Metal Gear Solid: Revengance

Robot ninjas with eyepatches! Revengeance has been released and its ready to slice it's way through your eyeballs!

Confession time, I've never played a MGS game up to this point. I know I'm missing on some golden games but I've never had a PS up until this point. This game however has added to the guilt I feel for not playing the previous games earlier and I am determined to crack those open sometime soon. Anyway from what I can gather, this game takes place sometime after The Patriots and you're fighting for your right to cut people in half and eat their delicious spine flesh.

The game starts you off as what I can only imagine is Raiden 0.5. You're still pretty tough but you clearly still have some growing up to do. You're working for Maverick Security escorting the prime minister of some place in Africa (they don't really say) when you're ambushed by an enemy PMC. After some swordplay and  giant boss battles, you meet the big bad, Samuel Rodriguez who jabs your eye out, cuts your arm off and  leaves you for dead. Enter Raiden 1.0. who not only has shiny new black armor, his voice has become way less obnoxious. The story then follows Raiden as he tries to stop Sam and his plans to create anarchy via kidnapping children(I wont spoil what he actually does to the children). Throughout the game you sit through the traditional long flashy cutscences that are so common in Konami and Platinum games, though you do get to participate on occasion. You meet a variety of interesting and sometimes brutally tough enemies along the way that prove to test your skills and patience.

While I'm on it, lets gripe about some of the enemies. This is a fast paced sword game so you'll be correct in assuming that the combat is very unforgiving. At times though it's down right unfair. An example would be a particular enemy you meet near the climax of the game in the sewers. A giant, fast, gorilla like mech. At first glance you think "Pfft, this guy will lumber up and I'll cut him down easy." NOPE. This guy moves faster than any trooper you've encountered up to that point. Not only is he fast, he staggers and does huge chunks of damage when he pins you on the ground. The best part? He can chain stuns and flurries which will leave you deader than dead if you slip up even a tiny bit. It's especially fun when you get thrown two or three of these guys at once. Now I have experience in fast paced gun games, I've played through Bayonetta on Infinite Climax(very hard),  so I'm no stranger to getting my ass handed to me for a mistake. The problem with these guys and a few other mid level mechs is that, you don't get a block button or a decent dodge button. You have to rely on a very finicky parry system that works around 30% of the time. You need to point in the direction of the oncoming attack and hold X to parry and you either pull it off or you're spare parts. Trust me, the moment you are surrounded by six or more guys, the last thing you think of is a clunky parry system. Not to mention, most enemies do continuous attacks and you need to execute parries constantly to stay alive especially during boss fights. You do get a "dodge" skill early on, but it takes two buttons and a tilt of the control stick to preform, and it's not so much a dodge as it is a small sidestep. Not exactly an easy thing to pull off when a giant mechanical wolf is cutting your legs off with it's chainsaw tail.

Now the weapons in this game. You get three types of weapons, your main sword, your alternate weapon which you unlock by defeating bosses, and your use weapons. Use weapons are usually military weaponry you find on the battlefield. RPGs, lock-on missile launchers, various types of grenades, all which have a finite number of uses. The problem I find with using some of this artillery is that pulling them out can leave you exposed. They take a second or two to ready up and aim and with so much stuff going on in any given battle, it's sometimes difficult to pull off the shot. Though I will say that in a tight spot, they come in handy. Your alternate weapon is your prize for taking down the sometimes absurdly difficult bosses which you still have to pay for(with BP points you collect via combos, level completion time, skills, kills, thrills, chills, etc)but you can usually afford after the boss fight. I've stuck with the first one you get which is an overpowered bo staff/whip which hits a huge radius and has massive flurries. I find myself using it more than my sword. You can also upgrade both your alt and sword to do more damage, absorb more health or use less energy when you enter blade mode.

Touching really quickly on blade mode, it is so much fun. Slicing up enemies into little tiny bits feels very satisfying. It's essentially a bullet time mode you can enter at any time if you have enough energy built up. You'll use it mainly for cutting up enemies and exposing their juicy electrolytes spine(which you use to heal) though it can be used to cut away defenses on bigger mechs and for precisely cutting the left arm of troopers.


Left arm of troopers? Yes, left arm of troopers. Those are the games collectibles. The doctor, Doktor, has you collecting the limbs for something or other, and are treated as your collectibles. Now, trying to actually get a precise cut on a trooper is a huge task, even in blade mode. You need to either be a very good aim and have perfect positioning or flail for your life. The collectible arm wielding troopers are most of the time highlighted when you enter AR mode but since AR mode shuts off when you swing your sword, you need to make sure you don't accidentally kill him when you're swinging around the room.

There's something I need to say about this game that I've noticed the more and more I played. Video calls. Holy crap, every checkpoint, after every mission, every boss, mini boss, walking down a random hallway, every new area, EVERYWHERE! If I were Raiden I would've ripped off my ear radio long ago. Luckily you can skip through it by pressing Y but the thing is, you'll end up losing bits of important information among the continuous calls. I'm not sure if all MGS games are like this but I started to become angry whenever that radio went off.  That's not a good thing.

A bright spot through the constant phone calls is the ability to cut through anything. I can say that a good hour of my play time has been cutting up trees into bits. I don't know why it's so satisfying but I've actually gone BACK through a map to cut down a lonely telephone pole. Cutting up a car into so many pieces that it makes your game lag, so good. You can cut anything from bridges to walkways and it still doesn't lose it's charm after the hundredth one.


This game is pretty solid and aside from a crappy defensive mechanic and constant phone harassment, it's a really great game. I recommend it to those that like fast paced beat-em-ups and aspiring chefs who want to learn how to properly dice things.

Borderlands 2: Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt

 Another month, another Borderlands 2 DLC. This time it focuses on Sir Hammerlock and his quest to hunt and kill every rare creature in Pandora!

I went into this DLC with high hopes since the previous two DLCs(Captain Scarlett's Booty and Torgue's Canrnage) have been fantastic, with their interesting characters and quests. This DLC however feels cut. I'll start with the main story quest(and I'll try to remain as spoiler free as possible but no promises).

After you travel to the new location and meet up with Hammerlock, you get echo chatter from the "big bad" of the DLC. Hammerlock is uninterested, and only wishes to hunt down his creatures but he makes you go after him regardless. After some very amusing, though short story quests, you "take down" the big bad and boom, game over. You can work your way through the main story quest in about an hour and there are barely any sub quests tying back to it. It's not like in previous DLCs where everything feels like it's connected to the main storyline. Then again, even in-game, the characters treat the main storyline as something to get out of the way. It was a very good mock of what goes on in most games, the bad guy's omnipresence, the constant reminder of how bad he is and how he's going to do so many bad things(e.g Borderlands 2). Though I don't think it worked quite as well as Gearbox had hoped. It feels as if they're striving so hard to poke fun of it, you aren't having as much fun playing through it. After you end the main quest, the side quests feel repetitive. Trek to X location and kill Y creature, repeat. I understand you're on a monster hunt but there could have been a tad more variety. Most of the special monsters you hunt are reminiscent(if not a recolored copy paste) of the giant sub level monsters you fight around Pandora on a regular basis. The writing is still snappy and smart, yes there is some witty dialogue when you receive/turn in a quest but the writing can only go so far.

With new DLC comes new monsters of course, which are a bit more varied. There is a new human faction as well, spear throwing savages and elemental witch doctors. They're no different from any other human faction though the witch doctors throw whatever element they're imbued with. Also, they can summon Rakk storms.

There is one particular enemy that was a constant nag to my sanity. They're giant sacs of death that look like rotting, flying cabbage, called Spores. These giant balls of assholes will royally fuck you up if you're not careful. They fly quietly high over the battle field and fire off elemental attacks that can easily kill you or dispense of your shield. Shooting at them only makes them move faster towards you and when you kill them? They have spawnlings! They will rush into your face and explode dealing even more damage. Make these things priority number one when you go into a fire fight.

Speaking of environmental hazards, the new setting is stunning. Huge mountainscapes, filtering light pouring in from huge cracks in the cave, giant bones of monsters you wish you could fight. It's easily the best looking environment out of the other two DLCs.

In short, Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt ended up being not so big after all. Short main story, uninteresting side quests, re-skinned monsters. Compared to the other two DLCs, this one is definitely the weakest of the group.

Journey: Lost In The Sea Of Bullets

I've heard a lot of incredible things about this games in the past months. Great soundtrack, fantastic visuals, beautiful story, and since I recently acquired a PS3 (don't judge me), I decided to baptize it with a game that received such high praise. Journey, made by thatgamecompany who also made Flower, is more than just a game, it's an experience. No dialogue, no speech just sights and music. You start as a small cloaked figure confused and scared, traversing the vast and empty spaces of the world you're in, and you come out something better. You gain a deeper understanding of what it really means to be this little red figure hopping along the sand.

Game mechanics are pretty straight forward. You have a scarf that dictates how high and how far you can jump depending on how long and how much charge it has. You can make the scarf longer by finding floating symbols in the environment, that's all there is to it really. It's like a Mario game without having to hunt down your pink, kidnap prone wench. You jump along from gorgeously rendered location to the next, wondering what you're doing in such a place.

I wont touch on the story since it's very much worth the playthrough. Plus it's a bit open ended and very subjective.

Honestly I didn't want to write about this game because it's pretty flawless which is very surprising. Though I will say this game isn't for everyone but then again, isn't any other game? The reason I wanted to write about this game in particular was because of something I noticed when I put down the controller and reflected. This game conveys so much with so little and it doesn't fit into any genre, not entirely.

I'll walkthrough what I felt when I first picked it up. I was expecting a few things: dialogue of some kind, monsters to fight, boss battles, a really weepy story. When I first got control I nearly stopped playing. I was thinking "Is this it? This game is boring as hell!" I tried jumping, I tried attacking but all I could do was walk. I felt trapped and useless, I actually started to fidget because I couldn't do anything. I finally reached the point where you receive your scarf and though "fantastic now I can at least jump!" a little hop and that was it. The game was trying my patience but I pushed on regardless. As the game progressed the frustration started to dissipate. I started enjoying the limited jumping, the scenery and everything around me. It was unlike anything I've ever played. I had no idea I could feel such things from a game that offered no words. I was taken aback by it all.

This game showed me something going on within our gaming world. Most of the games out have at least one of three tropes in them: heavy dialogue, PvE, or guns. Go ahead, go look at your game pile and find one other game that doesn't have at least one if not all of those tropes. I'll wait. ... Saw it? See what I mean? Our games are so drench with hand holding and ricocheting bullets that I'm surprised we even have game genres. We are making games and not experiences. Sure there are a few games that have one if not all of those tropes that have managed to move you emotionally, but the thing that remains is that Journey is the only game I've come across that pulls at all your emotions with nothing more than a music note and a grain of sand. It also showed me how impatient I've become. I was trained to seeing some giant set piece explode or a giant monster appearing or everything going to hell within the first five minutes. I've been trained by past games to expect some cliched intro to keep me playing. I didn't realize I was going through the motions until after I finished Journey and picked up Far Cry 3. Sure enough, everything turns to shit after the first few minutes of game intro.

Another thing that really left me reeling was the co-op in Journey. You gain a partner after you get out of the tutorial levels and you expect to be able to communicate whether it be voice or text chat. The only way you can communicate is by using the music tone you usually use to activate switches in the game world. This take on co-op showed me something I seldom see playing on a console with strangers, cooperation. Every time I played, my partner would always hang by me, we would fly around in unison, show each other secret passages and hidden scarf pieces. It was like playing with someone you knew and not some stranger miles away. This showed me that people do have the capability of playing with others without resorting to name calling or being obnoxious jerks. I wish there were more games like Journey to show us that games don't always have to follow a strict set of linear, unspoken rules. That games can be more than gun simulators or  textbooks of dialogue and gore.

It's a distressing thing that a game that causes such an emotional response is put on such high regard instead of being the norm. 

Retro Review: Left 4 Dead 2

Back in 2009, a sequel was made from an already concrete formula which once again put four survivors smack in the unknown infected world of Left 4 Dead. There was a lot of stigma following Left 4 Dead 2, hell there was even a boycott. Reason was, people though that it would be fitting as a DLC rather than a full priced game. In the end they were wrong and learned never ever to question the almighty Valve. L4D2 ate up all the L4D players and then some. The L4D lobby is now the lonely older high school prom queen at the reunion who got fat and has way too many cats.

L4D2 was not just new maps and characters, it also had new guns and the ability to hit infected with frying pans! The atmosphere of L4D2 feels somewhat cheerier almost more arcade like than the first. Even the dark and Witch infested Hard rain campaign felt light and silly. Maybe it was the lighting or the new infected fighting quad but it was easier to have fun in L4D2. The new team consisted of Coach(his friends call him Coach) a big black man usually the brains of the team, Ellis the redneck who always had an irrelevant story that was always annoyingly interrupted by others, Rochelle pretty much Zoey in a different color way, and Nick the angry white con man who always yelled at everyone.

Not a lot has changed between games. It is still a constant struggle of survival among the hordes of infected and things that always seem to need fuel. There are a handful of new infected to make your romp through the  maps that much more terrible. Jockeys, little toad-like infected who jump on your head and ride you around like a midget hooker making it difficult for teammates to shoot the little fucker off you, Spitters, stomach acid spitting infected who drain your health with incredible speed if you stand in their puddles for too long, and Chargers who do exactly what their name says, one giant arm to charge into you, pick you up and tenderize you to death on the ground. These combined with the original cast of infected, prove a worthy challenge. The maps are more varied as well, from a sugar cane factory to a carnival to a plantation house.

Gameplay wise it's the same as the first, traverse the land through infected hordes using the supplies you find along the way. Teamwork is key so this game wont be as enjoyable playing alone. The AI gets a bit dumb at times so at least one other human player would be highly beneficial. Though the AI does have ultra mega sight and can drop a zombie a mile away especially if you're playing Versus mode. Some of the guns feel weak compared to the newly added melee items. I found myself using a katana or machete way more than my gun since it doesn't need to reload and you don't have to worry about fatigue.

It's not just a new coat of paint to an existing game, it feels like a solid sequel. The PC community has also modded the complete hell out of the game so it makes it that much more great. There's nothing more satisfying that running around in a minecraft skin beating infected to death with a medieval mace.That coupled with the hefty amount of DLC out for the game makes it a very worthy and fun game to be added to your library. Plus right now you can find it for less that $15 so there's really no excuse.

Mass Effect In The Gaming Journalism World

The Mass Effect 3 ending debate has been a hot topic for the last few weeks, and throughout it's course it has reveal some interesting things. The main thing that has stuck out to me is the continued criticism and bile certain gaming sites and "journalist" aim towards those in favor of a change in ending.

Supporters of a new Mass Effect 3 have been called entitled, biodrones, babies and many other crude things by the writers who are suppose to be the voice of our culture. Of course, this could be easily traced back to money, who pays more for an opinion and what brings the most page views. This to me points out a very alarming point in our gaming world, the one with the deepest pockets controls the word. What ever happened to unbiased news reporting? There are a few reputable writers out there that even though they don't particularly agree with the supporters, they don't go calling them names, insulting their cause or injecting their personal feelings to a non-opinion article. Forbes has been pretty much the only unbiased, loud-spoken voice of reason during this whole debate. A business publication is more credible than a handful of the top visited gaming sites. That should not be the case.

Is our gaming culture that easily bought out by big companies that there has to be an outside source to report the facts without going off into a rant about how much they hate the cause in order to keep their endorsement? Of course, after all the negativity and what I can assume is a drop in site activity, many of the game journalist flipped to the support side just so they could say they do. That is not good journalism. Not only does it make us look like indecisive band-wagoners, it makes the genre in general seem like one big joke.

Video game "journalists" are people too with many varying opinions. They can both report a story and opine about it, that is one hundred percent true. However, when you go on a rant about how the opposing side should just "stop crying and get over it" you lose some of that trust the reader has instilled in you. You make yourself look like you don't really give a shit about what the other side has to say. I believe that there has to be a certain level of professionalism and finesse when you post your opinion on something controversial that gets people excited. You can not shut your ears to the other side.

We need to have people we can trust to be the flag carriers of our culture. The obelisk by which we stand proud and vocalize our thoughts without being talked down to. We shouldn't need to look to other sources for credibility, it needs to be from our own. As long as advertisement dollars are at stake though, I am afraid of the hill the gaming journalism is going down on. I hope that a few hold fast and keep themselves true or we're going to be in trouble.

Neverdead

Alright so I didn't know when to post this so I'll post it up here. I did NOT finish playing through this game BUT, I will tell you all why. Now then, Neverdead.

 When you mention Neverdead to people you are usually met with questions, "Does this mean we can't die in the game?" "What's the health system do?" "Who are you and why are you in my house with that notepad?" It wasn't a very widely known game and apparently, that's how the marketing department wanted it. It was developed by Rebellion Developments and published by Konami so you would think with a Konami backing it would have been at least slightly more on the radar.

In Neverdead, you play as an immortal demon called Bryce who can never die. I'll give you a second to collect your brain fragments if I just blew your mind. From the first moment of the game, he comes off as tired of roaming the earth, apathetic and snarky, very snarky. Think Dante from Devil May Cry turned up to eleven. There is a small interactive cutscene at the beginning which is apparently suppose to tell you a bit about his past but ends up confusing you. Something to do with a fat clown with eight pack abs and a very annoying voice. Fast forward to the present game time. You are introduced to Bryce's sassy and edgy female sidekick Arcadia. She can die. You can not. therein lies the catch to being an immortal killing machine. You need to protect her or you will lose. So after being tethered to your in-your-face sidekick who kicks open the door to your apartment and starts berating you to get to work, you set off to your first assignment.

So in a game where you can't die you're wondering how damage is dealt. Well your body parts can get blown off and you must collect them every time they do unless you have enough regeneration energy reserved to just regrow them. This might have sounded like a good idea on paper, and it is, but after playing for the two or three hours I dedicated to this game, every time my legs or arms got blown off I groaned mournfully and started to begrudgingly look for them. The body part mechanic is different from any other game but the fact that the slightest  hit from an enemy sends your arm or leg flying off across the screen makes the feature seem more like a chore. There are parts of the game that treat you like a pinball that force you to rip your head off and throw it through a vent or a seesaw mechanism to get through a specific part of the level. The problem is the frequency that this happens (It happens about 4 times in two hours) and the camera handle when you're just a head. You misjudge your jump and you have to do the entire bit over again because the camera didn't want to tilt in the right direction.

I need to address this very quickly because it seriously bothered me. Remember somewhere in that word wall up there when I said you couldn't die? Well I lied, I'm sorry. Usually that loss comes in the form of small, white, spiked balls that suck your head and body parts into their stomach when you get blown apart. Your arms or legs aren't too bad since you can just regrow them or kill it with your other arm but they usually go after your head if and when it gets blown off. If they suck you in you have one chance to get free in the form of a quick time event slider and if you fail, you are stuck forever being digested by it as Arcadia put it. They are in EVERY fight. You will not go into a room full of enemies and NOT see four or five of them rolling around. Some say it's for balance, I say it's to annoy the complete hell out of you when you have to do the room over again for the sixth time.

Characters? Alright fine. Bryce and Arcadia are annoying. Plain ans simple. The snap at each other every chance they get and you would think it gets better over time but nope, still annoying after the seventh hundred condescending joke. There is one character which I found way more interesting than Bryce and Arcadia and he's only shown very briefly at the end of the first level. I'll just say he has knives stuck in his body that never run out. Who knows though, maybe Bryce and Arcadia develop a deeper relationship throughout the game.

The guns in this game seem to be made out of cardboard and shoot gum wads because they are useless. There are gun upgrades but even when I added two to my perks list, my guns still didn't do much damage. Your best bet is Bryce's sword which controls with the right thumbstick weirdly enough. You need to flail it around for it to work which I found pretty ass backwards and gave me horrible flashbacks of Too Human's controls.

All things considered, the Neverdead concept sounds great but falls flat on it's face in execution. It needed that over the top feeling to it to make it truly stand out. I feel that if this license were handed to someone like Platinum Games they would make an incredibly kick-ass game. Right now it's a boring hack-and-slash game with a twisty story and a single golden idea. The game isn't bad it was just not very well fleshed out. Maybe my credibility is shot at the beginning where I said I couldn't finish the game but if it didn't grip me and keep me focused enough to push through, there is no point in playing on.

When is it time for a franchise to end?

Sequel on top of sequel, remakes and re-imaginings plentiful, the original, shining IP covered by a thick layer of bad mechanics, tired stories and unlikable characters.

A prime and obvious culprit would be Sonic. The first few games were incredible fun but then somehow SEGA got derailed into thinking we wanted to connect with the characters and Sonic needed more "friends". Sure, down the long line of sequels and remakes that Sonic has it managed to pull-off one or two great games but, what if it would've just stopped at a high point instead of the low bar it keeps tripping on every time now? Would we have demanded more of our lovable blue rodent or just admired it as a long lasting classic?

What I ask is, when is it time to let a franchise die?