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.