Spider-Man: Far From Home

I Feel lazy if I don't write anything, but all there is for you to do is click the link below.

Spider-Man: Far From Home

Abalone

It took me a week longer than I meant for it to, but here's another review.

Abalone

10 Second Ninja

After 6 years without posting anything I am back at it again with my completely unsolicited opinions on video games that I've played.

Deus Ex: The Conspiracy

I feel bad when I hate games that are generally regarded with found memories. It is worth mentioning that many games have weak openings and get better later on. If I am not in love with it in the first thirty minutes I am loath to give it any more time. That is a THIRD of a movie, it is as much time as it takes me to eat lunch, it is in my opinion quite long enough to come up with something redeeming.
I am of the opinion that all of the first person shooters before the xbox 360 / playstation 3 era kind of sucked. Don't get me wrong there were plenty of good ones for PC, I just mean all of the ones for consoles sucked. ALL OF THEM. I want to be proven wrong about this, but so far I have not been.

This game had a good opening video. It hit all the right notes, showing how evil the corporate villains with their shadowy mega-corp are, not getting too cartoony about it (like in RoboCop). Then it throws you into a menu with all the style and flair of a Dungeons and Dragons stat sheet where you decide what to invest your points in. On the PS2 they had the ability to give each of these a sexy little explanation video, however, they chose not to. This menu didn't even have cool looking icons. After reading the explanations for each skill I invested all my points in melee weapons skills and started the game. It Soon became readily apparent that there was no hand to hand combat, my character may be a futuristic special agent of some sort, but he is incapable of throwing a punch, he might have bio-engineered flashlights inside his freaking eyeballs, but he can't kick to save his life. Fine whatever I'll just use my cattle prod baton. What's that? I can only use it three times? Well I can still use it to bludgeon people with once it is out of batteries right? NO! OK, I'll use my pistol. six bullets you say? Now I have a baton (traditionally used for HITTING PEOPLE) which I cannot hit people with, a pistol that is out of bullets and cannot be used for pistol whipping, and a sniper rifle that ALSO only has one clip. One clip for each of my guns and a single battery for my stun baton. . . Apparently they did not anticipate me running into more than 12 people on this one man assault of a terrorist cell, and their budget did not allow for providing me with extra munitions just in case. I might be able to sneak past some of the guys I used up all my bullets on, but despite the fact that I am a secret agent for some sort of woefully underfunded police agency, and that I live in a future where people have flashlights implanted in their eyeballs, I have some sort of untreated, and debilitating, knee condition that prevents me from crouching or kneeling. I am in capable of ducking behind any of the crates for cover, but I can jump up and down if I wish, my knees can still do that.
Speaking of crates, I have to use up bullets to open them. I, having no ability to punch or kick, am dependent on my gun or stun baton to break open wooden crates, and am apparently incapable of opening the metal ones. I did not enjoy this game.

game play video

In a five star ranking system
I give this game 2.5

Killer 7

I did not care for this game. I am not saying it is entirely without merit, there may be people who enjoyed it, and I would not respect them any less because of that, but I didn't like it at all. It has a cool cell shaded art style, it has a cool premise, and an interesting mechanic, it also has a painfully dull and poorly designed tutorial. Well designed games, games like portal, have a tutorial that is seamlessly melded with the game play so it is fun to do. Games with a mediocre to average level of designed have a tutorial you have to play through in the first level, or simply have the choice of doing if you want. Poorly designed games, like this game, have a menu you can go to where game mechanics are explained to you in dull text rather than demonstrated. Bonus points if this vital information is only accessible from a single point on the map instead of being in your pause menu. More bonus points if the long list of short explanations are poorly organized and take a LOOOONG time to go through. But wait there's more! Its not just a just a series of short articles on game play you can read through at your own pace, there is an obnoxious guy in a gimp suit who reads them to you. It is impossible to read them faster, or to skip past the intro lines he says EVERY TIME you open an article. There are like 30 different articles explaining different aspects of the woefully unintuitive game play, by the time you have read them all you have heard this same introductory phrase several dozen times.
I like a good disjointed, unnerving, dream sequence style surrealism, and this game has some of that, the problem is it also has the most annoying aspects of traditional narrative devices to let you know a character is insane. Why is it assumed that all crazy people perceive all written text in a bare legible, irregularly kerned, mixed caps, font? Why is it assumed the mentally ill see the world through a jittery blinking camera view? Why is it assumed that when ones brain is not functioning normally it also effects the function of their electronic devices? Schizophrenia does not intermittent static on televisions and radios.
Maybe there are people who would not be bothered by these myriad faults. Maybe the game play on the first level is just boring and the later levels are more interesting. Maybe the crazy and disjointed control style grows on you after a while. . . but I doubt it.

Game play video

in a five star ranking system
I give this game 1.5

Grimgrimoire

This game is made by the same people who did Odin Sphere so it is similarly pretty, but not quite as impressively so. The side scrolling RTS style game play means you are not zoomed in as close and thus less able to appreciate the detail of the character design, the levels are all indoors so the gorgeous landscapes and sunsets of Odin Sphere are replaced by stone walls, and the colors are not as bright and vibrant. The cut scenes are still great, but I didn't find the neo-victorian style of people at the magic university as visually arresting as the show girls and battle armor, quasi medieval fashions of Odin Sphere. Don't get me wrong this game is very pretty, its just not as pretty as Odin Sphere. I did find the story and the game play more engaging though. I am a fan of RTS games, and Harry Potter style story about a new student at a woefully unsafe school for which craft and wizardry is interesting.

game play video

In a five star ranking system
I give this game 4

Odin Sphere

This game is gorgeous. It might be the only game ever where the game play looks exactly like the box cover art. There are a lot of games that have a well developed esthetic. The high contrast black & white, moody shadows, and uncluttered visual field are all trademarks of film noir, which has a well developed esthetic, but nobody has ever accused it of being especially pretty.
This game has a bright, colorful, detailed, and engaging visual design. Imagine the prettiest 2D fighting game you ever played, but every level is a loop so if you move in either direction long enough you end up back where you started, also it has RPG elements. Its still a fighting game, but every time you beat someone you are leveling up.
Your character is an improbably attired worrior woman, but not in the traditional mostly naked but for an armored bikini kind. She looks less like a stripper and more like a show girl, a 1940's show girl. Really her only esposed skin is on her shoulders. She has a head dress made of bright azure feathers and a tutu skirt constructed of the same material. Or so it appears until you start learning her moves. She can glide along horizontally mid jump like Princess Peach in Super Mario Brothers 2, but when she does her tutu flares out to reveal it is actually two bright blue birds wings sprouting from her hips.
There are a variety of moves, one learns spells as they go along, and every time an enemy is vanquished you can gather the glowing orbs they drop to level up, or plant one of the seeds you have collected. All plants feast on the glow balls of fallen warriors, just like you, but will yeild different fruits.
The bosses are a monument to the forgotten tradition of the chunky sprite. Large segmented bodies taking up most of the screen and moving about menacingly. They are, like everything else in this game, a pleasure to look at.

Game play video

In a five star ranking system
I give this game 4.5

Shadow of Destiny

Dammit, if the games I intend to keep playing continue to stack up like this I am not going to have time for much else. I will admit I was not looking forward to playing this game, because I literally judged it by its cover. The cover looks boring.
I was expecting a J-RPG but the game play is more akin to survival horror, except I found it more engaging that I usually find the denizens of that particular genera. The game begins with a young woman leaving a cafe, glancing significantly at her watch in a foreshadowing fashion, and walking down a cobblestone street in what looks to be a cute little German village before getting stabbed in the back by an unseen assailant. Our protaganist wakes up on a floating island with Lewis Carroll decorating scheme and is told by a disembodied voice that she can go back in time and prevent her own death. Our protagonist speaks for the first time, voicing her concerns, in a distinctly masculine voice. It appears the main character is actually a dude. . .   The funny thing is it actually took more work to give him a small and delicately rounded chin. A big rectangular block would have been much easier to render. Whatever, the sex of my character is irrelevant, the point is I have to travel through time to prevent my own death. Being use to video games where I can stab blood thirsty raptors to death with a hunting knife, I just assumed that I was to walk down the same cobble stone street again, but this time be prepared to fight my assailant. As it turns out, my interactions with the world are limited to having conversations, opening doors, and traveling through time. I must go back to before the attack and gather a group of people to stand next me when I am to be murdered, so that my would be killer will give up and try again later when there are no witnesses. This seems like a temporary solution to an ongoing problem. None the less I am intrigued. I will definitely be playing more of this game when I have time.

Game play video

In a five star ranking system
I give this game 4

Okami

This game is fantastic. I sat down to do a quick 30 minute play through and write off a review and still have time for a snack before I head off to class. An hour and a half later I noticed how long I'd been playing and shoved a bag of trail mix into my pocket as I scrambled to get out the door on time. This reminded me of Zelda game in the way that you are a mute protagonist who still manages to have conversations with villagers in between going on quests.
The drawing mechanic works better than I would expect with a analogue stick and controls in general are just great. The cell shading and overall esthetic of the game is gorgeous and the game play has great flow. It is a game that sucks you in, and makes you want to ruin all of the beautiful environments by cutting everything in half with your slashing paintbrush maneuver. I also really appreciate that in every encounter with a village person you are given the opportunity to either speak to them, or bite them. If you decide to grab them in your jaws and drag them a short distance they are not overly perturbed and are perfectly to carry on the conversation after they have regained their footing.
The pause menu also keeps a list of all the enemies you have encountered, as well as all of the friendly wild life. This is another game I am going to have to play more of after I have worked my way through all of the games awaiting review.

Game play video

In a five star rating system
I give this game 5

Time Splitters

This is very much an old school first person shooter, complete with the mostly absent story line and the detached ice skating feeling of a camera that moves too fast over unnaturally smooth surfaces. It was rather startling to go from the long cinematic intro movies that I have had an my last few reviews to this. On the main screen I was given a choice between story mode and arcade. After selecting story mode I was given a choice between "1935 Tomb", "1970 Chinese", "2005 Cyberden". It is worth noting that 2005 was half a decade into the future when this game was released. I initially thought it might be an overly pretentious name for a internet cafe, which would make sense based off of the (date location) model established by the first option "1935 Tomb", but then there was the second option. . .   Is it possible Cyberden is a nationality? Only one way to find out. I select the "future" level with a date that is more than 8 years past and feel very old. Given a choice between two quasi futuristic garbed characters wearing clothes that look NOTHING like anythying people were wearing in 2005 I choose the female, Chastity Detroit, and begin the level. I start out in a dilapidated warehouse, no story, no nothing. Well, maybe if I check the pause menu.
"Get the Cyborg's plans and return to the ventilation ducts"
That's all I get? Why do I want these plans? What is at stake? Why is this worth dying for? And I do die, quickly and often. These Cyborgs are tough, I can't even make it past the first room. . .   Maybe its time to try a different level.
1935 Tomb, after fighting my way past a number of guards I make it to the room where I am suppose to steal the artifact, but it is guarded by walking skeletons with peaces of dry leathery skin stretched over their bones. Mummies, sans bandages, this is pretty cool. They fall before my Tommy gun just like all the guards and I am on my way, but now that I am trying to retrace my way through the labyrinthine catacombs through which I came, I find that they are crawling with mummies, some of them have Tommy guns just like mine. This is WAY cooler than the stupid cyber den. I still die a bunch of times and never make it through the level, but at least I always manage to make it to the macguffin, some times I almost make it out. This game could do with a bit more story and a bit less brutal difficulty.

Game play video (this guy liked it way more than I did, he is also better at it)

in a five star ranking system
I give this game 2.5

Devil May Cry 3

Ralph Waldo Emerson, whom I like to believe was related to the eponymous hero of the Where's Waldo series, once wrote "A foolish consistence is the hobgoblin of little minds". I am glad the developers of this game took heed of this sound advice and did not mirror the control scheme off of the first game just because this is a prequel. The evolution of game control continued logically. The first game had a relatively easy button mashing style which had become second nature by the time one clears the first level and starts playing in the even more intuitive "easy" control scheme. The Second game started out controlling like the "easy" control setup, but added in a few more moves and abilities that made it even more engaging but did not take long to pick up. The third game starts out with a set of moves only slightly more complicated than the one at the beginning of the previous game, but throughout the level at random times a tutorial box will pop up and advise you on different combos you could do. These are not always easy, they require practice. At the end of each level you have the option of changing your "style" which is the set of moves you will be able to do. Do you want a lot of cool sword attacks? Do you want some awesome gun moves? Perhaps you would prefer to use one of the other two styles that are not nearly as bad ass or interesting. In addition to all of this you have the option of buying even more moves at any time as you accrue red orbs that you pick up every time you kill an enemy, more on this later.
Its not frustrating to have the moves be more difficult or complex because you can still get through a level just fine by mashing buttons. The extra level of depth is there for you if you want it, but it can be ignored if you don't. I assume its use will become a requirement at some point in the game, but one has plenty of time to practice before then.
The cut scenes are even more over the top in this game, but also more polished, and more fun. After wondering how Dante can be constantly impaled by swords and sickles and never cut in half, I decided he must have an indestructible skeleton just like wolverine.
Things just keep getting better. The only thing in this game that is not a refinement or flat out improvement over the previous entry is the sound that an item makes when it spins toward the screen to tell you what it is. The first time I picked up a red orb I was very disappointed to hear it made a sound even more lack luster than the wet swishing sound from the previous game. BRING BACK THE HELICOPTER NOISE FROM THE FIRST GAME!!!

Game play video

In a five star ranking system
I give this game 5

Devil May Cry 2

This game is even better than the first one. It is such a highly polished third person beat em up that it makes me mad at all the crappy ones I have played since 2003 when this came out. WTF didn't they just copy what had been done here. Clearly they had perfected the design.
This improves on the original by adding some variety to the combos and movement, putting in a new dodge move, and adding in a energy bar that you can fill up to change into super mode where you have wings and shoot lightning. There is a remarkably slick lock on system that doesn't allow you to pick who you are locked onto, but it hardly needs to, it quite logically locks you onto whoever is the greatest threat, and usually switches when they have been knocked down. The only change that has been made to this game that wasn't for the better is that they changed the helicopter noise an item makes when it flies toward the screen to inform you what it is. Now when I pick up a green orb for the first time it makes a far less satisfying almost wet sounding noise is it spins toward the screen to inform me it is "condensed demon fluid" which apparently refills my health.

Game play video

In a five star ranking system
I give this game 5

Devil May Cry

Finally a game that breaks my long string of 4's. And it does it by going higher!
This game is as awesome as its cut scenes are stupid (although they are awesome AND stupid). Its like a Robert Rodriguez but even less concerned with plot or any attempt to make sense.
The opening cut scene starts out with a woman in an improbably designed bustier falling from the sky and landing in the middle of an empty street in classic, one knee to the ground I just landed really hard, fashion. You know, the kind of landing they do in all the movies, but it would shatter your patella in real life. That's fine, no complaint. She stands up slowly and looks down the street at the business she intends to enter. We cut to inside this establishment where Dante is sitting in room full of demon heads he has stuck on the wall with swords. Suddenly the woman who fell from the sky busts through the wall on a motorcycle. Where the hell did she get a motor cycle. After some weak banter she proceeds to impale Dante on his giant sword, electrocute him and throw her motorcycle at him. After Dante has blown the cycle out of the air with his giant guns and pulled the sword out of his own chest he prepares to shoot his attacker and then pauses. Why would he pause? Who knows. But she uses this opportunity to say she was just kidding about the attempted murder and wants to hire him for a job. Sure, why not!
This game fulfills the promise that the box cover throws down. You run around fighting things with a sword that is as big as you are and an improbably large pare of revolvers, One black, one white, that instead having the normal boring compliment of six bullets have INFINITE. If I could type the little tipped over 8 that represents infinity I would.
This is my type of game. A game where you have to kill all of the bad guys in the room before you can move on to the next section. A game where every new item you pick up flies toward the screen spinning and making the totally badass rapid ThipThipThip noise of helicopter blades before a little box pops up to explain what it is.
When you beat the first section and it gives you the option of switching to "easy" controls one is left wondering why they didn't have the option to just start out that way. Would I like easier combos and the ability to turbo fire my infinite ammo guns by holding down the button instead of having to continually mash it? YES PLEASE! I am warned that I can never switch back to the lame control style. . . Why not? I mean I don't want to, but why not? Oh well.

Game play video

In a five star ranking system
I give this game a well deserved 4.5

No One Lives Forever

This game has a fun 60's spy movie esthetic and a remarkably engaging opening cut scene. The beginning tutorial was through and I was having a good enough time that I kept playing after the 30 minutes was up, but during a sneaking tutorial I found the temptation to smack one of the guards in the back of the head too great to resist. I was instantly informed that killing a civilian had caused a mission failure and kicked back to the very beginning to the tutorial. First of all how was I to know my bare hands would be lethal, secondly isn't this the sort of thing that I should be taught in the low risk environment of a tutorial? Why punish me by making me do the parts I understand over again? I would have been perfectly happy to do the sneaking part over again, but I wasn't about to redo the five other training rooms that came before that just so I could get a second crack at it.

Game play video

In a five star ranking system
I give this game 4

Metal Gear Solid 3

Normally I play each game for about half an hour, this includes the brief introductory video. By the time all the videos were over it had been 28 minutes. After that I decide to skip all the conversations over the radio (and there were many more) and just play. Of the three Metal Gear games I have reviewed so far this is my favorite. The Jungle environment was more interesting than the cold industrial settings of the previous games, and you can kill everything.
After filling my pack with all the gator meat I could hold I got to my first encounter with guards. I thought it was cool that you could camouflage to what ever environment you were in, grass, mud, ect., to sneak past them. I of course elected to kill them all with my knife, but I appreciated that I had other options. There was one guard I tried to knock a bee hive down on top of, but by the time I had shot it down he had walked out of range of the angry bees. Oh well, that's what knives are for.

Game play video

In a five star ranking system
I give this game 4

Metal Gear Solid 2

The new ability to sneak up behind a guy and snap his neck makes the game play in this sequel a significant improvement upon its predecessor. I know you are suppose to try and get through each level without killing any of the guards, but the thing is if you sneak past them they are still walking around looking for you, and if you knock them out they will wake up eventually, it is a temporary solution. I don't like to cut corners. . . That is patently false, I cut corners all the time. I grew up playing games where you HAD to kill all the bad guys before you could move on to the next screen, I can kind of accept not doing that if it makes sense, but when it is more convenint to slaughter all your enemies, why wouldn't you?
I did only a smidgen of the actual story mode. You are going to take the invisibility cloak away from me before the opening cut scene is even over? REALLY? Disappointing!
Most of my time was spent failing at the VR missions, and doing the skateboarding game. It is difficult to get enough air to pull off any really impressive stunts and snake feels kind of heavy. It is no Tony Hawk game, but it is fun skating around the Big-Shell platforms with snakes bandana blowing behind him. I also enjoyed the fact that you kill the gun turrets just by crashing into them repeatedly.

Game play video
(This guy is so much better than me its astounding)

In a five star ranking system
I give this game 4

Dino Crisis 2

This game has far less of the exploration that dominated the beginning of the first game and far more Velociraptor. With two difficulty settings (Normal and Hard) I chose the default level of normal. On this setting the Raptors are pretty easy, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Usually in survival horror games the enemies are far more maneuverable than you and conflict is to be avoided, it was nice to have the tables turned for once. The raptors had excellent attacks to be sure, they could bite, they could leap through the air slashing with their foot claws, they could pin you to the ground briefly biting at you, and they could even smack you with their tails, but they never got a chance to do any of this if you struck first and then stabbed them in the belly repeatedly when they were on the ground. They would often attack in pairs or troikas but often made the mistake of attacking side by side. One mighty slash of my combat knife would knock them both to the ground and then it was belly stabbings all around. Occasionally one would get behind me and leap through the air claws swinging, at this point I would tap the quick turn around button and run toward him, we would land where I had formerly been and I would be standing behind him stabbing him in the spine.
By the time encountered the T-Rex that had gotten one of his eyes blown out by a rocket launcher in the opening cut scene I was loath to use anything other than my knife. Sure I had started out with a gun too, but I had managed to kill 49 raptors without it and I would be damned if I was going to start using it now. I don't know if it is impossible to kill the T-Rex with the knife or if it just takes an LOT of slashes, which is fair, but ultimately I slipped up in my running between his legs and slashing technique and it was the end of me.

Game play video

In a five star ranking system
I give this game 4

Dino Crisis

This game answers the question: What if Resident Evil were a bit more like Jurassic Park? That pretty much sums it up, wandering hallways and control rooms of an industrial facility, picking up bullets and med packs as you look for missing sprockets and key cards. Now all the zombies are Utah Raptors and the opening movies has a T-Rex in it. I started out running from the raptors but after I had maxed out my inventory storage with first aid kits and spare clips I decided to take a stand. I was a little disappointed that they went down with four bullets. I am partially to blame, I set it to easy, but I get the feeling that you are suppose to kill the dinosaurs. If that is the case there should be WAY more of them. It seemed like a reasonable number when I thought they were insurountable foes that must be fled from, but now that I know you can kill then, it seems like there should be enough of them that it is difficult to do so.


Game play video

In a five star ranking system,
I give this game 3.5

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

I like this game. I as not a fan of the original Castlevania, it was ok but Simon Belmont handled like a pickup truck full of bricks. He was slow, his jump was not very high, and his whip attack left much to be desired. When I saw that the first level of this game is the boss fright from the previous game I thought it was a cool idea, but I didn't want to start out with an ass kicking right off the bat. I have to assume they made it a bit easier because once I figured out Draculas' pattern I was almost never getting hit and I though it was going to be boring working my way through his TWO huge bars of health. That was until I discovered that if you hold down the attack key Siomn keeps his whip out. Instead of striking out in a straight line and pulling back, he doesn't pull back and the whip rests limply on the ground. Then, this is the good part, if you move the D-pad around he whips it around in a circle. After that I made short work of Dracula and the rest of the intro sequence. Enter Alucard. You get to navigate him through a few rooms before Death himself shows up and steals all your shit, presumably because he wants you to die. I really appreciated this simple plot device, instead of showing up to Dracula castle woefully unprepared, he comes heave, packing heat and armed to the teeth. Getting magically pick-pocketed by the reaper makes a good excuse for the RPG style weapon acquisition and leveling up instead of just giving you the impression he is a jackass who shows up for his quests woefully unprepared.

Game play video

In a five star ranking system,
I give this game 4

Tomba 2

This is a cute little adventure platformer that manages to avoid that annoying assumption that most platformers make, if there is a pit you are jumping over it has to be a pit of death. It brings some 3D into the side scrolling by allowing you change direction at certain crossroad points so instead of just going right and left you can also access the background and foreground. Many adventure games have an omnipresent risk of death the lends a tension to the experience and keeps you on guard, this game feels more like a puzzle game in the sense that you can die if you screw up, but mostly you are just trying to complete objectives in a fairly relaxing environment. This is a game to play if you want to unwind, but are in the mood for a little more narrative than a standard puzzle game.

Game play video

In a five star ranking system,
I give this game 4.5

Metal Gear Solid

This old classic has aged gracefully. The controls are so crisp and responsive it makes me want to go back and give Fear Effect an even lower star rating. The radio system was a stroke of brilliance, I love the little picture of the person you are talking to and the banter that goes back and forth. Despite the fact that every stealth game, and every ill conceived stealth section which was shoe horned into a game was partially informed by the mile stone opus, very few ever came close to doing as good a job as this one does. Except of course for the Batman Arkham games. Those are the best stealth games ever.

Game play video

In a five star ranking system,
I give this game 4

Vagrant Story

I was hoping this would be a homelessness sim. The porfessions of assasin, and mercinary are hugely overrepresented in video games, but even on the rare occasions a story focuses on a character with some other job, it is still a job. I was excited to play a game that explored the completely unexplored territory of playing as a hobo. Of course the moment I looked at the cover are it was immedately obvious this was a Japanese RPG. This is a genera I don't particularly care for, and the graphics are at the painfully ugly pixelated low end of the Play Station 1's already limited capabilities. That being said, they manage to pull of a very cinematic feel, and the combat system is unique and interesting. It allows free motion throughout the fight so you can dodge if you are fast enough. The action freezes when an attack is happening and the number of hit points taken pops up. When you attack it allows you to pick which part of the enemies body you want to target. This makes it much more engaging than Final Fantasy style rotational battle.

Game play video (Skip to 5:15 for the part that isn't boring)

In a five star rating system,
I give this game 3

Fear Effect 2

This game improves significantly upon the previous installment in the series. You start out with a better weapon selection, a larger area to explore, and you have the ability to save in the items menu, so hypothetically the problem of reloading at the beginning and having to get back to where you were should be solved. I didn't die during the time I was playing so I don't know for sure.
Where as the last one was, in my opinion, a profoundly unsatisfying gaming experience, this one seemed to be reasonably adaquit, it was simply not my cup of tea.

game play video

In a five star rating system,
I give this game 2.5

Fear Effect

In stark contrast to the previous game I reviewed (Hear of Darkness) this game take incredibly long to reload when you die, in fact it kicks you back to the menu screen if you haven't made it to a save point yet. Assuming you start mashing the triangle button continuously the second you die, so that you select new game the second the menu screen loads, it will take you 15 seconds from the moment you die until you can start playing again. Think about that. Think about it for 15 seconds, go ahead and count. Once you are back it doesn't mean you are back to where you died, oh no, you are back at the beginning of the level. You still have to walk to the elevator, press the button, skip the cinematic, and go down a hallway until you can get shot again. This game has a marvelously well developed esthetic. An obvious take off on blade runner, with one of the earlier attempts at cell shading, it would be really interesting if everything in the actual play experience, from the sluggish and clumsy controls to the painfully slow loading screens, wasn't absolutely terrible.

Game play video

In a five star ranking system,
I give this game 2 and it is lucky to get that many.

Heart of Darkness

 This is the only game so far that I am DEFINITELY going to go back and play more of once I have given all of them their 30 minutes of play. It is a lot like Out of This World, or Flash Back. It has a beautiful side scroll play style with a crisp and engaging visual esthetic and lots of fun death sequences, everything I want from an adventure game. The most important thing is that it offers very quick refresh time, and starts you right back where you died, which keeps it from getting obnoxiously frustrating. Why most of the games in the past 15 years never picked up on this magic formula of NOT having really long drawn out "you suck for dying" sequences is a mystery to me.

Game play video

In a five star ranking system,
I give this game 5

The Unholy War

This game is pretty cool. You play either as the monsters or robots and take turns moving your wide selection of characters around a landscape/board, and when your guy is next to your opponents guy you can order an attack. This brings you to a battle arena that is modeled off of the pentagonal section of board that your opponents guy was standing on when you attacked (grassy field, lava flow, desert, ect.). Once this has happened you move your character around the space trying to avoid enviromental dangers such as lava, and trying to either fire off projectiles off at your opponent or get up close to attack them. This will depend a lot on which of your characters you are attacking or defending with and which of your opponents character you are defending against or attacking. If you are the six legged rhinoceros monster you always want to get in close and use your heavy attack, if you are the sexy robot you always want to keep your distance and use projectiles, there are many shades of strategy in between these two extremes of course.

Game play video

In a five star ranking system,
I give this game 3

Silent Hill

This game deserves every bit of the acclaim it has earned for its skill at setting the mood. Even with the painfully ugly blocky first generation 3D graphics of the Play Station, they manage to hone an esthetic and the music really sells the atmosphere. The controls, however, are a major problem. They are slow, the button mapping is a little unintuitive, and it fails to adjust with the different camera angle as you enter a new area so I frequently find my self hopping backward even though I am pressing forward on the D-pad. They did some very interesting things with the transition of camera angles as you enter new areas. A great example of this is at 1:45 on the video below, and the part where he crashes into a wall is also a great example of how the directional controls fail to keep pace with this avant garde camera work. These controls are truly terrible, I am glad they did not prevent the game for getting recognition for all the things it did right.

A game play video

In a five star ranking system,
the controls get a 1.5
every other aspect of the game gets a 5
and so the game overall gets a 4

No One Can Stop Mr. Domino

The Japanese pedigree of this game is immediately obvious from the moment the title video starts. The art and sound design have the characteristic wacky fun quality of a very Japanese game, such as katamari damacy.
You are a smiley faced domino with legs that walks around a track that changes every level. The first level is a Casino, the second level is a shopping center, I never made it to the later levels. Your character can be steered and his or her speed can be adjusted but it will never stop walking. beyond this you have only one other control input, that is to hold down a button (any button) and leave a trail of dominos in your wake. The objective is to set up a string of dominos that will hit the little check points around the track, on your next circut around the track you knock down your string of dominos and when they hit the check points they will set off events such as knocking over a house of cars, or a tower of playing dice, or sending a ball down a ramp. This game would be much more fun if it had embraced the continuous play, impossible to lose, complete the objectives in your own time, style that one would expect from this sort of nontraditional and off beat game. The timer that kills you if you do not complete all the objectives in time detracts heavily from the game play in my opinion.

Here is a video of some game play.

In a five star ranking system,
I give this game 3.5

Qix Neo

I spent countless hours of my wasted youth playing Qix for the original Nintendo. Much like Tetris it had an oddly soothing quality (due in no small part to the sound design) punctuated by periodic moments of white knuckle tension when you were about to lose. The game mechanic was all about drawing little boxes to quarantine off areas populated by erratically moving enemies. You were safe as long as you were not drawing, but if an enemy touched you as you were drawing one of these boxes you would lose a life.

This video tells you everything you need to know about this NES classic

Qix Neo is an interesting spin on this old favorite of mine. There is a timer counting down to keep you from camping out too long looking for an optimal opportunity to draw lines, there are way more enemies on the screen at a given moment, and every level has a new one with a new random movement pattern. Projectiles from enemies are a major concern in this game and did not exist in the previous installment. The sound design, although radically different, is just as satisfying as the original. Death rays sound the way that death rays ought to. This is not as relaxing to play as the original, but just as much fun.

This video shows some game play of Qix Neo and tells a bit of its history.

On a five star ranking system,
I give this game 4.5

Video gaming challange

My brother came into town this week for the decades old, multi family, annual tradition that is:

THE COTTON-ROWLAND HALLOWEEN PARTY.

Before he came I called him and asked if he might be able to brig his copy of rouge squadron for the N64.
"I'll bring the one for the game cube, it was better"
When I reminded him that I don't have a game cube he said
"I'll bring a game cube too"
When he got here he presented me with these two boxes.

Inside the boxes.

He explained that since Arkham Origins was out he figured he would lend me his PS3 to play it on, and figured he would bring "a few" other games as well.
"I mean you've only got one class this semester right? You've got some time on your hands"

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

69 games spanning 5 systems, representing decades of gaming history and hundreds, most likely over one thousand, gaming hours. I could not hope to beat all of these games. Some will be stupidly hard, some would just be an unpleasant chore to play through, but I could sample all of them. Ever game on this table represents the work of a team of skilled programmers working 40 hour weeks for months some times years on end. I can sacrifice 30 minutes of my time to sample and appreciate their artistic output.

THE RULES
(as arbitrarily made up by me just now)

I play each game for a minimum of half an hour.

I write a quick review of each (time spent writing review is NOT to exceed time spent playing game).

I work through one system before I move on to another.

The order of systems will be:
Play station 1
Play station 2
Xbox
Game cube
Play station 3

Let the games begin.

"Run for your lives" 5 klick zombie run: Baltimore

http://runforyourlives.com

When I read about "zombie runs" in the August 4th 2011 geekologie post

http://www.geekologie.com/2011/08/run-for-your-life-5k

-zombie-obstacle-cou.php

I knew, as the kind of hopelessly geeky zombie enthusiast who has a blog about zombies, I HAD to be part of this exciting new enterprise. When I visited the website they were not yet recruiting so I completely forgot about it until some time later when my little sister told me she was going to sign up to be a volunteer zombie. We agreed to carpool, and then it was just a matter of waiting until October.

The venue was actually a bit north of Baltimore so in order to make it there by 6:00 am when the volunteers were suppose to show up I had to leave the house at 4:00 am. When I arrived the place was pretty disorganized, and there was a lot of waiting around. Finally they got around to putting on everybody's makeup

Then the great sorting of zombies began. "Are you a stumbler or a chaser?" asked a woman with a clipboard.

"I don't even know what that means."

She explained that the chasers are there to pull flags off of the runners belts. If a runner doesn't make it all the way through the obstacle course with their flags they are "dead". Stumblers on the other hand are the slow zombies. They are there more for. . .

"Ambiance?" I asked

"Yeah, that thing you said."

Having never really approved of fast zombies, and also being a pretty lazy guy, I decided to be a stumbler. Having had all of the important details sorted out I wasn't going to wait around to be told where to go or what to do

(this is not the sort of volunteer job I plan to use as a professional reference)

I looked for the nearest pack of shuffling zombies and headed off to join them.

Me as a zombie

When there are no runners around the zombies gather in groups and chit chat

My favorite zombies were the ones with themes. There was the zombie with a bathrobe and fuzzy slippers

Of course you need some prom night zombies

By far my favorite was the ballerina zombie. She would advance upon runners with lurching stilted pirouettes.

Here is an excellent group picture of the first horde I joined

This picture doesn't adequate capture the beauty of this scenic vista, but to give you a sense of scale, the speck on the water near the middle of the frame is a kayaker.

This is at the top of a very tall very steep hill that the runners had to climb up. This hill is of sufficient altitude and slope to cause fatal sledding accidents.

These two came all the way from. . .

Well I forget, but it was a long way. They were part of the last herd of zombies I shuffled with, and very personable.

Have I mentioned how much I love the themed zombies?

Being a volunteer zombie is a lot of fun, but be sure to bring some trail mix like I did. It lasts all day and you will get hungry. Of course you can always just go home when you get board or hungry. It's not like you are doing this for a professional reference.

Dusting off my long defunct zombie blog to share with the world the glory that is: The best blanket ever (technically an afghan)

My totally awesome and beautiful girlfriend is an avid crocheter and when she offered to make me an afghan I asked if it could be a mega man afghan.

"Yes"

she said. And thus began our six month odyssey. No simple words, no pallid photos could possibly impress upon you, dear reader, the great art she hath wrought, but none the less I shall try.

I imported a screen capture from mega man two into a picture editing program and drew over it pixel by pixel to make sure I was recreating the picture faithfully. Once I had our blue print. . .

all we had to do was count the number of pixels of each color and that is how many "granny squares" we would need.

Including the white background and a one pixel wide border all around it was 22 by 26 squares. My sweet and patient girlfriend crocheted 572 "granny squares" in all.

Then we laid it out and began sewing it together section by section

Once it was all together she crocheted a border of dark blue/light blue/dark blue.

Here it is draped over a chair like some super bad ass amoeba eating a chair shaped bacteria

and here are some pics of my girl friend and I holding it up in all its glory.

1

In total it took 36 skeins of yarn at a cost of $4 each for a total of $144.00 and approximately 100 hours of work between the two of us. . .

it's nice and warm!

Corpses Are Forever

0.2

It's like a cross between Memento, The Devils Advocate, and crap. The story is random and lame, the acting is weak, and the sound is surprisingly poor. In the middle of a scene dialogue will become way too soft or the back round noise will get really loud. The zombie makeup is passable and the scenes graced with zombies are ok, but they are too few and far between. The zombies are amusingly inept, being so slow that the principal characters always walking around them or knocking them over. Of course the real danger of zombies has always been getting swarmed.

The production value was fairly high, and the cinematography was quite competent, but no amount of fancy camerawork can save a script this poor. In fact, nothing could.

Jun 16, 2006Shambling Corpseproduct
Corpses Are Forever

spoiler:
The film starts out in black and white. A guy with a British accent that comes and goes has just woken up with grievous injuries. We fallow his story for a while as he searches for the guy who kidnapped his son and left him a series of clues. Next we see a guy with a bloody nose wake up in a vintage car. Things are finally in color and we get our first sight of zombies. He wanders around a warehouse knocking over zombies with a series of painfully slow punches and kicks that never actually make contact, but luckily the zombies fall over as long as he's with in a few feet of them. Then his watch tells him a team is coming in to pull him out. Then a team of people in the green and brown army camouflage clothes come and pick him up.

A creepy old guy explains that the guy with the talking watch has been taking a serum that makes him relive the memories of somebody else but as a side effect he has amnesia. The guy who's memories he is reliving is somehow connected to the zombie plague and ensuing apocalypse. Then the old guy reveals that our man with the talking watch has a wife that he didn't know about. You know, because of the amnesia.

More poorly written plot unfurls revealing further twists and turns, and with each inevitably comes an even larger plot hole. It's like unfolding musty old linens to discover they've all been chewed through with moth holes. The watch guy keeps seeing a woman covered in blood who will give him advice and suddenly disappear. He takes the memory serum a number of times until he eventually stumbles onto the final memory of the chap with the transient British accent. It turns out the guy actually killed his own son and the guy who's leavening him the clues is actually the devil who has kidnapped his son's soul. The guy sells his own soul in exchange for his son's and this triggers the end of days, but wait - it gets even stupider. It turns out that the devil is the old guy who was explaining the memory serum. When watch man discovers this the devil appears to him and tells him that his "wife" is actually his sister, and that the two of them must have sex because, well that was never really explained, but they have to.

Watch man understandably declines and the devil ties him and the side kicks he acquired somewhere along the way to a post, and leaves them for the zombies. The phantom girl covered in blood comes and rescues them, and then appears twice more to rescue them each time they hit a snag as they try to escape. in the final scene she gives them all guns and happily skips away. Then the watch guy considers the crowd of zombies slowly advancing on them and says:
Watch Guy: "How many people are in the world"
Sidekick: "Roughly six billion. If we travel the world we should have enough shells for everybody"
Watch Guy: "I like that. Lets begin"

We are promised that the story will continue in "the corpse who loved me" should we care to watch it and the credits roll, accompanied by outtakes.

I will admit the final scene was cute but, its just not practical. assuming only five billion people became zombies each of the three members of the team would need to kill three zombies a second for 8 hours a day and do this every single day for 52.8 years. Preposterous.