Reviewed on Xbox 360. Developed by Ruffian. Published by Microsoft.
The tale of the making of this game is a saga in it’s own right. The first Crackdown came out in in mid 2007 bundled with the Halo 3 multiplayer beta. Once the beta was over, some of those people actually tried the game and found they had a fun superhero game rather than just a lukewarm open-world cop game promised by the demo. Demand for the game, driven initially by the Halo 3 beta, kept ticking over and the game eventually sold over 1.5 million copies. Of course, this slow burn meant Crackdown developers Real-Time Worlds moved on to APB (and their eventual demise) and a new studio, Ruffian, was set up to make a sequel. Ruffian, located close to RTW isn Dundee in Scotland, hired several ex-RTW staffers to quickly make the DLCmission packre-skinexpansion pack full priced sequel.
At the end of the original game, there was a twist (of sorts) but here we are back in the same Pacific City ten years later. In the years since you cleaned out the three gangs terrorising theplace, a resistance group called The Cell have taken over large chunks of the city, broadcasting propaganda and shooting at you as you go about running your agility orb collection business. Also, a plague has created the zombie-like Freaks that swarm the city during night time hours. You play as a new agent backed up by the dulcet tones of Crackdown Guy (he also plays almost the same role in Red Faction: Guerrilla) whose job is to clear up Pacific City. Again.
Like the first game, you have 500 agility orbs to collect and can level up other stats by driving, using melee attacks, etc. There are also the rooftop races and car races to help with stat-building. Later on your agent can even glide and this ability can be levelled up by glider races where you fly through rings. Crackdown was one of those games that catered to OCD by having 500 agility orbs to collect. CD2, whilst being a decent open-world game, is also a decent collectathon if you so wish. There’s the agility orbs, online only co-op orbs, hidden orbs and, in taking ironically a pointer from inFamous, audio logs which flesh out the fiction of Pacific City. There are types of renegade orbs, which are orbs that move away from you forcing you chase after them if you want to collect them.
Instead of the three gangs whose bosses you are looking to take down, you have the Freaks and the Cell. The Cell are in charge during the day and Freaks play after dark and the game is structured so you take on both. The cure for the freaks is Project Sunburst, which involves you powering up the network of nodes in each area so that you can enter a Freak lair (typically underground) and face the horde whilst a power beacon (think EMP for Freaks) charges up. If both the beacon and your agent survive the onslaught, the resulting flash will instantly obliterate all traces of Freakdom in the area. You also have to face off against the Cell in their strongholds which amounts to killing x number of enemies without moving too far from the start point. This is the main point of differentiation between the original game and the sequel and it’s one area where the original way is best. You don’t get that element of working your way towards the boss at any stage and the game doesn’t really give you many clues as to your progress without digging around in the menus.
You can upgrade weapons by picking them up from fallen foes and calling in a chopper to save (the closest thing to the safehouses from the original game), and you can do likewise with vehicles. I barely bothered with cars, something I always liked about Crackdown, since the cars aren’t necessary to beat the game, that’s just how I roll. On foot. There’s the assortment of assault rifles, shotguns and machine guns with a few grenade/ rocket launcher weapons as well as standard grenades and mines. There’s also the UV shotgun, harmless to humans, but devastating to Freaks but even better is the harpoon/crossbow which shoots a lethal metal bolt at your foes. There are also mounted turrets around the place you can detach and become walking artillery shooting up the place like something out of a Sam Peckinpah film. Also of note- collateral damage is not something you’re going to find easy to avoid. Just take Crackdown Guy’s remonstrations in your stride. By the end of the game, you will have no choice but to use Rocket Launchers to clear out Cell strongholds and any civvies or peacekeepers who get too close will just have to die. It’s the price of cleaning up the city.
GTAIII and GTAIV are both set in something called Liberty City but they feature different takes on the same place. Pacific City is the same in both CD games, just that in CD2- it’s a little more rundown. Buildings that housed massive gang hideouts are now nearly derelict and it’s kind of cool to see how things have changed. But if you’re someone who’s run through the original more than once (or even just recently), you might find the similarities a bit of a cheat. It doesn’t feel like it’s the same game but it doesn’t feel like a full sequel, more an expansion pack using the same code and assets as the original. It’s not worse than the original, but it does lack that wow that many felt after getting into the original back in 2007.
There’s a strong co-op component to the game- evidenced by the co-op orbs around the place. I found Cameron’s story where, after having just started to play the game he went online and some stranger who was able to get to the final level joined the game and finished Cam’s game for him. I actually find that a good reason for changing your online options to friends only.
The graphics are still in Crackdown’s cel shaded style but the overall look is slightly dated. In it’s favor is the sweeping vistas the game offers when you can literally see forever. Things run at a stable clip and I only once noticed some slowdown in proceedings (others have had it worse). The sound is the same quality as the first game, which is to say, very good. I did, however, find Crackdown guy to be rather verbose this time around. Funnier, but sometimes he just won’t SFTU. He’s also got a bit of a potty mouth this time around, which is fun. The Audio Logs you collect are nice because they give the game some more voices to listen to. Sure, the crowds can get quite chatty, but for the most part you want to hear more than Crackdown Guy talk about online orbs.
Overall it’s fun package and should give you at least 12 hours of fun, which is a decent amount. I say if you like open world games, you’d like Crackdown 2. It’s not an essential game that you simply must play but it is a good one.
Controller1.com rating 2/3
(1/3 if you fear deja vu or 3/3 if you have more than one Commodore 64 in your cupboard)
So after a work-induced week away from gaming last week, I’m back into it. And by it, I mean Crackdown 2.
There’s something about the game that isn’t gelling with me. It’s either open-world fatigue after Just Cause 2, Saboteur, Assassin’s Creed 2, Borderlands, etc or it’s just a little lacklustre compared to the original. For me it’s not the similarity to the original, it’s the lack of similarity that gets me. I loved having to work my way through the waves of gang members before attacking the boss in the original and here, the ‘enhancements’ aren’t as much fun. The games’ fun, it’s just not as compelling. I’m a fair way through the game and fully intend on finishing it soon (certainly before Halo Reach), but I’m not getting the urge to play in the morning before work (my metric for HOLY FUCK THIS GAME IS AWESOME).
I live in Australia and of course, aren’t able to buy the same version of Left 4 Dead 2 as the rest of the world due to classifications issues. A friend gifted it to me after it was more or less being given away by Valve in a sale. I mean they almost paid me to download this game. Somehow receiving the game from someone with a US account means you can DL the normal version in Australia and play it without Zombies disappearing before your eyes.
It’s also a case of too little to add to the first game and I do agree with the critics of L4D’s releases so soon after the original- apart from a few enhancements- why wasn’t this DLC or an expansion like HL2 episodes? The new crew don’t have as much charisma as the original crew and yada yada yada.
Grumpy George continues grumpily with a some Grumpy Theft Auto IV. I’ve perhaps played 90 minutes of the PC version multiplayer- and seem to play once every few weeks. I like a bit of structure. this has none. There are several modes and for some reason they always end up with everyone having Bazookas or Helicopters, even if it’s a race.
So two weeks before Halo: Reach and I’d loooove to play some Halo 3 or ODST in the meantime. Approximately two weeks after H:R turns up, I’m off overseas for a few weeks so chances are I won’t feel like playing Halo when i get back. When you were a kid, did you ever have this thing that any fads or lunchtime activities would always be bookended by holidays? In Year 6 Term 2, everyone was into Marbles but gave up in Term 3. In Year 9, everyone was playing cards on the bus after Easter but that stopped the next holidays.
I therefore expect two weeks of concentrated Halo Reach from mid September. If you hate Halo, this site might be one to avoid till October.
Available on Apple’s iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch. Developed by One Man Left. Reviewed by LisVender
Dual-stick shooters don’t work so well on the iPhone. Sliding my thumbs around a touchscreen with no physical feedback makes for very imprecise control, which is no good for games that often require surgical precision. Nevertheless, there are many, MANY dual-stick shooters on the iPhone, each one hoping to be the next Geometry Wars. Hell, Geometry Wars itself is available on the iPhone, and it sucks too!
So the iPhone game Tilt to Live, an ostensible Geometry Wars clone, confused me, because of its many positive reviews. Folks were calling it unique, a blast, and perfectly suited to its platform. I scratched my head and wondered how that could be. I decided to take the chance, wire Apple my two bucks, and jump from the airplane. And holy shit, this game is good!
In Tilt to Live, you play a little white arrow in a rectangular arena that slowly fills up with magically-appearing red dots. One touch from a red dot, and you’re history. You move around by tilting the iDevice. Just imagine that your arrow is a little ball bearing that you roll around. It’s simple and intuitive. The tilt, however, is your only control. Touching the screen doesn’t do anything. All you can do is move about. No shooting!
So how do you fight back against the oncoming hordes of evil red dots? You grab pickups, which appear in random locations in the arena and float about innocuously. Colliding with a pickup instantly creates some sort of offensive that lays waste to red dots and clears a good chunk of the screen for you. There are always three pickups onscreen at any given time, and your survival depends on maneuvering through the crowds of dots skillfully to grab them.
Some of the weapons must be unlocked, but the three that are available from first play pack an effective punch on their own. There’s a purple pickup that launches a broad death wave from your arrow’s point, annihilating any dots in its path. There’s the fireworks pickup, which scatters five homing missiles across the screen, and then there’s the radioactive nuke pickup, which creates a large, lingering explosion that roasts red dots while keeping you momentarily safe. Each pickup is powerful and satisfying to use, and it’s especially fun to grab one after another in quick succession, so you can mow down red dots and build up a humongous score.
Tilt to Live has three modes of play: Classic, Code Red, and Gauntlet. Classic is the vanilla game which starts off easy, with only a couple of dots harassing you at a time, and then gets cooking after a couple of minutes. Code Red is Classic without the foreplay; it jumps from zero to intense in a second. It’s great for those times when you’re not in the mood for a gentle upswing in difficulty, and want to get right into the excitement. Gauntlet is a dodging game. You get no red dots or pickups, only a series of deadly obstacles scrolling across the arena. You have wend your way through rotating gears, walls that smash together, spinning blades, and other deadly traps for as long as you can. Thankfully the tilt controls are excellent, and when you die, you have no one to blame but yourself.
Tilt to Live is connected to a network called AGON Online, which not only means that you can upload your score to a leaderboard, but you can also earn achievements. These achievements, here called “Awards,” are pretty silly. One is earned by literally not lasting five seconds, and another is earned by building a kill combo of 42, because it’s the answer to life, the universe, and everything, you know. These awards are good for more than just bragging rights, though, because collecting enough of them will unlock the game’s most powerful weapons, such as the ice blast and the spike shield. Stupid though the achievements are, unlocking them is worthwhile.
Here’s proof that arena shooters can work on the iPhone after all. Tilt to Live, with its smooth controls, wild weaponry, and goofy sense of humor, is a winner. You won’t want to put your iDevice down, even after you’ve died fifty times and picked up the Masochist award.
Controller1.com rating: 3/3
Update: There’s been an update which adds a new game mode called Frostbite. Frozen dots scroll down the arena, and if you don’t touch them and shatter them before they reach the bottom, they’ll thaw and come after you. A powerful firewall pickup will only appear after you destroy a certain amount of frozen dots. Fun!
Available on PC, Xbox 360, and Playstation 3. Developed by Avalanche Studios. Published by Square Enix.
I fucking love this game. Just Cause 2 is one of the few games I’ve played that actually delivers what’s promised on the back of its case: “relentless, adrenaline-fueled action.” The genii at Avalanche Studios have slapped the Rockstar trend of angry, dramatic, and satirical open-world games right in the face, and have given us a boisterous smorgasbord of outrageous excitement that doesn’t take itself seriously at all. Just Cause 2 doesn’t give a shit about providing a powerful, emotional experience, it just wants to make you smile. And smile you will, as you turn acre after acre of banana republic property into a mad and swirling inferno.
Just Cause 2 is the latest and best in the recent line of open-world, gently structured action games with big environments, oppressive governments, stupid stories, and even stupider acting. Crackdown started it, Red Faction Guerilla continued it, The Saboteur took it a few steps further up the silly meter, and now Just Cause 2 has mastered it. The story is ludicrous, but I’ll go over it anyway: The president of the tiny Southeast Asian country of Panau has died, leaving his spoiled son in charge. Unfortunately, this new prez, “Baby” Panay, won’t answer the phone when NATO calls. What’s more, Tom Sheldon, a former US agent who was called out of retirement to investigate the Panau situation, has gone missing. So the mysterious “Agency” sends in Rico Rodriguez, played by Al Pacino, to find Sheldon and, in time, bring the misbehaving Panay to his reward. You’ll take control of Rico as you cut a path across the lovely forested landscapes of Panau, exploring villages and towns, piloting vehicles, collecting collectibles, shooting shootables, and most importantly, completing missions for the Agency and the various local criminal groups who also want to see the government pushed to its knees.
You’ll accomplish this revolutionary goal by causing Chaos. Chaos is your measure of progress in Just Cause 2, and you earn it by blowing up government property, such as gas pipelines, fuel depots, radio antennas, and military equipment. When you see an object with the red-and-white Panuan emblem on it, find some way to blow it up. Shoot it, throw a grenade at it, plant some C4 on it, or crash into it with a vehicle. Whatever suits your fancy. As your Chaos number rises, all kinds of things unlock, from strongholds/safehouses, to new Agency missions which advance the story. If you find yourself unable to push forward with the game, just look around for more things to blow up. You’ll get back on track in no time.
Naturally, the Panauan military won’t appreciate your efforts to destabilize it. You can kill all the civilians you want, but if you so much as shoot a government-issued trash can, look out. As you cause Chaos, the “Heat Meter” fills up, and the redcoats will come after you in droves. You’ll wield the usual assortment of shoot-em-up weaponry (revolvers, shotguns, SMGs, rocket launchers) to battle them. Just Cause 2 features a helpful automatic lock-on aiming system, so you can run and jump all over while you fight, and as long as you keep your finger on the trigger, you’ll probably hit someone. Once you’ve had your fill of gunfighting, or once the odds start to turn against you, head for the hills. Stay out of sight for a while, and the Heat meter will empty. The soldiers will eventually lose interest in you and leave you alone again, so you can plan your next assault.
Alec Mason liberated Mars with a simple sledgehammer. Sean Devlin fought the Nazis with a fistful of dynamite. Rico Rodriguez takes on the Panay regime with two slightly more unusual tools: a parachute and a grappling hook. These two items are a revelation. With Rico’s parachute, there’s never any fear of death by falling. You can leap off of any tall building or out of any high-flying jet, and land safely. Magically, Rico seems to have an infinite number of these parachutes in his little backpack, and they never get caught on tree branches or power lines. The grappling hook is also surprisingly useful. If you can see something, you can get to it with the grappling hook. Just aim at any surface and hit L1/LB, and Rico goes soaring towards it. It works simply and performs beautifully. The grappling hook is great for getting yourself out of enemy firing lines and behind cover, crossing long stretches of land, and for quick escapes to the rooftops.
The hook also has some more creative applications than these. You can fire it at enemy soldiers to grab them and yank them. This is great for pulling them out of cover, or from behind mounted gatling guns, or down from lookout towers. By holding L1/LB to attach the hook to one object, and then releasing the button while aiming at another object, you can tether the two objects together. You can hook a big truck to a statue of Baby Panay, and then drive the truck forward to pull the statue down. You can hook a soldier to the ceiling and then fire at him while he dangles. You can hook a car to a helicopter and airlift it. You can hook a person to a gas canister and then shoot the canister, propelling it forward on a fiery leak and taking its hapless attachment for a wild ride. You can spend hours just dreaming up crazy and cruel tricks to try.
Assault helicopters, the bane of characters like Mason and Gordon Freeman, are but a minor irritation for Rico and his grappling hook. If a tenacious chopper swoops in to strafe you, all you have to do is aim up and grapple onto it, where you’ll hang from the underside. From there, you can climb to the front of the chopper, shoot out any armed passengers, toss out the pilot, and commandeer it yourself! The most satisfying part of this is hearing the poor pilot scream and scream as he plummets to the earth. Truly, the grappling hook is the heart and soul of this game.
If you don’t want to wait for the military to send a chopper after you, you can always call up your black market buddy Sloth Demon, and have one delivered. After completing the game’s first Agency mission, Rico is given a special beacon, which he can use at any time, even during missions, to have armaments and vehicles dropped at his feet. It functions similarly to the air drops in the Mercenaries games. The items aren’t cheap, and the best ones have to be unlocked by causing Chaos, but since you rack up money and Chaos just by blasting and collecting stuff, finances are rarely a problem. Sloth Demon will become your very best buddy when you get caught without ammo during a tense firefight, or when a target on the horizon looks a little too dangerous to conquer on foot. Even a broad and steely military base offers little resistance when you can just order up a tank at will, as I do in the following video:
Yes, Rico can quickly and seamlessly move from one deadly vehicle to another, but they’re not invulnerable by any means. Military installations are often dotted with SAM sites that are just waiting for you to pilot a flying vehicle so they can take you down. Good thing you have your parachute! Remember that cutscene in Uncharted where Nathan Drake and his chick are flying a plane out to an island, when they get hit by anti-aircraft fire, and they have to skydive out to safety? Well, in Just Cause 2, not only can you actually DO that instead of just watching it, you can do it several times in one gaming session!
Traveling is a big part of Just Cause 2, but it’s rarely the chore that it is in some other open-world games. Rico can pilot any of the dozens of motorcycles, sedans, sports cars, ATVs, speedboats, jeeps, tanks, helicopters, airliners, and jet fighters he’ll find around Panau, but even on foot, Rico can maneuver in some nifty ways. One of these moves is the stunt jump, accomplished with a single press of Circle/B, which makes Rico leap onto the hood or roof of a nearby vehicle, even if it’s in motion. From this position, he can fire on approaching enemies, grapple onto a nearby surface, throw the driver out and take the wheel for himself, or even stunt jump onto another passing vehicle! If you’re on a busy highway, you can perform “stunt jump combos” by leaping from one vehicle roof to another.
Rico’s other great trick is the slingshot maneuver, or as I like to call it, “grapplechuting,” which combines the utilities of his trusty parachute and grappling hook. You start it off by firing your grappling hook into a distant surface, and then opening your parachute while you’re being pulled to your target. Then, while your chute is open, aim at the ground ahead of you, and fire the hook again. Rico will keep his parachute open and reel himself forward with the grappling hook cord. If you can repeat this process often enough to maintain your momentum, you’ll be amazed at how quickly you’ll get around.
For all the goodness it provides, I’m nonetheless willing to admit that Just Cause 2 can be pretty annoying at times. The first problem most players will encounter is the surprising learning curve. Rico’s moves aren’t especially difficult to pull off, but he has so many of them, from dual-wielding to grappling around to ordering items, that it’s easy to forget what your options are once the bullets start flying. It will take some practice before your eyes finally open up to Rico’s impressive maneuverability.
Just Cause 2 is also susceptible to a disease common to open-world games, which I call “Who-the-fuck-is-shooting-me Syndrome.” Since the game has no intentional level design, enemy soldiers can and will spawn from just about anywhere, and they’re going to hit you before you can hit them. This is especially frustrating when you think you’ve cleared an area out, and you’re trying to relax or grab a pickup, and then a new horde of bad guys starts firing from behind you.
The game’s health system is also unnecessarily complicated. Rico has the Halo/Gears/Uncharted Healing Factor that refills his health bar if he avoids damage for a short time, but it won’t fill the bar completely. To get all your health back, you need to find and activate first aid kits, and they’re not as common as you might think. This can be frustrating when you complete a tough mission with reduced health, and then have to choose between hunting around for first aid, or beginning your next task at a disadvantage. For some stupid reason, you can’t order up or carry first aid kits with you to use in emergencies. What the hell, man? Even Mega Man can do that!
I should also mention that one of the mandatory Agency missions involves an extremely frustrating escort segment. Rico has to protect some unarmed moron who can’t stop himself from charging headlong into enemy ambushes. I’ve been playing video games for a long time, and I haven’t met a single person who actually enjoys doing escort missions. Pay heed, Avalanche: no one liked escort missions in Wing Commander, no one liked them in Dead Rising, and no one’s going to like them here. I say we put a stop to this escort nonsense right now! Who’s with me?
The Agency missions can be lengthy and complicated, but the criminal faction missions are all pretty brief, and some of them can be completed in a minute or two if you use a good strategy. Unfortunately, one of them, called “Black Gold,” has a serious glitch that makes the mission impossible to complete. Your goal is to fly to a distant offshore oil derrick and blow up a certain number of its fuel tanks. If you destroy only a portion of them, die, and choose to retry the mission from the you-died menu, the mission progress meter will reset, but the fuel tanks you busted in your first attempt won’t return. This means that you won’t be able to perform all the destruction you need to do to finish the mission. Thankfully, this is not a game-killing bug, and it can be resolved by manually aborting the mission and then accepting it again, but it can be maddening if you don’t recognize it as a bug right away.
Funky bugs are all over the place in Just Cause 2. Some of them are frustrating, such as a strange one that causes enemies to spawn within buildings, where they can shoot you but you can’t shoot them, while others are pretty damn funny, like this headless fellow here:
Amazingly, when set against the undiluted craziness that this game is intentionally providing, this sort of glitch isn’t disruptive in the slightest. It’s just another thread in the tapestry, another gift from the game that keeps on giving.
Just Cause 2 isn’t just a gem, it’s a perfectly cut diamond. I know that I’ve been gushing on about it for good while here, but I doubt that I could ever run out of good things to say about it. If you’re looking for your game to deliver something “grown-up” and “meaningful,” go kick a horse around the dull and depressing deserts of Red Dead Redemption. If you want a terrific, beautiful action game that’s just a ton to fun to fool around in, Just Cause 2 is it. From its opening skydive to its hilariously stupid final objective, Just Cause 2 is so far over the top that it really should be called Just Awesome. As goofy as it is, though, I don’t think it goes quite far enough, and that’s what keeps it from dethroning Total Carnage as my favorite video game of all time. What I’d really love to see is a game with the same controls and basic structure as Just Cause 2, but which engulfs you crazy, crooked, sci-fi architecture, hordes of mutated creeps to kill, and towering, bloodthirsty bosses that you have to grapple onto and tear apart piece by piece. THAT would be, quite honestly, the only game I would ever play.
Reviewed on PS3. Developed by From Software. Published by Atlus.
I have beaten the dark fantasy game Demon’s Souls, and it took me a good long while. Having passed through its voluptuous challenges alive, I can say that my opinion about it has changed somewhat. I went over the rules and details of the game in my first review of it, so I won’t repeat myself here. The purpose of this re-review is to describe some of the intangible aspects I discovered about Demon’s Souls that transform its plodding and frustrating experience into one of the most addictive and engrossing games I’ve played in years.
Demon’s Souls has every advantage over you. Each of the game’s five worlds has its share of unique dangers, from fire-breathing dragons to arrow-traps to poisonous marshes, and each of them is capable of shredding an unprepared adventurer in seconds. Losing in one of its grand boss fights, and then dying again to weak monster while making a corpse run, causing all those souls you gathered to vanish, is a lesson in heartbreak. Many times, in the course of my playthrough, I tossed my Dual Shock aside and flopped onto my bed in hopelessness. I’d turn off the console, go do something else, and then, the next day, fire up Demon’s Souls again.
I’ve always been drawn to games with high difficulty levels, but I don’t put up with them if they cheat. The thing about Demon’s Souls is that it’s completely fair and consistent. The enemies are unintelligent, and they repeat the same attacks over and over, usually leaving themselves open. The traps behave the same way every time you activate them, so they’re easily avoided once you know where they are. The challenge of Demon’s Souls often comes from the environments, the level design. Enemies are often placed in tight corridors or on narrow cliffs where dodging is difficult. Traps sometimes fire from behind you when sprung, so you’ll hear them but won’t know what’s happened until you’re hit in the back. Luring tactics are often required in areas where enemies hang out in groups. The traps and monsters are always set the same places when you enter a level, though, so they’re easy to handle with the right preparation.
Building a strategy requires a lot of patience and persistence, which is something video games don’t often demand anymore. You play a game like Uncharted or Halo, which are liberally peppered with checkpoints, and you never have to replay much when you die. In Demon’s Souls, though, and in difficult games from the past, such as Ninja Gaiden and Castlevania, you need to replay a significant chunk of a level upon dying, so that sooner or later, the tougher areas become a part of your memory.
I’ve said before that I’m not much for “performance games,” games which require memorization in order to win them, but in Demon’s Souls, the levels rarely play out identically from one attempt to another. The monsters switch up their attacks, they weave, they circle, and they spar. They may not be smart, but they’re not always predictable either. Recognizing telegraphed attacks, dodging or blocking them, and then countering, all while managing your stamina, makes the combat in Demon’s Souls reminiscent of Nintendo’s Punch-Out!! games. Even the toughest bosses can be beaten using this basic strategy. It just requires a little patience while you wait for that opening.
Practice and reflexes are all well and good, but Demon’s Souls is an RPG at heart, so playing its numbers is just as important as having fast fingers. It’s important to know that each weapon in the game has properties such as slashing, piercing, blunt, magical, and physical damage, which differ in effectiveness against the game’s bevy of baddies. It won’t do much good to stick with a weapon that only inflicts heavy physical damage, since it won’t have much effect against a creature like Flamelurker, who is only weak against magical attacks.
So specialization is discouraged. Keep at least one of everything. Keep a spear, a sword, a hammer, and a bow. Keep a shield that protects against magic, and another shield that keeps your stamina high, even after multiple blocks. You’ll need to upgrade multiple weapons in multiple ways using the multitude of ores you’ll find, so that you have a broad variety of attack types at your disposal. Knowing what weapons work best on each monster and boss requires experimentation and time, but it also provides you with a huge advantage, and once it all comes together in your head, and you start tearing through the bad guys, you’ll feel like a fucking genius.
And the reason you’ll feel so accomplished is that game didn’t hold your hand along the way. All that planning and practice is easy to stomach because Demon’s Souls doesn’t say a word while you do it. Like a good parent, it shuts its yap and lets you set your own goals, and learn from your own mistakes. It doesn’t give you hints when you fall to a boss, like Batman Arkham Asylum, it doesn’t interrupt your play with interminable cutscenes and dialogue, and it doesn’t shove text boxes in your face about locked doors and levers, like a Zelda game. Truly, this is a Zelda game for grown-ups.
As annoying as it could be at times, I couldn’t help but be drawn to Demon’s Souls again and again until I was through it. Then I found myself picking it up again to play the New Game+, even though I told myself that I wouldn’t. Here is a game that is a truly demanding gauntlet, but beyond each hurdle is a grand and satisfying reward. Simple, stupid experiences like Darksiders, which don’t let you move for a few seconds without hitting you in the face with a fanciful cutscene, can’t hold a candle to the endless, absorbing, almost obsessive experience that Demon’s Souls provides. I still can’t say it’s better than Canabalt, but it’s damn close. This is one of the best games I’ve ever played.
To nobody’s great surprise I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about Crackdown 2 in those horrible, cold hours that are the time I am not playing Crackdown 2. It wasn’t until Ravi forced me to explain my rabid defence of the game that I was able to really wrap my head around how I feel about the game. And it is thus:
Crackdown 2 magnificently succeeds in the areas that are the most important to me. Thus, to me, it is an absolutely incredible game.
All I wanted, at the end of the day, was more Crackdown. Now for different people more crackdown means a lot of different things. All I wanted was jumping off buildings, COLLECTING ORBS, and blowing people up with a homing missile. That’s it. To me, Crackdown is the never ending joy of finding an enemy, jumping, pressing LT to lock on and, while you’re still in mid air, pressing RT and watching the enemy blow up real good like. I swear I have a Povolv-ian reaction to this, just sitting there like an idiot drooling doing it over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. And then to top it off I jump off a building and get vertigo and land SO HARD on the ground that NEARBY CARS EXPLODE.
That’s Crackdown to me. Crackdown 2 has more of that. Therefore it’s great.
Crackdown (left) compared with Crackdown 2 (right)
For the life of me I couldn’t understand the backlash. It’s bad because it’s more of the same, but different? Who the hell complains about following up the best steak you’ve ever had in your life with ANOTHER STEAK BUT THIS TIME WITH EXTRA SHRIMP IN THE MIDDLE OF IT?
I have to admit Ravi had a point. For a lot of people ‘more Crackdown’ is about watching different factions fight each other for control of a city, or it’s about watching a working, vibrant city that is desperately trying to cling onto normality getting screwed up by crime. Some people spent most of their time in the vehicles, which I never really was interested in. And…OK, I’ll admit, Crackdown 2 doesn’t have that. The visually unique areas are replaced with a uniform desolation, and because everywhere is so broken you can’t enjoy being anywhere as much. I thought the Peacekeepers, Cell and Freaks would be the three factions that fight each other, but they’re all just everywhere and you never get the sense you’re in Freak territory or whatever. Everywhere is the same as everywhere else really, and that’s a shame. The city isn’t what it used to be.
I kind of miss it.
But, like everything else in life I miss, I try not to think about it and just play more Crackdown 2 and start grinning like a God damn lunatic again.
Editor’s Note: A less mentally unstable review of Crackdown 2 is coming in a few weeks
Reviewed on Wii. Developed by Nintendo. Published by Nintendo
Mario is back. Again. So soon?
Super Mario Galaxy came out in 2007 and had Wii gamers not yet accustomed to feeling cheated after E3 cheering for Nintendo’s latest take on 3D Mario. After the minor let down (ie WORST MARIO EVER) of the Gamecube’s Super Mario Sunshine, Galaxy felt like an exciting move back to the more abstract worlds we all know and love in the Marioverse. But near perfect review scores didn’t translate to the multi-million unit sales Nintendo had expected from their flagship and despite being reviewed highly, it was an imperfect game with too many cool ideas not fully developed. Here in 2010, in the wake of the continuing success of the 2D Mario games on DS and Wii, Galaxy 2 has arrived. And it’s taking names.
SMG2 is more or less a refined expansion pack to the first game, but one that substantially improves on it in nearly every way (ie Uncharted 2 is better than Uncharted). Gone is the mind-numbing-to-navigate hub, replaced with a simpler, smaller hub in the shape of Starship Mario (if you need to ask…) with world selection far more streamlined, harkening back to a Super Mario World on the SNES level of simplicity).
So you pilot Starship Mario, them select an available galaxy, then Mario will fly there (as he did in the first title. Each Galaxy may have a few stars to collect, some only appearing later on to encourage you to revisit some levels later, but often in a way that you don’t feel you’re playing the exact same level twice to beat two different objectives. Traversing the same geometry on revisits is thankfully kept to a minimum (I mean you’ve selected what star you’re aiming for) but there are still the mystery stars that are hidden throughout. I just ignored these troublemakers since they are belligerent drunks.
Green mushrooms giving you another life? Check! Red Mushrooms temporarily doubling your max health? Check? Bumblebee suit? Check. Fireflower? Check? Princess captured by Bowser? Check?
The puzzles on each level, much of which has brought over from the first game, feel more organic and less forced overall. Perhaps it’s just that the game feels so much more polished than the first game. Not that the first game was rough, but SMG2 feels like the gameplay has been polished so thoroughly that Nintendo is almost daring you to find something wrong with it. I dare you. Dare to hate.
The thing that really makes this game stand out for me is Yoshi. Now, I’ve never really played games with Yoshi outside of Super Mario World on the SNES but here my favourite levels have been those with Yoshi and his abilities. The Drill is also a favourite of mine, though it’s hard to say how much of this is new since I only got about 50% of the way through SMG. This game has made me think about revisiting the original. But there are obviously things I like about the sequel that just weren’t there the first time around. And I HATED New Super Mario Brothers on the Wii.
Your brother Luigi is back and at times you will be given the option to play as him. Not that I’ve found much of a reason to play as Luigi but he’s there all the same. A few new suits and talents are used really well but for the most part, if you’ve played the first game, you’ve played this. If you haven’t played the original, play this. It’s just better.
The graphics are perfect, everything looks crisp (even on a Full HD TV with upscaling) with some jaggies of course. I do know that the Wii doesn’t translate well to using a computer monitor, but a game like this works so well with the hardware. Maybe that’s the lesson of the Wii. If you can make the art look clean and bright, it well sell to people regardless of high poly character models with realistic textures.
The sound is what you expect of a Mario game, even though most of the sound and music is recycled from the first game- not that you can realistically change the sound of a Mario game- Going down a pipe sounds the same as always, collecting Yoshi is the same as it was on the SNES, etc.. Charles Martinet is back as Mario and Luigi so you can expect all manner of falsetto Ethnic stereotyping as you play this delightful title.
I wasn’t sure I was going to stick with it, but It grew on me more and more as I played it. Earlier this year, I toyed with selling my dust-gathering Wii but SMG2 has made me glad I haven’t (yet) disposed of the console.
Reviewed by Lisvender on PS3 Developed by From Software. Published by Atlus.
From Software’s first game since Demon’s Souls is a weird creature. It’s a Zeldalike that doesn’t borrow from current Zeldas, but from the original one for the NES. It presents itself as an experience stuck between generations of graphical technology, and similarly, it plays as a game stuck between generations of design theory. It is a cheerfully self-aware love letter to not only Zelda, but to fantasy adventures of the 8-bit day, but, sadly, that novelty is its only true feature.
Long, long ago, the Dark King Onyx, a really bad dude, set his army of monsters on Dotnia, a quaint little kingdom located somewhere between Hyrule and Alefgard. A courageous warrior and six powerful sages worked together to defeat Onyx and seal him in an orb, and peace returned to the land. Unfortunately, if not surprisingly, this peace was not to last. Now, hundreds of years later, the power-hungry bishop Fuelle gets his hands on that orb, puts a curse on the princess of Dotnia, and steals away to a tall tower surrounded by poisonous swamps. Monsters are running rampant across the land, and rumors of Onyx’s return have the good people in a panic. Now the descendants of the sages and the warrior must unite to put a stop to Fuelle’s scheme.
You play the warrior’s descendant, and you’ll have explore the countryside, delve into underground labyrinths, and battle bad guys as you search for the sages’ descendants and gather their power. You’ll explore six different temples, each with a big boss at the end. Your character fights with a sword and a shield, but he/she will also make use of a series of useful tools, including a boomerang to stun enemies, a bow and arrow to hit switches, bombs for breaking open walls, and candles to light dark halls. It’s all very Zelda, but a few twists make Heroes stand out from the games it apes.
The most noticeable aspect of the game is its appearance. Dotnia is a curious place, and a singular one among video game worlds. It’s rendered in 3D, but everything in it is built from very large blocks, as though roughly translated from chunky, low-resolution pixel art. Characters move with jumpy, two-frame animations, and slain monsters burst open into a shower of boxes. It’s meant to look like an 8-bit game brought a step nearer to reality.
Heroes’s look is initially striking, but this awkward, teenaged area that Dotnia occupies creates some problems. Some current visual effects have worked their way into this growing land: depth of field effects, light and shadows, and sparkling reflections are everywhere. Unfortunately, these effects are so prevalent as to be distracting and annoying at times. The game includes a character editor, which allows you to sculpt your own 3D pixel thing and use it as your hero, Spore-style. Putting together a character box by box, though, is tedious, and when viewed from the perspectives that the game provides, your creation will be hardly recognizable.
In fact, hardly any of the game’s details are recognizable during play. The simply designed inhabitants of Heroes would probably look great if viewed directly from the front or side, as they would be in the 2D games that inspired them, but here, as 3D models looked down on from a bird’s-eye view, they dissolve into blocky bundles of angular confusion. Using one of the game’s zoomed-in camera angles makes the details more noticeable, but it also makes effectively fighting and exploring impossible. You can only change the camera angle in the overworld, anyway, so you won’t see a difference in the dungeons.
Which brings me to another problem. The viewpoint in the dungeons is fixed at a low angle, which means that everything up against the near, “fourth” wall is obscured. This can be irritating when monsters creep down there, but it’s really frustrating when a critical puzzle object, such as a floor switch or a hookshot pole, is positioned down there. The only way to really figure out rooms like that is to use an FAQ, or to make a lucky guess.
The other major difference between Zelda and Heroes is the big sword. You’ve probably heard about it. When your character is at full health, his/her sword will grow to an enormous size, allowing you to swipe down monsters with joy and aplomb. You can bring your sword to a blacksmith to increase its size until it reaches across the screen and pierce through walls if you wish. Much has been made of the big sword in 3D Dot Game Heroes, but while it makes a fine symbolic image for the game, I consider it a liability. The big sword is so effective that it makes all the other treasures in the game unnecessary except as keys to progress gates. Why bother using the bow, the boomerang, or the fire rod, when the sword wipes out your enemies so much more quickly than they do?
The audio is good in some parts, just okay in others. The music is layered with happy, chirpy chiptunes, but it also features some strong horns and strings, and a few songs, such as the main overworld theme, are quite catchy. Some of the dungeon themes, however, can be grating. Tools and bombs make strong, satisfying sounds, and when you strike an enemy with your sword, you’ll hear one of the best slashing samples ever used in a game. What you won’t hear is any voice acting, as the game employs the traditional text boxes of RPGs past, but for the dialogue you get here, that might be a blessing.
There’s a ton of nerd humor in 3D Dot Game Heroes, some of it subtle, obscure, and clever, and the rest broad and heavy. While the game plays like Zelda, references to many different classic games are everywhere. Dragon Warrior gets the lion’s share of the attention, with sound effects, characters, and conversations lifted directly from the beloved series, while Final Fantasy, Hydlide, Tower of Druaga, and Spelunker get their dues as well. Each of the game’s loading screens is Dotnia-style riff on a classic video game’s box art, too, and this would be cute if the game didn’t load so often.
It’s a little confusing that we have games like Grand Theft Auto IV and Uncharted 2, which feature complex, detailed environments and yet stream data seamlessly, while 3D Dot Game Heroes, with its small, simple world and no voice acting, which loads every time your character enters a new area. There’s an install option on the main menu, but even that doesn’t do away with the loading entirely. I’m truly bewildered by this. The only explanation I can think of is that From Software didn’t give this game much time for optimization. It would certainly explain its jumpy frame rate. Yes, this game, with its simple graphics, can’t manage a stable frame rate. If you kill too many enemies and have too many little blocks flying around the screen, or if you’re in a room with a lot of lighting effects running, the game chugs. What the hell? Is this really what we should expect from an exclusive on the most powerful games console on earth?
3D Dot Game Heroes is a tough game to review. It’s joyful, and it revels in the simplicity of the 8-bit era, but it also has very little of its own to say. It can be enjoyable to run around Dotnia smashing monsters with a big sword, but it also feels unbalanced, with many of its items and ideas going underused. The pseudo/retro graphics are charming, but they wreck the visibility. To give this game a 1/3 feels too harsh, but to give it a 2/3 seems too generous. Perhaps the best solution is to give it both scores, and then summarize my position thus: 3D Dot Game Heroes is pretty good for smiling at the past, but if you want to play a Zelda game, trust in the name brand.
Controller1.com rating: 1/3 (2/3 for retro lovers)
Mario is just one of those things in gaming. I’ve always enjoyed Mario platform games (right back to Donkey Kong being one of my top 5 arcade favourites), but I have gotten to the point where I’m just not finishing them. Sunshine on the Gamecube was the last Mario game where I faced the final boss, and that was by getting the bare minimum shine requirement.
I may have only gotten half way through the original SMG and barely 25% of the way through New Super Mario Brothers on the Wii. But I still bought SMG2. Thankfully, I am enjoying it.
I felt that although SMG was a good game full of ideas, too much of it felt a bit like they were reaching for new things to do. SMG2 (so far) feels organic. It feels right. It feels good. wait, that’s caffeine. well, anyway, it’s a good game.
There are two wrinkles to me getting too far into this game. One, is Crackdown 2. Having only played the demo and the first 15 minutes of the game (Most of which is the demo), I think I can say it’s comfort food. But then, most of my gaming is comfort food. Mario games and platformers USED to be my comfort food, replaced first by shooters and now it seems by open world mayhem games. Games like Heavy Rain and Mario are me straying outside those confines.
Crackdown 2 is that burger I have from Grill’d every Friday lunch. I order the Bombay Bliss Veggie Burger most weeks, and occasionally have a Beef Burger with egg and bacon (To make any fast food ‘Australian,’ add egg. Don’t ask me why, just be glad it’s not vegemite)
So Crackdown 2 is expected to offer few surprises, but then, I didn’t really expect it to. I didn’t expect a Mass Effect style rewrite where the developer took to heart any and every minor complaint from the original and offered up a massively different sequel. SMG2 feels like Miyamoto and co may have looked at the feedback from the original (and sales figures- while healthy- were under expectations for a marquee game like a Mario platformer) and tightened up the graphics on level 3 as well as the gameplay. Ruffian havn’t done this, possibly down to a very short time constraint and likely small budget. I’m guessing the guys who replayed the first game and/or hunted down the collectibles will be the ones who notice the similarity more. It’s the same city, which is the kicker, unlike say, Vice City which was GTAIII tech with changed art.
The other big news, I have my iPad. I didn’t expect to pick on up for another week but as my Wife and I are heading interstate for a few days, we thought it would be a good opportunity to see if an iPad would be all the computing we’d need away from home in preparation for an overseas holiday later in the year. That said, I’ve got all of my iPhone games to try like Canabalt, Attack Force and Poker Smash and have picked up Angry Birds and Plants VS Zombies. I’m considering Mirror’s Edge as well as some Popcap puzzlers. I’m open to suggestions…
also we've started recording a few extra retro podcats to have in the can so there's no disruption in service while I go off galavanting 4 days ago
Caved and bought Lara Croft GoL. Enjoying it somewhat more than my Halo 3 (still progressing) replay. 4 days ago
looks like only US, Canada, UK and Mexico are affected. Funny how Sonyland countries are unaffected. oh and MS- there's this thing called $5 4 days ago
Xbox Live is going to get more expensive. I wonder if a US$10 hike is going to translate into a 10, 15 or 20 hike for us in Oz. 4 days ago
My tolerance for bullshit at an all time low 5 days ago
