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!!!
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.
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
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.
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.
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)
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.
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
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.
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
