Help! I’ve Been Shanked! (Shank Review)
I thought that "shanking" someone was a harmless prank, like depantsing or something of that nature. I was way, way off base.
Of course, "shank" is at its origin a noun referring to a certain section of an animal's body (the thigh) that will be butchered and then consumed.
Later, the word "shank" came to be used to refer to knives; specifically, knives made in prison by prisoners. Shanks and shivs wherever I go, oy!! The verb form of the word then referred to these prison stabbings. And more unsavory things can be drawn from looser interpretations of the word.
All of the above came as preliminary research before I booted up the game SHANK, released on PSN and XBLA from developer Klei Entertainment and publisher EA at the end of August. With nothing but research on the game's title as my backup, I still had quite a bit of surprise to go through.
Shank. Costumed. Killing dudes on a bridge.
Shank is a 2D, side-scrolling beat 'em up with a strong story-telling element. Furthermore, despite its simple cartoon-like animation, it is one of the most intentionally ultra-violent games out there. Fans of the old flash video series Ninjai will recognize the style almost immediately. Though, it should be noted, Jeff Agala's art style is different from the pseudo-anime of Ninjai.
Because I'm a story nut, I tried to ignore all the visceral action (minus 10 points for using the forbidden word) and instead soaked up the dialogue and the excellent flashback sequences. And though it's a great story, it is ultimately quite derivative. Many critics were quick to compare this game to the works of filmmaker Quentin Tarantino; this comparison is absolutely appropriate. Not just for the excessive gore, no. Shank's plot is a revenge plot. Ready for the spoilers?
Shank, the titular character, is a big muscular guy who worked in a crime syndicate, led by a man named "Cesar." Shank is a loyal follower, but one day he falls in love with a young lady and gets her pregnant. Cesar tells Shank he must kill the girl (as a rather sick test of loyalty), but Shank is obviously reluctant to do so. So Cesar sends 4 of his other high-level goons to kill the chick and Shank. They take care of the girl as expected, but after roughing up Shank they leave him to die in a fire. Never a good idea; of course he's going to survive and come back years later for revenge.
You just gonna leave me to die? At my own wedding? Wait, no, that would be too similar.
Points go to the scenario writer, Marianne Krawczyk (who co-wrote the plot for the GOD OF WAR trilogy), for a well-executed tale. But no points awarded for basically re-telling the film "Kill Bill" with a male protagonist. Seriously, the entire action of the game is Shank hunting down and killing the 4 goons, and finally, Cesar himself. I seem to remember Beatrix (spoiler?) doing much the same thing. The only difference is that in Kill Bill, you have a reasonably happy ending with mother and daughter reunited. In Shank's scenario, there is no reunion. Only revenge, more revenge, and finally, a man walking into the sunset, with no one to turn to.
As far as the game itself is concerned, I have some short praise and critique. I like that Shank is capable of performing a variety of attacks with each of his three weapon types (fast, strong, and ranged). He starts with just his "shanks" (the knives), a chainsaw, and pistols. Over time he also adds a katana, two machetes, uzis, a shotgun, and chains to the roster of weaponry. They can all be changed on the fly, and each comes with a change in delay and, usually, some special attacks. On Shank's end, the combat was well thought out.
Unfortunately, I cannot give that praise to the enemies and their AI patterns. Basically, the game plays like this:
1. Fight a ton of enemies thrown at you with seemingly no order or strategy.
2. Fight a gimmicky oversized dude who can only be beaten by paying attention for special button-triggered events.
3. Fight another ton of enemies.
4. Fight a more strategic boss (about Shank's height); win by dodging attacks and then countering.
Rinse and repeat.
It's fun to control Shank, but the repetition, even for a 3 hour game, does get old by the end of the first playthrough. You do need to play smart to win; some enemies are simply immune to certain types of attacks. And when you're in a large crowd, one of the best things you can do is pounce on a smaller guy (just to incapacitate him) and then while he's down, shoot enemies around you with a pistol. Interesting concepts, to be sure.
This is step 2 of the 4-step pattern listed above.
Outside of combat, the environments do lend themselves to some fun acrobatic work. Shank can run on billboards, swing on poles, climb walls, and come out of pretty much any sticky situation with weapons at the ready. Motion is swift, and the player has to keep up if they're going to survive. They are pit deaths and other one-hit environment kills throughout the game. Always gotta watch out for that.
A quick note regarding the music: it's good, and thanks to pressure from the fans, it's free to download.
My concluding thoughts are these: the game looks great, though I could do without the excessive blood and many, many decapitations. The game plays fairly well, but overstays its welcome even considering its short length. The story is cool, but a little too derivative for its own good. And, finally, I'd just like to state that I do not ever, under any circumstances, want to be "shanked." Whatever that means.
Played: 5 hours
Platform(s): PlayStation 3 (PSN), Xbox 360 (XBLA)
Price: $14.99
Besting the best? BlazBlue: Continuum Shift (review)
I love you, BlazBlue. I loved you last year when you first invaded consoles. I loved your music. I loved Rachel. And now, a year later, I love your sequel.
Yeah, that's right, sequel. All this time I thought BLAZBLUE: CONTINUUM SHIFT was little more than an expansion. Two new characters and some gameplay mechanics being balanced. Right? Wrong.
BBCS, like Calamity Trigger before it, has this extensive story mode to it. That's the essential difference between the arcade cabinet and the console port, right? You have this huge story that fleshes out the "main event" and all things leading up to it from the perspective of every playable character. Like that Faulkner book I hated reading in high school. For those among us who can stand the "graphic adventure / visual novel" non-game experience and enjoy it being juxtaposed to the fighting, The story mode of BBCS is fan-freaking-tastic.
"Teach me: Miss Litchi!" (boobie lady!) is back! The entire 8-part series from the first game is on the disc, as are 5 new episodes. Rejoice!
Every character comes with three endings, which can be compared to the film Wayne's World. There's the normal (bad) ending, the silly (Scooby Doo) ending, and the True (generally good) ending. This time around, you don't need to lose in every fight to get 100% completion of each character's stories (though *some* fights will require it), and there aren't any secret paths opened with Distortion/Astral Finish. Generally, it's easier to get around.
AND, most importantly, it is my opinion that the script and voice acting has improved (how? I don't know!). For people who really want meat behind their favorite playable character in a fighting game, BBCS offers it in spades. You'll know in full detail where each character stands in relation to any other character very well if you complete all story paths (as I did). That's very important, since things change pretty significantly from BBCT to BBCS.
Oh, and then there's the full plot arc. When we left off in BBCT, Ragna encounters Nu-13, shit hits the fan, and they fall in a cauldron together. If you achieved the "true ending" (finishing all character paths first) in BBCT, you learned spoiler***
Noel jumps in too, saving Ragna, and somehow everyone gets out unscathed. Except Nu.
***spoiler end
In BBCS, the hinted-at villain (Hazama/Terumi) becomes a playable character and is, generally, the true villain, though by the time you reach the true ending in BBCS, you see that even he is a pawn to someone with more power and authority over the world. When you see who it is, you will pee your pants. I couldn't have guessed, only because I forgot about the character in question entirely up to this point. But those rabid fans who dig as deep into this as they do into, say, Battlestar Galactica, may be able to figure out what's coming before it hits them like a ton of bricks.
That's all I'll say about the story mode.
The "balancing" issues were mighty important. Let's face it: Jin, Nu, and Tager were overpowered. Arakune could be cheap given the right conditions. Carl and Hakumen were generally useless. Something had to be done about this. And generally, I think Arc System Works achieved their goal. I still think Jin is a little over-the-top in his power. All things being equal, a decent Litchi player is still prone to losing to a decent Jin player. You follow?
Oh, and Nu is gone. Though she is a downloadable character, her spot is essentially replaced by a weaker version of her: Lambda-11. Lambda has her own subplot in the story mode, and it's actually very interesting. Though it's mostly about sector seven scientist Kokonoe, the "Scooby Doo" ending for Lambda is actually bittersweet instead of off-the-wall hilarious. Robots make me cry.
So hey, how about those two new characters? We already mentioned Hazama. He wears a black suit, has green hair, and his movements in-game feel a hell of a lot like late '80s Michael Jackson. He's a smooth criminal, and he's got an ability that puts Scorpion's "Get Over Here!" to shame. Able to release up to 2 "Ouroboros" snakes at a time, he can latch onto the opponent, or to plain air, and then swing himself to the destination point. Handy, right? He also has daggers, and in his Unlimited mode he gets a circle of life-draining awesomeness around him. Makes for a hell of a fight on anything higher than "Normal" mode if he's your AI opponent.
Did I mention that this game is eye-gasm gorgeous? Because it is.
The other playable character is Tsubaki Yayoi. Once upon a time, we'd understand her to be Jin Kisaragi's girlfriend, and a good friend of Noel Vermilion during their school days. Today, she is a part of the NOL's "Zero Squadron," also known as the "Wings of Justice." Her job is to run around the NOL (Novis Orbus Librarium, aka "The Library") and assassinate traitors and defectors. We know even at the end of BBCT that Hazama has ordered her to hunt down both Jin and Noel. That is her primary motivation in BBCS, at least at the start. Outside of plot and motivation, her fighting style is ... slightly similar to Ragna. Though, she also has a shield-like thing that immediately makes me think of Sophitia from the SOUL CALIBUR series. However, she's one of these "I can do the same attack in four ways" kind of gals. Almost all her special movies can be performed with quarter-circles and then A B C or D. Of course, if you use D, you're using Seithr, which is gaged out very particularly for Tsubaki. It's not to be confused with the heat bar on the bottom. She has her own five-block bar which fills only when you hold D. So you hold D, then you do a special move with the D button, and it uses one of those five blocks. End result? Said special move is enhanced in one of a variety of ways. Her aerial attacks are especially deadly, or so I've found.
I noticed one thing about part of their "balancing" of characters: they changed the inputs for some special moves. It used to be easy as pie to use Rachel's signature attack "Sword Iris." Some exposition: Rachel can place up to three lightning rods on the field by shooting flowers out of a shape-shifting cat who turns into a cannon (I know, right? Isn't she the coolest character ever?!). These three lightning rods will all be struck with lightning, simultaneously, with the "Sword Iris" ability. If the opponent is standing near one or more of these rods -- well, as they say: MASSIVE DAMAGE. Sword Iris used to be accomplished with something like, down down B. Now it's something like half-circle back, forward, C. I don't have that exactly right, but the point is, it's a little harder to achieve. Being a career Rachel player, this is the one move that comes to my attention, but I did notice a few other characters having their special ability inputs tampered with between BBCT and BBCS. I guess that's all part of balance. That, and, reducing the amount of damage characters do. Or, in the case of Hakumen, increasing said damage. And explaining the freakin' Magatama system a little better.
BlazBlue: Continuum Shift is basically perfect. It is the 2D fighter. And for $39.99 (compare that to BBCT which retailed for $59.99 last year) it's a steal. Mind you that these days, BBCT will only by $19.99 at most stores, so you can get both games and sit through a hell of a lot of dialogue if you're into the story mode, like I am. But even if you hate story mode, this game is well worth the money just for arcade mode and online versus mode. The fighting is intricate, and button-mashing will get you nowhere against a player with the slightest amount of skill and knowledge.
BBCS's only flaw? EXPENSIVE DLC!! I'm all for adding characters via DLC, but don't dick with me. They've announced that 3 characters are coming, and they're $8 each. So far one is out: Makoto Nanaya. She's the third in a trio of gals that were friends in school (Noel, Tsubaki, Makoto). Makoto is a beastkin humanoid (half-squirrel). As a fighter, she's absolutely great. She uses her fists, and her "D" attacks rely on a small gage that fills and then re-empties quickly (like kicking a field goal in almost every football game ever). That's awesome, right? Well she's pretty cool. But she's eight freaking dollars! That's one fifth the price of the full retail game! And get this: no single-player arcade mode for her! What?! I wasn't expecting her to get her own story mode, though at $8, I almost find it warranted. But at a minimum, she ought to have an arcade mode where I play through 10 characters and get some basic exposition on her. Nope! She can only be used in multiplayer versus modes. That is weak sauce. Am I going to pay another $16 for Valkenhayn (Rachel's butler) and Platinum (some kid with multiple personalities)? Not bloody likely! I'll wait until they're included in the third game.
Oh oh oh, speaking of! BBCS makes no bones about whether or not there will be a third game. There will be. And it will take place in Ikaruga. Both BBCT and BBCS took place in Kagutsuchi, the "13th Hierarchical City." The next game will be in Ikaruga, the land of the ninja clan that Bang Shishigami belongs to. The game's story mode, and even the arcade mode, clues you in to the fact that this place is little more than rubble now thanks to a civil war that ended in some sort of horrific, worse-than-multiple-atomic-bomb-drop mass death. Whatever happened there has piqued the interest of all characters, good and bad, so that's where we're going next. I cannot wait, and they share as hell better make Jubei playable.
Before I forget, I should mention that Nu is also downloadable if you want her back from BBCT (I think she's like $5 instead of the standard $8), and that Mu-12, a character you'll meet in the story mode, is free but can only be unlocked by getting the true ending in story mode (or, I think, beating arcade mode with all characters). Either way, she's cheap as hell and totally worth it. While Lambda and Nu are essentially the same, Mu plays with a completely different weapon type and is almost unstoppable, especially in unlimited mode.
Oh oh oh! One last thing! Do you feel like you can't get into this game because the complex combos require all sorts of charts, graphs, and practice? They actually introduced a "beginner mode" that you can flip on that turns your assigned buttons into combos. So button mashing CAN work, if your opponent agrees to let you use beginner mode. Even then, though, you better know when to execute them or you're screwed.
Go get this game. Play it a lot. Be happy. But beware the DLC. It does not get to be a part of the perfect 5-star ranking! Makoto SHUN!!!
Played: 30+ hours
Platform(s): PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Price: $39.99
Microsoft wins the summer. Again.
(I wrote this last Wednesday — well before Microsoft's announcement this week that they're kicking off "Game Feast," another multi-week promotion with a killer lineup of games, at the end of this month. Over at Sony? Crickets. But hey, you get a discount on your PS3-protection plan if you sign up for PSN, so there's that.
Anyway, SUPER MEAT BOY, Twisted Pixel's very promising COMIC JUMPER, HYDROPHOBIA and the like are anchoring the Game Feast calendar. Just something to keep in mind as you read on.)
The Hotshots vs. the Icemen! Transcending history and the world, a tale of laser turrets eternally retold. (Uber Entertainment)
If a layman judged this summer’s video game offerings based purely on retail, he or she would be rightfully disappointed. As boxed titles go, the last three months have been dreadfully bare — typical for June, July and the first half of August, but disappointing nonetheless.
Remember the heady days of May, which gave us “Red Dead Redemption,” “Super Mario Galaxy 2,” “Alan Wake,” “Blur,” “Split/Second” and other blockbusters within days of each other? Since then, there’s been “StarCraft II,” and then there was everything else.
Fortunately, we’ve nearly turned the page on all of that archaic brick-and-mortar nonsense. With few exceptions, this summer’s best games have been downloadable — either exclusively or as a companion to their boxed cousins — and priced at $15 or less.
The results have been heartening.
Though I’m as console-agnostic as can be, Microsoft gets the gold star this year. Their third annual Summer of Arcade promotion packed a lot of polish and diversity into five timed exclusives, starting in July with LIMBO (reviewed in this space last month) and wrapping up last week with the sublime LARA CROFT AND THE GUARDIAN OF LIGHT, which I’ll discuss here shortly.
Summer of Arcade dropped a clunker in 2008 and 2009, and 2010 doesn’t buck that trend. CASTLEVANIA: HARMONY OF DESPAIR, with its charmlessly dated visuals and slipshod multiplayer getup, is to this summer what GALAGA LEGIONS and the remake of TURTLES IN TIME were to the summers before it.
But four out of five ain’t bad.
That isn’t to suggest that the PlayStation Network has been totally worthless this summer, despite Sony’s best efforts to make the thing unusable. PSN got a two-week jump on Xbox Live with the video game adaptation of SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD, a nostalgia-throttling 2-D brawler that owes more to Bryan Lee O’Malley’s comics than it does to Edgar Wright’s wonderful movie.
As of this week, that title is available on both services.
And DEATHSPANK, the silly-ish hack-and-slash from Hothead Games and Monkey Island co-creator Ron Gilbert, debuted in July on the Xbox 360 and PS3 simultaneously. That likely will be the case next month, too, when the game’s surprise sequel, announced just this week, hits servers everywhere.
Same goes for SHANK, the hysterically violent side-scrolling brawler unleashed on both services Wednesday.
It’s Sony’s lethargy about locking down down exclusives (not to mention those innumerable, lengthy updates that cut off your PSN access) that keeps the PS3 from being truly competitive summer after summer after summer.
Sure, they’ve got the bead on Q Games’ great Pixeljunk titles, and they’ll probably get the exclusive on JOURNEY, thatgamecompany’s follow-up to FLOWER. There are also those wonderful, barely announced oddities, like space-spelunker GRAVITY CRASH.
But four years after Sony launched PSN, it still trails Xbox Live and Steam as a destination for digital content. I’m not insisting that the company line up more exclusives, but until Microsoft stops throwing money at publishers, Sony’s going to have to find a way to get in the game.
That said, here’s my pick for the best downloadable title of the last three months:
LARA CROFT AND THE GUARDIAN OF LIGHT
Available only on Xbox Live until late September, Crystal Dynamics has put together an attractive, robust action-adventure title that borrows the twin-stick shooting of GEOMETRY WARS and the isometric perspective of DIABLO.
It’s an unsettling blend at first, but it grows on you quickly. Jumping feels great, the physics-based puzzles are satisfying to solve, and the shooting is legitimate fun — something that’s never been true of Lara’s TOMB RAIDER games.
The game also makes a great argument for abolishing the artificial cap on trophies and achievements in downloadable titles. As officially sanctioned Microsoft achievements go, LARA CROFT offers a handful of inventive challenges — catch your co-op partner with your grappling hook, beat a boss, jump off your partner’s shield — but they pale in comparison to a bevy of in-game tasks that reward exploration and reflexes with new guns and other goodies. Unlocking them all requires multiple playthroughs and a commitment of a dozen hours or more.
(Your partner, by the by, is an English-proficient, cartoonishly brawny dude native to the tombs you’re raiding. As things stand today, you can play him only as a local co-op partner, though Crystal Dynamics has pledged to integrate online co-op by the end of next month. Until then, so much for those co-op achievements!)
In other words, there’s more than enough content here to justify the full 1,000-point treatment. So how about it, Microsoft?
This article appeared first in the York Dispatch.
Review: ‘LIMBO’ is all killer, no filler
Seriously, spiders are the least of your problems.
I'm fully aware that STARCRAFT II debuted Tuesday at 12:01 a.m. EDT, and I'm enjoying this singular, momentous, 12-years-in-the-making achievement as much as anybody. If I could have played hooky Tuesday and Wednesday to run all the way through the game's incredible single-player campaign, I'd be writing that up for today.
But at my yeoman's pace, that will take a week or more.
Thank the maker, then, for remarkable, bite-sized adventures like Danish developer PlayDead Studio's LIMBO, a moody platformer released last week on Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade.
Worlds apart from the canonical baggage that shapes franchises like StarCraft, the only narrative context you'll find in LIMBO exists entirely outside the game itself.
As Wikipedia's curators have it, you control a boy in pursuit of his missing sister.
And ... that's it.
The game's description on Xbox Live is similarly vague, and PlayDead has shown no interest in elaborating on any of it.
That's just as well. Not knowing who you are, where you are or why you're there makes a strange sort of sense in this quiet, brutal world, where spiders are as big as houses and up is often down.
Put another way, LIMBO isn't about hit points or water physics or some densely woven narrative. It's about the purity of the platforming experience, and by that metric, it performs like a champ.
As the game starts, you're coming to your senses in a dense parallax forest. The camera eases into focus for what feels like forever -- your avatar takes more than a minute to sit up, open two lamp-like eyes and climb to his feet.
This whole sequence is a joy to watch.
Eventually, you'll realize the game has relinquished control to you, and your inborn gaming vocabulary tells you to run right. You'll clamber up a small hill, instinctively jump off an enormous log and immediately fall to your death.
Then you'll respawn, start over and get it right.
This will happen to you dozens of times -- maybe a hundred or more. You'll drown, electrocute yourself, alert automatic turrets and get skewered by the aforementioned spiders.
The game's gorgeous, occasionally devilish aesthetic is partly to blame for your haplessness. Your character (and the other ten or so living creatures that populate LIMBO) are drawn only in sillhouette, and the entire game is rendered in black, white and a thousand handsome shades of gray.
So you'd be forgiven for glancing past that narrow strip of spikes that closes around your tiny legs the moment you disturb it. Or the tiny natives who attack you with blowguns on sight. Or the gravity-suspending switch that will keep you from plummeting to your doom.
PlayDead calls this "trial by death," and though it occasionally bummed me out -- I grew attached to my nameless, voiceless hero, and watching this world vivisect him over and over again was unsettling -- it works well enough.
Some of the puzzles might seem inapproachable at first, but most of them give away their secrets as soon as they slaughter you.
If you work at my pace, you'll clear the game in a little under three hours. Then, unless you're fishing for a few fantastic achievements or salivating for a second go, your time with LIMBO is regretfully finished. Like "The Empire Strikes Back," it's the sort of thing you wish you could forget, if only so that you could experience it for the first time all over again.
So, yes. It's short. I hesitate to mention all of that that in the same breath as the game's pricetag, as nearly every writer in the gaming press has managed to do. Yeah, the going rate for Xbox Live Arcade games this summer is $15, and no, LIMBO doesn't buck that trend.
But when an interactive moment is as fun and thoughtfully crafted as this one is, $15 is a bargain. If even the Practice League in StarCraft II is handing your dignity to you on a digital platter, consider LIMBO.
This article originally appeared in the York Dispatch.
Review: ‘Singularity’ tears up space, time
You'll be facing all manner of mutated Russians in Singularity's many shiny, Unreal Engine 3-powered corridors.
As the MC of "Cabaret" once said, "You know the funny thing about Herman? There's nothing funny about Herman."
That basically sums up my feelings for SINGULARITY, a first-person shooter from veteran action developer Raven Software. The great thing about the game, released on HD consoles and the PC this week, is that there's nothing truly Great (capital "G") about it.
It doesn't aspire to some sort of literary permanence, a la HALF-LIFE 2 and its rudimentary multiplayer getup isn't the tent-pole spectacle of MODERN WARFARE 2.
Instead, Singularity revels in the silliest, schlockiest corners of science-fiction gaming, tasking your American avatar with an investigation of Cold War experiments on a secret island off the coast of Russia.
In pursuit of an edge over the tyrannical West, the Soviets in 1950s apparently created a time-space anomaly on said island, inadvertently mutating its inhabitants and screwing things up in 2010. Your character might or might not have participated, thanks to some time-travelling shenanigans. Awkward!
The game offers you the standard complement of FPS weaponry -- shotguns, rifles and explosive stuff -- as well as a few less conventional items. The Seeker, which you find only during scripted moments in the 1950s, lets you guide your bullets in slow motion; another gun fires darts that detonate a second after burrowing into their targets.
Each gun, save for an utterly useless pistol, is fun to fire, and all can be upgraded tokens you find hidden throughout the game.
But Singularity doesn't really take off until about 90 minutes in, when you find a mysterious robo-glove (called the Time Manipulation Device, or TMD) that lets you stop time, instantly age enemies by hundreds of years and, of course, throw heavy objects great distances.
If that sounds familiar, it's probably because you played BIOSHOCK or its sequel. Magic in your left hand, gun in your right, dispatch meanies as you please.
But where combat in BioShock and BIOSHOCK 2 never inched past serviceable, Singularity feels genuinely good. This is the DOOM of modern-day shooters, throwing plenty of ammo and nine or ten enemies at you at once. The game is not about conserving bullets; it's about shooting time-travelling zombies in the head and telekinetically chucking explosive barrels at them, counting your remaining health packs after the fact.
Puzzlingly, you're constrained here by the Halo Rule. Where Doom, QUAKE and their successors allowed you an entire arsenal of destruction, today's shooters limit you to only a handful of guns at once. This presumably is done in the name of realism -- how many rocket launchers, plasma rifles and BFGs can one man carry, after all? -- but when a game trafficks in the absurd with as much gusto as Singularity does, the size of your war chest seems like a silly place to draw the line.
Still, the fighting is usually very satisfying, particularly once you pick up the Deadlock power about one-third of the way through the game. The ability lets you create a sphere inside which enemies are frozen and bullets move at a snail's space. That trick, coupled with the sniper rifle's slow-motion zoom, lets you watch rounds actually rotate out of the chamber on their way to your target's face.
The single-player campaign (no co-op here), shiny and diverse though it is, lasts about eight hours on normal difficulty, and once it's over, you're at a crossroads. You could slog through the first hour or so again on the harder difficulty, armed with naught but your terrible pistol and dodging enemies who steal nearly all your health in one swipe.
You could try the game's two class-based multiplayer modes, which pack a few thrills but currently suffer from awful connection issues and terribly net code.
If neither of those sound appetizing, you're done. At $60 for the console versions (and $50 on the superior PC version, though the game performs like a champ on all platforms), that can feel like a tough sell. And that's totally fair.
But the single-player content here is as cheeky and exciting as FPS campaigns come today. Even though story isn't something you'll be quoting years or even days from now -- there's no "would you kindly" moment here, folks -- Singularity is packed with enough memorable sequences and tight gameplay to merit any action junkie's attention.
Review: ‘War for Cybertron’ has real spark
Like every playable Transformer in "War for Cybertron," Bumblebee has a retractable melee weapon. Duh.
After umpteen efforts across a variety of platforms, the Transformers finally have a game they can be proud of. Free from the narrative shackles of a TV show or movie cash-in, developer High Moon Studios has built a sturdy shooter and terrific multiplayer experience in “Transformers: War for Cybertron,” out this week on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.
The game is set before the events of the 1980s cartoon, giving you one company’s look at the civil war that ravaged the Transformers’ home planet and sent the dastardly Megatron and the heroic Optimus Prime into deep space. They’ll eventually scrap in our solar system, crash-land on Earth and take a 4-million-year dirt nap before waking up in 1984.
But as “War for Cybertron” begins, Optimus is not yet a “Prime,” a title bestowed upon the leader of the Autobots (the good guys). He’s not even a proper truck. Because the robots haven’t yet encountered our 18-wheelers and Volkswagen Beetles and whatnot, they transform into space-age versions of the same things. Optimus, for instance, is a strange sort of hover-barge.
The narrative is strung together over 10 missions (five each for the Autobots and Decepticons), which can be tackled solo, cooperatively or competitively. The levels are beefy, occasionally overstaying their welcome but never leaving you with less than your money’s worth.
There are collectibles to hunt down, of course, and a handful of inventive achievements will give you a reason to go through some of the stages a second time. But by the time you’ve cleared the single-player campaign once or twice, you’ll be glad to say goodbye to it.
Not because it isn’t good, but because the multiplayer is so much fun.
Though it can feel a bit like a checklist (gradually unlockable abilities, a la “Modern Warfare” and “Blur”; a cooperative mode that pits players against waves of computer-controlled enemies, a la every modern shooter), High Moon pulls off the online component with panache.
The class-based competitive multiplayer, with its points and levels and challenges, is a serious timesink.
So “War for Cybertron” has the game part covered. But be honest, you’re here for the license. So how good is the Transformers part?
Pretty great, actually. The voice cast is superb — faithful to the franchise’s roots where it matters (Peter Cullen as Optimus) and fittingly histrionic elsewhere, too. Megatron is still a screeching nihilist bent on getting his way; Optimus, in Cullen’s rumbling baritone, still gives long-winded speeches about honor and sacrifice. It isn’t SAG Award-caliber stuff, exactly, but it’s more or less what you remember from the cartoon.
The sound effects work deserves special mention, too. Transforming is a crucial component of the game, and the accompanying rattle in “War for Cybertron” is rapturous. It blends the cartoon’s classic “ruh-rut-Rut-RUT” with a more sophisticated hydraulic whine, admirably approximating what an alien robot transforming into a jet might actually sound like.
The same goes for the game’s substantial library of weapon noises, from the heavy thud of a laser gattling gun to the sickening, satisfying crack of truck-on-robot violence.
The visuals, though solid, don’t always fare as well.
Giantbomb.com lists 91 games powered by Epic’s flexible Unreal Engine 3, and “War for Cybertron” is one of the most unremarkably shiny among them. If you’ve played “Gears of War 2,” “Mass Effect 2” or any other shooter from a third-person perspective in the last few years, you’ve already seen the best of what’s on offer here.
The problem is rooted mostly in the game’s title and setting — the Transformers’ home planet of Cybertron. Per franchise lore, the entire planet is one big robot foundry, and a Transformer in its own right. I think. That means everything is metallic, angular, mildly reflective and a little boring.
It’s not that any one part of the game looks especially bad; in more than a few instances (the levels that involve low orbit, open air and lens flares, usually), it actually looks very nice. But if you’re tired of corridor crawls, this isn’t going to change your mind.
In some ways, though, keeping the action on Cybertron makes a lot of sense.
By setting the game before the events of the TV shows, High Moon wasn’t beholden to the burdensome, muddled, often pointless history of whatever the Autobots and Decepticons did on Earth.
And because Cybertronian environments are understandably built to spec for these enormous machine-people, the game steers clear of the scale issues that have plagued the franchise elsewhere (Is Optimus as big as an Earth tree or an Earth building? If Megatron turns into a big Earth gun, why is he as tall as Starscream? Such are the things that keep me up at night).
Fortunately, the character models themselves look quite good, each with their own glowing and moving parts. Some of the Decepticons can be tough to tell apart, as is the case with Michael Bay’s live-action “movies,” but by and large, the Transformers are sharply-designed bits of engineering.
Also worth noting — each robot credibly collapses into its vehicle form. Unlike the movies and cartoons, all of the interlocking pieces appear to end up somewhere in “War for Cybertron,” even if they don’t.
Though not without some issues, including a few day-one bugs that have yet to be ironed out, this game is easy to recommend. The online community is there, too, so you won’t want for teammates.
If you’re looking for something to string you through the summer, you could do much worse.
This article originally appeared in the York Dispatch.
Review: ‘Red Dead’ redeems western games
By any measure, May was a bountiful month in gaming. But when comparing it to previous Mays — a historically dry month at retail and the traditional start of the summer dry spell — it was absolutely astonishing.
Week after week, gamers’ checking accounts — still reeling from an unusually strong start to the year — were pelted by dazzling releases from Nintendo, Rockstar, Remedy, Bizarre Creations, Black Rock Studio and other proven corners of the industry. Let’s take stock of some of that greatness and prepare for what looks to be a quiet, affordable June.
If you buy one game from May, make it “Mario Galaxy 2” for the Wii, which was reviewed in this space last week. But if you get two, pick up “Red Dead Redemption,” the spiritual successor to a competent but unremarkable open-world Western from the PS2 and Xbox era. “Redemption” builds on that game’s ideas and applies the same polish Rockstar Games typically reserves for its “Grand Theft Auto” titles, emerging as a strong contender for game of the year.
It would be disingenuous of me to tell you precisely how faithful “Redemption” is to the tenets of classic-westerndom. In that respect, I can offer only this — I’ve seen “Tombstone,” I’ve seen “The Wild Bunch,” and one of my favorite TV shows of all time is “Deadwood,” a sprawling, 36-episode dissection of frontier life as civilization creeps in.
Set about 40 years later, when telephones and power lines are making cowboys irrelevant, “Redemption” touches on many of the same concepts. And while Rockstar’s prose is hardly the flowery genius of David Milch, it does the job.
But how’s the shootin’ and stuff? Well, the game was put together by some of the fine people at the developer’s San Diego studio, which builds sturdier, better-looking games than its cousins do. The vistas and weather are absolutely the graphical stars of “Redemption,” lending real credibility to virtual sunsets and thunderstorms.
Guns carry real kick, too, adding some gravity to how you decide to dispatch the desperate, thirsty schlubs that litter the land. Do you lasso and hogtie your bounties, returning them to lawmen for due process? Or do you administer some frontier justice, blasting them off their horses and watching them flail about as they get caught in their own stirrups?
Thanks to some fancy software, people gyrate and stumble believably. If you shoot a guy in the shoulder while he’s running at you, his momentum will carry him forward even as he whips around and falls down. In “Redemption,” bullets hurt.
There’s an absurdly generous amount of content here. Aside from the entertaining and varied narrative missions, which take you from Mexico to the mountains and all points between, you have scads of sidequests, jobs and collections to complete, all at your leisure and in any order you please. Treasure-hunting, which forces you to rely on faded clues drawn on in-game maps, is my favorite distraction of the bunch, and it’ll last you five hours or so on its own. Provided you don’t cheat by looking up all nine treasures on YouTube, of course.
Know that the game is stacked with technical quirks — some graphical, some more serious — but they’re as forgivable as they are eye-popping. The gunplay, for one, is functional enough, but “Redemption” occasionally calls upon you to brain bad guys more quickly than is possible.
For instance, while going about your business in Armadillo, Chuparosa or one of the game’s other towns, a prostitute will scream for help as a scorned client tries to knife her to death. This all happens before your eyes, and if you train your sights on the attacker quickly enough, you’ll get the good lady’s thanks and a few bucks for your trouble.
If you’re too slow, or if you can’t be bothered, you watch a hooker die in the street. And if you try to shoot the bad guy after the fact, you’ll confuse the game’s morality system, which decides you’ve committed a crime.
Hardcore, hardly appropriate, hilarious, or a little of all three? In any case, it’s not a dealbreaker. “Red Dead Redemption” is a true milestone for sandbox gameplay, and it cements Rockstar’s reputation as one of the best in the business.
This article originally appeared in the York Dispatch.
The Newest Oldies Round-Up: March '10
After months of writing about painfully bad lineups on the "Virtual Console Round-Up," the revamped monthly article "The Newest Oldies" has demonstrated that there are still plenty of good titles on the way for the Virtual Console. Meanwhile, PSOne Classics lags behind, and XBLA gives us the occasional gem.
The Fatal Fury (Garou Densetsu) series makes me feel simultaneously more and less masculine compared to its cast of characters.
Let's start with Virtual Console. On March 1st, SNK's FATAL FURY SPECIAL hit the VC store. This Neo Geo originally costs 900 Wii Points, for reasons unknown to me. This is an enhanced/updated version of FATAL FURY 2. You can play as the "boss" characters, plus they brought on some cast from the first game. Known as GAROU DENSETSU in Japan, this series of 2D fighters never really grabbed my attention. If I want to rock some SNK action, it's usually via KING OF FIGHTERS. Nonetheless, it's quite the rarity, and fighter-fans might want to check it out.
So the good news here is that Fatal Fury Special is the least interesting of March 2010's four VC releases. Next up, we have FINAL FANTASY II on SNES, released on March 8th. That's the one that's really FINAL FANTASY IV "Easy Type" in Japan. So, do you want to play the inferior version with whole sections of script cut, abilities and items "dummied out," etc? Well, if you are like me and you played the game in 1992, maybe the nostalgic experience will make it worthwhile. But it is a solid $8 to download; and as I said in my review of the DS version, the DS version is a great way to experience the game. And you can probably find that used for $20. Your call. Super-old 2D original or thrice-remade 3D DS version. Or any of the other remakes in-between.
CASTLEVANIA: RONDO OF BLOOD for the TurboGrafx is the game that paved the way for Symphony of the Night (which in turn started the Metroidvania craze). The game is a lot like SUPER CASTLEVANIA IV, but with a rudimentary inventory system, but lacking 8-directional whipping. Whipping straight-forward only? "That's no good!" Much like FFIV, this game is available in all kinds of random places, most prominently on DRACULA X CHRONICLES for PSP. The game itself is a 3D upgraded version of Rondo of Blood, but the original game (as well as the complete version of Symphony of the Night) can be unlocked while playing the game. For 900 Wii Points? Eh... I guess I'd say it's worth it. It's a fun game to be sure. This one was released on March 15th.
"Only for Nintendo 64" ... until now!
Finally, and most importantly, Square Enix very recently (March 29th, to be exact) published the old Quest-developed Strategy RPG OGRE BATTLE 64: PERSON OF LORDLY CALIBER. I saw a dude at Anime Boston this past weekend selling a used, but boxed, copy of the N64 cartridge for like $80 or something. This is one rare frickin' game. And, apparently, it's also a great game. I'm behind on my "Ogre" goodness, but the general verdict from RPG fans is that this game is a rare treat, one of a fistful of worthwhile RPGs for the N64 console. So yeah, for only $10 (1000 Wii Points), this is pretty much the best thing ever. I'm probably going to buy this and play it.
One "PSOne Classic" hit the docket in March. I actually played this one to completion as a kid, and I tentatively recommend it to people who remember the game and say to themselves "hey, was this a good game?" The game is ONE. It has no relation to the Metallica song. Instead, you play some sort of military enhanced-soldier guy with a gun-arm and a barcode on your neck. Right from the start, you're being chased down by hostile police forces and stuff. This 3rd-person, 3D run-and-gun platformer/shooter spans six levels, forces you to conserve ammo, and pits you against some mighty intriguing bosses. Very hard, but if I recall, pretty cool concept as well. It's also from some (in my mind) no-name companies: developer is Visual Concepts, publisher is ASC Games. The PSOne Classics version hit the store on March 18th.
In the land of Xbox Live Arcade, developer 4J Studios did a visually upgraded remake of Rare's N64 classic PERFECT DARK. Improvements outside the graphic realm include online multiplayer and added voice acting. We already mentioned this one on The Jurassic Hour, but I thought I'd plug it here too. I'd much prefer they take this same approach to the game's engine-based predecessor, GOLDENEYE. I'll mess all you Odd Job players up. You can't karate-chop my ankle when I'm rockin' prox mines.
Joanna, do you play mind games? I play "mine" games. GOGO REMOTE MINES!
Finally, and this is slightly outside the scope of this series of articles, MEGA MAN 10 is out. That's not to be confused with MEGA MAN X. And it's out on like, every current-gen platform. It was a "timed exclusive" from one week to the next, with Wii getting the first shot. But yeah, this is just a direct follow-up to MEGA MAN 9, which was what brought the "intentionally retro development" scheme into the forefront of chic gaming. I haven't really sunk much time into this one yet, but I loved 9, so I will almost undoubtedly love 10 as well.
In other news, FINAL FANTASY IX is on its way to the Japanese PS1 archives. We're waiting anxiously for its North American (re)debut.
The first hour: "Final Fantasy XIII"
But first, some exposition.
Never in my life had I gone to a midnight release for a game, or a console. I'd done some movies (which turned out to suck: thanks for nothing, George Lucas!). So it was a very new experience for me.
While chillin' at the local mall, anxiously awaiting my copy of the game, I also heavily promoted this site. To any new readers who accepted a card from Patrick "The Gameodactyl" Gann, welcome aboard! There's a boatload of old podcasts to listen to if you'd like...
Anyway, I get my game (PS3 version, Blu-Ray ftw) in short order and head home. It's 12:30am EST, March 9th 2010. Most people who picked up the game are probably jamming away by this point. Me? I think "crap, I have work in the morning" and go to bed. What an anticlimactic feeling.
And when I get home from work? I teach piano lessons to some kids, get some writing done, tuck my own kids in bed, and ... wow, I sure am tired!
So it actually took me a solid 36 hours after the game's release to actually touch it. Pathetic.
Without further ado, enjoy my ramblomatic notes that I took during the first hour of FINAL FANTASY XIII. Watch for a neat little trick I pull to make a comment about today's highly cinematic RPGs. Not that I'm complaining: after all, I am a XENOSAGA fan.
The Newest Oldies Round-Up: February '10
(This time with no images, because I think my clever writing trumps screen shots.)
February had one classic-ish game on XBLA, three good ones on VC, and a ridiculous load of PSOne Classics (only one of which is worth talking about).
Starting with the XBLA release, DARWINIA+ (released Feb. 11) is a repackaging of two games: DARWINIA and MULTIWINIA. We mentioned it on a recent episode of Jurassic Radio. The original Darwinia was released in 2005, so this really is a newer "oldie." But it's worth mentioning, if only because developer Introversion Software deserves the love for making such a strange hybrid of RTS and Tactical goodness. Darwinia+ was released a few months ago for PC on Steam, but now Xbox 360 owners can pick it up for 1200 MS points (that's $15).
Among the PSOne Classics, the one that's really gettin' me feeling nostalgic is GRANDIA. This classic RPG from Game Arts (the developers who also created the LUNAR franchise) deserves attention and accolade. Again, this was mentioned on a recent episode of Jurassic Radio. Even though the protagonist is an annoying kid, and the voice acting is all-around awful, the battle system, art, music, and sense of grandeur from the game's world all make it a worthwhile RPG. For $10? Yeah, it's a worthy download, right up there with FFVII and VIII. And it just came out a little over a week ago (Feb. 25). Go get!