Sigh, I Miss Marcus : Gears of War Judgement Review

I apologize if you find my title misleading as I found Gears of War: Judgement to be a good game and by no means hated any of the game, something I can't say about Gears 1-3. This is because GoW:J has no vehicle levels, levels that bogged down on the original with bad controls and were a bitch to get past on insane (the hardest difficulty.) This game feels built from the ground up but with characters we are familiar with but didn't spend a large amount of time with.

The Characters

The first thing you'll notice is the ages of everyone's favorite smart-ass Baird, and the Thrashball legend Cole. You do have two other members to the team, kilo squad, they are: Paduk, a combatant from the pendulum war, a war prior to the locust emergence, he fought against the COG. Then there is Sophia Hendrik, a cadet in an elite group amongst the COG called Onyx guards, they are tasked with providing security for COG leadership and and similar to MPs. She's a bit of a slut. Unfortunately the only time Marcus is in this game is three to four lines of voice-over.

The Controls

You'll notice as well that the controller layout has been changed, the Y button switches weapons now and the left bumper is now a quick throw on grenades which no longer can be equipped or "stuck" to a enemy with the B button but will stick to an opponent when thrown, but not on a bounce. Also, medical healing grenades have been added. Lastly if you have a boom shield you can keep your equipped weapon, be it a shotgun or lancer.

The Gameplay

Gears of War: Judgement is in essence an arcade style 3rd person shooter, a departure from the straight forward shooter vibe or the originals. The sections in each chapter are short mostly containing 1 to 2 firefights with small to large groups of enemies with varying enemy types to fight. This sounds simple, and it can be, or you can add challenge by accepting a level modifier in the form of a declassified mission.

Declassified missions come for the story being based around Lieutenant Baird's war trial. As you start the game you are shown that Baird and the rest of kilo squad are on trial for their actions during a skirmish with the locust, an alien species that came up from the ground of the planet Sera, that the game series takes place on. Judgment is told as testimony from each member or kilo squad's perspective. Apparently some of the testimony is classified and by choosing to play it you get to see how it "really" happened. These can be varying chores like playing the level with low visibility, playing a mission with weak weapons or low ammo, or protecting a random item from damage. Declassifying is offered as a way to add story that you wouldn't get otherwise, in actuality it adds a sentence or two of dialog specifically about the task at hand and skipping them does not cause you to miss anything.

The reason I called the game an arcade shooter is that the game is similar do the developer's previous game Bulletstorm, in that kills and actions are scored and you gain stars for completing kills and earning ribbons. These stars are earned faster once you declassify a mission as they always add difficulty. Well, this and the fact that each level is so damn short. Each chapter contains 5 to 8 levels or sections and each one is a different person's testimony but forwards the story.

Among the story and declassified missions are collectibles. COG tags, to be exact, while I hate collectables being in EVERY game, these are a mainstay of the Gears of War games. In this game there is only one per level which is down quite a bit from previous entries in the series, but still hold no importance to the story.

The Story

As far as the story goes you play as Lieutenant Baird, whom you meet as Private Baird in the initial trilogy and this is a prequel to those, so what happened to cause the demotion. Well, that's what this game is about. Baird is in a city called Halvo Bay and finds it to be under siege by a Locust commander called Karn, the same locust who has laid waste to entire cities and is known by one of Baird's squad mates, Paduk, as death and destruction incarnate. Braid decides to use a weapon that is called a light mass missile, it is very destructive and centralized, but it is meant to be used on a larger target and to ultimately save move lives than those of Halvo Bay. Hence the hearing.

I won't ruin the story for you as it is good and has tons of Baird's sarcastic humor. It's dark and gritty and has a lot of good ideas and it delivers on most of them. The best part of which is Aftermath. Aftermath is a follow up to the story of Judgement that you unlock by earning stars in Judgement story and takes place during a section of Gears of War 3. Marcus Fenix tasks Baird with locating a boat for an attack. This section was the closest to the Gears franchise, longer missions, no stars or declassification, just straight gears action.

The Rest

Multiplayer in Judgement is similar to previous games with a few changes. There is now a Free For All mode and Overrun, which is a mode that has replaced Horde. Free For All is self explanatory, no teams everyone fights everyone. Overrun is similar to horde in that its COG vs Locust but now both sides are human players and now there is a damageable objective. You have three waves where as Locust you attempt to destroy an emergence hole plug for two waves and a generator providing power to. . . Something the COG need. As the COG it is your job to defend these objectives, all of which is done with a time limit.

Gears of War: Judgement is executed quite well and tells a story worth seeing. Is it great? No not really, Gears 3 is the best of he series. But, the game is good. My favorite character of the whole series has been Baird and I appreciate the fan service in getting a Baird centric game. The game is definitely worth a buy, just in that its not the same formulaic crap for other shooters, like the terrible Call of Duty franchise.

Well that's all from me on Gears of War: Judgement. Feel free to comment or question below, or look for me in multiplayer under Amzngspidermatt.

-ASM out.

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Disclosure: This is a non-sponsored review. All product was purchased by me and the purpose of this review is based solely on my own interests. No product or monetary compensation was given to me by said company. 

I Wish All Archers Looked Like This: Tomb Raider Review

I'm not going to censor myself in any means so I'm just putting out there now that this review may have some spoilers, I will be talking about several different points in the game. But I am a human being so the ending will not be covered. 

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Tomb Raider starts with a ship wreck, (not the stupid, G-rated, drawn out kind from Life of Pi) ), but a very quick vessel torn in half kind that gets you in the right place to raid some fucking tombs. Literally opening movie is Lara on a ship broken in half and Lara leaping toward this old guy named Roth who drops her ass into the sea. Lara wakes up on a beach and sees a small group of survivors from the ship. She begins to yell out to them, and gets cold cocked and passes out. Great start. I seriously was already riveted to the couch.

Lara wakes up in wrapped in a canvas upside-down hanging in a cave. To escape she has to shift her wake to swing into a corpse - that must have woken up in this same state quite a long time ago - into a fire and then back into her to light her canvas bag on fire to escape. Getting set on fire isn't the worst of her worries either (especially this early) because as she falls she lands on up-ended rebar that stabs completely thru her and I'm shocked she doesn't have a pierced liver to boot. This ain't your daddy's Lara though, by the end of the game, not including all the horrible ways she can die, she's stabbed, shot, pierced, scraped up and knocked out repeatedly. She may be a super hero.

Playing this Tomb Raider - for me - seemed like coming home again. I had the original game on Sega Saturn and other than her having triangle boobs I had no issues with the game. At the time there felt like there was nothing like it. I saw myself as exploring and learning with her. I got the same feeling again, granted there are lot of people/survivors that you are in contact with almost constantly, suffering along with Lara. I felt her need to survive and the pain was she put through.

Once you get Lara out of the cave of death, she finds a bow on another dead guy dangling upside down and you get a tutorial on shooting. Another video establishes that Lara is cold and hungry, so you start hunting the deer and rabbits in the area. There is no cold or hungry bar, so there there isn't a goal in hunting other than you get XP per kill and search of the corpse. With skills you learn thru the XP you can begin to earn salvage from the kills as well.0Ssalvage is used to upgrade your tools and weapons in the single player story. The weapons include a handgun, rifle, bow and arrows, and a shotgun. There is  a rock climbing axe that can be used to open tough doors, climb craggy rocks, slide down ropes and thru skills can become quite a formidable weapon as well.

Thru a video camera Lara finds, we see some backstory. The boat, The Endurance carried: an archeologist, Dr. Whitman, who is concerned more of striking it rich than anything else. Roth, an ex-marine treasure hunter, who is a family friend of the Croft's. Sam a friend and classmate of Lara's and filmer of the expedition and others who are made up of film crew and a bitch mechanic. The video shows us that the expedition is searching for the lost island of Yamatai, somewhere on the coast of Japan, and Dr. Whitman wants to continue the search in the same place everyone else already has. Lara's idea is to search elsewhere, which does lead them to Yamatai, but caused quite a lot of death and destruction. All of which Lara blames herself for, honestly I do feel that it is her fault, but that doesn't stop me from loving this game.

Tomb Raider does have its share of tense moments, not really scares, it tries its hand at some humor with having Lara say things like "I bloody HATE tombs!" While the humor is a pass the suspense is great and the shock value of watching the horrific ways that Lara is killed is in itself shocking, Tomb Raider succeeds on soooo many levels. The brutality that Lara must deal with both within herself and what she faces with the strange cult that inhabits Yamitai.

The cult is lead by a fanatic named Mathias, and he leads a large group of heavily armed thugs, carrying weapons ranging from dual machetes to Molotov cocktails to machine guns to dynamite. The cult is after Lara's friend Sam for some sort of ritual that will bring back the queen of Yamatai, Himiko.

For the first time in a long time this game has something lacking in a lot of games, good enemy AI. They run and hide, they flank, they destroy your cover, great stuff. There are some dumb moves where they hide behind flammable cover (only after you get flaming arrows) and will leap unto ropes that slide down to in front of you, one shot with any weapon drops them from the rope ride, to their death. Eventually the enemies vary further into Japanese soldiers in ancient samurai garb, katanas and all.

So all this said, I have told people I know (and I don't throw this around a lot) I have named this game the best game of the year so far.

Pros: Great graphics, horrifically brutal deaths for Lara, good story, and great AI.

Cons: Hunger bit not really fleshed out, collectables (every fucking game has collectables now, I can't just arrow down some deer and crows, I gotta hunt for eggs and relics and diary pages, shit I'm sick of hide and seek shit in action games) and press for the game, the developers have gone to the press and stated there will be tons of dock but no plans for story, I like multiplayer in games but charging 5, 10, 15 bucks for a different place to kill some fuckers I don't know or care about isn't worth it for me. I love story, why not have more.

In Summation: Tomb Raider is the game to beat for game of the year in 2013. Unfortunately it came out early in the year and with some stiff competition. I will be covering those new games as the are released and as I am able to play I will be covering them here.

- Your friendly neighborhood ASM

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Disclosure: This is a non-sponsored review. All product was purchased by me and the purpose of this review is based solely on my own interests. No product or monetary compensation was given to me by said company. 

Super Hyped Irreparable Trash, An Aliens: Colonial Marines Reveiw

Heh, I made the title spell S.H.I.T.

It's funny because the game is terrible. 

I have a confession to make, I love all things Alien, even Alien 4. I've played many of the Alien games in the past even those of the Vs Predator variety and have been immediately in like with them.

Be aware gentle reader, I have full game spoilers in this review and I do share the ending. Not now. Near the end of the review. You have been warned.

At first this was the case with A:CM. I really wanted to play this game and I had seen tons of photo references I liked; the throwback design of the text in the game that looks like the text first seen in the opening scenes of the early movies aboard the Nostromo and Solaco.

Immediately after the aforementioned text showed on a blank black screen the game opens into a in game movie that stops, stutters and shakes so bad I turned my system off, loaded the game to my hard drive, and started it again. No change.

"Well ASM," I said to myself, "maybe the playable stuff is better."  As soon as I started moving I saw screen tearing and sighed. A little further in I started to see that everything in the background looked like it wasn't fully rendered. Things like projections on the wall, generators on the floor look smeared and undefined, words on them are muddy blobs.

Then I saw. . . The aliens.

Good god, the aliens.

Honestly they are hard to talk about and not be sad. Yes, only one word of the three words in the title is Aliens, but they should have been the focus. Right away I'll tell you that the story is bullshit. It's a shame, but it's far and away shockingly bad. Badly acted, poorly written, and filled with characters that aren't built in anyway, and animated poorly to boot.

Lance Henriksen is voicing Bishop in it, I will give the game this one allowance and only this one, Lance Henriksen. I digress, the aliens in A:CM are laughable. The aliens continuously walk directly in front of your fire, and whilst walking out in the open will randomly just stand the fuck up on their back legs and do a sideways walking shuffle that is odd looking to say the least. These murderous beasts will kill npcs in one strike but when they face off against you are found lacking, one burst of fire will destroy them and their acid blood might as well be saliva. It effects you for mere seconds and makes it so that your always-replenishing-health doesn't replenish for those few seconds. In fact there is an achievement around blasting an alien close range with a shotgun specifically to get acid on you. Seriously these puppies are defanged.

Now basically your story is random set pieces that they throw the characters into but honestly this could be any licensed game with the bare bones story they provided. Level one is catching up with the story before you get to the Solaco and see the bottom half of Bishop with the white blood everywhere, just the mess left from the movie Aliens. You play a character named Winter, not that it matters. You are mostly teamed with a big guy named Oneal and run from place to place fighting aliens. There is a girl named Bella who in the first level tells you she had a face hugger on her when she woke up in a random room, the player knows what her eventual end will be but they have her throughout more the half the game. Again no development of the character, death means nothing but she dies.

Now you don't just fight aliens you fight enemies that are part of the Weyland-Yutani corporation and they don't like you fucking around with the aliens. There is a ton of fighting these guys too, and they have the smarts to hide behind cover when they are being shot at and actually are sometimes a challenge. Your overpowered weapons and room crossing shotgun blasts will make short work of any enemy so the last few levels just becomes quantity over quality. It is eventually revealed that somewhere in the base the WY folks are harboring a queen in their base and trying to monetize her. Of course she breaks loose and you have to fight her.

I am going to give a quick list of the 11 levels of the game as too what you do in each level.

1. Tutorial you see aliens and learn to shoot guns
2. Bullshit
3. Weyland-Yutani blow up the Sulaco
4. On planet, Hadley's Hope where much of Aliens movie takes place
5. Water level where you've been de-gunned and now have to sneak past new explodey aliens. Seriously. In a shoot-em-up game there is a for no reason stealth level. Honestly this level is quite nerve racking, and with an Alien game the whole thing should've been this level but with just a few guns and low ammo.
6. Bullshit
7. Bullshit
8. Bullshit
9. Poorly rendered bullshit
10. Duckshit, it's like bullshit, but looser
11. End boss fight in which you end the level with 0 kills

The end level boss fight is the worst offender of the game. In this boss fight you don't fight the boss. You are in a hangar where you have crashed a ship. The captain has been pinned in the pilots seat and everyone else has found a way to fuck off and leave you alone. You then find out that the queen is in there with you. You can shoot at her to get her attention but mostly she goes from empty box to empty box that litter the hangar looking to hurt you. During this time you are to activate switches that are on opposite sides of a track with a shoving wall aimed specifically at the hole your crashed ship left. Guess what you do. The queen literally stops searching for you and runs and stands in the center of the track as soon and you activate all 4 four switches. You have one final toggle that launches her towards the hole. At which point she saves herself from falling but the trapped, and now dying captain activates the ship and commits suicide/murders the queen to end the game, stealing your kill.

I beat this game without going out of the way to collect anything and ended with 30 of 50 achievements. I need to be very clear: I hated every last thing about this game. It is not worth the 60 dollars to buy. Use the purchase to get Borderlands 2 if you haven't already.

So that's it for Aliens: Colonial Marines.

If there is a review you would like to see, let me know I the comments below.

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Disclosure: This is a non-sponsored review. All product was purchased by me and the purpose of this review is based solely on my own interests. No product or monetary compensation was given to me by said company. 

Revelation

Update: I have found that the pricing for 360 and the Wii U will be 49.99 as well and it will be day one digital download for PS3 only with the other two consoles following suit later.

Just a quick post today. It was recently announced that the amazingly good Resident Evil: Revelations that was previously released only on the 3DS will be coming to consoles, May 21st (my wife's birthday, she'll be thrilled) in the Us and the 24th in Europe. So far only the pricing for the PS3 has been announced, which is at 49.99, but it will be released for the 360 and the Wii U. Hopefully they will be improving the graphics and adding some stuff, because as of now you can buy it for 19.99 for a new copy at Gamestop for 3DS and 30 extra dollars seems steep for the privilege of playing the game on a tv with a controller. I will update as soon as the pricing is announced for the remaining 2 consoles. Let me know if you're excited to see it on console or if it was good enough as a handheld.

Starry Starry Knight: Black Knight Sword Review

I was incredibly excited to see that Grashopper Manufacture, Inc. and Suda51 was releasing a new game called Black Knight Sword, and even more so that it was being released to Xbox Live Arcade. If there's anything I love more than movies it's video games and above video games it's the ability to buy a game and play it without putting on pants.
I had been in a funk with video games lately only playing full retail games, which have several pros and cons. As far as the main pro for a retail game is the (sometimes) high production value on a retail game tends to be higher as there is more money put into development, the con is that this cost is passed directly to the consumer with most new retail games coming out in the $60 dollar range. The reason behind my retail funk is that most retail games aren't normally a pick-up-and-play affair, meaning any time you play you have to carve out a decent chunk of time to play. This is where XBL arcade games are great, sometimes I only have 10 or fifteen minutes to kill and these games are built with this in mind.

Now as for Black Knight Sword, it was released during the holidays, December 12th on Xbox, and while I had heard about it I didn't have the funds or the time to get it. This led to this week when I downloaded the demo (another great feature for  XBL arcade) and within the first 5 minutes I knew I needed to get the full game. Not exactly a breaking the bank occurrence as it was 800 Microsoft points (about $10.) I have always had a high opinion of Grasshopper Manufacture, Inc. and have been a day one purchaser of their previous games, like the criminally underrated Lollipop Chainsaw, and Shadows of the Damned (the only game I've seen with an achievement with the word "Fuckin' " in the title) and knew I would not be let down.

The game starts with the tale of a beautiful princess whom is equal part beautiful and ruthless. In the same land as the princess there lives a sword spirit that opposes the princess. The sword spirit imbues your character with the powers of the black knight sword. You begin playing as a corpse hanging from a noose in an empty hotel room, falling from the noose and obtaining the sword and the black knight armor and powers, which leads you into a tutorial for movements and attacks. The controls are quite basic, a multi-directional attack, right trigger attacks with sword spirit and you unlock the use of magic with the "Y" button later.

The star of this game however is not the controls but the art. The game is done in the style of a paper puppet show. This game looks like the marriage and then odd baby of Castlevania and Monty Python art. With complete honesty when I mention something is like Castlevania it is high praise indeed as Symphony of the Night is my favorite game of all time.

Along with the paper art puppetry things are quite odd in this world too. The only real world enemies are wolves that you only see a few times, everything else is deformed and hideous, most enemies are brown wrinkled heads with appendages. Bosses are normally deformed animals like an enormous wolf with the head of what looks like Miyamoto-San (head honcho of Nintendo) wearing an eye patch, or an enormous spider wearing a gas mask and an abdomen made of a face that spits out smaller flying faces. Far and away the kookiest level has to be a level where you fight a 30 foot tall chicken. After defeating the chicken your character jumps on it and you play a flying(?) mission, akin to Galaxia shooting lasers and collecting powerups to battle an onion shaped head. During this level my wife walked into the room and stood bewildered and stunned (a condition I have deemed "Suda-Ed") by the crazy kookiness that is what I expect from Suda51 and Grasshopper. When she looked at me weirded into silence I looked back and said "Gotta love Japan."

The only downfalls I could find in the game was that one the story is almost nonexistent, with small stories being told along the way in rhyme but with nothing really connecting everything together. Second, the character you play as is silent, all previous efforts by Suda and Grasshopper have had great characters with funny personalities, and the silent black knight is devoid of this. Lastly, death makes you start the entire level over again making the last level a trudge, I got wiped out twice at the last boss and had play the massive last level again. These things are mere blemishes on a well made kooky game and should not stop you from playing. This game is a must buy, so go download it and have a great . . . Knight.

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Disclosure: This review is sponsored by Grasshopper. I received free product for the purpose of this review. All opinions are my own and no further monetary compensation was received.

Disney Inifity: Printing Money

Disney recently announced a new game called Disney Infinity. The game itself is not that new of a concept, especially if you have younger kids in the house. Disney Infinity is an action platformer title similar to that of Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure, both in the play style and in the fact that the game is played by using an NFC reader to scan figures (purcahsed with the initial game and in separate packs) and playing as the scanned figures in the game. I think even though this idea is not the most original it is still genius. Adults collect everything Disney to recapture their youth that was squandered (guilty) and purchase the toys because kids (and everyone) likes Disney.

Earlier today Disney Interactive Studios announced pricing for the game and the figures which up until now was only speculated as "Really Fucking Expensive" because A: Its Disney and B: Skylanders shit was really expensive. So, the starter set, which includes the game, the NFC scanner base, and 3 Figures:Mr. Incredible, Sully, and Jack Sparrow along with the character's playsets, which equates to levels of play which are The Incredibles, Monster's  University, and Pirates of the Caribbean respectively is priced at $75 in the us for consoles and a little less for 3DS.  Just like Skylanders there are plenty of figures to buy separately, 20 to be exact, a 3-pack will be 29.99 or individually for 12.99. There will be power discs, which is different from Skylanders, that imbue your characters with special moves, they run 4.99, no news as to if these are packaged as single powers or multiple in a package. 

  

Right now the only release date announced was the European street date of June 28th. Normally in similar situations the US date is a bit ahead of the UK so it will probably be the 25th as US release dates normally fall on Tuesdays. Seeing as this is 6 months out there is plenty of time to save up. I for one will be an early adopter, but only under certain conditions, there must be a Nightmare Before Christmas level, also Lion King is a must. I have seen the trailer for the game that does show Jack Skellington rendered in game so I don't think I'm too far off the mark but I want to play a full level as well. So, Disney, you know what needs to be done.

Lollipop Chainsaw: A test you can use to see if other people are worth talking to

This post was originally hosted at cheshirecatart by the great artist Devin Kraft. The review was originally posted back when the game was first released and I wanted to post it here now that I have my own blog. 

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The game starts with young Juliet Starling narrating to the player about how today is her birthday. She introduces us to people we'll see throughout the game; her sisters Cordelia and Rosalind, her mom (who,we are told is the reason that Juliet and her sisters wear their vaginas proudly) her dad, and her boyfriend Nick.

Juliet explains, in a series of photos and shower scenes, that her family is different from Nick's because they are zombie hunters. Nick is very early on bitten by a zombie and before he himself turns, Juliet decapitates him. With magic she is able to keep his head alive and attached to her waist band. Nick serves as comic relief (in an already comical game) and in several different situations can be used as a weapon against the zombie hordes. Her weapons, along with Nick's are upgraded by the cast of the game giving Juliet presents for her birthday.

The prologue exists mostly to introduce us to combat and the tone of the game.

The combat is simple:

• Strong chainsaw attack
• Pom Pom Attack (which serves to dizzy zombies for a beheading hit)
• Low chainsaw attack which de-feets  zombies (get it?!?)
• Dodge

Note: Beheading zombies results in rainbows and sparkles spraying from the neck stump.

As you progress thru the game you earn zombie medals in gold and platinum which you can use at the game store. Gold variety buys upgrades to either her base stats or for combo moves. Platinum medals buy costumes, in-game music and conceptual art.

The aforementioned tone is decidedly adult and at the same time juvenile but always funny. From a class mate that was rescued from a zombie horde randomly proclaiming his favorite president to be Warren G. Harding to the perverted Sensei Morikawa repeatedly falling face first into Juliet's cleavage. Although some humor is just funny without being rude or offensive, one of my favorite exchanges is in the first level between Juliet and Nick, it goes:

Juliet: I need to find Morikawa Sensei.

Nick: Who?

Juliet: Morikawa Sensei! He's my sensei.

Nick: You mean like a teacher?

Juliet: I didn't know you speak Japanese Nick!? (she then proceeds to speak in Japanese for a minute or so)

Nick: I don't know Japanese, just that one word.

Juliet: Oh Nick, your simple innocence is one of the reasons I love you! You're like a kitten. A kitten that doesn't speak Japanese!

The story does feel like it's being purposely perverse (in a very good way), like a lot of the comedic R rated movies coming out lately, it's reaching for that "hard R," or in this case a "hard M." It's in line with other Suda51 games, being unapologetically weird, with cursing and gorey fighting and has random uses of the words "dick" and "fuck" aplenty. Lollipop Chainsaw also contains one of my favorite mini games in which you drive a combine thru a field of zombies.

Leading up to the release of the game James Gunn (director of Dawn of the Dead and the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy) was brought on and his addition helps to make a zombie masterpiece.
 
Graphically the game isn't out to win any awards, but it serves it's purpose. Their are several mediums used in the design of the game. Most of the game is done in a third person camera style, but has comic panels for level score and menus, as well as very flat 2-D transitions in levels that look a lot like moving paper similar to South Park but not crappy. Whenever a new character is introduced we are given a bio in comic book format, that gives us attributes and a list of "Likes" (things like badminton and shooting are clumped together with things like masturbation and wanting to meet Justin Bieber and then add his skull to the person's collection).

There do seem to be controversies around the game already about it being degrading, offensive, sexist, and weird. My argument to that is, "Isn't that what makes it fun?" Which is what it really breaks down to folks. The reason we play video games is to have fun. Why should we take a game like this seriously when it clearly doesn't take it's self seriously. Yes the game is short. There is replay value and not just for achievement hunters but for the great dialogue and all the many things that you miss the first time around.

In closing I do not believe in number scoring (because numbers are arbitrary), I will only recommend that you buy this game and love it for what it is. Always pay for the things you like so that the people making them can continue to do so.

Also, do yourself a favor and turn on the subtitles, you'll be glad you did.

Original Artwork by Devin Kraft

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Disclosure: This is a non-sponsored review. All product was purchased by me and the purpose of this review is based solely on my own interests. No product or monetary compensation was given to me by said company. 

Dishonored Review: Thar She BLOWS

I have been playing a lot of Wii U lately and remembered the stack of new games that ended up in a pile due to the yearly deluge of games in November. I had seen a lot of really great reviews for Dishonored and decided to throw it in the 360 and have the blast that was being promised by these reviews. I was immediately impressed by the beauty of the game and the wealth of colors. The art design is a bit cartoony but not to the level of say Borderlands. The game is billed as stealth FPS with a plethora of choices of how to accomplish your missions, but you only get rewarded for the low kill stealth approach.

Dishonored is quick to establish your role as a soldier/ personal guard to the queen named Corvo. You are in a sort of steampunk world that runs off of whale oil rather than steam (so whalepunk?) You are coming back from a secret mission that the amazingly rendered NPCs  tell you went well. You are brought before the queen and go through litany of dialogue which essentially breaks down to establish that Corvo likes the queen,  Corvo likes her daughter the princess, the queen and the princess both like Corvo a lot. This conversation is eventually broken up by an attack of ninja-esque assassins who kill the queen and kidnap the princess and knocking you semi unconscious, awake enough to hear that you are now being setup for the queens murder and the kidnapping. 

You wake up in a prison and have to break out. From here the game takes a huge dip and never really recovers. The prison and proceeding sewers are an extended tutorial, which teaches you how to kill and the basics of your weapons. All of which you are penalized for using through the rest of the game. When you eventually get out of the sewers a boatsman is waiting for you to paddle you to the resistance, a group of NPC quest givers that somehow know of the betrayal perpetrated against you and they want to help.

Everyone knows who Corvo is so they give you a creepy ass mask that is meant to hide your identity. This is all well and good but almost no one else in the game wears masks, so why do you not stand out from the crowd in the mask?  The mask is a mechanic that sets you up with features that are standard for an FPS game (scopes for zooming in for long shots) and you get super powers (more like ok powers that seemed borrowed from Jedi knight barring the lame rat command power) that help you along as well, this is where I feel the game falls apart. To earn abilities you have to spend runes that you find thought the game. A good deal of these are in areas where if you are going for the best "low chaos" ending that it's better to skip them. 

As a bit of an achievement hunter I found it really hard to get achievements as they all revolve around limits. Things like no kills after the tutorial level, or beating the game with only the ability upgrades that you get thru playing the story. The worst offender is to not be discovered. The reason I think it's bad is this is a FPS with no way to change the camera, so there is no way to exit a hallway or door and be 100% sure no one can see you. This game has a high frustration factor and there is no way to play in a way where you're not seen and have fun. Please don't get me wrong I love stealth games having a long love affair with Tenchu and Splinter Cell, but in those games I felt like the game was designed around stealth rather than having the stealth option thrust upon you in a world that was open and rife with people that really needed to be killed. I have seen other games that reward players for a kill free play through but I don't see how being limited is fun. For me the point of gaming is entertainment and escapism, this gets interrupted too often by achievements used as stretch goals rather than enhancing the fun. 

Ultimately I played the game I wanted to play and just killed as I went, slowed time and commanded rats. I had fun, still had to reset here and there, had to listen to and read odd stories about whale oil, but playing this way reduced the game down to between 10-20 even with collecting items. In fact I noticed once I stopped caring about being seen the missions are all quite short.

Honestly I don't feel this game is worth the still $60 price tag on it, maybe wait on it for a lower price or try to rent, it may be something you can beat in one sitting but definitely too short for the cash. In my honest opinion Assassin's Creed 3 is a way better use of your funds.

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Disclosure: This is a non-sponsored review. All product was purchased by me and the purpose of this review is based solely on my own interests. No product or monetary compensation was given to me by said company.