co-op, ahem, single player.

Despite ODST's undeniable awesomeness, there are several things that bother me about the game. For one, when using the shotgun or the sniper rifle, significantly less damage is done than when Master Chief wields the same weapon. A headshot with the sniper rifle on Easy in ODST does not even break a Brute's shield, whereas on Heroic in Halo 3 it will kill him. Same goes for the shotgun. Often in ODST it will not break a Brute's shield, where, again, in Halo 3 it would kill the Brute, or at least break his shield. I understand that ODSTs are no Spartans, but come on. Why do they do less weapon damage? That doesn't even make sense.

The following paragraph is mainly my personal bitching about the game, though none of it truly negatively affects gameplay. For hardcore Halo 3 players, the arc in which the ODSTs throw a grenade is much different than in Halo 3, and may bother you for quite a while, especially if you switch between games frequently. And may I add, shielded drones? Really? Really Bungie? I mean it's bad enough drones were in the game at all, I was like FFFFUUUUUU but then I saw shielded ones and i was yet again like FFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUU- And even worse, beat a level on Legendary with no grenades or weapons used!? AAAAARGH

It has been said that ODST is a "expansion pack" not worthy of its $60 price tag. These peopel have clearly not played the game yet. ODST is a refreshing and fun Halo experience, and may interest those of you addicted to Call of Duty, refusing to play Halo based on principle. At any rate, I highly recommend ODST. 9/10

23rd Entry - WET

2009-09-17T16:42:00.003-04:00

Gamers have quite the month or so ahead of them, with Need for Speed Shift, Halo ODST, Forza 3, and COD Modern Warfare 2 all on the way, but perhaps you've found time to notice something like WET. Thought little more than a blip on most people's radar, WET is worth a look into.

WET is a over-the-top 3rd person shooter in the vein of Kill Bill. You play Rubi, a hired assassin out for revenge after being framed.

Being a fan of Tarantino movies like Kill Bill and Pulp Fiction ("SAY WHAT AGAIN"), WET instantly caught my eye because it had a similar look and feel. Another thing that brought WET to my attention was that it was published by Bethesda, the makers of Oblivion and Fallout 3. Instantly I wanted this game since Bethesda has so far only cranked out awesome games. Despite WET being a fun game, it is my final evaluation that Bethesda should stick to RPGs.

Anyway, right from the outset WET is in your face with wall-running, dual targeting, backflipping action. In the beginning, Rubi only has her dual pistols and her sword to fight off the bad guys, but soon you get the dual shotguns, which are excellent for taking down bosses or groups of weaker enemies. Then you will get the dual SMGs, which are perfect for annihilating pretty much anything, although they blow through ammunition like no other. Finally near the end of the game you'll receive the dual dart crossbows, which fire explosive tipped darts, perfect for blowing anything and everything away quickly and efficiently. While this may seem like not much variety, it will be more than enough to keep you entertained.

The gameplay for the most part is fun and addictive; despite seeming repetitive, jumping around like a crazy person and going into slow-mo 90% of the time just never got old. Just as I got annoyed with any part of the game, I would jump from a story up, go into slow-mo, and drop 3 guys before I even hit the floor, or something equally ridiculous.

On each level however, there are sometime jumping puzzles a la Tomb Raider. While WET excels at its over the top shooter aspect, the jumping puzzles are just horrific. Crappy camera angles, goofy and awkward controls....ARGH. Just BLARGH. Be prepared, and just be patient. You will mis-jump. You will die. Often. And you will become frustrated. However, just remain focused on the wall-running goodness that awaits you in the next room, and no controllers need be chucked at windows or roommates.

To mix it up, there are several car chase scenes, which consist of Rubi "car surfing" while blasting enemies and jumping from car to car and pursuing her opponents.

Every once in a while, there will be a "rage mode" level, where Rubi goes into a psychotic fury, changing the graphics to a bright noir red, black, and white. Not only is Rubi faster during these sequences, but she hits harder too. The rage mode levels provide for the most memorable and crazy parts of the game, and are always a blast.

This all aside, there is one level which can only be described as complete dick. The level in which you are free falling from a destroying airplane and attempting to avoid the falling debris is by far one of the most annoying and frustrating game sequences since the dump truck scene in Kane + Lynch (trust me, it was beyond awful). It took me several tries to get this scene right, so just be wary. I wish i could offer some tips for it but i can't even really; just try to memorize the pattern of the debris.

The game itself is fun but short, and not especially bad, but it's certainly not outstanding. However, even after you finish the game, what will stick with you is the game's soundtrack. The music is AWESOME. The timing, selection, and style of music is flawless, and is to be commended. If only all games took their music as seriously as WET did. Seriously, if anyone knows where to get the soundtrack of this game, let me know, because I'd really like to get my hands on it.

There we go. That's about all there is to say about WET. Rent it, or wait for the price to go down and buy it, but it's a fun game, and anyone who likes a good ol' over-the-top shooter will have fun with WET. Hell, if you're looking for a fun casual game to beat, this could be it. At any rate, while it's fun, it's not exceptional, and WET earns a 7/10.

HALO FANBOYS UNITE, ODST IN 2 DAYS!

4th Mini Entry - FEAR 2: Reborn Campaign

2009-09-12T12:14:00.002-04:00

FEAR 2 was, despite what people may have said, a highly enjoyable game that I recommend. Therefore when I heard about FEAR 2 Reborn, a new 4-level campaign for FEAR 2, I got super excited.

Reborn is an excellent DLC for the most part, the first few levels being an action packed set of battles with the Replica and ATC forces. Aside from the end where the DLC's quality and ability to make sense begins to end, it's a excellent purchase.

In Reborn, you play as a Replica soldier Foxtrot 813. The beginning of the DLC is action packed, as you hot-drop from orbit in an armored walker directly into tons of ATC forces. As you tear them to shreds, you descend closer to the center of the Armacham explosion, and Alma appears more frequently as her powers increase. Essentially, Reborn has the same feel as the original campaign but with more of an emphasis on kicking ass.

Reborn isn't perfect, but if you liked FEAR 2 you'll love Reborn.

7/10

22nd Entry - Prototype

2009-09-09T02:35:00.002-04:00

Yeah, yeah. I know this is kinda old. But honestly, nothing new has come out recently that I have wanted to play. Fortunately, ODST on the 22nd will fix that.

Anyway, Prototype.

Prototype - Xbox 360

You're Alex Mercer, an amnesia-struck shapeshifter out for vengeance. Awesome. When i saw the trailer for the first time i could scarcely contain myself. Unfortunately, the one thing Prototype has taught is to never get too excited for sandbox games. Despite the multiple attemts to change up gameplay, it always ends up repetitive. Don't get me wrong, Prototype is very very good, it's just that what should be a refreshing and neat concept wears itself out rapidly.

Anyway, the story missions themselves are generally entertaining, aside from the one or two that are crappy escort missions. As much as I though I'd hate the brooding character of Alex Mercer, I actually was suprised to find i didn't. Quite the contrary, I found his attitude fit the game perfectly.

The controls themselves are simple enough, although in the midst of having tank rounds fired at you, the button mashing can be annoying. There are several powers you can shift between, from Whipfist, Blade, Musclemass, Claws, and Hammerfist, to the defensive Armor and Shield powers, to the useless Thermal Vision and Infected Vision powers.

Whipfist is the most useful by far, allowing you to annihilate groups of weak enemies in one or two button presses. It also lets you grapple onto helicopters from range, putting it in the #1 most awesome power spot.

Blade is what it sounds like, a giant blade erupting from Alex's arm. It kills everything dead. Including tanks. Pretty much all there is to it.

Musclemass is, as far as I can tell, useless, because why chuck cars ridiculous distances to kill helicopters when you can just steal them instead? A dumb power.

Claws are your first power, and slice through enemies quickly, but won't kill armored targets. Useful until Blade and Whipfist. Afterwards, totally useless.

Hammerfist is hilarious to use but in the end kind of just goofy and awkward. The only time I ever used it was to kill tanks by doing a people's elbow from 30 stories up onto them. Like I said, goofy.

Armor is awesome, it makes you near indestructible and extremely heavy, limiting your mobility. But when everything around you is crying from the death and destruction you bring, that doesn't matter one bit.

Shield is ok, Armor is better. Simple.

Both Vision powers are just a waste of upgrade points.

Now, I'm sure as you work your way through the game, you'll develop your own favorite powers too, but rest assured, some powers are simply bad.

After beating the main story (which actually has a well thought out and intriguing storyline) you'll do some of the events around the city. Eventually you will do the Consume events, which are fun. The Virus events are hilariously easy, and the Military consumer events are as well, until you hit the set of 7 "hard difficulty" ones. These are frustrating, unfun, and very unrewarding. Approach with caution. As for the rest of the events, War events are generally pretty fun, Kill events are easy save for a few, Glide events are stupendously simple and even kind of fun, and the foot race events made me want to burn my copy of Prototype slowly over coals.

Sandbox games aren't really my thing, but if you're looking for something to do for a few days, Prototype will happily fill the spot. Being a solid game, Prototype earns a 7.5/10.

Next entry will likely be a review of FEAR 2's new FEAR Reborn DLC, Fable II's DLC packs, or perhaps of the new XBL Arcade game Defense Grid. Maybe all of the above. Depends on the homework situation this week.

Until next time everyone.

3rd Mini Entry - Fallout DLC

2009-07-15T13:18:00.007-04:00

Fallout 3, if you aren't already aware, is one of my favorite games to date. The quality and amount of immersion in the game is unmatched, and with the release of new DLC it only gets better.

The original DLC for Fallout 3 is called Operation: Anchorage. It is a solid DLC and definitely worth your time/money.

The storyline extension seems kind of contrived, what with it all taking place in a virtual reality world. Despite being disappointed in this feature, most everything about Anchorage is excellent, especially the weapons which have been added in. Some are fairly boring like the Trench Knife, but some, like the Gauss Rifle, are hilariously powerful. Not to mention you get the T-51b armor, which never requires repairing, which in my opinion makes it the best armor in the game.

Anchorage is solid but it always felt like they didn't quite go the extra step to make it really stand out. 7.5/10

The second DLC pack is called the Pitt, taking place in the now Raider-controlled city of Pittsburgh. After the bombs fell, Pittsburgh became The Pitt, and the sign above the bridge to the Pitt reads "Welcome to The Pitt - HELL" pretty much explains the current situation.

This pack was infamous for being inexcusably buggy, doing all kinds of crazy things from deleting the player's inventory, or simply hanging up and not allowing the player to finish the quest. Bethesda remedied the situation as fast as possible, but the Pitt still remains very buggy, leaving a "play at your own risk" aura around this pack. When it wasn't freezing or glitching, i enjoyed the Pitt for the most part, but the bugginess made for a greatly diminished play experience. For hardcore fans only. 5/10

The third and undoubtedly best DLC to date is called Broken Steel.

It takes place in the Capital Wasteland, adds new weapons and stronger enemies, but most importantly, raises the level cap to 30, with new perks as well. I enjoyned this pack all the way through, never having a single problem with it. If every Xbox DLC was this perfect, well, then...I guess every Xbox DLC would be perfect. Honestly though, download this and play it now. 10/10

Two new DLCs have been announced, Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta.

Point Lookout has already been released, and I would review it right here and now, IF ONLY I HAD MY XBOX. Alas I won't have it back until i return to Richmond in the fall but for now I'll drool over the screen like a good Fallout fanboy.

Mothership Zeta takes place on a alien spaceship. Holy shit. This is all that needs saying.

Next entry - Prototype! Or the Conduit...hmm...I'll have to decide.

2nd Mini Entry - NEW RELEASES (kind of)

2009-05-14T12:10:00.015-04:00

So as we roll through summer, we'll eventually hit fall again, and we all know that means tons of new games. Well some of the best stuff has been announced recently and in case you haven't heard about any of it, I've decided to compile a little list here of what looks awesome. Thank me later.

Also, what are you guys looking forward to? Did I miss anything for Wii? Let me know in the comments...

What have you been playing through recently? New stuff, like Wolverine? Old school? PC?

For me it's been this.

Oh yes.

Anyway, on to things you care about.

Modern Warfare 2

I guess after Treyarch's flubbing of the franchise, Infinity Ward has stepped back up to the plate to hopefully give us something grand. If you haven't seen the teaser, here it is.

Now it's also been annoucned official debut information will be released on May 24th, so stay tuned.

Prototype

Look, I know I was really wrong about Legendary, but Prototype is another new game that looks promising. I can't say much else, other than that this trailer rules.

Brutal Legend is a new game I'm especially interested in. It's a neat-sounding game taking place in a heavy metal-themed world. I think we're long overdue for something like this. \m/

Hmmm. What else? A new Wolfenstein, for those of you who are fans, and also a new Battlefield: Bad Company are due this summer, along with oh yeah, BIOSHOCK 2!

And finally, to wrap things up, the thing i most want to see, Mass Effect 2.

Enjoy everyone, the next entry will be on Resident Evil 5! Followed soon after by a mini-entry covering all the Fallout DLC, and what you should know about them, Wastelander.

21st Entry - FEAR 2

2009-05-13T13:04:00.007-04:00

Alright, I'm going on a writing spree this week as i devote the only time I'm not working in the evening to my much-neglected blog.

Since we're playing catch-up, this time it's FEAR 2!

FEAR 2: Project Origin (Xbox 360, PC, PS 3)

I'm shamelessly addicted to survival horror games. It's just something I've had to accept. That in mind, I was excitedly awaiting FEAR 2's release. Day it came out, went out to my local Gamestop, picked it up, and popped it in with Poke watching me.

The game lives up to its survival horror title, to put it simply. I hear people criticize FEAR 2 for "cheap thrills" or just being "a bad game". I don't see how this game is bad. It has a story that draws you in, interesting characters, not to mention the game itself has a realistic feel and the weapons are neat and inventive. So to everyone who's hated on FEAR 2, i say no, no to your ignorance of a excellent game.

So to everyone new to FEAR, you really should start at FEAR 1, which is also a excellent game, to learn the complicated story better.

All of you FEAR junkies though, keep reading. So, the malevolent force known as Alma has been unleashed on the world, with catastrophic results. She has decimated an entire city and shows no sign of stopping. Michael Becket is sent in with a special forces team to put a stop to everything. The game essentially tells the story of Becket as he comes closer and closer to defeating Alma.

While the story is mainly text-driven, anyone who cares enough to read the text will enjoy the intricate story.

People have said FEAR 2 lacks a good ending, but I fail to see how this is the case. I found the ending shocking and provocative, and I'm sure any true FEAR fan would as well. All in all, the story is the least of this game's worries.

FEAR 2 provides a blissful and much needed array of enemies as opposed to the simple setup of two enemies in FEAR 1. Ranging from high tech black ops soldiers to psychotic failed experiments, FEAR 2 not only has a great range of enemies, but provides some excellent shock value as well. More psychological enemies appear, as Alma's desires begin to replace out world with hers. There is also a stage or two in which you enter a mechanized unit and tear apart the base of the Armacham security forces. It is in no way difficult and you get the feeling of god-like power as you sweep through the city, wrecking all in your path. Definitely a fun part of the game.
The number one enemy, however, is Alma. Throughout the game she terrorizes Becket and his team, leading some of them to strange deaths and ultimately falling in love with Becket. There are some truly shocking moments with Alma, and i can only hope they match them with FEAR 3.

The weapons are the centerpiece of any shooter, and FEAR 2 is no different. The Nailgun makes a return as a fan favorite, and yes, it still pins enemies to walls. There's a rocket launcher, and it's pretty hilarious, especially with FEAR 2's amazing graphics and physics. The SMG also returns, and, if anything, is better than the original. There is an all-new laser beam which really brings the pain, and also a new energy weapon that dishes out the death room by room (just stay out of the blast radius). There is a flamethrower but it isn't really a great weapon, much like the sniper rifle, which is quite terrible since the game is mostly close quarters combat. IN WHICH CASE THE AUTOMATIC SHOTGUN IS AWESOME andthepumpactiononesucks. There's also a pistol but no one cares unless you dual wield them and even then they're still just pistols. :/ Finally there is a 3-round burst fire rifle, much like the famous Halo battle rifle, which is very good and quite frankly sometimes feels like you're cheating to use it.

Slo-mo also makes a return and is more useful than before, or maybe I just never used it. Whatever the case, it seems more polished this time around.

Not much else to be said about the otherwise somewhat short single-player. Moving on to the multiplayer, I had very mixed feelings everytime i fired it up. It was quite unlike COD 4 or 5, or Halo 3 in that I am confident in my ability in all of those games and generally do well in the multiplayer; however, FEAR 2 seemed to have no ground in skill but rather in what armor class you could cheat the best weapons into. The game rarely seemed balanced, as sometimes I would be dominating in one game, and the next game i would get crushed terribly. I felt it had something to do with the matchups of each player's default weapon sets, because I know it wasn't my inexperience with the genre. Whatever the case, FEAR 2's multiplayer has a long, long way to go until it rises to the ranks of such as Call of Duty and Halo. That's not to say it isn't fun for a while, because it is, you'll just grow tired of it more rapidly than you would a different shooter.

All in all, and multiplayer achievements ASIDE BECAUSE I HATE THEM poijwrl9by,hjILJONH:(>G, FEAR 2 is awesome and if you liked the original you'll like the sequel.

9/10

Also, I personally can't wait for everything that's been announced recently! Next entry - A GIANT POST OF EVERYTHING GREAT THAT'S COMING OUT with yours truly.

Till next time everyone.

20st Entry - Castle Crashers

2008-12-04T17:02:00.008-05:00

Hey everybody,

It's summer finally, so I'll be having time to actually update this. Also so you know, I've gone and messed up the dates for like all of my posts, so today's is for May 13th 2009, just so we're back on track.

Castle Crashers - Xbox 360 (available only on 360, through the XBL Marketplace)

Anyway, today's review is for Castle Crashers, a Xbox Live Arcade game available for 1200 MS points. The cost is negligible - I am telling you, as a fellow gamer, you need this game if you own a Xbox 360. Need. Also as a side note, I've never played this game on my own, and neither should you. The 4 player local multiplayer should keep you and some friends busy for a while.

Additionally, Castle Crashers may or may not provide the best drinking game experience in existence, but I'll leave that one up to you to discover.

Right, so not much of a story here, just 4 goofy characters of your choosing, a couple of princesses in need of saving, and a whole lot of button mashing. Anyone can play this game, all it requires is pressing X and Y in various sequences and, if you use magic, sometimes RT. Oh yeah, and LT is block, but that doesn't really matter, unless you have a friend like me who always makes a magic character.

As you can see, not much involved in mastering the game. However, the game has numerous unlockables and weapons, although you only begin with the original 4 knights and their starting weapons. Some of my favorite unlockable characters are the Bear, the Pirate-Ninja (Pinja, as my friends have coined it), and the Skeleton. There are tons of weapons as well, too many to count, ranging from a lobster to a flaming dragon-sword. There are also Animal Orbs, each of which offer a special bonus to the user, such as extra health or defense, or in the case of my personal favorite, Bi-Polar Bear, mauling enemies near death.

The levels are well designed and rarely, if ever, boring. Each has its own sort of ridiculous humor, varying from crude to clever (mostly crude, though :p) There are plenty of hidden items on each level so be sure to search. Being it that the game is a sidescroller, there's not much else to say about the levels, other than that the entire game was drawn in Flash, a highly impressive achievement.

Other than the addictive gameplay, the game really shines in its 100% original soundtrack. The songs are all great, and i ended up hunting down all of them and putting it on my iPod...really good stuff. CHAOZ JAPAN.

Another facet of the gameplay is the massive boss fights, ranging from a Catfish to a sock-puppet wielding dragon. Each boss is more silly than the last, the final boss being no exception.

After you play through a few times, you may find yourself thinking, "I wonder when this will get boring?" And, miraculously, the answer is, IT WON'T! Despite having about the same 20 levels to play over and over, it NEVER got boring. There's always something new to unlock or find. I have played the living crap out of this game, and i still find myself going back with a friend now and then to beat it again.

All things considered, Castle Crashers is THE best Arcade game available for purchase, so buy it already. 10/10. Seriously, it's side-scrolling perfection.

19th Entry - Mirror's Edge

2008-12-04T16:59:00.004-05:00

Mirror's Edge (Xbox 360)

So I'm making up for the last few weeks. It's going to be a ridiculous slew of games, as a whole bunch of great stuff has come out since November. We'll start with this new EA franchise.

Mirror's Edge isn't the newest game out, but it definitely takes the cake for innovation.

I first saw the cover art for Mirror's Edge at Gamestop on the "coming soon" shelf. Poke and I both automatically dismissed it, thinking it was really stupid looking alongside such greats as my beloved Dead Space. However, it has managed to make me eat my words.

The game pits you as Faith, a part of a underground kind of smuggling ring who are called Runners. The world they live in is constantly monitored and watched, and Runners provide the communications between those who still fight for independence.

The game itself is a first-person adventure. It has shooter elements, but is not actually a shooter. Instead, you spend the game "free-running" over obstacles and also fighting off policemen and security forces. You can choose to use martial arts to fight off your enemies or just simply shoot them with their own weapons. The graphics are rather stunning, with a good use of bright color that sets it apart from the various shades of gray so present in other games. The EA team has done a great job creating a futuristic city from the ground up, and you'll be seeing all parts of it, from insides of offices to the tunnels of a subway.

Alright, alright, so what's good about it? Well, a lot. But it's still a new franchise with some defects.

So the good. Like i said, stunning graphics, awesome level design, and a interesting premise. The cutscenes are done in an cool cel shaded style. As for the game itself, the campaign is short but challenging. Playing on "easy" doesn't actually make it much easier, it only means you won't get shot up as much by the police. In this sense, if you don't learn to use the controls well, you'll be frustrated easily.

The "Runner Vision" helps immensely; it is a tool that highlights your next objective by shading it red on the HUD. Which, really, is another high point of the game. The HUD is flawless in that it barely exists, never cluttering the screen with things I don't care about. Definitely a good thing.

Another great boon to the gameplay is the inclusion of the martial arts combat. It's extremely satisfying to be running along at full speed, when all of a sudden a cop pops out of nowhere, and to not only not stop, but jump on him and use him as a springboard to get away. There are too many moves to list, and the combat is limited only by your own imagination, and you know, gravity. But only kind of. :)

There are some levels which can only be described as supremely badass. I think somewhere between jumping between two cranes over a 300 foot drop and kicking overzealous gun-toting bad guys in the face, I experienced Mirror's Edge at its best. I'm just sorry it couldn't always be that great.

Now of course, the bad.

The game has nothing truly wrong with it. It also has nothing truly GREAT either, which leaves it's "innovative" gameplay feeling like a cheap gimmick which has roped you in and then left you lonely and friendless. To put it in the most confusing words possible, Mirror's Edge over-reliance on it being "different" is it's greatest flaw. Every moment in-game screams, "HAHA LOOK WHAT I CAN DO! FLYING DROP KICK YEHAAW" and while this is great for the first few levels, it becomes contrived by the end.

Despite reasonable character design, they still manage to kill off the one character who we all know would be killed off. In addition, we never had time to become attached (to any of the characters, really). The in-game moment has the air of "YOU AREN'T GOOD FRIENDS WITH HIM BUT HE'S DYING! WHERE IS YOUR SOUL, FEEL BAD YET?" These kinds of moments in games are pretty crippling, and indeed, I lost interest in the story after that point. However, the game shamelessly chugged along to its cliche ending. Ah, well. Innovation and good stories can't all be in one game. (Wait, I'm getting something here...DEAD SPACE. Ok, there we go. WAIT, WAIT...FALLOUT 3. Ok. I'm feeling better. Onwards.)

Mirror's Edge, like so many other games, starts out great, loses its momentum, and begins riding the fine line between greatness and total boredom. Despite being different, that alone is not enough to thrust it to the level of greatness all games aspire to.

When I played through Mirror's Edge, I couldn't seem to decide if it was mediocre, crappy, or breakthrough awesome. After beating it, i think it's safe to say it's a little of each.

Final words: Rent it. Worth a playthrough and $5.

6.5/10

18th Entry - Need For Speed Undercover

2008-12-04T16:57:00.002-05:00

Need for Speed: Undercover (Xbox 360)

Welcome back everyone, sorry it's been so long. :(

The main reason it's been so long is i KNEW i had to do this review next. While I have always been a Need for Speed fan, this one wasn't terribly worthy, even for a fanboy like me.

The game starts out well, despite the cheesy continuation of the NFS story. The gameplay has only improved since the early NFS games, and this is no exception. The sheer amount of customization possibilities is ridiculous, and even a little overwhelming. And, despite that fact that it's a racing game, Undercover still manages to mix up the gameplay enough that it isn't boring.

The meat of this game is the career mode, which is easily the longest in the NFS series. I'm unable to decide if this is good or bad. I can tell you the writing for this game was atrocious, as over half of some characters' lines are (bad) innuendos, as well as the random rivalries that spring up for no apparent reason during the course of the story. The attempt at a "plot twist" is no less obvious than being hit by a semi. Sigh. What will it take for EA to realize a story just doesn't belong? It worked in Tokyo Drift!

The cop chases are fun and exciting, and the infamous Speedbreaker mechanic makes a return to assist you in plowing through roadblock after roadblock.

Despite my love for this series, it always has flaws. Undercover just has lots. The most glaringly obvious flaws for car guys like Poke and I are the arbitrary assignment of car stats.This is a rampant problem throughout the game. The muscle class cars are also impossible to drive because they refuse to turn, and last time i checked, a Chevrolet Corvette was a RWD vehicle, yet the one i drove in the game out-manuevered anything from Japan, which is just plain wrong. A Lancer EVO with worse handling than that of a Challenger? Seriously, what the hell? It seems nitpicky, but this kind of sloppy detail subtracts from the game. (Also, a Bugatti Veyron tops out at 253 mph, not 246. Check on it, EA.)

Despite the lack of "realism" as far as the cars are concerned, the acting is subpar. Just because you put Maggie Q in the game doesn't mean we'll all be too busy staring at her to realize the acting would make Vin Diesel's character in The Fast and the Furious have a nervous breakdown.

(I'm going to go on a quick tangent here. Why does the radio always suck in driving games? I understand, put some rap and R+B in there, that's fine, no big deal. I even understand the crappy mainstream rock. But seriously, throw the metal fans a bone. Not even one song? And I mean real metal, none of this Bullet for My Valentine stuff, or even worse, Slipknot.)

*end rant.

Right, so Undercover has a multiplayer mode, which i tried. I have to say, I'm a gamer, and I can move at a fast pace, but the game of Cops and Robbers i played was too fast to even think. The Nissan Skyline i was driving went 0-100 in about 1.5, and the whole game mainly took place above 200mph. I'm sorry, that isn't even kind of real. It was so mind blowingly fast i didn't even know my team had won. Needless to say, I'm not a real fan of the online modes.

A final annoying feature of the game was the shamless abuse of bloom lighting. Shameless. Poke was once driving into the sun, and the lighting effectively made it appear as if the road was glass, and the glare made it impossible to even see. Come on, EA, too much of a good thing...

So now you're thinking after that flame-fest, Goofy, you're not a fan of NFS after something like that. WEll, yes, I am, and a very diehard one. It's why i hate to see the games start going downhill. NFS is in need of a major return to roots, Underground-esque revival. Unfortunately, Undercover does not provide this revelation.

The career had enough variety to keep me busy. I don't know if it's because it's a good career, or if i'm just a fanboy so I'm patient. Either way, if you feel you're getting bored with it, take a break cause you'll just end up not wanting to pick it up again. Undercover is one of those games. In addition, beware of the Highway Battles. These 1v1 races are generally easy but there were a couple that required 20+ tries, at least on my end, and I like to think i'm pretty good at Undercover.

One thing i do greatly enjoy about Undercover is its plain silly customization options. Yeah, I put 22s on my Aston Martin DB9. Know what i did next? Gave it a spoiler large enough to constitute a plane wing, slapped on some soda can mufflers, and gave it a chrome paint job. That's right, chrome. And when the sun hit it just right, the glare off the car would burn a hole in your retina. You can do anything from serious to silly, and everywhere in between. Personally, I prefer to black-out the whole car. This is my Charger. (502 hp of muscle that runs on souls.)

All in all, if you're a NFS fan, give Undercover a shot. If you're new to NFS, uhm...buy a Gamecube and play through NFS Underground. If you like realistic racing games like Forza and Gran Turismo, you should not play this game. Bottom line - for fans only.

7/10

17th Entry - Left 4 Dead

2008-12-04T16:53:00.003-05:00

Left 4 Dead (Xbox 360)

This game was one of the best things released in 2008, and I almost didn't know about it.

Poke's roommate (Vars) is a fan of all things zombie, he has movies, books (The Zombie Survival Guide, anyone?) and now he's got a game. (Well not really, I haven't returned it yet.)

If it weren't for Vars's zombie thing, I never would have even seen the demo. But he, Poke and I downloaded it and gave it a run. It was pretty fun alright, but i wasn't about to run out and buy it. Fortunately Poke and Vars bought it and it was definitely worth it. ( I really need to buy my own copy.)

The game's premise is that after a zombie apocalypse, our four Survivors battle their way through 4 unique campaigns in a city, a park, a suburb, and an airport. The game uses a unique "Director" feature that makes the game different each time you play through random spawns based on a variety of factors.

There's the veteran Bill, the college girl Zoey, the cubicle-dweller Louis, and the tattooed biker Francis. I only play as Francis. For the following reason. (from the Left 4 Dead wiki - Francis is notable for often contextually exclaiming how he hates something. Anything, really.)

Among the things Francis hates:

The Army
Ayn Rand
Bats (dislikes)
Boat lawyers
Boat people
Boomers
Camping
Churches
Cops
Doctors
Electric fences
Elevators
Helicopters
Hospitals
Hotels
Hunters
Jumping
Lawyers
Mazes
Planes
Sewers
Small towns
Smokers
Stairs
Subways
Tanks
Trains
Trainyards
Tunnels
Turnpikes
Vampires
Vans
Vomit
Walking
Water
Whispering
Witches
Woods
Zombies

Awesome.

There are also the Infected, which i will briefly describe.

The Hunter is a fast-moving Infected who can immobilize a single survivor unless he/she is rescued by another survivor. It has a pounce attack and a claw attack. One of my favorite classes to play as in multiplayer.

The Boomer is a disgustingly obese bile-filled monster, and can projectile vomit onto the Survivors to attract all nearby Infected. They have almost no health, however, and are easily killed.

The Smoker is an Infected with a long tongue that is used to ensnare and drag away Survivors. It is insanely powerful when used correctly and can certainly take a few bullets. The Smoker also has a claw attack in additon to its primary tongue grab. This is my favorite Infected to play as.

The Tank is a huge, zombified Hulk. It hurts to be punched by and will kill you almost instantly if it hits you with a concrete brick or a car. Only concentrated fire will kill a Tank. If engaged at range, a Tank is rendered harmless as it can do little at range. The Tanks is my least favorite Infected to play as, mainly because of its horrible imbalances.

The Witch is a non-playable Infected. She has glowing red eyes, a distinctive cry (and scream), and has long, deadly claw-hands. She WILL kill you if you are careless, she will also kill you even if you are very precise, because the Director seems to find it amusing to place her below ladders or at choke points. Also, in a game one of my friends took part in, the Director once spawned five Witches forming a death blockade across a doorway essential to progression. If this happens, accept your painful death, for there is no way to escape.

Anyway, this game is fun on your own for a while, I suppose, but the real fun is the multiplayer. 4 humans play as the Survivors, and 4 play as the Special Infected, such as the Boomer, the Hunter, and the Smoker. (Occasionally the Tank as well.) The humans try to get to the safe rooms while the zombies try to kill all the Survivors.

There are only a few weapons. At the start, there is a Uzi, or a pump shotgun. Further into the levels, there is a Benelli M4 Super 90 semi-automatic shotgun, a M16A3 assault rifle, and a Ruger Mini-14 hunting rifle. You can also acquire dual pistols.

Real men use the pump shotgun for all five levels of a campaign. Unfortunately, we can't all be real men, so the other weapons were put in the game.

There are also Molotov cocktails and pipe bombs for taking out groups of Infected. Using pipe bombs is synonomous with "cheating." So is playing on the "Easy" difficulty.

The true beauty about Left 4 Dead is its simplicity. Easy to pick up and play, yet challenging enough to keep a serious gamer busy.

After beating all four campaigns, eventually you will turn to the multiplayer modes. There are a few things that should be known about multiplayer in Left 4 Dead.

First, teamwork is paramount. If you don't have cooperative teammates who will communicate, find a new game.

Your success depends entirely upon your teammates. I don't know about PC gaming, because I'm not a PC gamer, and I won't pretend to be. But on Xbox Live, a good game of Left 4 Dead is precious because generally, your teammates are douchebags, your opponents are douchebags, your opponents are douchebags who use glitches, your teammates are douchebags who use glitches, or everyone participating in the game thinks they are playing Halo 3 and run around yelling about no-scopes and killing sprees. No one cares. Not even your douchebag teammates.

Alright, well its not really that bad, but the average Xbox 360 player is not someone i want on my team.

Second, the only playable multiplayer maps right now are No Mercy (city campaign) and Blood Harvest (park/woods campaign). This greatly limits replayability.

Finally there are several glitches that allow the Infected team to wall the Survivors off from advancing. If this kind of thing frustrates you, you've been warned. It drives me nuts when the other team does this, as you are powerless to move on, until the zombie team realizes they are being morons, and move the block.

Despite its potential shortcomings, Left 4 Dead delivers one of the most solid multiplayer experiences in recent memory. Running around blindly like in some shooters will get you killed here, make sure to remember you're on a team now and need to play as such.

There really isn't too much more to say about Left 4 Dead, other than that you should buy it and that it's full of zombie-blasting goodness.

That said, Left 4 Dead earns an impressive 8.5/10. Play it. Now.
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Now playing: Alice Cooper - No More Mr Nice Guy
via FoxyTunes

16th Entry - Call of Duty: World At War

2008-12-04T16:52:00.002-05:00

Call of Duty: World at War (Xbox 360) - I know this isn't the real cover but it's so much better. :)

Alrighty then everyone, I just finished a 3 hour battle with my homework, i finally came out on top for once. I wanted something fun to do afterwards, so here i am.

And then I noticed the review i was doing was Call of Duty: World at War (CoD:WaW). My heart sank. For several reasons.

One, this game was a total letdown.
Two, unfun games are never as good to write about.
Three, this game was a total letdown.

I'd like to let everyone know, Poke was right and i was wrong. This game came out, and I kept pestering him to go in half with me on it, since i wanted to play, but of course was too cheap to buy it outright. He kept saying no, but i eventually wore him down and we got it. What a waste.

Popped it in, turned on co-op, and came to find the screen setup was AWFUL. Not only was it terrible, you can't change it. Stuck in Suck-Mode forever. Not a great start, Activision.

I really don't have much to say about the game itself, it's a lot like Cod 4, minus, you know, the good stuff. Poke and I beat the co-op mode in under 4 hours. Dissatisfying.

Poke gave up on WaW at that point. I took it to my apartment and figured I'd try single player. It was ok, a lot better than co-op for sure, but still just ok. I beat the game in yet another dissatisfying 7 or so hours total.

Dismayed at my waste of $30, I gave WaW back to Poke to have him beat it. (Originally I was going to have him write this review, but he never played CoD 5 again, he really didn't like it.)

My (our?) copy of World at War ended up back at my local GameStop as fodder for my collector's edition copy of Halo Wars. :/

Ok I'll talk about what I liked, then what I didn't.

The good stuff about this game is fairly limited. However, the sniper level in Stalingrad is great fun, reminiscent of the greatness that is CoD 4's "All Ghillied Up". I had a good time with that level.

The game mode you unlock upon beating the game, NAZI ZOMBIES, is pretty amusing, and it's fun even, but after about 20 times of playing it, it loses its appeal, and falls aside.

The strong point of all CoD games shines here - multiplayer. I spent an afternoon playing multiplayer, and had a damn good time (by 'good time', I mean unlocking the Japanese "Banana Gun" and running around like a deranged maniac). However, multiplayer won't hold me for long, the game itself needs to be good as well , and that just wasn't the case. I'll just mention that Poke really dislikes online multiplayer, mostly for the reason that "it's pointless". (He just hates losing.)

That's pretty much all i enjoyed from CoD: WaW. Oh, shoot, well i also liked the "Black Cats" level. Mowing down Zeroes with a huge chain gun is great fun too. If anyone knows where to get the music from that level, PLEASE email me a link, or something.

On to the bad stuff.

Co-op. Abysmal. It seems they had a week to go until release, and some developer ran into the test room and goes "FUCK we need a co-op mode!" and some idiot slapped it together in under 45 minutes, just so they could write "co-op" on the box to sucker people like me and Poke into buying it. Communists.

The gameplay took a step back from CoD 4. Activision, THAT'S BAD. We try to avoid annoying our target audience by producing games that deviate from what they're used to.

I can't quite put it in words, but pound for pound, WaW just feels inferior to CoD 4. Please give the next game in the series back to Infinity Ward. Please. Last thing this market needs is another WWII game. Yeesh.

Also, I'd just like it pointed out that as of now, World at War retails for approximately $10 less than CoD 4 does. Hmmm. Wonder why.

Call of Duty: World at Was earns a 5/10.

That's pretty much all i can bring myself to write about this less than satisfactory shooter.

As for the rest of you, hopefully you're going out to get FEAR 2 tomorrow just like me.

Until next time everyone.

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Now playing: Dio - Living The Lie
via FoxyTunes

15th Entry - Fable II

2008-12-04T16:51:00.002-05:00

Fable II (Xbox 360)

HEY EVERYBODY! I can't seem to remember to update this blog, and it's not cause i don't love you guys.

Anyway I'm writing this now so that's all that really matters. So here we have one of the most anticipated games for Xbox fans since Halo 2, and I have to say, Fable II fell short of the mark. In fact, it was even disappointing.

Call me biased, I'm not a big fan of RPGs (I can be swayed, however by certain games, like Mass Effect, way too awesome to not play) and Fable II, if anything has made me lose more hope in the genre. I wasn't even for a second considering downloading the recent DLC from Xbox Live, I just can't be convinced to care. So enough rambling, I'm going to talk about why it was a less than perfect experience.

When I popped Fable in, it seemed promising. Neat story, pretty to look at, and i even got to have a dog. Cool.

But then things started happening, like me realizing how ridiculously BROKEN the magic (Will) abilities are. Why would you be anything but a mage? Charge up a level 5 spell or so, unleash it, and watch everything on screen wither and die. Do it twice if it's a boss. I'm almost serious.

In all honesty, the other two concentrations of Skill and Strength are nearly pointlesss, especially the Skill tree, which is terribly unbalanced when compared with Will.

So 30 minutes in I'm using nothing but magic. Then i make the mistake of eating a pie in-game, and suddenly my Hero is all huge and chubby, and for the life of me, I can't get him to lose any weight. And now I have a mage-y, fat, scarred, demon-horned Hero. Not really what I'd call desireable, and no matter how hard I try, i can't change any of his attributes. (Ok, I'll be fair, I liked the demon horns. Good for bad-ass points.) At any rate I rapidly became frustrated with the lack of emphasis on the story which had instead been replaced by an annoying need to RE-DECORATE my house!? Come on, this isn't the Sims. But you're close, Lionhead Studios, so close to making a Sims clone. >_< Coupled with a clunky and rather unrealistic "realtionship" system where people become your friends after farting on them a few times, I rapidly moved from being annoyed to dismayed. How was this game getting positive reviews!? Poke gave up after reaching Bowerstone in-game, and my goofy self was headed down a similar path. (In Poke's defense though, he is a rather impatient player who will discard a game he finds annoying whereas i will finish it no matter how terrible.)

There aren't really any nifty weapons, only boring variants of the same weapon. They aren't even cleverly concealed behind a changed name, they're just all the same. So yeah, I could go in search of "loot", but WHEN IT'S ALL THE SAME, what's the point?

I think that's about all the bad stuff i have to say...oh wait.

Right, so Poke and i are big fans of co-op games (Army of Two is awesome, I don't want to hear it) and so we noticed Fable was co-op. We gave it a try, and i can't really describe it to you in words. I'll try though. It is an experience in frustration; an abysmal, terrible, and clunky system, and to top off this pile of garbage, it's FIXED CAMERA. Yes, fixed. Seriously, read a book, Lionhead. If two players are on seperate Xboxes, they don't want a fixed camera. Fixed camera doesn't even work in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and it's the best game ever made. I had to stop after 5 minutes of co-op mode, it hurt too much. But wait, there's more. If you join someone's co-op game, you don't get to use your own Hero. Nope, you get to choose from several stock ones. STOCK! The whole point of this game is character customization, so then in a co-op game, you remove one of the things this game had going for it!? That's like telling me you're going to give me a delicious burger with bacon and cheese, but then when you give it to me, it's really a bunch of strangely colored forest fungus between slices of Spam, and you didn't even have the decency to give me the damn bacon. Much like forest fungus, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and makes me much less likely to buy your games.

In all seriousness, though, Lionhead spent years on this game, so why did it end up like it did? Why is fighting off creatures of myth worth less than pounding the "A" button to forge metal/serve drinks/cut wood? Why is Will so broken? Why are all the female Heroes busted? Why does a in-game character marry a zombie? Why did i finish this game? And, most importantly, how does a condom exist in this time period?

Now to say a few good things about Fable. One, the story is a step above average. I'd call it good even. I'd be lying if i said i didn't enjoy several of the story related quests. Two, I liked the dog. The dog was good. (One suggestion though, make the appearance of the dog more extreme, like if I'm evil, i want a dog with horns, possibly leathery demon wings, and definitely a tendency to breathe fire. F*ck it, just let me have Cerberus on a leash.) Three, you managed to make a decent inventory system. For all the multitudes of items you acquire in this game, I never felt overwhelmed because I always knew where everything was. And four, the game really FELT medieval and arcane. So good job on that.

Bottom line - Fable is a over-hyped sequel with a good story that is hampered by its own need to play interior designer. Don't buy it, rent it. And return it after you beat it. Easy, done, move on and don't look back. 6.5/10.

Do like Goofy instead, and look forward to FEAR 2's upcoming release. :D

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Now playing: Dio - The Last In Line
via FoxyTunes

1st Random Entry - Dead Space Art

2008-12-04T14:23:00.004-05:00

I'm on DeviantART (here) and i was looking around and stumbled on this very appropriate drawing about Dead Space, I just wanted to share it with everyone, it was too good to pass up.

All credit to Esau13 on DeviantART. His page.

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14th Entry - Gears of War 2

2008-12-01T18:51:00.003-05:00

Ok, this time I'm pretty much back on track with my schedule, so I actually got to writing this before the end of the month.

Anyway, this week I'm reviewing the much anticipated Gears of War 2.

Gears of War 2 (Xbox 360)

What to say about this game...

Well, for the most part, the annoying things from Gears 1 are mostly gone, such as cheesy, CHEESY dialogue, glitches in the cover system, a weapon switching glitch, and other minor annoyances. Other than that Gears 2 is exactly what it should be: more of what I liked about Gears 1, with no dumb new "innovative features" we didn't want.

Gears 2, like 1, is a tactical shooter. This means about 15 minutes of frustration for me and my fellow Halo addicts to realize that you can't directly charge an enemy and expect to not die (especially on Insane difficulty, but we'll get to that silliness later). It also means I can't beat anyone who is good at Gears in a online match to save my life, NOT THAT I'M BITTER.

So the best part about Gears 2 is the weapons, at least for me. The reason I talk about the weapons in some games, and not in others is that the games whose weapons impress me enough deserve to be recognized. They have a lot of variety, and all the possible uses will keep you busy for a while.

We'll start with the Boomshot, a ridiculous piece of rape that is only dropped by the aptly named Boomers, who are essentially very dim-witted Hulks that can only speak one word describing their weapon. At any rate, this thing takes out anything in one go, save for a Reaver, and the active reload makes it shoot a cluster grenade. I personally got really good with this thing and it paid off because you can get all those pesky turret guys with it. Once it runs out of ammo though, drop it because you'll rarely find ammo for it again.

The Gears shotgun isn't a standout among shotguns as far as I'm concerned, but it does have a ridiculous range and will damage enemies almost a hundred yards away. Up close it's unfair and silly, but if you have to reload you're screwed. Just don't miss, you n00b.

The Gorgon pistol is carried by the annoying Kantus monks who roll and dodge bullets. The Gorgon has a 4 shot clip, but each "shot" is an approximately 10 bullets, making it a devastating shotgun alternative. If you get the active reload its damage becomes high enough to down even a Mauler. Also it has a zoom, making it incredibly versatile. Some people hate the Gorgon, but they're also probably the people who team-kill with flamethrowers.

Jackasses.

Next is the Hammerburst assault rifle, but what they really mean is "the carbine from Halo except it shoots metal and not that glowy plasma junk". Really that's what it is, it's a semiautomatic weapon with a decent zoom (and a kickback that takes getting used to) and I'd take one over a Lancer any day.

The Hammer of Dawn is useless in anything but campaign or Horde. In these modes however it is cheating because it kills everything you point it at in seconds, as long as you can aim. It summons a sky-laser from an above satelitte and blows everything into delicious chunks.The end.

Next up is the Lancer. It's a fully automatic assualt rifle with a chainsaw bayonet, which means it isn't really a bayonet, but simply a chainsaw. Whatever. Good damage, decent range, no zoom. Ugh. I think it's overrated, but I'm outnumbered 300 to 1 by all the 10 year olds who play Gears and rave about cutting people in half with the chainsaw. At any rate, you need to carry either this or the Hammerburst at all times.

The Longshot is a sniper rifle. A BOLT-ACTION sniper rifle, at that. I thought we stopped using bolt-action, after the invention of, you know, SEMIAUTOMATIC WEAPONS. Despite its bolt-action-ness, it kills most everything in a single headshot, and if it doesn't, then most likely an active reload headshot will. If that doesn't work, switch to a different weapon, but you're probably screwed anyway. Also, don't bother aiming for anything but the head, as it does negligible damage elsewhere.

Now we have my third favorite weapon, the Snub pistol. 12 shot clip, semiautomatic, and a nice zoom. Perfect. Everything i need in a pistol, and also did I mention if you do it right, the active reload is almost instant? It even does good damage! :)

The Torque Bow is two things. One, it's the most ridiculous weapon. Two, it's by far my favorite. It shoots explosive tipped arrows that stick to anything, granted you hold the fire button for a little. They toned down the explosion radius from Gears 1, but it's still a formidable weapon. It has a line that shows its trajectory, making it easy enough for even a moron to use. It also has blades along the sides of the bow, which make it an effective melee weapon, but in all reality I kind of feel that it would pose a threat to the user, if he were to carry it on his back or something. At any rate, great weapon, learn to use it.

The Boltok pistol sucks hard. Hits like a truck but everything else about it is painfully awful. Avoid picking this up.

The Mortar is super-powerful, but takes a little getting used to. Practice in Horde mode. The active reload just makes the explosion bigger. Also never blind-fire it, it goes off wilder than your mother. Heheh.

ANYWAY, on to the Mulcher, a mountable machine gun that has terrible accuracy unless you are standing next to the target or if you have mounted it on cover. Use RB to cool it down, as it rapidly overheats, and keep an eye on the ammo, as it runs out faster than you'd think. This is a really useful weapon against Bloodmounts, if you can get it mounted before they are on top of you.

Finally there is the flamethrower. They put this in here, just like they did in Call of Duty: World at War, because people ALWAYS whine when there isn't a flamethrower (even Halo PC fell victim to this). Anywho, only use this if you're screwing around on Easy difficulty, and use it to get the achievement. It's really pretty terrible, and the active reload apparently increases the range, but it's still a useless
weapon.

As far as the enemies are concerned, there isn't a whole lot of variety, but that's OK, as it makes you feel more like you're fighting a faceless horde than a collection of heroes. Basically you have your standard issue Locust, pretty easy to kill and generally armed with Hammerburst. Then there's a upgraded version with more health, followed by the Theron guards who have good weapons and are bullet sponges. There's the Kantus monks who are really fast and take a lot of damage, and somtimes they howl, and if you're close enough it will knock you down. Next are the Boomers/Maulers/Butchers/Grinders, who use Boomshots, flails, cleavers, and Mulchers respectively. Bloodmounts are strong Locust who have Drones on their backs, and are very tough and are a high kill priority because of their speed and strength. Wretches are weak little enemies who are fast and can swarm you if you are not careful. Tickers are organic mines that should be dealt with from a distance due to their tendency to explode. Sires are quick, mutated Locust who melee only, and are little threat unless completely ignored. Finally there are Reavers, which take tons of damage and attack with missiles and turrets. Kill them quickly and from behind cover.

Now to talk about gameplay, the controls aren't awkward and they are in fact good. The HUD is nice and clean like Gears 1 was, and though the cover system got an update and isn't as glitchy, it still isn't wonderful and can be clunky. Other than that, everything else functions pretty smoothly, and it's a fun game to play.

Before i wrap this up, I just want to comment on how exceedingly difficult this game is on Insane. On Hardcore, it's not really even that difficult. When you put it on Insane however, the difficulty is ramped up so much, it's nearly impossible. Myself and another good friend spent a good five evenings or so playing it on Insane and finally beat it. Do not play on Insane if you want to have fun. Just a warning.

Alright then, in closing, Gears 2 is a solid and capable game, earning it a 8.5/10. Good, but not above and beyond.

Till next time everyone.

13th Entry - Saint's Row 2

2008-12-01T18:50:00.006-05:00

Saint's Row 2 (Xbox 360)

This has been one of the surprising games this fall. I played Saint's Row one when it came out cause I wanted to play Grand Theft Auto for the 360 but it wasn't out. The first one was a pretty good game with some minor flaws. But everything I didn't like about the first one was fixed in this one, plus some other really cool features. There is tons more customization not only can you change your clothes you can change the way you look, your voice or even your gender (and make some transgender freak if you want [no offense]).

Unlike GTA IV this game realizes it's an arcade game and doesn't try to make real driving physics that just piss you off cause it's almost real but not quite so it's hard to judge whether or not you can make that turn so you just run into the wall instead. In Saint's Row the cars behave like you expect them too. Plus you can also customize them as well, not just painting them you can give them more health make them drive faster and even make the tires stronger. Also you just have one garage that can be accessed from any of your houses making it much more convenient (plus as a reward for completing one of the side missions you can have a guy drive them to you for free, on of the many ridiculous rewards, more on that later).

The general game play doesn't stand out in a good or bad way. The graphics are good, not great. You have standard weapon classes, pistol, shotgun, smg, rifle, rocket launcher, and grenades. They didn't put in armor instead just made you take tons of bullets, plus your health regenerates which because it's an game I think is better, or better then having to find a hot dog stand at lest. Also apparently your guy is jacked cause you can just tear a fire hydrant out of the ground and throw it at somebody a mile away it's great fun.

The bad guys are, while not inventive, well done. The story also has some pretty funny parts. One of your lieutenants has come up with this complex plan to rob a casino goes kind of like this

Johnny Gat: What's with this doll house?
Pierce explains a complex plan.
Johnny Gat: why don't we just kill everybody between us and the money?
You: It would be faster...
Johnny Gat: and more fun.
You: F*ck it let's just do that.
Pierce: Aww guys come on!

You pretty much just give Pierce crap the whole game. There's also a couple of fun missions where they make you really high and force you to do complex things it's pretty funny.

Then there are the side missions. I hate most forced side missions that are there to artificially extend game play, but these are great. Also they give you crazy rewards. You can get what can only be described as rape weapons, and then you get unlimited ammo for them,. Plus I randomly jumped out of a plane and it said press Y to do base jumping. I landed in the center of the target it gave me and now I don't take any falling damage at all, plus there are many others that make you basically invincible, and of course some crappy ones like 75% off at the mechanic from a major pain in the butt mission too.

This game is really more than the sum of its parts. It is a lot of fun to just screw around and any time I got stuck or really mad I just went crazy and destroyed the town and instantly remembered why this game was so fun. This game is easily one of the best to come out this fall. I give it 9 out of 10.

12th Entry - Legendary

2008-11-17T18:31:00.006-05:00

Everyone, i have bad news.

Well, really first i have an apology, i haven't been able to write a new entry in forever, school has been slowly (rapidly) crushing my soul.

But the bad news is, Legendary was a letdown. On a grand, epic scale. I just want to make sure everyone knows how bad i wanted this game to kick ass - I read updates, i visited the site, i got mad at its initial negative reviews, i bothered Poke repeatedly by mentioning it to him every waking hour, I slept with the pre-order art book - uh, well look, before this gets weird, you get the idea.

At any rate, in my mind, this was the game of the year.

And, well... just read the review. :(

Legendary - 1st Person Shooter (Xbox 360, PS3, PC)

You're Charles Deckard, a world class thief with a fire axe and a chip on his shoulder. You've been hired to steal Pandora's Box, and in doing so you unwittingly open it and unleash mythological creatures into the world.

Ok, stop. This is where I became hooked. As soon as mythology is invlolved, I'll probably buy it.

Indeed, I bought it, and after throwing it in the ol' 360, after not even five minutes I felt like this game was going to not be what i wanted.

I rapidly devoured the story, which is easily the shortest, most pathetic excuse for a campaign mode i have ever seen. If you put your mind to it, this game is beatable in about 4 hours.

This game gives out achievements like candy, so if you really are desperate for Gamerscore or something, its a fun little diversion.

Alright alright, so let's talk about the stuff Legendary does right. It has (some) merits.

Right, first off, this is not a BAD game. It belongs in the NFS Carbon, Fable II, and Star Wars: Force Unleashed catergory, that is - a perfect idea, executed in a terrible fashion.

Easily this game's best feature is it's innovative and powerful AI. The creatures work alone and together to take you down. The werewolves are the best example but all of the creatures are intelligent and unique.

The Lumos werewolves are pack animals, usually in groups of 3 or 4, and they are smart. They climb the walls, throw things at you, and get in your face, but then are nimble enough to jump away and beat on you again. You will be very impressed by the amount of work put into making these things seem realistic. You are hunted, and you will feel like it.

The Alpha werewolves are better than you, and they know it. They are fast and at least 3x as strong as a Lumos. They provide a fun and much-needed challenge. They act like the Lumos wolves, except they are bigger and will do anything to get in your face. They jump mind-bending distances, and are stunnigly fast. Also, if a Lumos werewolf gets in its way, the Alpha will punch it in the face/kill it/kick it. Pretty amusing. Also, for pure badassery, let a Alpha jump on you while you have the shotgun out, and then mash the buttons that appear on the screen, and you shove the shotgun in its face, and well...you know where it goes. Awesome.

Then there are the Griffins. (That's how I spell it, some people say Gryphons, Gryffins, whatever, my way is right.) These are huge, and sometimes you have to fight one mano e mano. It's pretty epic, they are tough customers. Unlike the wolves, these guys don't bother with any of this "nimble" garbage, no, no....they will charge through anything to get a piece of Deckard. I find the easiest way to deal with them is a rocket, it's generally a 1 hit kill, and if you miss, go back to target practice. Also the SAW works pretty well, if you have about 250 rounds to put in the bird's head. The griffins in mythology were described as dangerous predators, yet still benvolent under the right conditions. The griffins in Legendary are evil, gigantic harbingers of destruction. Definitely my favorite enemy.

The Nari are so retarded. They are a kind of harpy, I dunno, their representation isn't very accurate. I hate these things, they go invincible for a while, and you have to hit them with a blast of energy from the Signet. They hurt a lot, and they will possess objects and throw them at you (demon soda machines). They are really small, best solution is pest spray with the SAW, or the shotgun if you can aim. >_> At any rate they giggle like children which makes them ever more annoying, deal with them or they will snipe you with boxes and stuff.

The Minotaur is like the Terminator, if the Terminator carried around a big piece of rock as a sword. Really though, this upright walking bull will kick you around the stage if you aren't quick. Pull out the shotgun or the SAW and let em' have it. Also, don't bother with Molotov cocktails, minotaurs like being on fire, and they will laugh at you if you hit them with one. These enemies are a pretty nifty piece of work, they are well-represented (accurate to their mythological description) and essentially are raw power with legs. Just be fast and dash a lot, you will be OK.

There are tentacles that pop out of the ground occasionally, just hit them with some ammo and it will let you go. Really they are more annoying than dangerous, just be alert.

The Salamanders are possibly as annoying as the Nari. They roll around really fast in death-boulder mode, then they unfurl and spit fire at you. Also, they explode when you melee them with the fire axe, so only real men kill them with it. The pistol is kind of effective, but use a shotgun and you're in business.

Finally there are the Bloodticks. They are very similar to the Flood in Halo. They are ineffective on their own, but groups present a problem. They are spawned by a bag-like Queen, kill the Queen and then they stop coming. These aren't really dangerous until near the end of the game where there are about 7 Queens in one room and they overrun you if you take too long. Just be careful and find the Queen fast.

The normal human enemies are annoying, and they seem much harder to kill than thy should, although one axe chop usually does the trick. They do carry ammo though, so make sure not to skip all of them or you'll be getting owned by a Alpha and have nothing but your axe.

The weapons are decent, nothing really bad, except for the pistol, which is inexplicably terrible. In all other games, the pistol may be weak but you can still kill things with it, the Legendary pistol just sucks uncontrollably, and you're better off just pissing on your enemies.

The shotgun is retardedly powerful, it fires insanely fast, and three shots is enough to kill a Lumos, and a whole clip will kill a Alpha, generally. It's easily the best weapon. Nothing else is really standout, aside from the guided missile launcher, which kills griffins in one shot. There's a flamethrower for all you failures who think flamethrowers are cool, and the SAW is ok also, almost forgot it. It has a huge clip, you almost never need to reload, and it kills werewolves dead.

The controls are fine, and do not detract from the game. Thank god, this game had enough problems, it doesn't need cripplingly bad controls too.

On to the stuff that made me hate the game i wanted to love.

The gameplay is subpar, and it is a degradation the Unreal engine. Not that it needs much help, but still. Also, at times it seems like the designers got lazy, because simple things are missing, like an animation showing Deckard's hands when he hacks a door lock. Instead, the door lock magically hacks itself as the player watches in amazement (annoyance).

To put it simply, the developers spent all their time on making the creatures great, and everything else (and i mean everything) was an afterthought. The animations for dismemberment are terrible (when they exist); the griffin simply explodes into terribly rendered little chunks when hit with a rocket, and there are several boss fights and mini-boss fights that just weren't designed well. There are numerous clipping issues, and there are a few weird attempts by the developers to switch to a horror-type shooter for a little while, and it doesn't work at all.

I can't say enough how badly i wanted this game to be awesome. It isn't awesome, it isn't even good. My only remaining hope is for the sequel to realize its predecessor SUCKED, and that Gamecock will adjust the game accordingly. You've got the creatures done right, guys, just fix the rest of the game! (Please stop using the Unreal engine.)

For starters, a pet werewolf would definitely add to the game. And on that note, I have to give Legendary a lackluster 4.5/10.
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11th Entry - Fallout 3

2008-11-06T16:48:00.011-05:00

Fallout 3 (Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC)

Hi guys it's been awhile, this week I'm doing Fallout 3. I've had a couple of friends say they didn't like this game cause it was just going to be Oblivion with guns (this doesn't matter to me cause I like Oblivion) and while that's true it doesn't mean anything. That's like saying Portal is Half-life with puzzles, sure it's built on the same engine, but it's not really the same game.

Let me start by saying I played Fallout 1 when it came out, but that was a long time ago and I haven't played it since, so I'm just not going to compare them. The game itself is really fun, and while the character creation is great they throw a lot of stuff at you in the beginning and they don't really tell you what it means, so pay attention to where you put your points.

So lets' get down to the meat and potatoes of the game. The controls are good, and hey if you don't like them you can even change them (plus, unlike certain other crappy games about Norse mythology the right stick is camera). The game can be played in either first or third person and you can really play it any way you like. If you want to be a bad ass warrior that refuses to use guns, you can get a fun little toy called a Shishkebob which is basically a flaming sword, it's actually on fire, and it sets everything on fire. If you just want to be your average post nuclear apocalypse survivor and use normal guns, or you know a giant minigun, or later in the game laser guns you can do that, and if you want to sneak around and have no one the wiser you can do that too (which if for some reason you decided that your default difficulty for games was very hard you kinda need to do).

So lets talk about armor. You have your basic random post nuclear apocalypse armor made out of old beer cans, some other stuff that's slightly better, and an Indy hat. Then as you progress you run into power armor which are relics from before the war. The bad guys that you fight near the end have this fun armor called Tesla armor. It's electrified, need I say more. Really though it looks super bad ass and has energy crackling around it all the time. Plus there is even this one set of talking medic armor that calls you a pansy when you get hurt and injects you with what is basically crack. I can't even begin to describe the hilarity of you getting raped by a Death Claw (I was going to say that as a joke, but it's a real enemy and that's the only way it can be described) and your armor saying "Suck it up soldier and have some juice".

Like any good post nuclear apocalypse game, the bad guys are an important part of the game. Sure, you have your giant insect and crazy raiders that kill for fun. Then there are fun things like giant bipedal crabs that you can only hurt if you shoot them in the face. Or Super Mutants, who you'll spend most of the story fighting. Then you have the leftovers of the previous government, that thinks everyone else is wrong and should die. They have super rape Tesla Armor and Plasma rifles. And they are the only people that have vehicles. I don't know how this happened. Also there is a Death Claw, it's a genetically modified death machine, made by the U.S. government. They run super fast and just rape you, and they come out of nowhere, and they travel in packs. I would suggest running but they run faster than you, so good luck.

The story is also very good, you grow up in a vault, your dad leaves, your childhood friend Amata realizes her father has gone crazy, says "Holy shit pork chop sandwiches! Get the fuck out!" (that's not really what they say, but they could [should] have). You then leave and go find him, saving the world along the way. Of course if you only play the main story you miss a large portion of the game. There are multiple side quests each with there own story and interesting characters, including two crazies that think they are super heroes but really they are just destroying the town and you must stop them, I won't ruin it any more but it's pretty funny. Plus there is one quest where you need to find Lincoln artifacts, one of which it\s Lincoln's Repeater. It's pretty much the best thing ever.

The world is is well done. It all kind of bleeds together but then it's supposed to because it's just a giant wasteland (fun fact: where the game takes place is within easy driving distance from my apartment). And while the wastes are all the same all the settlements you run into stand out from each other, like the first town you see, Megaton. A town built around an atomic bomb that didn't go off, seems safe right? Or Arefu, built on a broken interstate bridge to stop the raiders. Or the town that's just surrounded by mine fields (it's a really cool place you should go). The characters stand out and everyone looks different (aside from the very few unnamed characters). So each place has it's quirks. And then there is D.C.. It is very irritating, (and irradiating too)(sorry that's a crappy pun I'm not proud of) not because of the Super Mutant hordes or the random ghouls, or even the traps. It's the subway tunnels, and I get it it's a bombed out city so the only way to get around is the tunnels, but still it's less fun. Don't get me wrong it's still kinda fun but this is the only problem I had with the game (that and this one part where i had to talk to this kid and I said bye cause I wanted to do other stuff, then had to search for him for literally an hour). Also, I didn't run into this but Goof did, it's a grocery store where the game designers built a Rube Goldberg with which to rape you. You set off a pressure plate that sets off dominoes that sets off a pitching machine that sets off a line of mines all they way around the room to kill you, it takes like 15 seconds. It's awesome.

Really, I just lied to my loyal readers, my major problem with the game was the length, it was way too short. This is a really good game, and if you have ever liked a sand box game or an RPG, you should buy it. One caveat though, watch the clock, one night I sat down to play it at like nine, then I looked outside and the sun was up.

All in all, a great new release to an old series, and it is awarded 950 rads/sec out of 1000 rads/sec.

10th Entry - Dead Space

2008-10-21T15:11:00.005-04:00

Well everyone, I realize it's been a while but I've gotta say I have never had so much schoolwork in my life. At any rate, no sob stories from me, but I finally took the time to sit down and give you guys something new to read.

Dead Space - 3rd Person Horror Shooter (Xbox 360, PC, Playstation 3)

Dead Space was a game i had never heard of until Poke pointed it out to me and showed me the creepy trailer with a disturbing version of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" as the background music.

After seeing the trailer, i was instantly hooked, being that a guilty pleasure of mine is horror shooters (except Resident Evil).

Fast forward to its street drop date, Oct. 15th, and Poke and I stand in our friendly neighborhood GameStop waiting for me to pick up my copy.

We head back to Poke's apartment but decide it's essentially un-American to play this game before it's dark outside. So we wait and around 10PM we crank it up and sit down to play. As a result, this is one of the best games in recent memory.

Now, I can only describe the beginning of this game as a descent into hell. You start out as a part of a repair crew for the "planet-cracker" USG Ishimura, but five minutes in you crash land in the ship, everything is broken, and you begin a search for repair parts. Along the way though, you're introduced to your only company aboard this ship - the Necromorphs. These zombie-esque death machines kill half your squad and seperate you from your remaining crew. Did i mention that the only way to kill the 'morphs is to shoot off their legs/arms/various bladed appendages? This is a very important part of the game, you will die a lot if you don't blow off legs and arms. The latter of the game is spent trying to fix various ship parts so you can get off this death trap.

I'm not one to scare all that easily, and Poke even less so, but i have gotta say, there were more than a few nasty suprises that had me checking to see if i needed new pants on. In all truth, that's what this game does best - scares you shitless. This game is not for the faint of heart, there are lots of dismembered limbs, gory deaths, and bloody curb-stomps.

Ok so enough of me blathering about the game's premise. On to the good stuff!

Right so this game is from the 3rd person perspective, but set at a angle so you peer over our good hero's (Isaac Clarke) shoulder. This at first seems annoying, but it's really quite fine as you get into the game. It contributes to the intensity, always making you check to see if you are being chased. (You probably are.) Oh, did I mention that unless you hit the pause button (start, duh) the game won't pause. This sounds like I'm being stupid but let me give you an example. In, oh, say, Halo 3, if you clear the room of enemies, you don't have to pause, you could just leave good ol' Chief sitting there and he'll be there when you get back. In Dead Space however, if you cleared the room and then left Isaac sitting there, you would 99% of the time come back to a very mangled and very dead Isaac.

Like i said, this game doesn't pause. You are always vulnerable. Using your inventory? Hope there isn't anything near you, because you're going to get bum-rushed while fumbling with your ammo. Oh, thought you were safe because you're saving the game? Wrong again, should have killed that enemy you thought was dead because guess what? It got up and raped you in the ear. This feature is not as frustrating as it sounds, it simply makes you think before you act. You don't have the luxury of time. You gotta kill or be killed, and that's always the way it is. You will eventually become so paranoid about enemies that might come after you you will just curb stomp every dead body until it has no limbs left, because it's the only way you feel safe.

I just feel this needs menitoning and i didnt really know where - Isaac is a bad-ass. I don't care who you are, this guy is stuck on a ship from hell, with zombies that are fast and smart, conniving crew members, and he speaks maybe a sentence the whole time. Like i said, BAD-ASS. Anyway.

On to the possibly best (if not most hilarious) feature of this game - the weapons. Since you're on a mining ship, there are relatively no guns available.

The only real gun is called the Pulse Rifle, and it is your friend. If you upgrade it, it can hold up to 175 rounds per clip, eliminating the "Oh shit oh shit, six enemies on top of me and i gotta reload" factor. It shoot pretty fast, does reasonable damage, and kills the smaller enemies dead. All in all, you'll be falling back on it a lot.

Next is the first weapon you ever get your hands on, a mining tool called the plasma cutter. Don't dismiss it as crap. Ok, in the beginning, it is crap, but strap a few upgrades on it, and it will be a limb-cutting machine. Again, a good fall back weapon.

Now we have the flamethrower. This thing is useless. It sucks, and it sucks hard. If you buy it, you will regret not saving the 5,000 or so credits. It only catches the enemies on fire, and as it doesn't cut off limbs, they will just run over to you and kick your pansy, flamethrower wielding ass. Don't use this, evereververvevevereverever.

Next up, and my personal favorite, the Ripper. Or a more accurate description, a long range circular saw. Yes. That's right. It works real nice too, and as it's a circular saw, it cuts your enemies to shreds, and they don't get back up. It's pretty decent, but not as reliable as the good ol's cutter or pulse rifle, but if you're like me and use it constantly, you get good with it, and eventually i was dropping even the biggest enemies with this thing.

Then there's the Line Gun. Oh, man, If there is a overpowered gun in this game, this thing is it. It shoots a thin and flat beam of death in a straight line, cutting anything in its path to pieces. That's before you even upgrade it. You can make this thing shoot a beam as wide as most of the game's hallways, eventally making it hilariously broken. Simply walk into a hallway, wait to be charged by enemies, and mow em' down. It gets very ridiculous. Still, it is made less broken by the fact that it isn't really all that effective on big enemies...definitely better against groups of mobs.

There is also the Force Gun, a semi-useless weapon i never bothered to upgrade. It appears it actually kills enemies unlike the flamethrower, but it takes a few shots, and it only has about 5 rounds a clip. I never used it much though, so i might not be offering the most objective insight.

Finally there is the Contact Gun, better known as the the Red-Ray Beam of Death, the BFG, the rocket launcher, the boss-killer, or the mob-sweeper. (Ok, it's not really a rocket launcher.) This awesome weapon shoots a bright red puncturing burst of plasma that kills most everything in one go, save for bosses, and the Brutes. Save it for the bosses though, its much better to use it then than against smaller enemies.

In addition to weapons, you character can make use of the Stasis module, which temporarily slows down the targeted object, enabling you to solve puzzles or simply make a enemy easier to kill.

Also there is a Kinesis module. This useful tool lets you pick up most any loose object and move it around to solve puzzles or better yet crush a hapless enemy with a box, or with the body of another enemy, if you're the sick humor type.

About the enemies. There are several different types, and all of them have a normal version, and a "elite" version, which is harder to kill, and moves faster. Also, the most common type of enemy eventually absorbs a Stasis module, and it reproduces, creating a creature that is constantly trpping balls, and runs really fast and twitches a lot. They're damn annoying.

The basic enemy is a (generally) two legged creature with bladed arms that rushes at you. They're not all that dangerous alone, but they can and will kill you in groups. Blow their legs off with the cutter, then curb stomp them, they really aren't worth the ammo one on one. In groups, take em' down with the Pulse Rifle or Line Gun. The elite version takes a few more hits, and the fastest version takes determination to kill. There is also a fat version of these that when killed, spews little enemies that crawl on you.

The next enemy is a small, dog-like thing that will hiss and shoot blades at you . Not all that dangerous, but if there is one in a room, kill it early or it will snipe you and you will hate it. Use the pulse rifle, the plasma cutter seems to suck against it.

Then are the quick moving scorpion like enemies. You see these often in zero-g combat. They aren't really all that dangerous, but in groups, it gets a little hairy. The ripper is my weapon of choice against them.

Combine a zombie with a suicidal instinct and a explosive sac on its arm, and you get the next enemy, a realatively slow moving suicide bombing creature. Just shoot its explosive sac and move on.

Resembling the head crabs of HalfLife, the next enemy is annoying at best, not really all that dangerous, even in numbers. For big lolz, let one get on you then shake it off to watch Isaac go ballistic on it. Pretty ridiculous. There is also a large enemy later on that when killed, drops about three of these. Just deal with it carefully.

Then there are the bat-like creatures. These are not dangerous combat wise, most they can do is scratch at you, but they are dangerous because they go from body to body, crawl inside it, and create a new necromorph. Not good. Kill them fast as possible. Curb stomping works well if they are close, but just kill it quick.

The biggest standard enemy are the Brutes. Brutes are huge, armor plated, 'morphs. They are fast for their size, they will charge you, they will hit you across the face, they will tackle you to the ground. Pull out the pulse rifle and put as many rounds into it as possible, or if you're a Boy Scout and FREAKING COME PREPARED, whip out you Ripper and tear these things to shreds. If you hurt it enough, it curls up in a ball, and this is your cue to keep going and finish it off. Ripper vs. Brute = you win. Remember this.

Randomly thoroughout the game, a tentacle will ome out of the wall and grab you and begin dragging you towards a death hole. (If you get there, you will die in a violent and gory way.)
Cue pulling out the biggest, baddest gun you have and blasting away. As long as you act quickly, you will be ok.

Ah yes. And my favorite enemy ever, the invincible Necromorph. That's all i can tell you about it, otherwise I'd be spoiling. But seriously this thing is gay as shit, it runs megafast, hurts a lot when it punches you in the face, and doesn't die. Ever. Shoot its legs off to slow it down, and it will lay there for a while but it will regrow legs and chase you down. Your only option is to run a lot. Also it likes to growl at you to remind you that you are its bitch, and it will remain that way until you find a way to temporarily ditch it.

Now to talk about the game design. The levels are beatuiful, with perfect rendering. Everthing is shiny and looks realistic. The cutscenes are good too, and the story is film-worthy. Really, the story is very gripping and will have you hooked, twist after twist. All in all, EA has done a wonderful job.

Unfortunately I have a few things to complain about. These things are mostly nipicky, because really, this game is quite close to as perfect as you can get. The puzzles occasionally are annoying and clunky, but not enough to make you want to stop playing. The camera is annoying but eventually it's not a problem anymore. The reasons for going on to each new levels seem contrived somtimes, with your fellow marooned crew members always telling you to do this, that, and the other, sometimes you just want to scream, "If you want it done so bad, YOU F*CKING DO IT!." These are all minor obstructions to the game though, never really causing you to want to stop.

To wrap it all up, Dead Space is more than worth your $60. Just make sure you're ready for a lot of cursing, gore, and flying body parts. But if you're a gamer that's anything like Poke or myself, you will like this game a lot.

Dead Space gets a all time high of 9/10 win-Isaacs.

Till next time, everyone.
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Now playing: Chimaira - Pictures In the Gold Room
via FoxyTunes

9th Entry - Star Wars: Force Unleashed

2008-09-29T18:47:00.007-04:00

Welcome to our first "good" or at least positive game review!

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Xbox 360) - 3rd Person Action/Adventure/RPG

One thing I feel I should make very clear is that i had lots of fun with this game, and while it was a great change of pace from the general garbage some game companies keep spewing, it still suffers from MAJOR flaws.

Before i get into that, however... let's talk about the good stuff.

All in all the gameplay is good, the controls don't suck, and the game is short enough it doesn't get repetitive. THE CAMERA IS THE RIGHT THUMBSTICK. THANK GOD, THANK GOD. Unlike the baby-roasting, seal-clubbing, mullet-wearing crackwhores who made Too Human, LucasArts realizes the importance of this essentially INDUSTRY STANDARD feature.

Easily this game's best feature is your ability to use the Force in a evil and brutal way (sometimes hilarious way) to dispatch the seemingly neverending river of enemies headed in your direction. Some of the most fun abilities are:

1. This move where you grip your hapless target, hoist him in the air, and then unleash a force push to send him sailing through the air.
2. After lifting your target up, you charge him with force lightning and then can hurl him in any direction to cause heavy damage to anything he hits or lands near.
3. Grabbing an enemy, lifting him up, and impaling him with your lightsaber. Normally you just set him down after doing so, but it's bigger lolz to throw him straight up, lightsaber and all, and watch as he sails off into orbit somewhere around Yavin IV.
4. Any of the force push combo attak with your saber. Spin around in a blaze of death, then hit all those near you with a huge throwing blast. Awesome.
5. Generally abusing your enemy. Push him into walls, shock them, grab them, drop them, throw them into each other, throw them into laser walls, or my personal favorite: grab an enemy, and move them over a deep chasm, release the grip button and watch them slowly fall to their doom.
6. On the first level after playing as Darth Vader, you will be in a TIE fighter factory. They will moblize the fighters against you and they will fly around the room shooting you. For minimal amusement, grip one of the loose metal bars lining the side of the catwalk, and pull them down and out into the TIE fighter's flight path, and laugh at their pathetic attmepts to dodge.

There are several types of enemies you could classify as "mini-bosses", such as the chicken walkers (FINE, AT-STs), the Rancors, and the Imperial guards who carry long, staff like lightsabers. I mention them here because they provide a sense of how small you actually are; that is to say, instead of chucking around Stormtroopers, a Rancor is breathing down your neck, and you better deal with it, because to him you're lunch. Deafeating them isn't all that much different , they basically have more health and require a fast-paced on-screen butto combo to defeat. The only mini-boss that is really dangerous is the green skinned rancor, he runs faster than the others, and will bum rush you from out of nowhere, and proceed to kick your pathetic, whimpering ass, in a corner, as you ask yourself why a damn Rancor can move like a cheetah.

Much in the same vein as the mini-bosses are the, you guessed it, the BOSSES. These long, generally epic battles involve you piting yourself against other masters of the Force until one emerges victorious. Once you've overtaken your opponent, you can begin to exectue another (different and longer) onscreen combo to finish them off. Generally these finishing moves are very stylized and very awesome, but can get frustrating if you don't get the combo right. (OK, A, then B, then A again, now X, *presses wrong button and watches our hero get nailed by a heavy flying object*... FUCK! SHIT! Well, you see how it goes.)

Another great element of Force Unleashed is its seamless storyline, and the perfect integration of it into the rest of the Star Wars story. The voice acting for Vader isn't perfect, but then again, if you get anyone but James Earl Jones, its a failure. The story is rather gripping though, and will keep you entertained.

A less important, but still awesome feature in Force Unleashed is the two best costumes available in the game - The Sith Assassin armor, and the Sith robe. The Sith assassin armor has claws (yes, CLAWS) on the hands, because, you know, a lightsaber doesn't always kill them dead enough. The Sith robe just looks badass, an if you combine it with a red lightsaber, you just look downright sinister.

On to the bad stuff, and there is definitely a lot of it.

This game is buggy as fuck.
Seriously.

Did they even fucking test the junkyard level? It makes no sense sometimes as to where you should go in a level, much less trying not to get lost in junkyard land. It's almost as if they had a real testing team for the other levels, but for the junkyard levels, they brought in a bunch of retarded howler monkeys and let them jump around on keyboards, flinging their poo everywhere, and the real testing team got drunk out of their minds and just laughed at the monkeys. The next day when they should have really tested the levels, they said "fuck it" and moved on.

There are more places to get stuck in the junkyard levels than i can count, some items that let you grip them, let you grip them but won't move, and sometimes a enemy will spawn under you, clip into you, and lock you in place. Then there is the part o the first junkyard level which i can only describe as "The Giant Cavern of Raging Dick." In this cavern you will find edge clipping GALORE, enemies who will easily combo you and throw you down a hole to instant death, and edges of the level which require a college degree to scale. This part of the level is awful, and stands out like a sore thumb among the otherwise well done levels.

Sometime when you jump and hit a staircase at a odd angle, it will stop you and hold you there until you hit jump again. Annoying, and again a sloppy mistake.

Another thing in this game that sucks is the level near the end where you must pull a Star Destroyer out of orbit (?!) and crash it down on your enemies. Now, this sounds cool and all, but cut to 1hr., 30 mins later, where I've died six times, almost stranged Poke for no fault of his own, and have terrified Poke's roommate with my anguished screams of rage. Let me explain. As you pull this Star Destroyer out of orbit, TIE fighters are running a train on you, and because of the annoying "cinematic" camera angle, you have to psychically know when to grab the fighters and throw them too so they dont kill you. Once you've mastered this newfound psychic ability (URGH) you have to still do it well, and you will die often when you mess up. Also, this brings up an entirely seperate issue. If i can bring down a Star Destroyer, the only thing larger being the Death Star, why in the HELL can't i lift and throw an AT-ST? That aside, the part with the Star Destroyer is very, very terrible.

The final boss battle with Vader (if you so choose, muahaha) is MIND-NUMBINGLY, BRAIN-CRUSHINGLY hard. Now don't get me wrong, i like a good, rough boss battle like any good gamer, but this boss battle isn't good, it's just rough. To be more specific, it's just Vader giving it to you roughly from behind. It's so hard that at one point Poke was asking me if i needed to take a break i was so frustrated. Vader is one tough customer, and he takes tons of damage and is faster than you. Really. One time i stunned him, and before i could hit him again, he had already dashed at me, and knocked my ass flat. It gets pretty ridiculous, but if you keep your cool, you hould come out alright.

Don't let my rant discourage you, this game is very much worth your $60 and is great fun. It's just far from perfect.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed gets 6 out of 10 win-sabers.

8th Entry - Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior

2008-09-28T15:54:00.009-04:00

So you may have noticed we changed up the blog a little bit, mostly because we got tired of doing crappy stuff. So instead this week I'm going to do something good, namely the movie Doomsday wanted to be, Road Warrior.

While this movie is fairly old, it is still a very good movie by today's standards. It has great action sequences, awesome car chases and the main character is a total bad ass.

The movie is set in the post apocalyptic future. Gasoline has become the currency because to stay alive you have to stay mobile. So our hero Mad Max (Mel Gibson) drives a super bad ass muscle car with giant gas tanks (a v8 Interceptor). Seriously, this car kicks so much ass. The movie opens with him flying down the road being chased by bad guys, he uses a little bit of ninja driving and wrecks one of them and causes one of the bad guys to shoot the other in the arm.

He then sees this weird flying machine guarded by snakes. He then proceeds to grab a snake as it tries to bite him an throws it away, at which point to owner of the machine jumps out of the sand and then gets owned by Max's dog. In return for his life the gyro captain (by the way you know it's a awesome movie when they don't bother with names) shows him a settlement built around a fuel refinery. Of course he can't just walk in and ask them kindly because they are surrounded by bad guys. So he saves one of their people and rushes past the bad guys.

Turns out the people want to leave their settlement but they have no way to move their fuel. So Max, being the badass he is, knows where a truck that can haul their tanker is. In exchange for some fuel he gets it back for them. They offer to let him come with them but because he is a man he would rather wander the desert alone. So he tries to escape, but because the bad guys are dicks they blow up his totally awesome car and kill his dog.

So he goes back to the settlement and tells them that he'll drive their rig. Up to this point has all been building action. The final 45 minutes or so is just one long chase scene. This movie has the best car chases I've ever seen hands down. I'm not going to go into details, cause i can't really. You can't put into written word how kickass it is.

Bottom line if you like action movies at all and especially car chases, you should get this movie. I give it 7 out of 10 win-terceptors.

1st Blog Update - Blog Changes

2008-09-24T18:18:00.004-04:00

Hey everyone -

We've decided to make a few changes to how we do things here - the biggest of which is our name change - we're now Pure Judgment Gaming.

On that note, the games, movies, and etc. that we review will not just be terrible anymore -we're going to start doing new releases, some of our favorite games, and other fun stuff.

Honestly, the biggest reason for this change is if Poke and i had to force ourselves to scrounge up another bad game and force ourselves through it, well, bad things would have started happening.

Keep tuned in, our first real blog entry under our new name should be up by Friday!

Thanks all!
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Now playing: Black Label Society - You Must Be Blind
via FoxyTunes

7th Entry - Doomsday

2008-09-22T09:39:00.014-04:00

Hey there everyone, ALREADY we find ourselves on our seventh review.

Additionally, we've got our highest fail-o-meter score yet! Read on, my friends in fail!

This week it's DOOMSDAY!

Normally, I'd just dive right in, but everything about this movie is ....wrong. They just did it wrong. As in, needs a do-over, you got the incorrect answer wrong.

Actually, a better way to put it is (Star Wars x Mad Max) + SLC Punk + 28 Days Later + Lord of the Rings = Doomsday.

Ok, now you've got a general idea of the "plot". Raging virus takes over Scotland (I think, they never make it clear, Poke and I had to pause the movie several times to make sure we were on the same page), the world doesn't help Scotland, the only people left alive are the zombified victims, and the now-degenerate humans living in Scotland.

Before this, there is a intro scene where a mother holding her small child is running from soldiers who are simply shooting into the crowd to kill several infected people who have somehow made it through. Her child is wounded by shrapnel and loses an eye, but the mother manages to get her child to a army helicopter and hopefully save her child. CUE FAST FORWARD IN TIME!

To quarantine the deadly virus, the great people of England build a giant wall around Scotland, put up 24-hour surveillance, and install motion activated DEATH TURRETS that kill even innocent rabbits. (No joke, there is a scene of a rabbit being obliterated by a death turret)

BUT WAIT! We come to discover, in the middle of the walled up quarantine zone, is a abandoned lab which may hold the cure! A team is to be sent in to get the cure, and save the world (Scotland).

TREPIDATION! An advisor to the prime minister has other plans. Instead of getting the cure, they're just going to flood Scotland with water, and kill innocent people (zombies)!

Our heroine (the child from the intro scene, all growed up!) is introduced by a acceptable action scene on a ship, and that's about all i can grasp of it. I mean, I'm sure she is there for a reason, they just think its better to keep it a surprise! At any rate, she navigates the ship using her detachable eyeball, which doubles as a camcorder and a recon tool. She kills the bad guys, gets the necessary video for her mission, and a guy essentially gets decapitated by a shotgun blast to the head (It's important, decapitation is a important plot point).

Ok, there is some boring story "development", but the real point is, they are now sending the team into the quarantine zone. To get there safely, the team is in two APC-esque vehicles, (Poke knows a lot more about army weaponry than i do, he says they were accurate enough that i can't ridicule them) armed with futuristic weaponry, and wearing bio-suits to protect them from the virus. Now, the bio-suits are one of the most hilarious things i have seen. They are straight out of Buck Rodgers.

Seriously, it's pretty bad.

To be fair, not really that ^^^^ bad, but close- and... they called them bio-suits. Really Doomsday? Really? At any rate, now they are in the quarantine zone, and they soon find the lab. They move inside, and for a moment, it looks as though this movie could redeem itself. The aura of creepiness is there, I'm on the edge of my seat, and then... PUNKS! Yeah. Punks. Purple haired, tattoo covered, leather-wearing, blunt-weapon carrying punks. Ah, bad movies. How fast you can go from almost breaking even, right back into fail mode. Speaking of punks, I'm gonna go on a bit of a tangent here. I'm a metalhead, and we always get a bad rap. I don't have time to get into stereotypes, but we get the short end of the stick. Always. About damn time the punks had a little fun poked at them.

ANYWAY. These punks are charging out of some room and our team is in the back of the room having a shooting-fish-in-a-barrel kind of time, except for the one guy from the team who takes a blunt object to the face when he is caught by surprise.

There's an admittedly cool little scene of bad-assery where the guy with the shotgun is just stomping face, and takes out a lot of them. Not bad. His shotgun even has two flashlights. I dunno why, probably just because he's bad ass.

Now we've progressed to my favorite part of the movie. The foam grenades. Yes, everyone. Foam grenades. Essentially what happens is, the team crams into a non-working elevator. Our heroine demands the shotgun from the resident bad-ass. She says "we're going down" as she shoots the elevator cable, causing me to writhe in pain at the terrible joke. As the elevator falls, she pulls out a grenade, and you wonder, 'What can she do with that'? She pulls the pin and drops the 'nade, and there is a slow-mo sequence of it hitting the ground, and then a white foam erupts from it, filling the elevator, pushing the walls of the elevator against the elevator shaft, stopping the team on the floors below.

This is what transgressed as Poke and i watched this scene.

Me: Ah, she's asking for the shotgun. Oughta be good.
Poke: Did she say stun grenade?
Me: Yeah i think so.
Poke: So she used a stun grenade to do that? Why is everyone's ear's not bleeding from the grenade?
Me: Wait, i think she said foam grenade.
Poke: But that's not even a real thing?!
Me: *shrugs, rewinds* Yeh, she definitely says foam grenade. Yeah, look, it fills up the shaft and stops them on the floor below! Cool.
Poke: That's dumb. That wouldn't even really work.
Me: Wait, yeah. And when they all get out of the elevator, no one has foam on them!
Poke: Plus, that's like the only application I can think of for a foam grenade.
Me: Yeah, this movie is fail.
Poke: Yeah. Hey guess what?
Me: Yeah?
Poke: You're gay.
Me: No I'm not. But you like men.
Poke: Up yours. Let's finish this movie before i hate myself for watching it.

Now the team has escaped the building, they run out onto the street and head for the APCs.

A team member left back on the APCs, in all his brilliance, has brought in a young woman from outside who is infected in hopes of saving her.

Now back in the APCs, they begin driving as fast as possible, while the punks throw Molotov cocktails at them. There follows a mediocre chase scene (wait a minute, who am i kidding? it's an awful chase scene) and one of the punks ends up on top of the APC and he bashes the "bulletproof" glass of the APC open with a BRICK. APCs are meant to take a pounding, with glass that can withstand a tank round. Hmmm. Must have been a very strong brick.

Long story short, our team of heroes gets captured, a few people we never had time to care about die, an our heroine wakes up in a jail cell with a punk named Sol. Sol is bat-shit crazy. Sol is not nice. Sol beats our heroine up, gropes her, and goes Mike Tyson on her ear. And of course, because Sol is the craziest of all our resident punks, he is the leader.

The next scene is a bizarre mix of concert/circus/strip show. Apparently they have strung up one of the team members over a fire pit, and they plan to eat him. At this point the movie goes from bad to flat out disturbing, as the huge crowd of people eats his burned corpse. Seriously it's disgusting and very graphic, not for the faint of heart. Here's where i got more than a little annoyed at this movie...i understand the need to show the degeneration of society, but eating people crosses a line.

At any rate, a woman covered in tattoos to make her resemble a hawk (and is also Saul's girlfriend, as best i can tell) is introduced as a new main character, and then she heads downstairs to the prison blocks to where our heroine has freed herself and they have a short, badly choreographed sword fight, in which our hawk-lady is (you guessed it) beheaded. I was taken in complete shock (not by the loss of heads) because this hawk-lady had been treated as a new main character for five minutes, upon which she is rapidly killed off. Take a look at the movie cover, hawk-lady is featured in front of the heroine character. What!? It makes no sense, it's like hiring Brad Pitt to play an extra in a war movie!

Next the remnants of our original squad busts out of the punk compound and heads for a train in search of Kane, the operator of the abandoned lab. Kane's new base of operations is in a feudal English castle like setting, but we all know it's Lord of the Rings. The train is of course in perfect working order, and on it we meet Archer-Guy. He looks like a good replacement for Shotgun-Guy, but when they step out from Punk Land into Lord of the Ringsville, they are captured by Kane's horse riding knights, and Archer-Guy is killed almost instantaneously. What is their fetish with introducing new characters and then killing them in less than five minutes?

There's a whole bunch of attempted plot points, but really all you need to know is that our heroine is dumped into a deathmatch with Sauron...ahem, a guy in black spiky armor, she wins, they escape, and head for a cave like thing in the middle of the forest. Once in there the team opens a bunch of boxes, and in them is a Bentley Continental GT and a walky-talkie like thing. HOW CONVEINIENT! :o

They rev up the Bentley, burst out onto the abandoned highway, and head for rezendevous with the English bigwigs so they can save the world...er, Scotland.

A RIDICULOUS chase scene follows where a bunch of punks in wonderfully fast cars such as AMC Gremlins, a old busted Cadillac, and several Peugots and rally cars. Did I mention all of the cars look in poor working order, have human body parts mounted on them, and are somehow KEEPING UP WITH A BENTLEY? Seriously, the thing has 600+ horsepower, how is a old Caddy keeping up?

Oh yeah, because it has Sol in it with his dead girlfriend, and if we couldn't have them keep up, we'd be out of a story. Oh, damn.

Anyway, the good guys get away, Sol gets beheaded in the process (REALLY? AGAIN WITH THE BEHEADING MOTIF) and the Bentley drives through a old school bus full of punks and it somehow blows up, not sure how that one works, seeing as...well, whatever. I couldn't even try to explain it.

Now we are near the end, which i awaited with great anxiety. Not because I cared about the story, but because i wished to end the abusive relationship of this movie with my brain.

Our heroine delivers the cure, which is really a survivor who is immune to the disease. The cure can be made from her blood! G'HEY! We shoulda though of that before everyone turned into zombies!

After getting the bad guy's confession with her camcorder eyeball, our heroine gets back in the Bentley, scoops up Sol's head, and declares herslef the new Punk Leader.

THE END

The ending is about as abrupt as being tackled by a rhino, you don't expect it to happen, but when it does, it hurts.

No transitions, terrible acting, even worse dialog, EXCESSIVE gore, and cheesy plot points make Doomsday drunkenly stumble its way to our worst rating yet: a whopping 5.5 out of 7 failpunks.

If you intened to go against my recommendation, and watch this movie, make sure you're either among friends, drunk, or both. Otherwise, this movie will make you feel like flossing your teeth with barbed wire is a better alternative.

Till next time, everyone.

DOOMSDAY SUCKED!

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Now playing: Lamb Of God - Redneck
via FoxyTunes

1st Mini Entry - Legendary

2008-09-20T02:17:00.013-04:00

Hello all - today I am going to be doing something slightly different - I'll be telling you all about a game both Poke and i think looks AWESOME. From time to time, we'll post an entry like this when a game we're very excited about is coming out.

This time, I'm writing the entry, because while Poke thinks it looks cool, I am damn near obsessed with it. (I'm considering getting a 360 just for it...)

It's called Legendary.

Ok, well, no one really likes PS3, but it's the only cover i could find, ok? I'm sorry.

AT ANY RATE. As you can see, griffins. Also, werewolves. How can this game be bad?

Seriously though.

Griffins.

This isn't doing you any good. Here's the trailer. It can tell you how badass this game really is better than me.

This looks like one of the best games for 360 in a good while, if not one of the prettiest graphically. At any rate, this game has so many opportunities to be awesome, if it comes up short, know that there will be a long and very unkind blog entry about it.

Plus, there's a shotgun. It has to be good right?

TIll next time, everyone.

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Now playing: Accept - Balls To The Wall
via FoxyTunes

6th Entry - Too Human

2008-09-18T18:34:00.009-04:00

Hello, everyone. This week I'm reviewing Too Human.

Too Human - Xbox 360 - 3rd Person Adventure/Shooter

This is a game Goof and I really wanted to be good. It's about Norse mythology, how could it not be? Well, the reason I'm doing this one and not Goof , is the Norse part, or rather lack thereof. If Goof were to do it, there would be pages and pages of how wrong it is. I'll just say it failed and move on.

As a change of pace I'll start out with all the good parts, cause there were some. The warhammer weapon class made a satisfying "tink" sound when you hit people with them. Plus there is a weapon class that i can only describe as Death Cannons. Plus the graphics where technically good but they made some poor aesthetic choices.

OK, so on the parts that suck. And there are many.

The controls are terrible, like really, really, bad. I guess it was supposed to be an innovative feature like in Fight Night (I loved that game). But anyway, the controls involve you just randomly swinging the right thumb stick around, and that's just the melee. The gun controls are even worse. To fire you press the right trigger and to shoot powerful shots the left trigger. Sounds simple enough, but don't let it decieve you; it doesn't let you aim. You have to use a terrible lock on feature. It says you can select targets but really you can only select targets at the far left or right. If you want to target the big guy in the middle you're pretty much screwed, plus God help you if you end up turned around trying to shoot something.

Now lets talk about the camera control. Instead of making the right stick the camera they just made it failsuck. You can hit left bumper to center it behind you but you can't really in the middle of a fight. So you end up not knowing where you are going most of the time.

So on to the game play. As I mentioned on the controls section you just swing the thumb stick around. A lot. Like that's all you do. Each level consists of you fighting progressively bigger enemies till you get to the boss at which point you swing it around some more then he dies. Yay, you win. This is like a lot of games, but in this game the enemies don't even change. Like they don't even get a different paint job. Then after every hundred or so (not an exaggeration you kill a lot of things) you fight a big named guy. But the only different part about him is he is bigger has more health and a really gay name, like "Wrist Slit" (Not kidding really a guy you fight). The only game play change is the last level. For those of you who know about Norse mythology you go to Helheim(on a side note no one can ever leave Helheim, not even gods), for everyone else you go to Hel and fight zombies and even Garm (the zombie guard dog). So instead of robot elves (I guess I forgot that part, up to this point everything you fight is a robot. Also there are no elves in Norse mythology, I wasn't kidding when I said they failed) you fight zombies. Big change, but not really cause you just swing the right thumb stick around till everything dies.

I'm putting in an extra paragraph to rant about "Cyberspace". I'm relatively sure they just put this part in to pretend they had puzzles. Mostly it just removes you from the other game play and forces you to go push a button, later in the game you have to chose between three buttons. It's really hard.

So on to the loot. This game drops crap tons of loot. But really you just need to wait till you find an orange piece then you can use it for like ten levels and just sell everything else you pick up. I do wonder though, if you're supposed to be a god, why is the stuff you pick up off dead robots better than the stuff you start out with?

The story is also pretty terrible, I can sum it up in some short sentences. You wake from the dead. You kill the Grendel (by the way this is from Beowulf, not Norse). You fight Hod, because he killed you. Loki gets away. You kill Hel, Loki's daughter. And really the Grendel part isn't important i just wanted to point out that part not even loosely based on Norse myths.

The only cool part is Thor cause he's just a bad ass, when you first meet him be breaks the table with his hammer and asks for some mead. Plus they gave it a terrible ending, just asking for a sequel but all that's left is to kill Loki.

I bash this game a lot, but it wasn't really super terrible. I definitely had to force myself to finish it, cause it was the opposite of fun. I give it three out of seven failhammers.

5th Entry - Doom 3

2008-09-15T10:40:00.006-04:00

Yes everyone, we're back for another round.

It was my birthday this weekend, thanks to all my friends for making it great. One of my presents was a cat figurine from the Dollar Tree that has the most evil and terrifying eyes I have ever seen. That's all I'm telling you.

Doom 3 - PC, Xbox - FPS

Ok so this week it's Doom 3's turn. Yes. You read that right. I DON'T LIKE DOOM 3. In fact, i think its downright awful. Here's why.

First off, this is a horror shooter. Where is the horror? This game simply isn't scary. Call me desensitized, but the only time I jumped from shock in this whole game was when the first zombie appears. After that, it was mind-numbingly predictable. Here's an example.

Player: Hmmm, there's a dead body over there. Also I hear demonic whispering. There must be a enemy or two over there.
*Player walks to said area*
Player: Damn flashlight. Why can't I use you and a weapon at the same time. This would be a perfect time to get ambushed.
Imp Demon: GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR! HISSSSSSSS!
Player: Fuck.

This happens over and over through out the game, and eventually you want to throw the disc at a wall. My favorite type of ambush (sarcasm) is when you're backed into a corner, and suddenly one of those hell hound things warps in, and begins doing terrible, prison cell things to you before you even know it happened.

The gratuitous blood and gore gets kind of old too. Sure, it makes sense that if i put a shotgun to a imp's head, and pull the trigger, the result is messy. But every corner i go around, there is another brutally murdered and dismembered scientist. (There are only so many scientists on this stupid rock called Mars, apparently demons like guys in white suits) Too much gore makes it just ridiculous. Not to mention there are a lot of operating tables in this base, and apparently the surgeons are terrible, because the tables are always slick with blood and covered in body parts. Remind me to never sign up for the Doom Health Plan.

Ok, I'll give it to them, for a shooter, this story is not half bad. Pretty good even. Pretty good until you open a portal from hell AND DEMONS START COMING THROUGH! How does this work? You're on Mars. Mars! Is hell even near Mars? And let's say i even buy that they can teleport to Mars. Why do they want to come to Mars? It's got zombies on it, so screw that, give it to the demons.

Moving on. The weapons are alright. I like the shotgun. I always like shotguns. Their overpowering silliness makes me happy. Then there's the pistol. Wow. I'm pretty sure calling the demons bad names would hurt them more than this freaking thing. Really though. Don't use it. The other guns are pretty rudimentary - assault rifle, plasma gun, rocket launcher...your run-of-the-mill sci-fi shooter. A run-of-the-mill weapons set doesn't make a already lame and limping game any better though...

Uh...the Soul Cube. Yeah, let's not even go there because...I...uh...wha...guh...retarded.

Oh, and thank you game developers of Doom 3, for trying to mix up the gameplay and put puzzles in the game. You assume i will get bored with shooting demons, and want to do some puzzles? Are you kidding? What the hell is this, Bubble Bobble? Why am i playing Doom 3? I have a RAGING HARD-ON TO KICK SOME FIREBALL-CHUCKING, DEVIL WORSHIPING DEMON ASS, that's why. But no. I have to slide some tiles around. You didn't put puzzles in here to mix up the gameplay. You just want to waste my time.

Hmm. Oh yes, i haven't had my flashlight hating rant yet. Look, let's face it, we're in a miltary base, and one of these gung-ho manly marines has to have some duct tape. Just grab that junk, wrap it on the flashlight, strap it to the gun, and now all of a sudden your game's players don't hate your existence anymore. Seriously, I get that having to switch to a flashlight makes it more creepy, or whatever, but when i start having to light my way by muzzle flashes so i don't get bum-rushed by flying death demons, I get a little annoyed.

Speaking of flying death demons - the enemies all look like they probably did come straight from hell. Sure. Yeah. But flying babies? Flying BABIES. They even whine like little children. Come on, couldn't you have done something less dumb? How about a winged, fire breathing serpent? See? I'm already miles ahead of you. Fire breathing serpents > flying babies that cry.

Also, the "bosses" are laughable. Really. The first one, that spider like thing, is just sad. I think i used two shotgun clips on it. Maybe. The final boss can only be described as total fail. I shot it twice with the rocket launcher. Two rockets to the dome, and I had beaten the biggest monster in all of hell. It makes tons of sense.

Bottom line - Doom 3 is a shooter than does several things pretty decently, a lot of stuff badly, and throw in a handful of mediocre weapons to make it lackluster. There are worse games, but there are DEFINITELY better ones. A lot of them. Like most of them.

All that considered, Doom 3 earns its way to a score of two and a half out of seven faillights.

Till next time, everyone.

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Now playing: Black Label Society - Nothing's the Same
via FoxyTunes

4th Entry- Point Break

2008-09-11T22:45:00.014-04:00

Hey guys, this week I'm keeping with the movie theme and doing Point Break, and while this movie is old it is still hilariously bad.

This is what it says on the back of the box: "'Ultra-stylized, testosterone-charged action, death-defying stunts, wall-to-wall rock music and ear-shattering sound' (Village View(who has ever heard of them)) are just the backdrop for this super-intense, high-octane thriller..." I mean really I don't even have to come up with a joke, it's that ridiculous. I really enjoyed this movie, but not as a high-octane thriller (lot of hyphens on there aren't there) but more as a laugh out loud comedy.

It has every thing from super campy dialogue, such as Patric Swayze's famous line "Little hand says it's time to rock and roll." (really what does that even mean, does his watch's second have a 'rock and roll' time, and if so where did he buy it?)
to ridiculous action scenes; like a 90 second conversation held in free fall, when in reality you can't hear anything much less have a conversation and the fall lasts thirty seconds at most after which your just a splat on the landscape. My favorite scene ever is when Gary Busey and Keanu Reeves (I'm not going to mention the character names cause really who cares?) hatch their plot to catch Patrick's merry band of surfer/bank robbers. After they figure that all they need to do is put Keanu under cover as a surfer (which he fails at by the way) they jump up on the table and start table surfing. I wish I could find a picture because you really have to see it the appreciate the fail, but apparently they signed a deal with the devil cause i can't find it anywhere.

The plot is just sad. Keanu is a wet behind the ears F.B.I. agent who thinks he is going to change the world. There are these bank robbers nobody can catch but this one old guy (Gary Busey) that everybody hates knows they are surfers because of some bogus police work that anyone with half a brain knows is total crap. So anyway he tells his new partner about his theory and then Keanu goes under cover, too bad he can't surf, plus I guess he is too dumb to remember a cover id so he doesn't even change his name. So he meets this super hot chick that also happens to be an x-girlfriend or some such of the bank robber, our pal Patrick. I guess he's just super lucky cause she also wants to bang the crap out of him. So blah blah he learns to surf and impresses the bank robbers, by getting in a fight with the bad crowd. He totally thinks it's this bad group cause no way, it can't be his friend Patrick, he's too cool. Turns out he's wrong and his friends find out he's a cop. So they then kidnap him and go parachuting(?).

Later after some sexual tension between him and his girlfriend, they force him to help rob a bank. Yet again not sure why I don't know they gain by this but hey it's a terrible movie anyway so I'll go with it. Of course something goes wrong one of them gets shot and the cops come. This lead to one of the dumbest chases ever. Keanu trips and Patrick gets away but as he's climbing the fence Keanu pulls out his gun, but because he is his friend he can't shot him, so instead he shoots into the air probably kill and bunch of kids, cause of that whole gravity thing. Then later Keanu is on the plane with the surviving bank robbers (no one knows why, probably not even the writers) and Patrick jumps out leaving no chute for Keanu so he jumps after him. Again not sure why cause the plane isn't crashing and there's even a living breathing pilot but whatever. So this leads to the 90 second free fall complete with conversation, which as I already discussed is just wrong. Then because Keanu's a dumb ass Patrick gets away.

Later in Australia (I do this transition because it's pretty much how it is in the movie) Patrick is going to catch the perfect wave and Keanu shows up with a bunch of cops and then he lets him surf and then quits his job. Then the movie ends.

I really wonder what everyone who was making this movie thought of it. Like this movie was bad for when it can out but I guess everybody on set didn't want to admit it and just lied to themselves. So in the end I give it four out of seven fail boards.

3rd Entry - In the Name of the King

2008-09-08T09:11:00.007-04:00

Hey everybody, welcome back to our blog. Hope you had as good a weekend as I did.

This week I am changing it up a bit, and I am going to review our first movie, In the Name of the King, starring Jason Statham.

Also, I am going to give a spoiler alert, but honestly, if you watch this movie because you want to see the story unfold, you're doing it wrong.

In The Name of the King - DVD - Action/Fantasy/Adventure

All right, so, first off this movie is hilarious. I don't think i can stress enough how funny this movie is. However, it isn't supposed to be funny. It's just that bad.

Secondly, Jason Statham is awesome. He never stops stomping face in this movie. Or any movie he is in, for that matter. In this case, i think he took this movie because he felt he needed to expand his repetoire into comedy. Either way, Jason, buddy, you're not a B-list actor, don't do this to yourself.

If you've ever played a game like World of Warcraft, or Dungeon Siege (which the movie is apparently based off of), or seen any of the Lord of the Rings movies, or read any kind of fantasy novel, you know the deal. It goes like this.

1. Hero is introduced.
2. Hero kicks some preliminary ass.
3. Hero's loved one dies/is captured/both. (In this case, both.)
4. Hero kicks lots of ass.
5. Hero wins.

OK so, Jason Statham is Farmer, an....uh... farmer whose son is killed by the Krugs (really though, they are Orcs from LOTR) and whose wife is captured by the ubiquitous bad-guys. So Jason Statham being the kind of guy he is, goes off to get revenge. (Revenge, yes, but revenge is so different when it's Jason doing it.)

But before he can leave, he's gotta fight off the remaining Krug (ORCS!) in his village. Know how he does it? With a BOOMERANG. Yeah, pretty much the best thing ever.

Once that's done, a few volunteers come along with him, and it's off to reclaim wifey.

Along the way they have a few random encounters, but one is by far my favorite. Our heroes begin to wander through the forest, when they are captured by what i can only accurately describe as tree-ninjas. I think what they were going for was a dryad or a druid of some sort, but tree-ninja is much better. At any rate, a massively POINTLESS scene ensues where Jason says to let them go, the tree-ninjas say OK, sorry to bother you, and everyone goes on their way. Really. That's the whole scene. Ridiculous.

So now we've arrived near the castle (which is ruled by everyone's favorite, Turd Ferguson...err, Burt Reynolds). There is some stuff in the middle I've missed, but it really, REALLY doesn't matter.

Ray Liotta makes a hilarious appearance as a evil wizard - his character must exist to have all of the bad lines, the man never says one line that isn't beyond hilarious. (YOU WISH TO ACCELERATE!?!?!? FINE! WE SHALL ACCELERATE!) Matthew Lillard plays the stupid and greedy heir to the throne, who is league with the wizard to overthrow Turd (Burt Reynolds, dammit). Also, Johnathan Rhys-Davies plays a good wizard, much different from his role as Gimli in LOTR.

So now at this point we're in the middle of a huge battlefield, the king's army versus a ragtag band led by our man Jason.

The battle commences, and as far as battle sequences go, this one is not too terrible. Really. Its actually fairly enjoyable, and it isn't hilariously bad either. But then, something amazing happens.

Legions of NINJAS appear! That's right, legions. No they aren't the tree ninjas either. But then, just as you recover from the addition of ninjas, then (you guessed it) the TREE NINJAS return to help out our beloved hero. But even when you thought it couldn't get more ridiculous, a rotting hand emerges from the ground, and now, ZOMBIES join the fray! (If by this point in the film, you aren't able to breathe from laughter, something is wrong with you.) So after this giant battle of ridiculous proportions, our man Jason comes out on top, outcasts the greedy heir, and takes his place as the real king, with his newly reclaimed wife at his side. That's right, a twist ending, how could we have known Jason was the real heir to the throne? TELL US, TURD FERGUSON. HOW?!

The best (and probably only way) to watch this movie is with a huge group of your friends. So while it is a terrible, terrible movie, it is redeemed by its accidental humor value.

All in all, a bad movie, but a great thing to do when bored. I give In the Name of the King 3 out of seven fail ninjas.

(Thanks to myself and Poke's good friend GADs for the awesome ninja pic)

Also, this movie is directed by Uwe Boll - you should know, this guy is infamous in Hollywood for just making terrible movies. Also, he is infamous for generally being a dick. He also has a apparent enjoyment of calling various critics and directors "retards." Way to go, Uwe. Deutschland is proud.

Uwe Boll has released a video stating that he is "the only genius in the whole fucking [movie] business" and that other directors such as Michael Bay and Eli Roth are "fucking retards". (Wikipedia)

Blair Erickson, a writer of a treatment for Alone in the Dark, has written a critical account of his experience working with Boll, in which Erickson alleges that Boll stole ideas from prior movies and wanted to add elements to the story that were not true to the tone of the source material. Uwe chose to not use Erickson's script, citing reasons such as it having "not enough car chases." (Wikipedia)

Blizzard Entertainment refused Boll's request to make a World of Warcraft adaptation; Boll said, "I got in contact with Paul Sams of Blizzard, and he said, 'We will not sell the movie rights, not to you... especially not to you.'" (Wikipedia)

All right everyone, and with that, till next time.

- GoofyTooth

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Now playing: Mastodon - Blood and Thunder
via FoxyTunes

2nd Entry - Kane and Lynch: Dead Men

2008-09-04T16:06:00.010-04:00

Kane and Lynch: Dead Men - Xbox 360 - 3rd Person Shooter

This is a game i had high hopes for. It's a cool concept, plus Goof and I like co-op games, so this seemed like a perfect choice. The story is pretty simple; these two guys are broken out of jail by some criminal organization to rob a bank. Why, I'm not sure. Kane i understand sort of. He owes them money so they make him do bitch work. Lynch, however, makes no sense. He's in jail for maybe killing his wife no one knows if he did it or not not even him. This seems to be his whole criminal career. Plus he blacks out some times, doesn't seem like the best choice, but not all criminals are geniuses so I'll go along with it.

So the first couple levels are fun. You rob the bank, Lynch has an episode all the civilians turn into cops with pig heads, cause you know he's crazy. Then you have a fun little chase with you riding in the back of a van, pretty cool unless you're Lynch cause at this point the only weapon you can get is a shotgun or pistol, neither one really effective because they never get close. This turns out to be a major problem the whole game. Lynch always has a shotgun at the start of the level even if the level involves you sneaking through fields in Cuba, you might ask why you are in Cuba, but I can't really tell you cause I'm not sure myself. They tired to make an in depth story but mostly I couldn't figure out what was going on.

After like the first three levels you start just doing dumb stuff, that mostly is not fun. There is one part where you have to stop a giant dump truck from running over Kane's daughter cause, you know, the bad guys are bad. Mostly it's a game of chance if you manage to kill the guy, nothing really to do with skill just luck, which is super irritating. As an added bonus if you mess up, and you will (a ton), you get to watch a thirty second cut scene that you can't skip. This seems to be a common motif, because later, when you're in Cuba, The bad guys have Kane's daughter again, you start in the middle of a court yard with guys above you and no cover, yet a again it's pure chance if you don't die, and if you do, which you probably will, you get to listen to them bitch about Kane's daughter and whatever else is happening in the story for a good twenty seconds this time, yay fun!

So now we get to talk about the game play in general. First lets talk about the weapon selection, or lack there of. Essentially There is Kane's assault rifle, which starts as an M-4 and I believe turns in to a Galil, and whatever assault rifle the bad guys have, first an M-4 and the when you get to Cuba Ak-47s, they are about the same. And then the useless shotgun Lynch gets which you should drop for anything the first chance you get; it sucks that much. Then the controls. The buttons were ok, but it just seemed sloppy. The third person was again not bad but after playing Gears of War it made me mad sometimes. Also the levels where pretty much go to this place and kill everything in the way, which is the same as Halo but it just seemed not fun the way they did it. They put in grenades in almost as an after thought. They took so long to throw and you had to stand out of cover do so. When you really need them to take out large groups or a machine nest you are more likely to die then anything else. The graphics where yet again so-so. Kane and Lynch themselves looked pretty good, but the world was pretty bland and the bad guys all looked the same, the only difference between the cops and Cuban revolutionaries was the color of the uniform. Also the adrenaline was funny. There's no real good revive system in any game, but it just made me laugh that if you got hit by a tank round all you had to do was get a shot of adrenaline and you where cool

So in conclusion this game made me mad. At first I was like this is a fun co-op game but then it just started to suck, and became the opposite of fun. At one point I was happy to put it down and read bad Greek plays for class. I give it 5 out of 7 failpills

1st Entry - Brute Force

2008-09-01T18:58:00.012-04:00

Hello everyone, this is the first installment in Terrible Entertainment Media, where myself (GoofyTooth) and my friend (Poke) will review and promptly ridicule terrible, terrible games, movies, and the like. (Let's remember this is all in good fun, if I don't like a game you do like, its not you i don't like, but the game.)

We're both VCU students living in Richmond, VA.

If you have a idea for us to write about feel free to send it to thegoof@hotmail.com!

With that said, let's get right to it.

Brute Force - Xbox (Original) 3rd Person Shooter

Let me preface this by saying I wasted only $4 and eight hours of my life on this game. When Poke and I saw it at GameStop for $4, we immediately thought of how we had only played the game a few times when it first came out, and we remembered it being rather fun.

But no. Oh, no, no, no. I don't know how I ever enjoyed this game.

Admittedly, the first few levels were fun in a terrible, campy, and nostalgic kind of way. We laughed at the bad writing, the bad graphics, and the laggy gameplay. But by the time we reached about the tenth or so level, it went from amusement to outright frustration and irritability. I don't know where to start with this game. It does everything a shooter should do, but badly and painfully so.

First off, it's a third person shooter. But not really. Its more of a put-the-camera-on-the-guy's-back-and-wave-it-awkwardly shooter. You really spend most of the game looking at the upper half of your character's scaly/naked/armored back.

Speaking of the characters, there are four main playable characters.

Tex - A human male who can wield two weapons at once
Brutus - a male lizard who can go into a sort of frenzy
Hawk - a human female who can go invisible for a short period of time
Flint - a synthetic (huh? but really though she's a human female) who can auto-snipe

Now you would think all of these characters have their ups and downs. But in all honesty the only characters who are truly playable are Tex and Brutus. Hawk dies from anything that shoots her, ever, at ALL. And Flint is also too fragile to use effectively, and while her sniping ability could be useful, there are no good sniping spots in the whole game. And did i mention HAwk and Flint are unable to pick up the three most useful weapons in the game? Oh, AWESOME.

The weapon selection in this game at first seems impressive, but it's actually about twelve terrible weapons, and three useful ones. Seriously, if you try to use anything other than the minigun, shotgun, or missile launcher, you'll just become annoyed. Oh, yeah, and you start essentially every level with a laser gun with regenerating ammo. Yeah, that's how you KNOW it's good.

Let's talk about the game's cutscenes. For as old as this game is, the CG work is decent and most of the cutscenes look acceptable. However, every SINGLE cutscene does the same thing over and over, but with variations in the speech. I shall demonstrate.

Commander Guy: Great job team.
Team: Thanks.
Commander: Your next mission is on (insert planet here). You have to eradicate (insert alien race here).
Tex: Let's DO IT!
Hawk: Mmmmmmmmmmmhmm.
Flint: (some kind of moody interjection)
Brutus: GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!!!!!

There you go. Every cutscene in the game.

Also the battlefield banter from the characters becomes old in less than five minutes, because their vocabulary is less than fifty words apiece. Let me again show you an example of the only things each character can say:

Tex: I'm a giant bad-ass.
Brutus: GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.
Hawk: (She never says anything, she is always too busy dying/respawning.)
Flint: I snipe things.

It gets old very fast and you begin to hate when your character speaks.

The music is non-existent, and when it actually does chime in, it tries to sound epic, but it always comes up very very short.

The level design leaves something to be desired, and the final few levels seem like they were thrown together like a project due in six hours. Again, like much of the game, the levels seem to degenerate as you proceed.

However, the thing that really threw me off was the final stage, or I suppose what was theoretically supposed to be a "boss battle," but it was more of a lesson in frustration. The final boss teleports around several high towers and shoots missiles at you as you run for cover. You can only run around the level in search of a button which, when pressed, drops a meteor (OF COURSE!) on a small part of the stage. Shooting the actual boss will not damage him, so it stands to reason you wouldn't simply open fire on him just because. But in fact if you don't shoot him, YOU'RE DEAD WRONG. You need to pummel him with as much ammo as you can so he will teleport to the exact spot where you can drop the meteor on him. (Oh, silly me.)

The other thing about the final stage that i can't understand is that it is completely different from all other gameplay in that it can't be solved by throwing lots of minigun rounds at it. Seriously, the only truly fun thing about the game is using the minigun to put ridiculous amounts of lead in the air, so why they would remove this element in the final battle is beyond me.

In closing, since I only spent $4 on this game, I don't feel too bad. If i had abought the game when it was released, i would feel sick.

At any rate, this game is of course, terrible, so play at your own risk.

Therefore, I award Brute Force four out of seven fail.

Until next time.

- GoofyTooth

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Now playing: Blind Guardian - The New Order
via FoxyTunes