I get the feeling that I'm not the first person to make that joke. Red Dead Redemption is a Sandbox style game set in the Old West. It was released for the Playstation 3 May 2010. Developed by Rockstar San Diego and published by Rockstar Games. This is my first time playing and I don't think there's a difficulty setting so we'll call it "Normal Mode".
Considering the massive success of the Grand Theft Auto series (also developed by Rockstar) you should know how this game plays. The Sandbox genre has a lot of promise to it. You get a wide open space with lots of room to run around and a wide variety of things to do. Red Dead Redemption has all of that, the question is does it do them well?
The beginning of this game was painfully slow for me. We're introduced to our hero Mr. John Marston as he's being escorted to a train. He's being sent to the fictional state of New Austin to help clean up some local gang problems. You have to endure the train ride all the while listening in on two conversations. It's a long ride and nothing happens. I do recommend listening to the conversations as they do paint a pretty decent picture of how people behaved and thought back then.
I do find it amusing how much Mr. Marston stands out among the other people on the train. It's hard not to recognize him as an actual character. Everyone else is so dull looking and he's got a more "flamboyant" look to him. He doesn't look out of place, he just stands out.
Once you get to your destination you meet some guy and you go for a very long horse ride together. There's more conversation between the two but I don't really remember any of it. The ride is long and I kept waiting for something to happen. Nothing ever does.
You finally reach your destination, a place called Fort Mercer. Mr. Marston is here for one Bill Williamson. That means his name is actually William Williamson. Some people just have mean parents. Ft. Mercer is where some big bad group of outlaws is hanging out and I guess Bill is the leader of them. He doesn't really strike me as the gang leader type. The conversation is pretty brief. Mr. Marston wants to "save" Bill, Bill is happy being the leader of a dangerous gang. Marston gets shot. The end.
Sadly, you're awarded a trophy for this. Trophies/Achievements really do suck.
Your first 10 minutes or so of this game is just boring as can be. All you've learned is that Marston and Bill have a history and Marston is stupid enough to pull his gun on a Fort full of criminals. He really deserved to get shot. Thankfully the shot doesn't kill him and some nice lady comes and takes Marston away from the Fort where he's lying in the middle of the night.
Marston is out for three days, but he'll live and he'll recover pretty quickly after he wakes up. Your helper was a Bonnie McFarland Daughter of a ranch owner, she's full of spitfire. She's actually a pretty like-able character overall. I'm not fully sure for her reasons for saving Marston, but she's seems to an ally for the entire game. I'll find out more later on.
This is where you get your first mission, which is ride around the ranch with Bonnie. It was at this point that I was starting to get impatient. I wanted to actually do something interesting. All I've gotten for the last 20 minutes or so is story setup. Couldn't I have at least shot people at Ft. Mercer, but ultimately fallen in the end or something and then gotten rescued? But no, I have to endure boredom first.
Oh wait, that's right. I get to shoot some rabbits that are raiding the garden. Big whoopty-doo. Then I get to shoot some coyotes. A little more exciting then the rabbits, but only because you get to learn how to use your Dead Eye ability. Basically a "slow down time" "bullet time" effect that allows you to shoot more accurately. It's useful so get to know it.
Still not all that exciting so after the mission I randomly beat people up in town, then I stole someone horse. At least then I got chased by the Marshal, that was pretty interesting.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Heavenly Sword - Final Thoughts
Heavenly Sword is a games that ends just as it's really beginning. It's fairly short and fairly easy overall. The story is incomplete and the characters are not fully fleshed out. The action, gameplay, and story were finally starting to solidify when suddenly the game was over.
There are so many things that I still want to know about. What was up with the Raven? Where did the sword really come from? How did Kai initially escape the Flying Fox? Why did Shen think Nariko's birth was a bad omen? Why were all of Bohan's henchmen so stupid? I really feel like I only reached the halfway point in the game. I just hit a major plot twist, there should be more. Give me more!
The combat for the game feels unrefined. Most of the time I would just button mash my way to victory. Rarely did I really have to think about how to beat an enemy. Countering enemy attacks was very tricky so it was a part of the combat system I rarely relied on. I would have really liked a jump ability instead of the grab ability. Throwing items was used more for puzzle solving then fighting. If I actually took time to pick up an item during combat I normally found myself attacked and the item knocked out of my hands.
All of my complaints really come down to one thing. The game needs a sequel. The combat is good, but it could be better. Questions could be answered. Characters could be more fully realized.
Overall this is a game that I had a fun time with. The final fight was well worth the effort of playing through, but I wanted more along those lines. Since the game came out a few years ago I don't know if we'll ever see a sequel or if we'll have to wait for the inevitable revival that all titles seem to go through. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
So that's it. I don't have anything else to say. Good game but cut short. I've moved on to Red Dead Redemption. Got it recently as a gift. I've already played a little ways into it. Since it lacks actual levels my normal style of blog won't really work. I'll just talk about my overall impressions on the games various activities, story, characters, etc...
Until then.
There are so many things that I still want to know about. What was up with the Raven? Where did the sword really come from? How did Kai initially escape the Flying Fox? Why did Shen think Nariko's birth was a bad omen? Why were all of Bohan's henchmen so stupid? I really feel like I only reached the halfway point in the game. I just hit a major plot twist, there should be more. Give me more!
The combat for the game feels unrefined. Most of the time I would just button mash my way to victory. Rarely did I really have to think about how to beat an enemy. Countering enemy attacks was very tricky so it was a part of the combat system I rarely relied on. I would have really liked a jump ability instead of the grab ability. Throwing items was used more for puzzle solving then fighting. If I actually took time to pick up an item during combat I normally found myself attacked and the item knocked out of my hands.
All of my complaints really come down to one thing. The game needs a sequel. The combat is good, but it could be better. Questions could be answered. Characters could be more fully realized.
Overall this is a game that I had a fun time with. The final fight was well worth the effort of playing through, but I wanted more along those lines. Since the game came out a few years ago I don't know if we'll ever see a sequel or if we'll have to wait for the inevitable revival that all titles seem to go through. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
So that's it. I don't have anything else to say. Good game but cut short. I've moved on to Red Dead Redemption. Got it recently as a gift. I've already played a little ways into it. Since it lacks actual levels my normal style of blog won't really work. I'll just talk about my overall impressions on the games various activities, story, characters, etc...
Until then.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Heavenly Sword - It's Over 9000!
Chapter 5, the end of Heavenly Sword. It's actually quite a shame that the game ends here. I feel that it was finally hitting it's stride. But alas it does, and part of my is sad. The other part got a new game and has moved on in life. This is the shortest Chapter of the entire game.
This final Chapter really hits all of the final notes that you could want in the game. It revisits everything and does it's best to keep things interesting at the same time. You finally get to slaughter hundreds of enemy troops and show how much of a "badass" Nariko has become over the course of the game.
The Chapter starts with both Bohan and Shen giving speeches to rile up their troops. Shen's is a pretty typical one. But Bohan's speech is hilarious. He goes so far with his hate-mongering that he actually declares Nariko's people must die because he doesn't like their food. Yep, genocide must be committed over someone's diet. That's just low.
First, you have to fire the cannon again and blow up more catapult things. There are other distractions, such as guys rolling explosive barrels, but once the four catapults are down that section ends. You also need to destroy them before the wall takes too much damage. If the wall falls it's "mission failed" and you have to start over.
Next you have to escort Shen to some stairs. Thankfully Shen does not have a health bar. You only have to worry about Nariko's health. You fight some female assassins who are coming in on gliders. There's a lot of them and they like to randomly dodge your attacks and hit you while you're in the middle of your attack. My O attack really helped get me through this.
Then it's to the outside with Nariko. You're given a hand cannon and the goal to kill 500 troops. Use the cannon wisely. I had to do this section twice because I screwed up with the rockets. I dropped the cannon after only two shots. I only had 50ish people dead and I tried to take the rest out with normal attacks. I had about 475 people dead, but I couldn't refill my health so I eventually died. Second round went much better. I killed 350is with the cannon. Then liberal use of the O attack got me through the rest. I wish I had more time to use the cannon, because it is tons of fun to see 50 -100 people just go blowing into the air after a well placed shot.
Then you have to take out some catapults on foot. You have a time limit, but it's more then generous. You really just need to keep pressing towards the catapults until the prompts appear. Once the two catapults are down you have to rush back to the Fort and that's where the game started. Nariko has her life drained by the sword and she's sent to her own little Purgatory or something.
Once there Nariko yells at the camera, again. I've finally determined that she's actually yelling at the sword. I've also determined that the sword is testing her and seeing if she wants to live. I really like Nariko's argument that if she dies the sword "dies". It becomes a trophy behind glass never to be used again. The fact that she can appeal to the sword's ego impresses me, but she seems to strike a chord because the sword brings her back to life and she's all glow-y now! Yes, Nariko has gone Super Saiyan.
You're given one minute (or was it thirty seconds...) to slice down as many enemy troops as you can. Enemies fall like paper dolls now so go nuts. I recommend range attacks (768!).
Now I've talked before about my dislike of Bohan and how I don't find him to be an intimidating villain and now I know why. He's not the real bad guy of this game, the crow is. I thought the crow was Bohan's familiar, turns out the crow is actually some dark god/demon/monster/creature/wizard/pokemon. When Bohan sees his troops mutilated he begs the crow for power. Apparently the whole plot to get the sword was the crow's idea. Well, the crow gives Bohan power and finally I find Bohan to be intimidating and this last fight is long and hard.
We basically have two Gods meeting at the field of combat. It's the Heavenly Sword vs the Raven King and I love this fight. It's hard, it's challenging, it's tricky, it requires actual knowledge of the combat system and most important of all: IT'S NOT CHEAP! Bohan is a legitimately difficult battle without having to result to animation breaks, over powered attacks or one hit kills. I hope you've learned to fight because I lost this battle a lot.
There are three rounds against Bohan and each one is harder then the last, but I refused to put the game down until he was dead! Turns out that's not actually possible. I really recommend playing this game just for this fight alone. Screw the rest of it, the Raven King battle made me so happy and I could just squeal. Once Bohan is down in the third round it's game over and a surprisingly touching scene occurs.
First, the crow (I guess it's actually a raven) plucks out Bohans eyeballs and then abandons him. Nariko is prepared to finish Bohan off (I'm surprised he actually survived her final attack) when Roach suddenly appears begging for his Daddy's life. It's actually kinda touching. Bohan is relieved that Roach came to help him and Roach really does need his father. In a moment of Mercy, Nariko spares Bohan and allows Roach to take him. I really hope Bohan learns from this and doesn't try to plot his revenge or take out his anger on poor Roach. He would be dead without Roach.
The power from the sword is now too much for Nariko to maintain, she uses the power to heal Kai. She then begs Kai to hide the sword from the world declaring that the sword is evil and is not a heaven sent gift. Nariko then dies. Yep, the hero died at the end of this tale. There's no ambiguity about it. Kai says some stuff, but I wasn't really paying attention.
So the game is over, I'll give my final thoughts in my next post. Then it's off to the next game.
This final Chapter really hits all of the final notes that you could want in the game. It revisits everything and does it's best to keep things interesting at the same time. You finally get to slaughter hundreds of enemy troops and show how much of a "badass" Nariko has become over the course of the game.
The Chapter starts with both Bohan and Shen giving speeches to rile up their troops. Shen's is a pretty typical one. But Bohan's speech is hilarious. He goes so far with his hate-mongering that he actually declares Nariko's people must die because he doesn't like their food. Yep, genocide must be committed over someone's diet. That's just low.
First, you have to fire the cannon again and blow up more catapult things. There are other distractions, such as guys rolling explosive barrels, but once the four catapults are down that section ends. You also need to destroy them before the wall takes too much damage. If the wall falls it's "mission failed" and you have to start over.
Next you have to escort Shen to some stairs. Thankfully Shen does not have a health bar. You only have to worry about Nariko's health. You fight some female assassins who are coming in on gliders. There's a lot of them and they like to randomly dodge your attacks and hit you while you're in the middle of your attack. My O attack really helped get me through this.
Then it's to the outside with Nariko. You're given a hand cannon and the goal to kill 500 troops. Use the cannon wisely. I had to do this section twice because I screwed up with the rockets. I dropped the cannon after only two shots. I only had 50ish people dead and I tried to take the rest out with normal attacks. I had about 475 people dead, but I couldn't refill my health so I eventually died. Second round went much better. I killed 350is with the cannon. Then liberal use of the O attack got me through the rest. I wish I had more time to use the cannon, because it is tons of fun to see 50 -100 people just go blowing into the air after a well placed shot.
Then you have to take out some catapults on foot. You have a time limit, but it's more then generous. You really just need to keep pressing towards the catapults until the prompts appear. Once the two catapults are down you have to rush back to the Fort and that's where the game started. Nariko has her life drained by the sword and she's sent to her own little Purgatory or something.
Once there Nariko yells at the camera, again. I've finally determined that she's actually yelling at the sword. I've also determined that the sword is testing her and seeing if she wants to live. I really like Nariko's argument that if she dies the sword "dies". It becomes a trophy behind glass never to be used again. The fact that she can appeal to the sword's ego impresses me, but she seems to strike a chord because the sword brings her back to life and she's all glow-y now! Yes, Nariko has gone Super Saiyan.
You're given one minute (or was it thirty seconds...) to slice down as many enemy troops as you can. Enemies fall like paper dolls now so go nuts. I recommend range attacks (768!).
Now I've talked before about my dislike of Bohan and how I don't find him to be an intimidating villain and now I know why. He's not the real bad guy of this game, the crow is. I thought the crow was Bohan's familiar, turns out the crow is actually some dark god/demon/monster/creature/wizard/pokemon. When Bohan sees his troops mutilated he begs the crow for power. Apparently the whole plot to get the sword was the crow's idea. Well, the crow gives Bohan power and finally I find Bohan to be intimidating and this last fight is long and hard.
We basically have two Gods meeting at the field of combat. It's the Heavenly Sword vs the Raven King and I love this fight. It's hard, it's challenging, it's tricky, it requires actual knowledge of the combat system and most important of all: IT'S NOT CHEAP! Bohan is a legitimately difficult battle without having to result to animation breaks, over powered attacks or one hit kills. I hope you've learned to fight because I lost this battle a lot.
There are three rounds against Bohan and each one is harder then the last, but I refused to put the game down until he was dead! Turns out that's not actually possible. I really recommend playing this game just for this fight alone. Screw the rest of it, the Raven King battle made me so happy and I could just squeal. Once Bohan is down in the third round it's game over and a surprisingly touching scene occurs.
First, the crow (I guess it's actually a raven) plucks out Bohans eyeballs and then abandons him. Nariko is prepared to finish Bohan off (I'm surprised he actually survived her final attack) when Roach suddenly appears begging for his Daddy's life. It's actually kinda touching. Bohan is relieved that Roach came to help him and Roach really does need his father. In a moment of Mercy, Nariko spares Bohan and allows Roach to take him. I really hope Bohan learns from this and doesn't try to plot his revenge or take out his anger on poor Roach. He would be dead without Roach.
The power from the sword is now too much for Nariko to maintain, she uses the power to heal Kai. She then begs Kai to hide the sword from the world declaring that the sword is evil and is not a heaven sent gift. Nariko then dies. Yep, the hero died at the end of this tale. There's no ambiguity about it. Kai says some stuff, but I wasn't really paying attention.
So the game is over, I'll give my final thoughts in my next post. Then it's off to the next game.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Heavenly Sword - Chasing The Stupid Peacock
*There's a poll up. Go vote for what I'll play next.*
To get started, I don't think Nariko is actually alive. I think she died years ago and some bizarre snake demon possessed her dead body. Do you need proof? Just look at that hair of hers (that's actually the demon). Her hair is having constant seizures and it might just be the most dangerous object in the game. My wife has long hair and she complains that it sometimes gives her headaches. Nariko has MASSIVE amounts of hair and it wiggles randomly. Her head/neck must be killing her. But she never complains about it because her body doesn't actually feel pain, because she's dead. If you just shaved off her hair her body would collapse because the demon would no longer be in control. It all makes sense now.
Chapter 4 is all about Flying Fox. He's been told to kill Kai and Nariko needs to prevent this. So she'll spend most of the level chasing him and fighting through hoards of annoying enemies. It was this section where combat started to become very frustrating especially as I watched enemies randomly ignore my attacks to hit me. This can be extremely aggravating against the heavy-type enemies you encounter in this level. I'll be hitting them and they'll suddenly just launch into an attack that nails me.
Nariko's dodge maneuver doesn't actually take her far enough out of the way of combat. When I'm playing God of War, I know that if Kratos dodges that I'll be okay and I have moment to re-orientate myself. When Nariko dodges I need to keep hitting to right thumbstick so she'll dodge again, this way she might actually be out of harm's way for a moment. Making it worse is if I take a hit, I'm probably going to have to take the enemies entire combo before I have enough control back to block/counter/dodge.
To add to the confusion I'm not sure if my attacks can or cannot stop an enemy attack. I wonder this because sometimes they do and sometimes they don't and I'm not seeing an overall pattern to it. And the heavy-hammer wielding suck. I did find it useful to throw a body into their mist knocking them over and then I'd stab them. Again, it was frustrating to have to wait for the ragdoll physics to stop before I could stab them. They're on the ground, let me kill them already!
There are some ninja/assassin enemies that show up too, but those guys are wimps. Really easy to take them down so don't worry about them.
There's a section where you have to fight more of Roach's pets (turns out they're orangutans). You get to use a rocket and you better make sure your shots count. If you don't kill mass amounts of them with the rocket you can easily find yourself surrounded by a large number of these guys. I recommend throwing a body into their midst to knock them over and then stab them while they're still on the ground.
When you finally catch up to Kai and the Stupid Peacock it appears that you're too late. Peacock has a rope around Kai's neck and then drop her from a pretty amazing height. Being able to fly has that advantage. Looks like Kai's dead. Boss battle against Stupid Peacock then occurs.
Peacock himself isn't that hard to fight, especially if you stay on top of him. He will do two things that make this fight tricky. First, while flying around the arena he'll throw a projectile at you, you need to counter this. Once properly countered you can control the projectile and hit him with if for decent damage. This can be tricky to properly counter though. You can also use these to nail some health containers around the outer arena but those are fairly hard shots and you have to be properly lined up the moment you deflect the projectile to nail them.
His second, and far more annoying trick, is making clones of himself. I'm still not sure what makes the clones vanish. Some clones would apparently get bored and leave while others would hang around taking pretty significant damage. He'll call these guys in on a regular basis once you reach his second health bar. When you reach his third health bar he'll call in 10 clones to harass you. I got through this, but I'm still not sure why the clones would vanish.
Once all 10 clones are down Nariko's part in the fight is over. Big reveal: Kai is still alive and she's still holding her crossbow thing. You get to play as Kai for a moment. You have a limited amount of time to find Flying Fox and shoot him with an arrow. One hit and it's battle over, Stupid Peacock is dead. Man this guy was a lame enemy. He dies talking about how the battle had style, like you actually care.
Chapter ends with Nariko carrying Kai back to her clansmen. Kai will survive, so if you like Kai you can cheer and if you hated Kai you can just pretend that she actually died.
I do think that Kai should have died, it would've had more impact on how Nariko is living her life. Remember that Kai is basically an innocent. Even when she's killing people it has to be justified as a game to her. If Kai died that would mean that Nariko used Kai as a tool for her own selfish ambition. That would've been a great lesson for Nariko to learn. Instead Kai gets to live and Nariko only has to feel sorry for almost killing Kai.
Nariko was apparently followed by a crow. The crow is some kind of familiar for King Bohan. Nariko yells at the crow to tell it's master they they're ready for him. This sets up the final battle. I assume that next time I'll be typing about the final battle.
To get started, I don't think Nariko is actually alive. I think she died years ago and some bizarre snake demon possessed her dead body. Do you need proof? Just look at that hair of hers (that's actually the demon). Her hair is having constant seizures and it might just be the most dangerous object in the game. My wife has long hair and she complains that it sometimes gives her headaches. Nariko has MASSIVE amounts of hair and it wiggles randomly. Her head/neck must be killing her. But she never complains about it because her body doesn't actually feel pain, because she's dead. If you just shaved off her hair her body would collapse because the demon would no longer be in control. It all makes sense now.
Chapter 4 is all about Flying Fox. He's been told to kill Kai and Nariko needs to prevent this. So she'll spend most of the level chasing him and fighting through hoards of annoying enemies. It was this section where combat started to become very frustrating especially as I watched enemies randomly ignore my attacks to hit me. This can be extremely aggravating against the heavy-type enemies you encounter in this level. I'll be hitting them and they'll suddenly just launch into an attack that nails me.
Nariko's dodge maneuver doesn't actually take her far enough out of the way of combat. When I'm playing God of War, I know that if Kratos dodges that I'll be okay and I have moment to re-orientate myself. When Nariko dodges I need to keep hitting to right thumbstick so she'll dodge again, this way she might actually be out of harm's way for a moment. Making it worse is if I take a hit, I'm probably going to have to take the enemies entire combo before I have enough control back to block/counter/dodge.
To add to the confusion I'm not sure if my attacks can or cannot stop an enemy attack. I wonder this because sometimes they do and sometimes they don't and I'm not seeing an overall pattern to it. And the heavy-hammer wielding suck. I did find it useful to throw a body into their mist knocking them over and then I'd stab them. Again, it was frustrating to have to wait for the ragdoll physics to stop before I could stab them. They're on the ground, let me kill them already!
There are some ninja/assassin enemies that show up too, but those guys are wimps. Really easy to take them down so don't worry about them.
There's a section where you have to fight more of Roach's pets (turns out they're orangutans). You get to use a rocket and you better make sure your shots count. If you don't kill mass amounts of them with the rocket you can easily find yourself surrounded by a large number of these guys. I recommend throwing a body into their midst to knock them over and then stab them while they're still on the ground.
When you finally catch up to Kai and the Stupid Peacock it appears that you're too late. Peacock has a rope around Kai's neck and then drop her from a pretty amazing height. Being able to fly has that advantage. Looks like Kai's dead. Boss battle against Stupid Peacock then occurs.
Peacock himself isn't that hard to fight, especially if you stay on top of him. He will do two things that make this fight tricky. First, while flying around the arena he'll throw a projectile at you, you need to counter this. Once properly countered you can control the projectile and hit him with if for decent damage. This can be tricky to properly counter though. You can also use these to nail some health containers around the outer arena but those are fairly hard shots and you have to be properly lined up the moment you deflect the projectile to nail them.
His second, and far more annoying trick, is making clones of himself. I'm still not sure what makes the clones vanish. Some clones would apparently get bored and leave while others would hang around taking pretty significant damage. He'll call these guys in on a regular basis once you reach his second health bar. When you reach his third health bar he'll call in 10 clones to harass you. I got through this, but I'm still not sure why the clones would vanish.
Once all 10 clones are down Nariko's part in the fight is over. Big reveal: Kai is still alive and she's still holding her crossbow thing. You get to play as Kai for a moment. You have a limited amount of time to find Flying Fox and shoot him with an arrow. One hit and it's battle over, Stupid Peacock is dead. Man this guy was a lame enemy. He dies talking about how the battle had style, like you actually care.
Chapter ends with Nariko carrying Kai back to her clansmen. Kai will survive, so if you like Kai you can cheer and if you hated Kai you can just pretend that she actually died.
I do think that Kai should have died, it would've had more impact on how Nariko is living her life. Remember that Kai is basically an innocent. Even when she's killing people it has to be justified as a game to her. If Kai died that would mean that Nariko used Kai as a tool for her own selfish ambition. That would've been a great lesson for Nariko to learn. Instead Kai gets to live and Nariko only has to feel sorry for almost killing Kai.
Nariko was apparently followed by a crow. The crow is some kind of familiar for King Bohan. Nariko yells at the crow to tell it's master they they're ready for him. This sets up the final battle. I assume that next time I'll be typing about the final battle.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Explodemon - The Big Boom Demo
I downloaded the demo for Explodemon. Before I begin I know that there's some controversy with this game. There was this other game called Explosion Man, or is it just 'Splosion Man? Google will give you both results. The two games are fairly similar and rely on the same concepts. I've never played 'Splosion Man. I never liked the look of it. But Explodemon had my interest and so I checked it out.
On some random far away planet, aliens are conquering the people. Normally some Guardians would appear to save the day, but for some reason they are not answering the summons. Only one Guardian remains but the guy in charge refuses to release him from cryogenic storage. Now there is no initial explanation for why this last Guardian won't be released, I found that a little odd.
Thankfully the aliens do it for you. Their attack nails the cryogenic building where the last Guardian is being kept. Big surprise, the last Guardian is Explodemon. Explodemon does just that, explodes and he'll do it at any given opportunity or he'll just do it randomly. Explains why the guys in charge didn't want him released. The amount of collateral damage could be catastrophic.
Explodemon looks like a recycled Mega Man X character. For me, that works in his favor. I love the Mega Man series, especially the X games. I keep hoping we'll see Mega Man X9 as a downloadable title. Explodemon also talks in very broken engrish. Personally I give him a Russian accent. The writing for the game is excellent. It's got a bit of self-depricating, tongue-in-cheek snark going for it.
Game is spot on. The explosion mechanic works nicely and you actually have a variety of attacks at your disposal. There's the dash, normal explosion, close explosion, a multi-explosion. All of them are very worth checking out and learning how to properly use. Level design is great and learning that Explodemon can slide down walls actually opened up more of the level for exploration. There are hidden collectibles in complicated to get to areas.
It's great to see a platformer like this. Platformers are almost a dying breed now days, but they're one of my favorite genres. Hopefully this means that they'll make a come back.
Anyways I recommend checking out Explodemon and then buying it. I really hope to see more of this guy in the future. Not to keen on a second 'Splosion Man though. I still don't dig the look of that game.
For more info on what happened with Explodemon and 'Splosion Man check out the blog of Jonathan Biddle, one of the designers for Explodemon.
On some random far away planet, aliens are conquering the people. Normally some Guardians would appear to save the day, but for some reason they are not answering the summons. Only one Guardian remains but the guy in charge refuses to release him from cryogenic storage. Now there is no initial explanation for why this last Guardian won't be released, I found that a little odd.
Thankfully the aliens do it for you. Their attack nails the cryogenic building where the last Guardian is being kept. Big surprise, the last Guardian is Explodemon. Explodemon does just that, explodes and he'll do it at any given opportunity or he'll just do it randomly. Explains why the guys in charge didn't want him released. The amount of collateral damage could be catastrophic.
Explodemon looks like a recycled Mega Man X character. For me, that works in his favor. I love the Mega Man series, especially the X games. I keep hoping we'll see Mega Man X9 as a downloadable title. Explodemon also talks in very broken engrish. Personally I give him a Russian accent. The writing for the game is excellent. It's got a bit of self-depricating, tongue-in-cheek snark going for it.
Game is spot on. The explosion mechanic works nicely and you actually have a variety of attacks at your disposal. There's the dash, normal explosion, close explosion, a multi-explosion. All of them are very worth checking out and learning how to properly use. Level design is great and learning that Explodemon can slide down walls actually opened up more of the level for exploration. There are hidden collectibles in complicated to get to areas.
It's great to see a platformer like this. Platformers are almost a dying breed now days, but they're one of my favorite genres. Hopefully this means that they'll make a come back.
Anyways I recommend checking out Explodemon and then buying it. I really hope to see more of this guy in the future. Not to keen on a second 'Splosion Man though. I still don't dig the look of that game.
For more info on what happened with Explodemon and 'Splosion Man check out the blog of Jonathan Biddle, one of the designers for Explodemon.
Heavenly Sword - It's All About Kai
Well that's not completely true. It's really 90 - 95% about Kai. Nariko is around, just not for much of the Chapter. We do get to learn a little bit about Kai's backstory, but I have to admit that I was underwhelmed by the reveal.
Since the last Chapter ended with Nariko being captured you get to play as Kai for the majority of Chapter 3. Kai is mobile now so you can actually run around the level. Kai's main weapon is still that super-powered crossbow thing of hers. Playing as Kai sets up a different change of pace that's partially a breath of fresh air and partially annoying. Then again, that's the way this game seems to work. It likes to teeter on the verge of greatness.
Most of the Chapter deals with enemies running at Kai from long distances or standing on far away ledges. Both options gives Kai a chance to use her bow efficiently and if enemies get to close, Kai has some options. First Kai can jump over obstacles. She can't just jump whenever she wants, but if you run up to a pile of debris Kai will vault it allowing you to put distance between you and the enemy. Second is that Kai can grab a close enemy and momentarily stun them, again. allowing her to get away. So Kai play pretty defensively.
Kai's first goal is to find Nariko. Upon doing so Nariko begs Kai to recover the Heavenly Sword for her. Since learning about her father Nariko now feels all alone. Kai understands, apparently she was alone at some point in time. She was so hungry that she ate cockroaches to survive. That's just nasty. It wasn't until Nariko found her that Kai had a home again. So Kai decides to help Nariko, if only so Nariko won't be alone.
There are some massive shooting sections in here and I had no idea that this game was a cover shooter. Kai has to hide behind walls and such to avoid getting turned into a pincushion by the large amount of archers that appear. It's great since the cover will slowly deteriorate forcing you to move. Kai can also light her arrows on fire by shooting them through flames. A flaming arrow can then be used to ignite red barrels for some pretty sweet explosions.
It's really the end of the Chapter that makes no sense to me. Kai can't reach the armory where the sword is kept without a password. To get the password Kai has to talk to the Captain in the West Tower. She's very politely given the basic instructions. So when guards come in to try to kill her I'm not expecting it.
Getting the password is actually kinda fun. First the Captain hides in a room full of fireworks. Kai has to pull off a flaming arrow shot into the building to set off the fireworks that amazingly enough don't kill the Captain. The Captain then refuses to give Kai the password until she threatens to shoot him in his weak spot (crotch) for "MASSIVE DAMAGE!" Her words, not mine. Turns out the password is monkey-peaches.
Kai gives the password to the guard to the armory who then starts yelling "Intruder Alert!" But he was only kidding. Once through the door it's a long gondola ride to the armory. Consider this Kai's big boss fight section. I'm guessing the guard actually did sound the intruder alert because a scores of guards start appearing and shooting Kai while she's in the gondola. Take out what you can and quickly because they will slowly destroy the gondola. Eventually Kai ends up hanging upside down on the gondola remains, still shooting at guards to reach her destination. The armory.
I would call the armory more of a trophy room. Kai grabs the sword, but then she notices a body. Yes, a body in the armory. Turns out the body is Kai's mom. Her mom tried to hide her when she was young. Someone was slaughtering their entire clan and Kai's mom wanted her to live. Guess who the culprit was that slaughtered her clan? It was the Stupid Peacock! AKA: Flying Fox. I lost all sympathy right there. Flying Fox is a moron. If he killed Kai's entire clan that means that natural selection actually got them. Flying Fox just happened to be in the same area.
So Stupid Peacock shows up in the armory. Kai doesn't fight him, she just runs away with the sword in tow. I'm curious where she went since the path she used to get to the armory (the gondola) was destroyed.
Meanwhile Nariko has to fight in some sort of deathmatch in an arena. First she has to fight her clansmen, but you can choose whether to kill them or just knock them out. Just watch your button prompts. I actually saved more then I killed.
Then you have to fight Roach's pets. You only fight one at first and it's a really easy fight. Keep in mind that Nariko is without the Heavenly Sword so she can't use her stances. Once that single pet goes down it looks like 6+ are then unleashed to kill her. After Nariko takes some hits Kai shows up with the sword. How the hell did Kai get there?! She was completely blocked off!
Kai then gives Nariko the sword and the fight becomes a lot easier, stances are back. King Bohan then orders Roach to kill Nariko and get back the sword. Considering the reveal that Kai had to live off of cockroaches I thought that Kai might have to fight Roach, but no, this is a Nariko battle. A very easy one too. Roach telegraphs every one of his attacks by about a mile. His easy to avoid and it's easy to cause him massive damage.
Now Roach worships his dad, King Bohan. King Bohan just uses Roach as muscle. So when Roach is losing Bohan taunts and insults his kid. Emotionally this crushes Roach who no longer has the will to fight. Nariko actually takes pity on Roach and chooses not to kill him. Nariko leaves the arena with the sword and the Chapter ends.
So I'm actually out to just kill a big bully. That's all Bohan is, a bully. He's not really a sadistic madman. He just likes to push people around to make himself feel big. I think this bully needs a swirly.
Since the last Chapter ended with Nariko being captured you get to play as Kai for the majority of Chapter 3. Kai is mobile now so you can actually run around the level. Kai's main weapon is still that super-powered crossbow thing of hers. Playing as Kai sets up a different change of pace that's partially a breath of fresh air and partially annoying. Then again, that's the way this game seems to work. It likes to teeter on the verge of greatness.
Most of the Chapter deals with enemies running at Kai from long distances or standing on far away ledges. Both options gives Kai a chance to use her bow efficiently and if enemies get to close, Kai has some options. First Kai can jump over obstacles. She can't just jump whenever she wants, but if you run up to a pile of debris Kai will vault it allowing you to put distance between you and the enemy. Second is that Kai can grab a close enemy and momentarily stun them, again. allowing her to get away. So Kai play pretty defensively.
Kai's first goal is to find Nariko. Upon doing so Nariko begs Kai to recover the Heavenly Sword for her. Since learning about her father Nariko now feels all alone. Kai understands, apparently she was alone at some point in time. She was so hungry that she ate cockroaches to survive. That's just nasty. It wasn't until Nariko found her that Kai had a home again. So Kai decides to help Nariko, if only so Nariko won't be alone.
There are some massive shooting sections in here and I had no idea that this game was a cover shooter. Kai has to hide behind walls and such to avoid getting turned into a pincushion by the large amount of archers that appear. It's great since the cover will slowly deteriorate forcing you to move. Kai can also light her arrows on fire by shooting them through flames. A flaming arrow can then be used to ignite red barrels for some pretty sweet explosions.
It's really the end of the Chapter that makes no sense to me. Kai can't reach the armory where the sword is kept without a password. To get the password Kai has to talk to the Captain in the West Tower. She's very politely given the basic instructions. So when guards come in to try to kill her I'm not expecting it.
Getting the password is actually kinda fun. First the Captain hides in a room full of fireworks. Kai has to pull off a flaming arrow shot into the building to set off the fireworks that amazingly enough don't kill the Captain. The Captain then refuses to give Kai the password until she threatens to shoot him in his weak spot (crotch) for "MASSIVE DAMAGE!" Her words, not mine. Turns out the password is monkey-peaches.
Kai gives the password to the guard to the armory who then starts yelling "Intruder Alert!" But he was only kidding. Once through the door it's a long gondola ride to the armory. Consider this Kai's big boss fight section. I'm guessing the guard actually did sound the intruder alert because a scores of guards start appearing and shooting Kai while she's in the gondola. Take out what you can and quickly because they will slowly destroy the gondola. Eventually Kai ends up hanging upside down on the gondola remains, still shooting at guards to reach her destination. The armory.
I would call the armory more of a trophy room. Kai grabs the sword, but then she notices a body. Yes, a body in the armory. Turns out the body is Kai's mom. Her mom tried to hide her when she was young. Someone was slaughtering their entire clan and Kai's mom wanted her to live. Guess who the culprit was that slaughtered her clan? It was the Stupid Peacock! AKA: Flying Fox. I lost all sympathy right there. Flying Fox is a moron. If he killed Kai's entire clan that means that natural selection actually got them. Flying Fox just happened to be in the same area.
So Stupid Peacock shows up in the armory. Kai doesn't fight him, she just runs away with the sword in tow. I'm curious where she went since the path she used to get to the armory (the gondola) was destroyed.
Meanwhile Nariko has to fight in some sort of deathmatch in an arena. First she has to fight her clansmen, but you can choose whether to kill them or just knock them out. Just watch your button prompts. I actually saved more then I killed.
Then you have to fight Roach's pets. You only fight one at first and it's a really easy fight. Keep in mind that Nariko is without the Heavenly Sword so she can't use her stances. Once that single pet goes down it looks like 6+ are then unleashed to kill her. After Nariko takes some hits Kai shows up with the sword. How the hell did Kai get there?! She was completely blocked off!
Kai then gives Nariko the sword and the fight becomes a lot easier, stances are back. King Bohan then orders Roach to kill Nariko and get back the sword. Considering the reveal that Kai had to live off of cockroaches I thought that Kai might have to fight Roach, but no, this is a Nariko battle. A very easy one too. Roach telegraphs every one of his attacks by about a mile. His easy to avoid and it's easy to cause him massive damage.
Now Roach worships his dad, King Bohan. King Bohan just uses Roach as muscle. So when Roach is losing Bohan taunts and insults his kid. Emotionally this crushes Roach who no longer has the will to fight. Nariko actually takes pity on Roach and chooses not to kill him. Nariko leaves the arena with the sword and the Chapter ends.
So I'm actually out to just kill a big bully. That's all Bohan is, a bully. He's not really a sadistic madman. He just likes to push people around to make himself feel big. I think this bully needs a swirly.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Heavenly Sword - Stupidest. Henchmen. Ever.
Have you ever watched the original Ninja Turtles cartoon? The main villain was a guy named Shredder. He had two henchmen, Bebop and Rocksteady. They were both morons. The difference here is that Bebop and Rocksteady were supposed to be morons. King Bohan's henchmen are supposed to be competent warriors. Only one of them is supposed to be a "moron". Instead all three of them are morons.
At the end of Capter 1 you finally use the Heavenly Sword. Here Nariko gets to use what is referred to as stances. She has her normal stance (using attacks buttons normally), ranged stance (pressing L1 while attacking), and heavy (strong?) stance (pressing R1 while attacking). This actually makes combat far more interesting yet cheap at the exact same time. Normal stance can only block Normal attacks and the Heavy stance can only block heavy attacks. Rnaged attacks only block during specific occasions so far. The issues I have is that enemies seem to randomly change attack styles to hit you. The same attack can be used in Normal or Heavy stance which makes it hard to guess which attack type to block against. It really sucks if three guys are attacking you in Normal and then someone suddenly throws in a Heavy.
In-between Chapters Narkio speaks to the player again. She complains that I have made her a killer. I would like to point out that she killed 700+ people on her own before she actually used the sword so she should just stop whining!
Chapter 2 has you battle 2 different bosses. This is where my first paragraph comes into play. First you will encounter the Flying Fox. I prefer to call him the Stupid Peacock instead. He primps, he preens, he moves like a chicken, he has an annoyingly nasally voice and he isn't scary in the slightest. I was actually doing just fine against him until I encountered the Quick Time Event. Thanks for the warning by way. These QTEs are kinda nice in that if you screw up you can recover. I seem to fail the first time round because I'm not expecting the QTE to occur. So I had to repeat it.
It's not a hard fight and I can't take the guy seriously. He declares Nariko isn't strong enough to entertain him yet so he leaves. I felt like I just wasted 10ish minutes.
Shortly afterwards a cutscene occurs where Bohan is addressing Flying Fox and his other two henchmen Whiptail and Roach. Whiptail is some bizarre snake lady. She really reminds me of Jennifer Coolidge. The final henchman you actually saw a snippet of earlier and that's Roach. Roach is the big, dumb guy. I hate the big, dumb guy. It's a character that I have never, ever liked. Roach also happens to be King Bohan's illegitimate son. Roach worships Daddy, but Daddy can't stand Roach.
The cutscene with these three is just moronic. I don't really know how else to describe it. They argue, they bicker, they insult each other. King Bohan stares at them like a moron with no thoughts in his brain. He also seems to like Flying Fox even though he yells at Fox for failing to get the sword. It's just dumb. Would I be scared to in the same room as these four? Yes. But only because I think they might eat me, not because I actually fear them. These aren't villains you love to hate. They're just villains who you hate. I want to kill them so they're out of the storyline.
Thankfully I get that chance. At the end of Chapter 2 you get to fight Whiptail. This is an okay fight, but the fixed camera angle can really screw you over. You fight Whiptail in a long canal and the camera focuses on her. Now if Whiptail gets to close one of the back walls while in close vicinity to Nariko, the camera will jump back and forth between angles making it very hard to see what's going on. QA really should have been on top of this and design should have found a way to fix it. Give it to the tech team if you have to.
At the start of the battle Nariko rescues Shen, her father. Nariko is also told that Shen tried to kill her when she was just born. Shen confirms this. Nariko turns her back on her father and her clan at this point. Basically the only she has for living is killing Bohan. The dialogue between Nariko and Whiptail is great. Whiptail keeps trying to provoke Nariko and Nariko keeps throwing it right back. Now I'm starting to like Nariko.
There's a Kai shooting section here that I want to talk about. To me, this should have been the tutorial level for using Kai. Kai has to protect Shen while he walks, injured, down a long bridge. I actually found this section to be a little fun. The enemies come one at a time early on giving you a chance to really learn the bow. You also have plenty of room to shoot the enemies. The difficulty slowly escalates at an appropriate level. Eventually more enemies start appearing at the same time and you have to adjust how you fight. It's really well done.
Back to Nariko's battle (Kai's section actually interrupts Nariko's battle with Whiptail). When the fight ends Whiptail goes down with the sword through her. Problem is Nariko is also knocked out. It's actually King Bohan who finishes off Whiptail by snapping her neck. While I doubt Whiptail would have recovered from her injuries, Bohan snaps her neck and finishes the job. Bohan then claims the sword and Nariko is taken prisoner. End Chapter.
I actually don't remember what Nariko said this time and I don't really care. Chapter 3 is up next.
At the end of Capter 1 you finally use the Heavenly Sword. Here Nariko gets to use what is referred to as stances. She has her normal stance (using attacks buttons normally), ranged stance (pressing L1 while attacking), and heavy (strong?) stance (pressing R1 while attacking). This actually makes combat far more interesting yet cheap at the exact same time. Normal stance can only block Normal attacks and the Heavy stance can only block heavy attacks. Rnaged attacks only block during specific occasions so far. The issues I have is that enemies seem to randomly change attack styles to hit you. The same attack can be used in Normal or Heavy stance which makes it hard to guess which attack type to block against. It really sucks if three guys are attacking you in Normal and then someone suddenly throws in a Heavy.
In-between Chapters Narkio speaks to the player again. She complains that I have made her a killer. I would like to point out that she killed 700+ people on her own before she actually used the sword so she should just stop whining!
Chapter 2 has you battle 2 different bosses. This is where my first paragraph comes into play. First you will encounter the Flying Fox. I prefer to call him the Stupid Peacock instead. He primps, he preens, he moves like a chicken, he has an annoyingly nasally voice and he isn't scary in the slightest. I was actually doing just fine against him until I encountered the Quick Time Event. Thanks for the warning by way. These QTEs are kinda nice in that if you screw up you can recover. I seem to fail the first time round because I'm not expecting the QTE to occur. So I had to repeat it.
It's not a hard fight and I can't take the guy seriously. He declares Nariko isn't strong enough to entertain him yet so he leaves. I felt like I just wasted 10ish minutes.
Shortly afterwards a cutscene occurs where Bohan is addressing Flying Fox and his other two henchmen Whiptail and Roach. Whiptail is some bizarre snake lady. She really reminds me of Jennifer Coolidge. The final henchman you actually saw a snippet of earlier and that's Roach. Roach is the big, dumb guy. I hate the big, dumb guy. It's a character that I have never, ever liked. Roach also happens to be King Bohan's illegitimate son. Roach worships Daddy, but Daddy can't stand Roach.
The cutscene with these three is just moronic. I don't really know how else to describe it. They argue, they bicker, they insult each other. King Bohan stares at them like a moron with no thoughts in his brain. He also seems to like Flying Fox even though he yells at Fox for failing to get the sword. It's just dumb. Would I be scared to in the same room as these four? Yes. But only because I think they might eat me, not because I actually fear them. These aren't villains you love to hate. They're just villains who you hate. I want to kill them so they're out of the storyline.
Thankfully I get that chance. At the end of Chapter 2 you get to fight Whiptail. This is an okay fight, but the fixed camera angle can really screw you over. You fight Whiptail in a long canal and the camera focuses on her. Now if Whiptail gets to close one of the back walls while in close vicinity to Nariko, the camera will jump back and forth between angles making it very hard to see what's going on. QA really should have been on top of this and design should have found a way to fix it. Give it to the tech team if you have to.
At the start of the battle Nariko rescues Shen, her father. Nariko is also told that Shen tried to kill her when she was just born. Shen confirms this. Nariko turns her back on her father and her clan at this point. Basically the only she has for living is killing Bohan. The dialogue between Nariko and Whiptail is great. Whiptail keeps trying to provoke Nariko and Nariko keeps throwing it right back. Now I'm starting to like Nariko.
There's a Kai shooting section here that I want to talk about. To me, this should have been the tutorial level for using Kai. Kai has to protect Shen while he walks, injured, down a long bridge. I actually found this section to be a little fun. The enemies come one at a time early on giving you a chance to really learn the bow. You also have plenty of room to shoot the enemies. The difficulty slowly escalates at an appropriate level. Eventually more enemies start appearing at the same time and you have to adjust how you fight. It's really well done.
Back to Nariko's battle (Kai's section actually interrupts Nariko's battle with Whiptail). When the fight ends Whiptail goes down with the sword through her. Problem is Nariko is also knocked out. It's actually King Bohan who finishes off Whiptail by snapping her neck. While I doubt Whiptail would have recovered from her injuries, Bohan snaps her neck and finishes the job. Bohan then claims the sword and Nariko is taken prisoner. End Chapter.
I actually don't remember what Nariko said this time and I don't really care. Chapter 3 is up next.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Heavenly Sword - Do I, Don't I?
Heavenly Sword feels like a game that I want to like. The combat is fun. The story has me slightly intrigued. The characters are unique. But at the same time I want to dislike it. Enemies are cheap and that can make combat a mess. The story seems to be wandering. The characters are annoying. Many of the design choices just don't quite work. I hate when a game seems so close to it's goal only to be held back by so many issues.
I still can't connect with Nariko and I don't think I ever will. I definitely can't connect with her father, Shen. Kai just makes me wish she would go away and never come back. I know that Kai is "simple", but I don't like her.
So Nariko's clan is under attack. What's left of the clan stays the night at some fort looking place. This is really your introduction level and it works pretty nicely. You get to run up and down ladders and slaughter bad guys. Combat proves itself to be enjoyable, but it's not deep yet. I don't have to worry about that too much though, the combat depth I desire will come later.
Now I get introduced to two annoying aspects of the game. The first is Kai. Like I mentioned Kai is "simple". She's basically an innocent. I have no idea why she's like this but I do hope it's explained later on. Kai is supposed to be fun, cute (her bandanna makes it look like she has cat ears) and the player should instantly care for her. I find her annoying and she needs to go away. Especially since whenever Kai shows up that means I get to take part in a shooting mini-game. Kai like to play "twing-twang". That's the nice way of saying shoot everything you see with arrows.
First, I had troubles aiming normally, but this was supposed to be Sony's first major AAA title so the SixAxis controller had to be put to use. When you fire you can hold to the fire button, this will take you into a close up of the arrow, you can then guide the arrow by tilting the controller. I find motion gaming to be fairly sloppy in general and it's no different here. It's easy to over/under compensate and find your arrows missing everything. This is something Nariko can also do in combat. She can pick up objects and throw them at enemies, you can then zoom in on the objects and guide where they go. This same mechanic is also used for puzzle solving.
I'm not a fan of it and this first intro section makes a lousy tutorial. Kai has 25 soldiers to kill. Any soldiers that get by have to be dealt with by Nariko. I successfully killed 4, leaving 21 for Nariko to kill. I think it was just easier to have Nariko kill then all. There are some soldiers who have shields and they can block, but it's not that hard to win.
With that over everyone goes to bed for the night. Apparently Nariko has this reoccurring dream where her Dad kills her with the Heavenly Sword. This night her Dad actually gives her the sword to protect by driving it into the ground next to her in a way that would make you think he was trying to kill her. Her Dad is kinda creepy.
In the morning King Bohan's troops are attacking the fort in mass. You have to do another shooting section, this time as Nariko and you get to use a cannon. Once you blow up the catapults this section is actually kind of fun since you get to launch cannon blasts randomly into enemy troops. You have to slaughter 700 people pretty quickly. Once they are dead you have to try to escape with the sword.
This section is pretty fun. The enemies are diverse and you can actually make use of the throwing mechanic if you want. I need to point out that you are not yet using the Heavenly Sword. This is important because you're about to meet one of the stupidest enemies in video game history. You finally get to meet King Bohan.
King Bohan is an idiot. Apparently he's captured Shen and he wants to trade him for the sword. From the moment he opens his mouth I realized that I had nothing to fear from this guy. He's just an average lunatic who thinks the sword will make him cool. This character is played by Andy Serkis (who I mentioned last time) and no fault of Mr. Serkis', but the character is dumb (so are his henchmen). I cannot take him seriously and every time he shows his "threat-level" drops a little. I think the only reason he's a threat is because he has an army. If he was just some guy on the street he would probably be thrown in an asylum. So his big power is his army and being unbalanced. Go King Bohan.
At this juncture Nariko finally wields the Heavenly Sword, condemning herself. She does this to save her Father's life. I've never really understood the "giving up my life so you may live approach". I mean, the guy you just saved, wouldn't he want to give up his life to save you then? Does it just go in a big circle until one of you finally dies and then the other goes on a quest for revenge?
I'll wrap up Act 1 next time and delve into Act 2.
I still can't connect with Nariko and I don't think I ever will. I definitely can't connect with her father, Shen. Kai just makes me wish she would go away and never come back. I know that Kai is "simple", but I don't like her.
So Nariko's clan is under attack. What's left of the clan stays the night at some fort looking place. This is really your introduction level and it works pretty nicely. You get to run up and down ladders and slaughter bad guys. Combat proves itself to be enjoyable, but it's not deep yet. I don't have to worry about that too much though, the combat depth I desire will come later.
Now I get introduced to two annoying aspects of the game. The first is Kai. Like I mentioned Kai is "simple". She's basically an innocent. I have no idea why she's like this but I do hope it's explained later on. Kai is supposed to be fun, cute (her bandanna makes it look like she has cat ears) and the player should instantly care for her. I find her annoying and she needs to go away. Especially since whenever Kai shows up that means I get to take part in a shooting mini-game. Kai like to play "twing-twang". That's the nice way of saying shoot everything you see with arrows.
First, I had troubles aiming normally, but this was supposed to be Sony's first major AAA title so the SixAxis controller had to be put to use. When you fire you can hold to the fire button, this will take you into a close up of the arrow, you can then guide the arrow by tilting the controller. I find motion gaming to be fairly sloppy in general and it's no different here. It's easy to over/under compensate and find your arrows missing everything. This is something Nariko can also do in combat. She can pick up objects and throw them at enemies, you can then zoom in on the objects and guide where they go. This same mechanic is also used for puzzle solving.
I'm not a fan of it and this first intro section makes a lousy tutorial. Kai has 25 soldiers to kill. Any soldiers that get by have to be dealt with by Nariko. I successfully killed 4, leaving 21 for Nariko to kill. I think it was just easier to have Nariko kill then all. There are some soldiers who have shields and they can block, but it's not that hard to win.
With that over everyone goes to bed for the night. Apparently Nariko has this reoccurring dream where her Dad kills her with the Heavenly Sword. This night her Dad actually gives her the sword to protect by driving it into the ground next to her in a way that would make you think he was trying to kill her. Her Dad is kinda creepy.
In the morning King Bohan's troops are attacking the fort in mass. You have to do another shooting section, this time as Nariko and you get to use a cannon. Once you blow up the catapults this section is actually kind of fun since you get to launch cannon blasts randomly into enemy troops. You have to slaughter 700 people pretty quickly. Once they are dead you have to try to escape with the sword.
This section is pretty fun. The enemies are diverse and you can actually make use of the throwing mechanic if you want. I need to point out that you are not yet using the Heavenly Sword. This is important because you're about to meet one of the stupidest enemies in video game history. You finally get to meet King Bohan.
King Bohan is an idiot. Apparently he's captured Shen and he wants to trade him for the sword. From the moment he opens his mouth I realized that I had nothing to fear from this guy. He's just an average lunatic who thinks the sword will make him cool. This character is played by Andy Serkis (who I mentioned last time) and no fault of Mr. Serkis', but the character is dumb (so are his henchmen). I cannot take him seriously and every time he shows his "threat-level" drops a little. I think the only reason he's a threat is because he has an army. If he was just some guy on the street he would probably be thrown in an asylum. So his big power is his army and being unbalanced. Go King Bohan.
At this juncture Nariko finally wields the Heavenly Sword, condemning herself. She does this to save her Father's life. I've never really understood the "giving up my life so you may live approach". I mean, the guy you just saved, wouldn't he want to give up his life to save you then? Does it just go in a big circle until one of you finally dies and then the other goes on a quest for revenge?
I'll wrap up Act 1 next time and delve into Act 2.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Heavenly Sword - Nariko Addresses The Audience
It's not fair to say that just Nariko breaks the fourth wall, her father does too. So does Kai.
Let's do the intro stuff. Heavenly Sword, developed by Ninja Theory was released September 2007 for the PlayStation 3. Heavenly Sword was supposed to be the AAA title that would make the PS3 the system to own. Sadly the PS3's high price point discouraged many gamers from the system. This is my first time playing Heavenly Sword. I'm playing on Normal mode.
The game is a third person action game very similar to the style of God of War. There are differences of course but the parallels are still there. The camera is fixed (you can slightly control it with R2/L2 but nothing significant), square is light attacks, triangle is heavy attack (also counters enemy attacks), right stick dodges. If you've played God of War you should feel pretty comfortable.
There are noticeable difference. Nariko can't jump. Instead X grabs objects which can then be thrown (more on this later). Circle is used to execute special attacks that have to be charged before they can be used. L1 and R1 can change her "stance" (again, more on that later).
Heavenly Sword is about just that, the Heavenly Sword. Apparently the sword is cursed so that it may only be used by a God. If a mortal uses it, it will eventually drain their life force, killing the user. And that's where our story begins/ends. You see, you start at the ending, it's much more interesting that way. Out heroine, Nariko, has been wielding the sword for a few days now. She's battling thousands of enemies when the sword apparently decides that her time is up.
So the game starts with Nariko's death. Nariko complains about her life and how she doesn't want to die. I can only assume that she shows up in Heaven, or maybe Purgatory. Once she's there she directly address the player. I'm not quite sure who she's actually supposed to be talking to, maybe a God or maybe the sword itself. Basically she's begging for her life back. The whole talking to the camera is creepy. I personally find Nariko creepy looking, but when characters start talking to me directly it really takes me out of the game. This isn't Deadpool breaking the fourth wall type thing. She's actually talking to you in character, trying to make you part of the game. For me, it just doesn't work. Why can't she just talk to the sky or a rock or something?
To be fair, she has had a tough life. Her clan treats her as some sort of curse, her father blames her for her mother's death. She hasn't really had any reason to live, apparently she finds a reason during her quest. So she's begging the player to let her live. It's at this point that you get to get to know the backstory. Apparently some King Bohan wants the Heavenly Sword because he's determined that he's some sort of chosen one.
Gameplay commences. First thing you'll notice is the "cinematic" approach the game takes. The box for the game even brags that the cutscenes are directed by Andy Serkis. The guy was good as Gollum and King Kong, but he ends up being horribly mis-cast in this game. The cinematic feel is alright, the biggest problem I have is that the game wants you to immediately identify with Nariko and I can't. I don't know her yet, all I know is that she has issues.
I've already ripped a good way into the game so I have lots to talk about. I'm going to break things up a little bit. Maybe I won't play tonight so I can give more of my thoughts on the first two chapters of the game.
Let's do the intro stuff. Heavenly Sword, developed by Ninja Theory was released September 2007 for the PlayStation 3. Heavenly Sword was supposed to be the AAA title that would make the PS3 the system to own. Sadly the PS3's high price point discouraged many gamers from the system. This is my first time playing Heavenly Sword. I'm playing on Normal mode.
The game is a third person action game very similar to the style of God of War. There are differences of course but the parallels are still there. The camera is fixed (you can slightly control it with R2/L2 but nothing significant), square is light attacks, triangle is heavy attack (also counters enemy attacks), right stick dodges. If you've played God of War you should feel pretty comfortable.
There are noticeable difference. Nariko can't jump. Instead X grabs objects which can then be thrown (more on this later). Circle is used to execute special attacks that have to be charged before they can be used. L1 and R1 can change her "stance" (again, more on that later).
Heavenly Sword is about just that, the Heavenly Sword. Apparently the sword is cursed so that it may only be used by a God. If a mortal uses it, it will eventually drain their life force, killing the user. And that's where our story begins/ends. You see, you start at the ending, it's much more interesting that way. Out heroine, Nariko, has been wielding the sword for a few days now. She's battling thousands of enemies when the sword apparently decides that her time is up.
So the game starts with Nariko's death. Nariko complains about her life and how she doesn't want to die. I can only assume that she shows up in Heaven, or maybe Purgatory. Once she's there she directly address the player. I'm not quite sure who she's actually supposed to be talking to, maybe a God or maybe the sword itself. Basically she's begging for her life back. The whole talking to the camera is creepy. I personally find Nariko creepy looking, but when characters start talking to me directly it really takes me out of the game. This isn't Deadpool breaking the fourth wall type thing. She's actually talking to you in character, trying to make you part of the game. For me, it just doesn't work. Why can't she just talk to the sky or a rock or something?
To be fair, she has had a tough life. Her clan treats her as some sort of curse, her father blames her for her mother's death. She hasn't really had any reason to live, apparently she finds a reason during her quest. So she's begging the player to let her live. It's at this point that you get to get to know the backstory. Apparently some King Bohan wants the Heavenly Sword because he's determined that he's some sort of chosen one.
Gameplay commences. First thing you'll notice is the "cinematic" approach the game takes. The box for the game even brags that the cutscenes are directed by Andy Serkis. The guy was good as Gollum and King Kong, but he ends up being horribly mis-cast in this game. The cinematic feel is alright, the biggest problem I have is that the game wants you to immediately identify with Nariko and I can't. I don't know her yet, all I know is that she has issues.
I've already ripped a good way into the game so I have lots to talk about. I'm going to break things up a little bit. Maybe I won't play tonight so I can give more of my thoughts on the first two chapters of the game.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 - Final Thoughts
I will always really want to enjoy Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2,but the game is flawed in so many fundamental ways that it really is hard to. Let's break things down a little bit.
X-Men Legends, X-Men Legends 2, and Marvel Ultimate Alliance are all made by Raven Soft. The love they had for the franchise is very obvious and very deep. They crafted fun, fully thought-out games. Raven Soft is still in business last I new. They developed a game called Singularity which released last year.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is made by Vicarious Visions. While Vicarious Visions started out strong, they suddenly became a port company. All they seemed to do is port someone else's project to different systems. Case in point, the did the PSP port for X-Men Legends 2 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance.
Now I don't know the internal politics of these two companies or Activision (even though we've all heard the stories) so I don't know what development of Ultimate Alliance 2 was handed to a different company. Maybe Raven Soft wanted to work on something else. That's the problem with franchises, all people want is the next sequel. It can be creatively stifling for the development team. Activision might have felt comfortable with Vicarious Visions since they had worked with the series before. It really is hard to say. All I know is that the final result speaks for itself. Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is not a good game.
The levels are very linear with an occasional secret item. Your way is constantly blocked by invisible walls so it can also get confusing on where to go. If you don't want the player to go a certain way then you block off that path. Put some destroyed cars there or something, just make sure the player clearly understands that is not the way to go.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 has 9 levels. The game really feels like it's just getting started when suddenly it ends. You barely have time to get to know The Fold then BAM! Battle against Fury and game over. X-Men Legends has 16 levels, Ultimate Alliance has 13 levels, and I can't exactly figure out how many level X-Men legends 2 has, it looks to be around 25 or so. So 9 levels in total, each with a play time of around an hour, that gives you a 9-10 hour long game. That's fine for an action game like God of War or Devil May Cry, but this is an RPG. It needs to clock in around the 30 hour mark. The only way you're going to get remotely close to that is if you play the training missions. And I honestly doubt they'll add 20 hours of gameplay.
I personally feel that the game suffers by using the Civil War story line. It really suffers when they abandon the story and go for something original. The whole story should have been original. I really feel that it would have alleviated many of the problems that the current story suffers from. I mean, the whole Wakanda section really feels shoe-horned in. Also, splitting up the team was just dumb. I lost half of my character list and I didn't want that. I never truly understood each side of the story or sympathized with either team. I actually was disgusted by the actions of the Pro-Registration Team.
The cast felt very weak in this game. If you include DLC the first game had 33 characters. Again, with DLC Ultimate Alliance 2 only has 30 and we ended up with some real C-list characters. Penance? Songbird? Did we really need 3 Spider-Man villains as playable characters? I would complain about Iron Fist but at least he has healing abilities. Do I need to even mention Cyborg Nick Fury? But what happened to Silver Surfer? Elektra? Human Nick Fury? Nightcrawler? Ghost Rider? Doctor Strange? Any of these character should have been in the game. Fans want to play as their favorites, not some unknown character who you're just going to dislike.
There are a lot of unused characters who show up during the game. Why can't they be added to my team? She-Hulk, Bishop, Colossus, Spider-Woman, Black Widow and War Machine would all be a great start. I would even settle for Firestar, Lady Deathstrike, Dagger, Wonder Man, Justice, or Hercules just to help add some more variety. I can only imagine that many of these characters were planned as DLC and then canceled once Disney bought out Marvel. I'm still not happy about that.
Where's the customization in this game? Every character only has four powers so you don't have to worry about which one to choose. You can't equip any gear to adjust personal stats, just team boosts and you only use three of those at a time. You can't select what stats to put points into either. Characters are really static and you don't get to own them or feel involved with them. Heck, you can barely heal them. I'm going to find the guy who thought that carrying only two healing tokens was a great idea and punch him in the face. Give me my potions back you jerk!
And where are the alternate costumes? In the last game each character had four costumes. And various costumes would allow for unique team bonuses. This was a fun system since it added a lot of depth. Your costume choice really mattered and Spider-Girl even slipped in as an alternate costume for Spider-Woman. That's how awesomely the first game milked Marvel history. In this game you only get one alternate costume per character (except cyborg Fury, he doesn't get one). I found most of the costumes just ugly so I didn't bother to use them. Not like I found team bonuses to be all that useful this time round.
I'm sure I could go on like this, but it feels like I'm starting to nitpick. Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is a bad game and that's all you really need to know. What really hurts about this is it basically killed off this style of game. I enjoy the top-down, 4 characters at all times gameplay. I felt this style of game had plenty of room to grow and new options to explore. Heck, I felt that Smash Bros. would be perfect for this style of gameplay if they ever choose to abandon the fighting game style. Sadly, we probably won't see another game along these lines for a good while. And I blame you, Vicarious Visions!
X-Men Legends, X-Men Legends 2, and Marvel Ultimate Alliance are all made by Raven Soft. The love they had for the franchise is very obvious and very deep. They crafted fun, fully thought-out games. Raven Soft is still in business last I new. They developed a game called Singularity which released last year.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is made by Vicarious Visions. While Vicarious Visions started out strong, they suddenly became a port company. All they seemed to do is port someone else's project to different systems. Case in point, the did the PSP port for X-Men Legends 2 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance.
Now I don't know the internal politics of these two companies or Activision (even though we've all heard the stories) so I don't know what development of Ultimate Alliance 2 was handed to a different company. Maybe Raven Soft wanted to work on something else. That's the problem with franchises, all people want is the next sequel. It can be creatively stifling for the development team. Activision might have felt comfortable with Vicarious Visions since they had worked with the series before. It really is hard to say. All I know is that the final result speaks for itself. Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is not a good game.
The levels are very linear with an occasional secret item. Your way is constantly blocked by invisible walls so it can also get confusing on where to go. If you don't want the player to go a certain way then you block off that path. Put some destroyed cars there or something, just make sure the player clearly understands that is not the way to go.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 has 9 levels. The game really feels like it's just getting started when suddenly it ends. You barely have time to get to know The Fold then BAM! Battle against Fury and game over. X-Men Legends has 16 levels, Ultimate Alliance has 13 levels, and I can't exactly figure out how many level X-Men legends 2 has, it looks to be around 25 or so. So 9 levels in total, each with a play time of around an hour, that gives you a 9-10 hour long game. That's fine for an action game like God of War or Devil May Cry, but this is an RPG. It needs to clock in around the 30 hour mark. The only way you're going to get remotely close to that is if you play the training missions. And I honestly doubt they'll add 20 hours of gameplay.
I personally feel that the game suffers by using the Civil War story line. It really suffers when they abandon the story and go for something original. The whole story should have been original. I really feel that it would have alleviated many of the problems that the current story suffers from. I mean, the whole Wakanda section really feels shoe-horned in. Also, splitting up the team was just dumb. I lost half of my character list and I didn't want that. I never truly understood each side of the story or sympathized with either team. I actually was disgusted by the actions of the Pro-Registration Team.
The cast felt very weak in this game. If you include DLC the first game had 33 characters. Again, with DLC Ultimate Alliance 2 only has 30 and we ended up with some real C-list characters. Penance? Songbird? Did we really need 3 Spider-Man villains as playable characters? I would complain about Iron Fist but at least he has healing abilities. Do I need to even mention Cyborg Nick Fury? But what happened to Silver Surfer? Elektra? Human Nick Fury? Nightcrawler? Ghost Rider? Doctor Strange? Any of these character should have been in the game. Fans want to play as their favorites, not some unknown character who you're just going to dislike.
There are a lot of unused characters who show up during the game. Why can't they be added to my team? She-Hulk, Bishop, Colossus, Spider-Woman, Black Widow and War Machine would all be a great start. I would even settle for Firestar, Lady Deathstrike, Dagger, Wonder Man, Justice, or Hercules just to help add some more variety. I can only imagine that many of these characters were planned as DLC and then canceled once Disney bought out Marvel. I'm still not happy about that.
Where's the customization in this game? Every character only has four powers so you don't have to worry about which one to choose. You can't equip any gear to adjust personal stats, just team boosts and you only use three of those at a time. You can't select what stats to put points into either. Characters are really static and you don't get to own them or feel involved with them. Heck, you can barely heal them. I'm going to find the guy who thought that carrying only two healing tokens was a great idea and punch him in the face. Give me my potions back you jerk!
And where are the alternate costumes? In the last game each character had four costumes. And various costumes would allow for unique team bonuses. This was a fun system since it added a lot of depth. Your costume choice really mattered and Spider-Girl even slipped in as an alternate costume for Spider-Woman. That's how awesomely the first game milked Marvel history. In this game you only get one alternate costume per character (except cyborg Fury, he doesn't get one). I found most of the costumes just ugly so I didn't bother to use them. Not like I found team bonuses to be all that useful this time round.
I'm sure I could go on like this, but it feels like I'm starting to nitpick. Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is a bad game and that's all you really need to know. What really hurts about this is it basically killed off this style of game. I enjoy the top-down, 4 characters at all times gameplay. I felt this style of game had plenty of room to grow and new options to explore. Heck, I felt that Smash Bros. would be perfect for this style of gameplay if they ever choose to abandon the fighting game style. Sadly, we probably won't see another game along these lines for a good while. And I blame you, Vicarious Visions!
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Marvel vs Capcom 3 - New Characters
Today is March 15th. That means those of use who got the special edition of Marvel vs Capcom 3 can finally access Jill Valentine and Shuma-Gorath.
The download is only 100kb. That means that yes, these two are DLC that is on the disk. This is a very cheap practice that has been showing up more and more recently. It's not really DLC if all I'm actually downloading is an unlock code! There was plenty of evidence of this before hand, especially after I finished the game with every character and there were still three character slots open in the Model Viewer. Two were obviously Jill and Shuma. I don't know who the third is. I'm assuming it's Galactus, but I could be wrong.
I would understand better if every "new" copy of the game came with a code for these characters. Game companies are trying to discourage players from buying used. One way they are doing this is by denying players who bought used copies parts of the game. If you bought the game new you got a special code that unlocked all of the content. If you bought it used odds are the code has already been used or is no longer in the packaging. Dragon Age: Origins had this. You got Shale for free if you bought the game new, but if you bought it used she would cost you $15 bucks.
But these two characters don't work like that. You only get them for "free" if you got the special edition and that cost $70 instead of the normal $60. If you bought the normal edition I heard that it's $5 a character. So it's really like the you already paid the extra $10 with the special edition and Capcom just threw you a little comic/art book for free. This is a very shady practice and it should never happen. Companies need to stop thinking that they can control the consumer! I have the right to demand that all content be on the disk at the time of purchase and that all content is unlocked or can be unlocked through normal gameplay.
Now that I have that out of the way let's talk about the actual characters. Jill is fun and fast. If you think along the lines of X-23 then you have her pegged. She's no longer summoning zombies to help her, she now has massive acrobatic skills and she's putting them to use. I had a lot of fun with her and she's a character that I could easily use on a regular basis.
I enjoyed her ending. She teamed up with Blade to fight off hoards of the undead. Jill's personality though has me really confused. She has the little mind control bug on her chest so I would assume that she's still a puppet. In the comic though Jill is fighting alongside Chris so I thought she wasn't under mind control. During her ending she seems pretty happy to have Blade's help and seems to once again have independent thought. But during her entrances and victory lines Jill very much acts like she's under Wesker's control. I really with they would figure this out.
Shuma-Gorath is a fine character. The multi-tentacled monster from the Chaos Dimension works just fine. He's more technical then Jill. This makes his attacks harder to use. But the character is just over flowing with personality. He's got a great uniqueness to him. Probably won't be a character that I would use on a regular basis. But I'm glad to have him in the overall lineup. Unlike Taskmaster who I would just like to kick out of the game.
His ending had me laughing. He ends up hosting a Japanese game show. That right there is good stuff. That's what more of the endings should have been like.
I do hope for more DLC characters in the future. I would love for the selection to grow until it's bigger then Marvel vs Capcom 2. But the next time I had better actually be downloading characters! Not unlock codes.
The download is only 100kb. That means that yes, these two are DLC that is on the disk. This is a very cheap practice that has been showing up more and more recently. It's not really DLC if all I'm actually downloading is an unlock code! There was plenty of evidence of this before hand, especially after I finished the game with every character and there were still three character slots open in the Model Viewer. Two were obviously Jill and Shuma. I don't know who the third is. I'm assuming it's Galactus, but I could be wrong.
I would understand better if every "new" copy of the game came with a code for these characters. Game companies are trying to discourage players from buying used. One way they are doing this is by denying players who bought used copies parts of the game. If you bought the game new you got a special code that unlocked all of the content. If you bought it used odds are the code has already been used or is no longer in the packaging. Dragon Age: Origins had this. You got Shale for free if you bought the game new, but if you bought it used she would cost you $15 bucks.
But these two characters don't work like that. You only get them for "free" if you got the special edition and that cost $70 instead of the normal $60. If you bought the normal edition I heard that it's $5 a character. So it's really like the you already paid the extra $10 with the special edition and Capcom just threw you a little comic/art book for free. This is a very shady practice and it should never happen. Companies need to stop thinking that they can control the consumer! I have the right to demand that all content be on the disk at the time of purchase and that all content is unlocked or can be unlocked through normal gameplay.
Now that I have that out of the way let's talk about the actual characters. Jill is fun and fast. If you think along the lines of X-23 then you have her pegged. She's no longer summoning zombies to help her, she now has massive acrobatic skills and she's putting them to use. I had a lot of fun with her and she's a character that I could easily use on a regular basis.
I enjoyed her ending. She teamed up with Blade to fight off hoards of the undead. Jill's personality though has me really confused. She has the little mind control bug on her chest so I would assume that she's still a puppet. In the comic though Jill is fighting alongside Chris so I thought she wasn't under mind control. During her ending she seems pretty happy to have Blade's help and seems to once again have independent thought. But during her entrances and victory lines Jill very much acts like she's under Wesker's control. I really with they would figure this out.
Shuma-Gorath is a fine character. The multi-tentacled monster from the Chaos Dimension works just fine. He's more technical then Jill. This makes his attacks harder to use. But the character is just over flowing with personality. He's got a great uniqueness to him. Probably won't be a character that I would use on a regular basis. But I'm glad to have him in the overall lineup. Unlike Taskmaster who I would just like to kick out of the game.
His ending had me laughing. He ends up hosting a Japanese game show. That right there is good stuff. That's what more of the endings should have been like.
I do hope for more DLC characters in the future. I would love for the selection to grow until it's bigger then Marvel vs Capcom 2. But the next time I had better actually be downloading characters! Not unlock codes.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 - Fight With Fury
I really don't think that a sentient A.I would really build fancy buildings. I personally believe that they would build structures that are far more efficient and they wouldn't worry about style. Apparently The Fold defy my beliefs. Their buildings are fancy and meandering. I get that the designers wanted to give The Fold their own style, but I just would have gone with an "efficient" look over a "stylized" look.
You're off to Iceland for the final mission of the game. The Fold have been building giant broadcast towers all over the world to spread their signal and keep in touch with each other. The Heroes have found one tower where the Nanites shutdown signal can be activated from and then have it affect the rest of the towers. I also find it hard to believe that the Nanites haven't deactivated or in some way circumvented this signal, making it obsolete. But the Heroes need a last ditch effort and this is it.
During the level you find that the Tinkerer willingly joined The Fold. I can believe that angle. What I can't believe is that The Fold is allowing him to keep his free will. Again, I think The Fold would just download his brain to everyone on the network and have nearly 6 billion geniuses working for it. Instead The Fold has just the Tinkerer working on some new technology for them. It's pretty laughable at this point.
Most of the level is fighting super powered Fold controlled people, nothing overly complicated. You end up fighting a lot of the old bosses again. There's a battle against She-Hulk, Wonder Man, Firestar, Colossus, and Whirlwind that I can remember. The rest of the level maintains the straight-forwardness that the entire game has had. Nothing surprising or special.
There's a boss fight against the Tinkerer, and this fight is just badly silly and feeling very recycled. The Fold have developed cyborgs for the lack of a better term. They can be tough fights, each one has a large health bar and fairly solid defense. Tinkerer uses two of these guys to place a shield around him. You can't hurt him until the shield goes down, which means taking the cyborgs down first, similar to deactivating Von Bardas' shield back at the beginning of the game.Once they go down you get to happily beat the snot out of Tinkerer and he just lays their and takes it. Some grunts show up to make things a little more complicated but it's nothing you can't handle.
Tinkerer runs away and you get to ride a long elevator up. This makes me think the game is more of a Beat-'Em-Up then an RPG. Beat-'Em-Ups love elevator levels where mass waves of enemies assault you. And that's exactly what this is. Look at it as the gauntlet before the final boss. It's actually pretty fun and I got to really unleash my characters with some major crowd clearing.
At the top of the elevator your team is final able to activate the Nanite deactivation signal. You have to survive one minute against a very massive wave of enemies. Time to break the game. If you use your fusions everything slows down except for the minute timer. You can easily burn a few seconds and score massive takedowns. Once the minute expires all the Nanites drop and it would seem that the mission is accomplished.
But you still need a final battle. The Tinkerer fight was lame so that couldn't be it. Nope, instead you get to fight Nick Fury. Fury is now a cyborg and he's channeling powers from various superheroes. He's a long fight that you occasionally have to complete certain tricks on to succeed. Most of his attacks aren't hard to avoid. You just need to pay attention. Keep on him and Fury will go down.
It was a disappointing fight. Fury's attacks are not really all that hard to avoid. Generally you just have run around him and he gives you plenty of time for that. I wished that he had been more interesting, maybe combining powers into his own fusions. Instead he could only use one attack at a time, unless he split himself, then each Fury could use a unique power. Oddly enough, I had no background music while fighting him. I'll put that down as a bug.
With Fury down the Nanites go down. The Super-Human Registraion Act is amended so heroes don't have to join and they don't have to reveal their secret identities. They also can't forcibly be deployed to war zones and what-not. Basically the act becomes pointless, they should have just repealed the thing and called it a day. Iron Man and Captain America make up, Fury's body is returned to normal and Iron Man becomes commander of S.H.I.E.L.D. Like the guy doesn't already have enough to do. And that's how it ends.
I do recommend sticking around for the credits though. There's a great audio piece where The Hulk does an on-air radio interview that I highly recommend.
Once the credits are over you're placed back in Black Panther's Palace. There's an audio log from The Hulk again. I highly recommend listening to this one too. These two audio pieces have to be the best thing in the entire game. You can then start a new game plus, so all of your old levels and discovered items are carried over. Turns out I just beat Heroic mode, I created a new save file on Legendary that I may or may not get to at some point in the future.
I'm going to write my final thoughts on the game later. There's a lot to be discussed so I may start playing something else before I get to it.
You're off to Iceland for the final mission of the game. The Fold have been building giant broadcast towers all over the world to spread their signal and keep in touch with each other. The Heroes have found one tower where the Nanites shutdown signal can be activated from and then have it affect the rest of the towers. I also find it hard to believe that the Nanites haven't deactivated or in some way circumvented this signal, making it obsolete. But the Heroes need a last ditch effort and this is it.
During the level you find that the Tinkerer willingly joined The Fold. I can believe that angle. What I can't believe is that The Fold is allowing him to keep his free will. Again, I think The Fold would just download his brain to everyone on the network and have nearly 6 billion geniuses working for it. Instead The Fold has just the Tinkerer working on some new technology for them. It's pretty laughable at this point.
Most of the level is fighting super powered Fold controlled people, nothing overly complicated. You end up fighting a lot of the old bosses again. There's a battle against She-Hulk, Wonder Man, Firestar, Colossus, and Whirlwind that I can remember. The rest of the level maintains the straight-forwardness that the entire game has had. Nothing surprising or special.
There's a boss fight against the Tinkerer, and this fight is just badly silly and feeling very recycled. The Fold have developed cyborgs for the lack of a better term. They can be tough fights, each one has a large health bar and fairly solid defense. Tinkerer uses two of these guys to place a shield around him. You can't hurt him until the shield goes down, which means taking the cyborgs down first, similar to deactivating Von Bardas' shield back at the beginning of the game.Once they go down you get to happily beat the snot out of Tinkerer and he just lays their and takes it. Some grunts show up to make things a little more complicated but it's nothing you can't handle.
Tinkerer runs away and you get to ride a long elevator up. This makes me think the game is more of a Beat-'Em-Up then an RPG. Beat-'Em-Ups love elevator levels where mass waves of enemies assault you. And that's exactly what this is. Look at it as the gauntlet before the final boss. It's actually pretty fun and I got to really unleash my characters with some major crowd clearing.
At the top of the elevator your team is final able to activate the Nanite deactivation signal. You have to survive one minute against a very massive wave of enemies. Time to break the game. If you use your fusions everything slows down except for the minute timer. You can easily burn a few seconds and score massive takedowns. Once the minute expires all the Nanites drop and it would seem that the mission is accomplished.
But you still need a final battle. The Tinkerer fight was lame so that couldn't be it. Nope, instead you get to fight Nick Fury. Fury is now a cyborg and he's channeling powers from various superheroes. He's a long fight that you occasionally have to complete certain tricks on to succeed. Most of his attacks aren't hard to avoid. You just need to pay attention. Keep on him and Fury will go down.
It was a disappointing fight. Fury's attacks are not really all that hard to avoid. Generally you just have run around him and he gives you plenty of time for that. I wished that he had been more interesting, maybe combining powers into his own fusions. Instead he could only use one attack at a time, unless he split himself, then each Fury could use a unique power. Oddly enough, I had no background music while fighting him. I'll put that down as a bug.
With Fury down the Nanites go down. The Super-Human Registraion Act is amended so heroes don't have to join and they don't have to reveal their secret identities. They also can't forcibly be deployed to war zones and what-not. Basically the act becomes pointless, they should have just repealed the thing and called it a day. Iron Man and Captain America make up, Fury's body is returned to normal and Iron Man becomes commander of S.H.I.E.L.D. Like the guy doesn't already have enough to do. And that's how it ends.
I do recommend sticking around for the credits though. There's a great audio piece where The Hulk does an on-air radio interview that I highly recommend.
Once the credits are over you're placed back in Black Panther's Palace. There's an audio log from The Hulk again. I highly recommend listening to this one too. These two audio pieces have to be the best thing in the entire game. You can then start a new game plus, so all of your old levels and discovered items are carried over. Turns out I just beat Heroic mode, I created a new save file on Legendary that I may or may not get to at some point in the future.
I'm going to write my final thoughts on the game later. There's a lot to be discussed so I may start playing something else before I get to it.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 - Onward With The Lame Plot!
I finally beat the prison. Stupid level that it was. I was at the point where my characters had to run deep into the prison to turn the power back on so we could use the portal to leave. That's what we did, no other way to say it. We then turned around and left. There are some boss fights against some old bosses. Grim Reaper shows up, twice. The final battle to leave was at least a little interesting. You have to battle Whirlwind and I believe Moonstone. Whirlwind lives up to his name and spins like a tornado. I don't really know what Moonstone does, and I think Copperhead showed up as well, or was it Diamondback...I wasn't paying attention. Since I can find no reference of a Copperhead I will assume it was Diamondback.
Whirlwind is invincible while the other two are on the screen so he needs to be avoided. Thankfully the other two only show up one at a time making them easier to take down. There are basic grunts running around and that adds to the confusion. I just pounded them and hit them with targeted fusions until they went down. At least it felt like I had to try.
It was decided to destroy the prison to trap the Nanites in the Negative Zone. By the way, I've been calling them Nanonites, apparently it's just Nanites. My apologies. Turns out the Nanite injected bad guys are injecting everyone they can get their hands on and adding them to their network. Nick Fury agrees to stay behind and blow up the prison.
Everyone makes it out except for Fury. The portal closes and we have no idea what happened to him. Unless you understand how comic book logic works, then you know exactly what happened to him. Back at Nick Fury's secret base everyone is sorry for the war. There's a memorial service for people who might have died in the prison. Again, this is a comic book world, funerals for big named characters is pretty pointless.
Oddly enough the heroes aren't actively looking for signs of the Nanites. I guess they run a scan every few days or so. You see, the big-headed Mr. Fantastic (I mean that literally, his head is actually to big for his body in this game) claims they've seen no sign of the Nanites. He then proceeds to run a scan and much to his surprise there are thousands of Nanite signals. He's shocked. I'm personally wondering how these all showed up and no one noticed. I have to guess that no one was actively watching the Negative Zone "just in case".
So this is literally a massive surprise for everyone. The Nanites are infecting every human on the planet and it's estimated that in just under two years there won't be a free human left. Once again, this is a comic book world so world ending events aren't really all that unheard of. The heroes should just take this as another day on the job.
The team is sent to another fictional country named Wakanda, home of the Black Panther and the only place on earth to have a deposit of the fictional mineral called Vibranium. Cap's shield is made from this stuff. The Nanites are literally invading. They've sent in assault troops for crying out loud and they're being stopped by electric fences. These things are a sentient A.I., they shouldn't have problem hacking any computer system on the face of the planet. Electric fences should not pose a problem. Who wrote this crap?
Wakanda has a lot of odd backtracking in it. You seem to run in circles on a regular basis to get where you're going. There's what should have been a clever device in the Nanites using teleporters to bring troops in. It would have been a great way to overwhelm the player with enemies if they didn't shut them down quickly. Sadly the teleporters seem to spawn a certain number of troops and then stop working. I guess they didn't want you farming XP here.
I have a confession to make. I finally unlocked Hulk while wandering around Wakanda during this playthrough. I never unlocked him my first time through. Now I finally have everyone. Hulk's a good bruiser and his ground pound is easy to spam, plus it's great for crowd control. Not a big surprise that his alt. costume was Red Hulk. Glad I finally got him.
At the end of Wakanda you learn Nick Fury's fate. He's been infected with Nanites, big surprise. And he's now acting as their spokesperson. The Nanites have dubbed themselves "The Fold". Apparently some P.R. guy they infected suggested that a name would make them less threatening and that people might now willingly join them. I hope they fired their P.R. guy. He's a moron. At least they didn't call themselves "Legion". Is it wrong that I actually enjoyed the Ghost Rider movie?
Wakanda ends in a battle with Green Goblin and Venom again. This battle broke for me in the most fantastic of ways. Green Goblin got stuck in a wall. When he jumped off of his glider he apparently landed in a wall. I was killing goons for 15 minutes wondering when the fight would progress before I figured this out. Fight wasn't too hard after that. Every time Green Goblin showed back up he was back in the wall. Which meant I only had to worry about was Venom. Beating him requires banging some metal poles and causing soundwave. Symbiotes don't like high pitched sound. We've all watched the third Spider-Man movie, and hopefully we all regret it. I could then pound on Green Goblin whenever I felt like it and he couldn't touch me. Thanks wall!
Battle over. I'll talk about the miracle cure next time. For now we get to use Black Panther's palace as our newest base of operations. That's our third base this time round. There's only one more area left. Each arc of this game is broken into three levels. Prison 42 and Wakanda were the first two levels so next time they Heroes are going to pull a rabbit out of there butts and magically save the day. Go team.
Whirlwind is invincible while the other two are on the screen so he needs to be avoided. Thankfully the other two only show up one at a time making them easier to take down. There are basic grunts running around and that adds to the confusion. I just pounded them and hit them with targeted fusions until they went down. At least it felt like I had to try.
It was decided to destroy the prison to trap the Nanites in the Negative Zone. By the way, I've been calling them Nanonites, apparently it's just Nanites. My apologies. Turns out the Nanite injected bad guys are injecting everyone they can get their hands on and adding them to their network. Nick Fury agrees to stay behind and blow up the prison.
Everyone makes it out except for Fury. The portal closes and we have no idea what happened to him. Unless you understand how comic book logic works, then you know exactly what happened to him. Back at Nick Fury's secret base everyone is sorry for the war. There's a memorial service for people who might have died in the prison. Again, this is a comic book world, funerals for big named characters is pretty pointless.
Oddly enough the heroes aren't actively looking for signs of the Nanites. I guess they run a scan every few days or so. You see, the big-headed Mr. Fantastic (I mean that literally, his head is actually to big for his body in this game) claims they've seen no sign of the Nanites. He then proceeds to run a scan and much to his surprise there are thousands of Nanite signals. He's shocked. I'm personally wondering how these all showed up and no one noticed. I have to guess that no one was actively watching the Negative Zone "just in case".
So this is literally a massive surprise for everyone. The Nanites are infecting every human on the planet and it's estimated that in just under two years there won't be a free human left. Once again, this is a comic book world so world ending events aren't really all that unheard of. The heroes should just take this as another day on the job.
The team is sent to another fictional country named Wakanda, home of the Black Panther and the only place on earth to have a deposit of the fictional mineral called Vibranium. Cap's shield is made from this stuff. The Nanites are literally invading. They've sent in assault troops for crying out loud and they're being stopped by electric fences. These things are a sentient A.I., they shouldn't have problem hacking any computer system on the face of the planet. Electric fences should not pose a problem. Who wrote this crap?
Wakanda has a lot of odd backtracking in it. You seem to run in circles on a regular basis to get where you're going. There's what should have been a clever device in the Nanites using teleporters to bring troops in. It would have been a great way to overwhelm the player with enemies if they didn't shut them down quickly. Sadly the teleporters seem to spawn a certain number of troops and then stop working. I guess they didn't want you farming XP here.
I have a confession to make. I finally unlocked Hulk while wandering around Wakanda during this playthrough. I never unlocked him my first time through. Now I finally have everyone. Hulk's a good bruiser and his ground pound is easy to spam, plus it's great for crowd control. Not a big surprise that his alt. costume was Red Hulk. Glad I finally got him.
At the end of Wakanda you learn Nick Fury's fate. He's been infected with Nanites, big surprise. And he's now acting as their spokesperson. The Nanites have dubbed themselves "The Fold". Apparently some P.R. guy they infected suggested that a name would make them less threatening and that people might now willingly join them. I hope they fired their P.R. guy. He's a moron. At least they didn't call themselves "Legion". Is it wrong that I actually enjoyed the Ghost Rider movie?
Wakanda ends in a battle with Green Goblin and Venom again. This battle broke for me in the most fantastic of ways. Green Goblin got stuck in a wall. When he jumped off of his glider he apparently landed in a wall. I was killing goons for 15 minutes wondering when the fight would progress before I figured this out. Fight wasn't too hard after that. Every time Green Goblin showed back up he was back in the wall. Which meant I only had to worry about was Venom. Beating him requires banging some metal poles and causing soundwave. Symbiotes don't like high pitched sound. We've all watched the third Spider-Man movie, and hopefully we all regret it. I could then pound on Green Goblin whenever I felt like it and he couldn't touch me. Thanks wall!
Battle over. I'll talk about the miracle cure next time. For now we get to use Black Panther's palace as our newest base of operations. That's our third base this time round. There's only one more area left. Each arc of this game is broken into three levels. Prison 42 and Wakanda were the first two levels so next time they Heroes are going to pull a rabbit out of there butts and magically save the day. Go team.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 - The "Showdown"
So the heroes are happily fighting each other, but no one is really gaining ground in this stupid conflict. So the Pro team comes up with a great idea to lure the Anti team into a trap. The Pro team makes it seems like a chemical plant has a massive leak and amazingly enough the entire Anti team show up! I guess Captain America is just that gullible. Needless to say a large fight breaks out.
There are a lot of boss fights on this level. It's enough to really drive a person mad. During my first playthrough this was probably the toughest level to beat. This is in large part that there seems to be only one healer in the game and that's Iron Fist. Seriously! Iron Fist is the only guy I can find with a healing ability. The only other way to heal is to find red orbs (not that common during a boss fight) or to use an energy token, but you can only hold two of those. This is one of those ideas where I just want to scream at the guy who came up with it. Healing is a pretty essential ability. I would really like to have it at my disposal.
And that's where I learned how broken Deadpool was. While this applies more to my first playthrough than my current playthrough I feel that it's worth talking about. During this level all of my team had died due to the number of boss fights and the lack of healing abilities. All of team, that is, except for Deadpool. Deadpool proceeded to take down Mr. Fantastic, Iron Man, Venom, and Green Goblin all by himself.
You see, Deadpool has this self-healing ability. Sure Wolverine has it too, but Deadpool can strike from a distance, Wolverine would have to get up-close-and-personal and he would then get clobbered. Even better, Deadpool can teleport over an enemy, drop poisoned grenades, and then teleport back to safety. I made ample use of this move during these fights and Deadpool earned himself a permanent place in my party. Yes, Deadpool is that awesome and that broken.
Now I mentioned that there was a fight against Venom and Green Goblin. This is actually where the game completely jumps-ship from the comic book version of the Civil War storyline. If you remember the Pro team injected villains with Nanonites. Well the villains apparently break their leashes and try to kill everyone. Thankfully Nick Fury shows up to save the day. An entire army of Nick Furys show up. I think every generic soldier in both armies were actually Nick Fury robots. So Fury helps your current team stop the villains from killing everyone. The only problem, neither Captain America or Iron Man believe Fury when he tells them about the villains going rogue. Seriously, who didn't see this coming?
Fury recovers the team you were controlling and enlists them to help him stop the villains. So he sends you off to prison so he can gain access to the info on the Nanonites controlling the villains. Again a pretty simple level. You meet Penance here. Penance is a hero who used to be known as Speedball. Speedball was part of the New Warriors group that caused the massive explosion that started this stupid war. Penance is one of the many characters in the game that I just don't care about. He can feel sorry all he wants and it won't matter to me. I had him in my party long enough to get his alternate costume and then I kicked him out.
So you have to actually enter the Negative Zone and Prison 42 to acquire a fresh sample of Nanonites. This whole thing plays out with an incredibly boring level of predictability. It's like they aren't even trying to make things interesting and it's driving me crazy! Can you guess what happens next? I bet you can!
If you guessed that all of the villains are freed from prison, then you would be right. All of the villains escape from prison. And they go out of control and start killing everyone around them. Iron Man and Captain America finally believe Fury that the Nanonite controlled villains are uncontrollable. Yeah, they don't see it until it punches them in the face. Way to be great heroes guys. This story line sucks. I wonder how the comics handled it?
I'm still in the prison. It's been a couple of days since I've played. I'll get back to it soon.
There are a lot of boss fights on this level. It's enough to really drive a person mad. During my first playthrough this was probably the toughest level to beat. This is in large part that there seems to be only one healer in the game and that's Iron Fist. Seriously! Iron Fist is the only guy I can find with a healing ability. The only other way to heal is to find red orbs (not that common during a boss fight) or to use an energy token, but you can only hold two of those. This is one of those ideas where I just want to scream at the guy who came up with it. Healing is a pretty essential ability. I would really like to have it at my disposal.
And that's where I learned how broken Deadpool was. While this applies more to my first playthrough than my current playthrough I feel that it's worth talking about. During this level all of my team had died due to the number of boss fights and the lack of healing abilities. All of team, that is, except for Deadpool. Deadpool proceeded to take down Mr. Fantastic, Iron Man, Venom, and Green Goblin all by himself.
You see, Deadpool has this self-healing ability. Sure Wolverine has it too, but Deadpool can strike from a distance, Wolverine would have to get up-close-and-personal and he would then get clobbered. Even better, Deadpool can teleport over an enemy, drop poisoned grenades, and then teleport back to safety. I made ample use of this move during these fights and Deadpool earned himself a permanent place in my party. Yes, Deadpool is that awesome and that broken.
Now I mentioned that there was a fight against Venom and Green Goblin. This is actually where the game completely jumps-ship from the comic book version of the Civil War storyline. If you remember the Pro team injected villains with Nanonites. Well the villains apparently break their leashes and try to kill everyone. Thankfully Nick Fury shows up to save the day. An entire army of Nick Furys show up. I think every generic soldier in both armies were actually Nick Fury robots. So Fury helps your current team stop the villains from killing everyone. The only problem, neither Captain America or Iron Man believe Fury when he tells them about the villains going rogue. Seriously, who didn't see this coming?
Fury recovers the team you were controlling and enlists them to help him stop the villains. So he sends you off to prison so he can gain access to the info on the Nanonites controlling the villains. Again a pretty simple level. You meet Penance here. Penance is a hero who used to be known as Speedball. Speedball was part of the New Warriors group that caused the massive explosion that started this stupid war. Penance is one of the many characters in the game that I just don't care about. He can feel sorry all he wants and it won't matter to me. I had him in my party long enough to get his alternate costume and then I kicked him out.
So you have to actually enter the Negative Zone and Prison 42 to acquire a fresh sample of Nanonites. This whole thing plays out with an incredibly boring level of predictability. It's like they aren't even trying to make things interesting and it's driving me crazy! Can you guess what happens next? I bet you can!
If you guessed that all of the villains are freed from prison, then you would be right. All of the villains escape from prison. And they go out of control and start killing everyone around them. Iron Man and Captain America finally believe Fury that the Nanonite controlled villains are uncontrollable. Yeah, they don't see it until it punches them in the face. Way to be great heroes guys. This story line sucks. I wonder how the comics handled it?
I'm still in the prison. It's been a couple of days since I've played. I'll get back to it soon.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Marvel vs Capcom 3 - Endings
I've completed the game with all currently available characters. I want to talk a little bit about the endings in this game. I started out really liking them, but as I slowly completed the game with more and more characters I became more and more bored with them. The worst was on the Marvel side. Most of those were completely in character and treaded old ground. Hooray for Storm talking to her boyfriend Black Panther. Oh look, Captain America is a hero, how nice. At least M.O.D.O.K. stole Galactus' hat.
The Capcom side tended be a little more tongue-and-cheek. Spencer dating She-Hulk, Hsien-Ko writing a comic (that one was great and I don't like Hsien-Ko), Trish hunting Nightcrawler were all good. Oh and Arthur hunting Fing Fang Foom, nice! But Haggar becoming President, Morrigan hanging out at a bar, or Chris arresting Wesker were all very boring and I couldn't wait for them to be over.
These endings should have all been great. No Jean Grey becoming Dark Phoenix, that's boring old retread. But Hulk helping Chris hunt zombies is perfect. They should've had more fun with these. Overall it looks like Capcom was willing to be sillier with their characters, but I get the impression that Marvel wanted their characters treated with "dignity". I'm waiting for Jill and Shuma-Gorath to show up too see how their endings are handled. Overall the bad endings out weigh the good.
The Capcom side tended be a little more tongue-and-cheek. Spencer dating She-Hulk, Hsien-Ko writing a comic (that one was great and I don't like Hsien-Ko), Trish hunting Nightcrawler were all good. Oh and Arthur hunting Fing Fang Foom, nice! But Haggar becoming President, Morrigan hanging out at a bar, or Chris arresting Wesker were all very boring and I couldn't wait for them to be over.
These endings should have all been great. No Jean Grey becoming Dark Phoenix, that's boring old retread. But Hulk helping Chris hunt zombies is perfect. They should've had more fun with these. Overall it looks like Capcom was willing to be sillier with their characters, but I get the impression that Marvel wanted their characters treated with "dignity". I'm waiting for Jill and Shuma-Gorath to show up too see how their endings are handled. Overall the bad endings out weigh the good.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Twisted Metal Black - Going Old School
My PS3 isn't backwards compatible. This makes me sad in many ways. I've really been spoiled by the wireless remotes. Having a cord connected is such a massive hassle nowadays. But my wife wanted to play some Twisted Metal and since Twisted Metal for the PS3 hasn't been released yet I had to hook up the PS2, corded controllers and all.
Amazingly enough my PS2 still functions and it's one of the older brick models. But I really want backwards compatibility in my PS3. I have a fairly decent PS2 collection and sometimes I would like to just pull out a game without having to hookup the PS2. Backwards compatibility is the only reason I was even interested in custom firmware for the PS3. But I don't want to lose my account access so I'll just skip on that.
Now a sign of a good game is that ten years later the game is still fun. Twisted Metal Black is that game. Having been released June of 2001, Twisted Metal Black was one of the first "must own" titles for the PS2. In case you don't know, Twisted Metal Black is a car combat game. It's the one with the clown who's head is on fire.
Sure the graphics are dated. And the car physics are pretty laughable by today's standards. But the game is still fun. My wife and I played for about 2 hours blowing up each other and the AI contestants. We laughed, we cried, we yelled and we forgot the control scheme. Seriously, we were trying to remember how to pull off certain tricks the entire time we were playing. And that's probably my biggest gripe with the game. There are special attacks hidden in the button presses. You can shoot an iceball or you can jump, but you can't just press the X button to jump. Nope. You have to press a specific button combo to activate the jump. This problem isn't new to Twisted Metal Black, its plagued the entire franchise. Doesn't mean that I have to like it.
The other thing I want to complain about are the boss characters. Minion is cheap. His weapons cause massive damage and they seem to hit you anywhere. But the final boss, Warhawk is even worse. HE'S A FREAKIN' HELICOPTER FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!! I really want to know who said "Hey this is a car combat game right? We should have a flying enemy for the final boss. That would be cool!" News flash! It's not cool. Never do that again. If I'm playing a flight game then sure, I'll fight a helicopter. But if I'm playing a car game I would like to fight a car (or some form of ground vehicle).
But enough with the complaining. All that you really need to know is that the game is still fun and I would still highly recommend it. Now who's up for a game of Twisted Metal Black Online?
Amazingly enough my PS2 still functions and it's one of the older brick models. But I really want backwards compatibility in my PS3. I have a fairly decent PS2 collection and sometimes I would like to just pull out a game without having to hookup the PS2. Backwards compatibility is the only reason I was even interested in custom firmware for the PS3. But I don't want to lose my account access so I'll just skip on that.
Now a sign of a good game is that ten years later the game is still fun. Twisted Metal Black is that game. Having been released June of 2001, Twisted Metal Black was one of the first "must own" titles for the PS2. In case you don't know, Twisted Metal Black is a car combat game. It's the one with the clown who's head is on fire.
Sure the graphics are dated. And the car physics are pretty laughable by today's standards. But the game is still fun. My wife and I played for about 2 hours blowing up each other and the AI contestants. We laughed, we cried, we yelled and we forgot the control scheme. Seriously, we were trying to remember how to pull off certain tricks the entire time we were playing. And that's probably my biggest gripe with the game. There are special attacks hidden in the button presses. You can shoot an iceball or you can jump, but you can't just press the X button to jump. Nope. You have to press a specific button combo to activate the jump. This problem isn't new to Twisted Metal Black, its plagued the entire franchise. Doesn't mean that I have to like it.
The other thing I want to complain about are the boss characters. Minion is cheap. His weapons cause massive damage and they seem to hit you anywhere. But the final boss, Warhawk is even worse. HE'S A FREAKIN' HELICOPTER FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!! I really want to know who said "Hey this is a car combat game right? We should have a flying enemy for the final boss. That would be cool!" News flash! It's not cool. Never do that again. If I'm playing a flight game then sure, I'll fight a helicopter. But if I'm playing a car game I would like to fight a car (or some form of ground vehicle).
But enough with the complaining. All that you really need to know is that the game is still fun and I would still highly recommend it. Now who's up for a game of Twisted Metal Black Online?
Monday, March 7, 2011
Dragon Age II Demo - Fun Be Had Here
I downloaded the demo for Dragon Age II. Dragon Age: Origins is a game that I highly enjoyed. I found it was able to be a decent western-rpg without falling into the habit of having 500 sidequests that have nothing to do with the story. So I've been eagerly awaiting Dragon Age II. The demo for Dragon Age II lasts about an hour and a half and it was just lots of fun to play.
I initially rolled a female warrior. First off, I'm glad that the main character now has a voice and a personality. That's always been one of my biggest complaints with w-rpgs. The main character is normally a blank slate with 0 personality. NPCs would talk and my character would just stand there with a stupid look on his face. Sure I could choose the line where my character supposedly tells the NPC to go kill her husband or something like that, but there's no real personality attached to that. It just feels so empty.
Bioware apparently fixed this with Mass Effect and now they're bringing the same system over to Dragon Age. WOOT! I like how you now choose part of a line when the dialogue tree shows up and your character then says something along those lines. It's like you choose a topic and then the dialogue expands on that topic. It really is a great way to go.
Now playing as the warrior is very straight forward. There's lots of potential here, but I don't think the warrior really showed off her stuff. So after my first playthrough I rolled a male rogue. The rogue was a lot more fun. Jumping all over the place and that backstab ability is just viscious. I like how the rogue would just fall through the ground, pop up behind the enemy, stab them and then BOOM! the enemy would explode. Good stuff.
I'm really looking forward to picking this game up but I do have a dilemma. Games like this tend to have a lot of DLC, then a year later the game gets re-released with all of the DLC included on the disc. Dragon Age: Origins had it's Ultimate Edition and that really sucked if you had already spent money on the DLC. I find packs like this a big slap in the face to the people who supported the DLC. And Bioware isn't the only company to do this. I've seen it with Fallout 3, Borderlands, and Grand Theft Auto IV. So I really have to question, do I get the game now or do I wait the year and get it then?
I initially rolled a female warrior. First off, I'm glad that the main character now has a voice and a personality. That's always been one of my biggest complaints with w-rpgs. The main character is normally a blank slate with 0 personality. NPCs would talk and my character would just stand there with a stupid look on his face. Sure I could choose the line where my character supposedly tells the NPC to go kill her husband or something like that, but there's no real personality attached to that. It just feels so empty.
Bioware apparently fixed this with Mass Effect and now they're bringing the same system over to Dragon Age. WOOT! I like how you now choose part of a line when the dialogue tree shows up and your character then says something along those lines. It's like you choose a topic and then the dialogue expands on that topic. It really is a great way to go.
Now playing as the warrior is very straight forward. There's lots of potential here, but I don't think the warrior really showed off her stuff. So after my first playthrough I rolled a male rogue. The rogue was a lot more fun. Jumping all over the place and that backstab ability is just viscious. I like how the rogue would just fall through the ground, pop up behind the enemy, stab them and then BOOM! the enemy would explode. Good stuff.
I'm really looking forward to picking this game up but I do have a dilemma. Games like this tend to have a lot of DLC, then a year later the game gets re-released with all of the DLC included on the disc. Dragon Age: Origins had it's Ultimate Edition and that really sucked if you had already spent money on the DLC. I find packs like this a big slap in the face to the people who supported the DLC. And Bioware isn't the only company to do this. I've seen it with Fallout 3, Borderlands, and Grand Theft Auto IV. So I really have to question, do I get the game now or do I wait the year and get it then?
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Hoard and Tetris
If you're actually following what I type about, you'll remember that I downloaded demos for both Hoard and Tetris a while back. I finally got around to playing them and I'm all set to post my thoughts. Tetris is up first.
Tetris is, well, Tetris. There's really not a lot to say. Tetris is the king of puzzle games for a reason. The gameplay is very simple, yet it can get really complex. You drop down blocks of different shapes in hopes of creating an entire row. Once the row in complete is disappears, the line then vanishes and you score points. No other puzzle game as knocked Tetris off of it's throne. Sure some people will claim that a different game deserves the title and maybe they'll place Tetris at second or third place. But Tetris will always be on someone else's list and the rest of the list will change drastically from person to person. Tetris is just that well known. Heck, Tetris is what the original Gameboy launched with. It truly defined portable gaming as the "easy to pick up, easy to put down" system. So Tetris is on my list to uprade to full product at some point. In the meantime you should watch this.
So next up is Hoard. You play a dragon and your goal is to burn down surrounding villages to collect gold. The dragon with the most gold wins. Simply put: Hoard is good. There's no other way to really put it. It's not great, but it's good. It has that easy to pick up and easy to put down feel going for it. Hoard is really meant to be played in short sessions since it plays more like a puzzle game then an adventure game, action game, or RPG. Your dragon can level up in various categories, but it's always the race against the clock and your opponents. Plus your dragon's levels will reset with every map.
The more gold your dragon collects and the longer he stays alive will give you multiplier bonuses and these are keys to success. It's worth it to go out of your way to kill your opponent from time to time just to keep their multiplier down. Plus the game is designed for some good ol' fashioned griefing. This is another game that I would easily purchase and add to my collection. Well, maybe if it goes on sale or something.
But Hoard always feels like it's missing something. I really think it's the dragons and their abilities. All the dragons feel the same and when you level them up their attacks and actions don't really change. Sure you can breathe fire for longer, but why can't I shoot a meteor or something. Just a little something that could add to the variety. There's definitely some untapped potential in here. Which is a shame since Hoard could easily have been great, instead of just good.
Tetris is, well, Tetris. There's really not a lot to say. Tetris is the king of puzzle games for a reason. The gameplay is very simple, yet it can get really complex. You drop down blocks of different shapes in hopes of creating an entire row. Once the row in complete is disappears, the line then vanishes and you score points. No other puzzle game as knocked Tetris off of it's throne. Sure some people will claim that a different game deserves the title and maybe they'll place Tetris at second or third place. But Tetris will always be on someone else's list and the rest of the list will change drastically from person to person. Tetris is just that well known. Heck, Tetris is what the original Gameboy launched with. It truly defined portable gaming as the "easy to pick up, easy to put down" system. So Tetris is on my list to uprade to full product at some point. In the meantime you should watch this.
So next up is Hoard. You play a dragon and your goal is to burn down surrounding villages to collect gold. The dragon with the most gold wins. Simply put: Hoard is good. There's no other way to really put it. It's not great, but it's good. It has that easy to pick up and easy to put down feel going for it. Hoard is really meant to be played in short sessions since it plays more like a puzzle game then an adventure game, action game, or RPG. Your dragon can level up in various categories, but it's always the race against the clock and your opponents. Plus your dragon's levels will reset with every map.
The more gold your dragon collects and the longer he stays alive will give you multiplier bonuses and these are keys to success. It's worth it to go out of your way to kill your opponent from time to time just to keep their multiplier down. Plus the game is designed for some good ol' fashioned griefing. This is another game that I would easily purchase and add to my collection. Well, maybe if it goes on sale or something.
But Hoard always feels like it's missing something. I really think it's the dragons and their abilities. All the dragons feel the same and when you level them up their attacks and actions don't really change. Sure you can breathe fire for longer, but why can't I shoot a meteor or something. Just a little something that could add to the variety. There's definitely some untapped potential in here. Which is a shame since Hoard could easily have been great, instead of just good.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 - Free Will
This game really paints the bad guys as the Pro-Registration team. I don't care how you look at it. Captain America is out fighting for his beliefs, standing up for what he thinks is right. Iron Man just rolled over and called it quits. He became a servant of the government and attacks whatever foe they tell him to. But that's not the worst part of it all. Not by far. The next level really reveals how far the Pro team has fallen.
The Pro team has been capturing super villains. All of the villains have been placed in Prison 42. And once there the Pro team is free to experiment on them. Yep, we have human experimentation going on here. But it gets worse. The Pro team has created a Nanonite control system that they can inject into the villains. This system literally takes away the villains free will! That, quite frankly, is horrifying. There's nothing just or right about this. They can now force a person to do whatever they want and that person cannot fight back.
This is shown during the next level. A convoy is transporting captured Supers to Prison 42. During this mission Venom shows up to help the Pro team. He initially tries to talk to the team, but whoever is controlling the Nanonites clamps down on his vocal chords and prevents him from talking. Later the controller forces Venom to "shut down" in a rather painful looking display and then he turns Venom back on, forcing him to fight some more.
I get that super villains aren't nice people and 99.9% of them would be on death row, but this is pretty sick. It strikes me as a plan that super villain would unleash, not something that "heroes" would use. This is the part where the game starts to veer away from the comics so they needed some sort of plot device, but this is bad. It really shows the Pro team in a negative light and takes away from the "both teams are fighting for their beliefs" that the game tried to establish.
This is also sad since this area has one of the more unique boss fights in it. In the Pro team you fight Goliath. Goliath has lived up to his name and is now giant-sized. This is better than the basic round around an arena and pound on the enemy until he drops that you normally encounter. You have to dodge his giant fists, hit his fists and cause him to collapse. It really is fun and I wish more of the fights were this unique. I only had one major problem. Only the guy I was controlling did anything! The rest of my team would just follow me around and stare at me with blank looks on their faces. CAN I GET A LITTLE AI HELP HERE?! My team isn't normally the brightest in the bunch but this is beyond stupid. Some self-preservation would be a good idea.
There's a fight against Multiple Man. He lives up to his name by creating copies of himself. It's a perfect battle for unlocking costumes for your characters.
I need to say that I despise the Fantastic Four. I have never liked the team. It's hard to explain why too. They're just the guys that rub me the wrong way. So I don't give a crap about The Thing and his personal issues with the whole Registration Act. I do find it funny that he bothered to join my team in the end though. I quickly unlocked his costume and then kicked him out of my line-up. That's basically what I do with all of the Fantastic Four.
So the Convoy level ends with Cap freeing some people and some others getting captured. That's just the way it breaks down. After the level the poorly named Mr. Fantastic makes a comment about glitches in the Nanonite control system, but it's "nothing" to worry about. Yeah right.
I'm also not a fan of Scorpion becoming Venom. I know it's been that way for a while, but the Scorpion already had a gimmick. Let him stay with that and bring back Eddie Brock as Venom.
Note: This might have already happened in the comic books. I personally have no idea.
The Pro team has been capturing super villains. All of the villains have been placed in Prison 42. And once there the Pro team is free to experiment on them. Yep, we have human experimentation going on here. But it gets worse. The Pro team has created a Nanonite control system that they can inject into the villains. This system literally takes away the villains free will! That, quite frankly, is horrifying. There's nothing just or right about this. They can now force a person to do whatever they want and that person cannot fight back.
This is shown during the next level. A convoy is transporting captured Supers to Prison 42. During this mission Venom shows up to help the Pro team. He initially tries to talk to the team, but whoever is controlling the Nanonites clamps down on his vocal chords and prevents him from talking. Later the controller forces Venom to "shut down" in a rather painful looking display and then he turns Venom back on, forcing him to fight some more.
I get that super villains aren't nice people and 99.9% of them would be on death row, but this is pretty sick. It strikes me as a plan that super villain would unleash, not something that "heroes" would use. This is the part where the game starts to veer away from the comics so they needed some sort of plot device, but this is bad. It really shows the Pro team in a negative light and takes away from the "both teams are fighting for their beliefs" that the game tried to establish.
This is also sad since this area has one of the more unique boss fights in it. In the Pro team you fight Goliath. Goliath has lived up to his name and is now giant-sized. This is better than the basic round around an arena and pound on the enemy until he drops that you normally encounter. You have to dodge his giant fists, hit his fists and cause him to collapse. It really is fun and I wish more of the fights were this unique. I only had one major problem. Only the guy I was controlling did anything! The rest of my team would just follow me around and stare at me with blank looks on their faces. CAN I GET A LITTLE AI HELP HERE?! My team isn't normally the brightest in the bunch but this is beyond stupid. Some self-preservation would be a good idea.
There's a fight against Multiple Man. He lives up to his name by creating copies of himself. It's a perfect battle for unlocking costumes for your characters.
I need to say that I despise the Fantastic Four. I have never liked the team. It's hard to explain why too. They're just the guys that rub me the wrong way. So I don't give a crap about The Thing and his personal issues with the whole Registration Act. I do find it funny that he bothered to join my team in the end though. I quickly unlocked his costume and then kicked him out of my line-up. That's basically what I do with all of the Fantastic Four.
So the Convoy level ends with Cap freeing some people and some others getting captured. That's just the way it breaks down. After the level the poorly named Mr. Fantastic makes a comment about glitches in the Nanonite control system, but it's "nothing" to worry about. Yeah right.
I'm also not a fan of Scorpion becoming Venom. I know it's been that way for a while, but the Scorpion already had a gimmick. Let him stay with that and bring back Eddie Brock as Venom.
Note: This might have already happened in the comic books. I personally have no idea.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 - The Rebuild
I apparently had to rebuild the database for my PS3. This is not a bad thing. Apparently your system's hard drive has become fragmented and this is just the defrag process. It's really the same thing that you need to do to your computer on a fairly regular basis. The PS3 doesn't require it as often. Don't worry about any of your save data, it should all be there once the process finishes.
When I started the rebuild my wife turns to me and goes "So how does Final Fantasy XIII end?" I didn't tell her, she still needs to finish that game. I should do another playthrough and then talk about it. That game is fantastic for falling short on everything it does.
But I'm not currently playing Final Fantasy XIII, instead I'm playing different RPG, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2. Alliance 2 is just as lame of a game, but I find myself oddly enjoying it. It's like enjoying a B-movie. You go in knowing it's going to be bad and when you come out you got exactly what you wanted.
I'm trying to figure out if this game has a morality system in it. Whenever I have a conversation that are three answer types. Offensive, Defensive and Diplomatic. Apparently if I select enough Offensive or Defensive options I get bonuses. But there's no balancing for it. If I choose Offensive my Defensive bonus doesn't get smaller. It stays the same so there's really no downfall to what you choose. You can't piss people off with you answers so they'll leave your party, this definitely isn't a Bioware title (which also means you can't sleep with your party members). So it's just another silly system that feels randomly thrown into the game.
When I last stopped playing I had reached the crossroads point. I had to choose pro-registration or anti-registration. Since this is my second playthrough I went Pro. Pro feels very unnatural to me. Iron Man and company seem to happily hunt down anyone on the Anti side of things. Sure they comment about how they feel badly about it, but it sure doesn't feel that way during gameplay. The Pro team will stop at nothing to defeat the rebel force.
With that the Pro team invades an Anti team hideout. BOOOOO! This is the same location as the last playthrough. It's practically the same mission, I'm just fighting for the other side this time. All assets are reused and recycled. Bishop accompanies my team as an NPC. He seems to have a full moveset, so why isn't he a playable character? He was probably slated to be DLC, but the Disney buyout of Marvel probably squashed that.
The hideout level is as static as the rest of them. There's not much to talk about. There's a boring fight against Spider-Woman. A boring fight against Hercules. Wait....Hercules? There's a character called Hercules in Marvel comics? Well, he's been arrested anyways, I guess he doesn't matter, but still. There's a slightly more interesting fight against Cable. Nothing else to worry about in the level.
This whole Civil War thing comes off as a giant cock-fight. It's fairly unbelievable. I just don't see Iron Man mindlessly hunting down Captain America just because he didn't register. This makes more sense in the comics because the whole event is actually orchestrated by the Skrull empire. I will say this, Skrulls have nothing to do with this game. I don't even think they are mentioned.
I also find it funny that all the heroes are busy chasing down other heroes. It's established that S.H.I.E.L.D. agents will take care of any super villains. Yeah, right. Because S.H.E.I.L.D. has been so effective at that over the years.
After the hideout level it's revealed that the Thunderbolt team has apparently been helping round up super villains. Well, there ya go.
There seems to be something more looming in the air though when it comes to dealing with the villains. I know how things play out, but I won't ruin it quite yet. Area 42 has been revealed as a big prison for people. It's hidden in the negative zone. Supposedly this will prevent prisoners from escaping. All I see is badly setup foreshadowing. Somebody get me my towel so I can clean up this mess.
When I started the rebuild my wife turns to me and goes "So how does Final Fantasy XIII end?" I didn't tell her, she still needs to finish that game. I should do another playthrough and then talk about it. That game is fantastic for falling short on everything it does.
But I'm not currently playing Final Fantasy XIII, instead I'm playing different RPG, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2. Alliance 2 is just as lame of a game, but I find myself oddly enjoying it. It's like enjoying a B-movie. You go in knowing it's going to be bad and when you come out you got exactly what you wanted.
I'm trying to figure out if this game has a morality system in it. Whenever I have a conversation that are three answer types. Offensive, Defensive and Diplomatic. Apparently if I select enough Offensive or Defensive options I get bonuses. But there's no balancing for it. If I choose Offensive my Defensive bonus doesn't get smaller. It stays the same so there's really no downfall to what you choose. You can't piss people off with you answers so they'll leave your party, this definitely isn't a Bioware title (which also means you can't sleep with your party members). So it's just another silly system that feels randomly thrown into the game.
When I last stopped playing I had reached the crossroads point. I had to choose pro-registration or anti-registration. Since this is my second playthrough I went Pro. Pro feels very unnatural to me. Iron Man and company seem to happily hunt down anyone on the Anti side of things. Sure they comment about how they feel badly about it, but it sure doesn't feel that way during gameplay. The Pro team will stop at nothing to defeat the rebel force.
With that the Pro team invades an Anti team hideout. BOOOOO! This is the same location as the last playthrough. It's practically the same mission, I'm just fighting for the other side this time. All assets are reused and recycled. Bishop accompanies my team as an NPC. He seems to have a full moveset, so why isn't he a playable character? He was probably slated to be DLC, but the Disney buyout of Marvel probably squashed that.
The hideout level is as static as the rest of them. There's not much to talk about. There's a boring fight against Spider-Woman. A boring fight against Hercules. Wait....Hercules? There's a character called Hercules in Marvel comics? Well, he's been arrested anyways, I guess he doesn't matter, but still. There's a slightly more interesting fight against Cable. Nothing else to worry about in the level.
This whole Civil War thing comes off as a giant cock-fight. It's fairly unbelievable. I just don't see Iron Man mindlessly hunting down Captain America just because he didn't register. This makes more sense in the comics because the whole event is actually orchestrated by the Skrull empire. I will say this, Skrulls have nothing to do with this game. I don't even think they are mentioned.
I also find it funny that all the heroes are busy chasing down other heroes. It's established that S.H.I.E.L.D. agents will take care of any super villains. Yeah, right. Because S.H.E.I.L.D. has been so effective at that over the years.
After the hideout level it's revealed that the Thunderbolt team has apparently been helping round up super villains. Well, there ya go.
There seems to be something more looming in the air though when it comes to dealing with the villains. I know how things play out, but I won't ruin it quite yet. Area 42 has been revealed as a big prison for people. It's hidden in the negative zone. Supposedly this will prevent prisoners from escaping. All I see is badly setup foreshadowing. Somebody get me my towel so I can clean up this mess.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 - They're All The Same
I've started to notice that it doesn't matter what team I take into a level. Most of the characters feel like copies of each other. Sure there are some varying movesets but nothing that really stands out. I can walk into an area with a team full of DPS characters and do just fine. I don't need my Tanks, or my Range attackers. Because everyone actually feels like everything. It's ridiculous. Couldn't they at least try to make the characters feel more individual? And who the hell is my healer?! This is seriously starting to irk me.
So after Von Bardas explodes for the second time you're off to Washington D.C. to try to convince Congress not to pass the Superhero Registration Act. The funny things is that Super Villains have also heard of the Act and they want it passed, so they attack Washington. Or at least Titanium Man does. I was going to post a link to Titanium Man but the Marvel.com listing for Titanium Man looks nothing like the guy in the game. Go figure. Titanium Man captures two Senators and it's up to you to save them.
There are some great moments in here. Deadpool shows his masked face. Apparently he was in D.C. for the Cherry Blossom Festival. Go figure. Deadpool loves to break the fourth wall and he does so about 10 seconds after he shows up. He directly address the player about how enjoying the Cherry Blossom Festival doesn't make him less manly. There's a boss battle against Deadpool, it's fairly simple as most of the boss battles are. Afterwords Deadpool will join your party as a temporary NPC.
You continue your chase after the Senators eventually running across Titanium Man. Boss battle time. This is really just round 1 vs Titanium Man and he's really a push over at this point. A strong fusion blast sent him packing. I have a feeling that I should be playing on a harder difficulty. I still don't know what difficulty I'm on.
When Titanium Man flees you successfully rescue Stan Lee, or Senator Leeman or something along those lines. I always find it fun to spot Stan Lee hiding in every Marvel movie. It's great to see him slipping into the video games like this too. Also, if Wolverine is your main character during this scene Stan will call him a canucklehead. Great stuff.
At this point Deadpool stops being an NPC and becomes a fully playable character. During my last playthrough Deadpool became a mainstay for my party. This guy is pretty broken as far as his powers are concerned. He's not overly powerful per-say, but he's great at hit and run tactics. Add his self-healing ability and you have a character who can survive any fight. I'll cover more on him later.
You make your way to the Lincoln Memorial and it's straight to round 2 versus Titanium Man. Boy that level seemed short. Titanium Man is harder this time round, especially when he starts dropping turrets. The turrets need to be taken out in short order or they can cause massive damage to your team. Titanium Man will also turn invisible. Taking down Titanium Man takes time and a small amount of planning. But eventually he goes down declaring that he's done his job and the Act will now pass.
Cue cutscene. Tony Stark is addressing Congress trying to convince them not to pass the Act. Afterwords there's a conversation between Tony and Capt. America. Turns out that Tony isn't fully against the Act, but Cap won't hear of it. He finds the Act to be very un-American and he'll fight it, even if he has to go underground to do it.
Ever head of the New Warriors? I haven't. Apparently they're a superhero team that stars in a reality TV show. The New Warriors are chasing down some villains I'm not familiar with when things go very wrong. One of the villains (guy named Nitro) causes a massive explosion that kills around 600 people. Apparently this fight happened near a school so the tragedy is expounded. Needless to say this event causes the Superhero Registration Act to be rushed through both the House and the Senate. The Act has been passed. Once again reality TV does it's best to destroy our society.
So after Von Bardas explodes for the second time you're off to Washington D.C. to try to convince Congress not to pass the Superhero Registration Act. The funny things is that Super Villains have also heard of the Act and they want it passed, so they attack Washington. Or at least Titanium Man does. I was going to post a link to Titanium Man but the Marvel.com listing for Titanium Man looks nothing like the guy in the game. Go figure. Titanium Man captures two Senators and it's up to you to save them.
There are some great moments in here. Deadpool shows his masked face. Apparently he was in D.C. for the Cherry Blossom Festival. Go figure. Deadpool loves to break the fourth wall and he does so about 10 seconds after he shows up. He directly address the player about how enjoying the Cherry Blossom Festival doesn't make him less manly. There's a boss battle against Deadpool, it's fairly simple as most of the boss battles are. Afterwords Deadpool will join your party as a temporary NPC.
You continue your chase after the Senators eventually running across Titanium Man. Boss battle time. This is really just round 1 vs Titanium Man and he's really a push over at this point. A strong fusion blast sent him packing. I have a feeling that I should be playing on a harder difficulty. I still don't know what difficulty I'm on.
When Titanium Man flees you successfully rescue Stan Lee, or Senator Leeman or something along those lines. I always find it fun to spot Stan Lee hiding in every Marvel movie. It's great to see him slipping into the video games like this too. Also, if Wolverine is your main character during this scene Stan will call him a canucklehead. Great stuff.
At this point Deadpool stops being an NPC and becomes a fully playable character. During my last playthrough Deadpool became a mainstay for my party. This guy is pretty broken as far as his powers are concerned. He's not overly powerful per-say, but he's great at hit and run tactics. Add his self-healing ability and you have a character who can survive any fight. I'll cover more on him later.
You make your way to the Lincoln Memorial and it's straight to round 2 versus Titanium Man. Boy that level seemed short. Titanium Man is harder this time round, especially when he starts dropping turrets. The turrets need to be taken out in short order or they can cause massive damage to your team. Titanium Man will also turn invisible. Taking down Titanium Man takes time and a small amount of planning. But eventually he goes down declaring that he's done his job and the Act will now pass.
Cue cutscene. Tony Stark is addressing Congress trying to convince them not to pass the Act. Afterwords there's a conversation between Tony and Capt. America. Turns out that Tony isn't fully against the Act, but Cap won't hear of it. He finds the Act to be very un-American and he'll fight it, even if he has to go underground to do it.
Ever head of the New Warriors? I haven't. Apparently they're a superhero team that stars in a reality TV show. The New Warriors are chasing down some villains I'm not familiar with when things go very wrong. One of the villains (guy named Nitro) causes a massive explosion that kills around 600 people. Apparently this fight happened near a school so the tragedy is expounded. Needless to say this event causes the Superhero Registration Act to be rushed through both the House and the Senate. The Act has been passed. Once again reality TV does it's best to destroy our society.
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