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Raising Hell extends Overlord's hilarious campaign, but at least so far, it doesn't really add to the experience. The original game stretched its tenuous gameplay far enough already; this expansion brings new levels that riff on the old ones, and a few new abilities, but it doesn't feel different at all. Which is good, for the sake of seeing more witty parodies of fantasy tropes. But by the last level of Overlord I was ready for it to be over.
Being a prequel, the ending of Extraction pretty much ruined itself. And the way it answers each question about the Dead Space story with two more questions is a bit perturbing. Outside of that, I'm really impressed with this package. It's got a compelling and exciting campaign (at least, it was compelling with two players), as well as a story-less Challenge Mode where you can just blow necromorphs to bits for fun.
It also has, in the form of bonus features, a "moving comics" presentation of the Dead Space comic books. Me and my comrade-in-space-arms watched these after the campaign expecting some trite fanservice shit, but they're actually quite good, largely due to some excellent voice acting and thrill-a-minute pacing. Apparently you can also watch them on GameTrailers if you're so inclined. There are a lot of worse ways to spend an hour or so.
Since the game was announced, something like two years ago now, my attitude toward Brütal Legend could best be described as wary intrigue. Sure, Tim Schafer is a fine piece of development pedigree, but a beat-em-up in a setting inspired by a genre of music? Well, the demo is on Xbox Live now, and after playing it I've changed my stance to lukewarm interest.
The game world is very finely crafted; even the brief demo shows off some richly imaginative creatures and environments. A big draw is Jack Black's commendable voice acting - which, combined with a seemingly endless amount of witty dialog, is a very good thing. Still, there were some parts of the presentation I felt fell flat, notably the character animation in cutscenes and the female sidekick's dialog.
Brütal Legend's hand-to-hand combat feels somewhat fresh, at least as far as the demo went with it. By no means does it revolutionize the action-combat game, but in the current deluge of God of War knock-offs, Brütal Legend's creative moves and simple controls do stand out.
What really caught my eye in the demo, though, was the vehicular manslaughter segment. I maintain morethanapassinginterest in the sport of cars-versus-pedestrians, and the driving section of the Brütal Legend demo did not disappoint! Eddie Riggs's "customizable hot rod" is a box-cover bullet point, so I'm hopeful that the full game's implementation can continue to satisfy.
The demo shows promise, but I guess I'm still not sold on the whole concept coming together. We'll see how it fares in the review trenches come Rocktober 13th.
Oh yeah - in the demo at least, there was no health bar. Which is great for a clean interface, but I had no idea if I was about to die. Hopefully there's something I'm missing here, else unexpected deaths could get pretty frustrating pretty fast.
House of the Dead: Overkill felt just like an arcade rail shooter - fun, but not a standout, and largely forgettable. Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, from what I tried, had a pleasing amount of depth - but it still just felt "good for a rail shooter." Contrarily, after Dead Space: Extraction's introductory chapter, I completely forgot that the game was on rails.
It's a well-paced adventure (so far, anyway), with action to spare and no shortage of collectible extras, like weapon upgrades! The weapons are all great fun to use, and it helps that you never really have to worry about ammo. Well, you will if you just waste it by shooting into the air all willy-nilly, I guess.
Graphics are good, voice acting is great, controls are great. The one thing that seems off about Extraction is that even on the Hard difficulty setting, it isn't hard at all. They may as well have changed its name to Normal (and Normal to Easy).
Oh, and it probably isn't all that fun with only one player. Teamwork is actually an important facet of Extraction at times. There are Wiimote puzzles where two players will take turns drawing a path - the other player fending off necromorphs in the meantime - that seem like they would be a drag playing by yourself.
I've tried to play the original Metroid on several occasions, quickly giving up each time. Coming at the game from decades in its future, trying to manage passwords and no in-game map - it's simply too archaic. Enter Zero Mission, a remake of the first Metroid based on the Metroid Fusion engine. Problem solved!
Zero Mission still has hints of its old-school game design, in some particularly punishing rooms, and in a flat-to-nonexistent narrative (the remake tries to spice things up with some brief animated scenes, but really, they didn't have much to work with). Nevertheless, the game plays like something out of the 21st century, and I'm grateful for it.
It's a solid game, although I don't really know how much of it is from the original and how much is new. But however it's been changed, I'm glad to finally experience more than a few minutes of the seminal Metroid.
At first, I blamed most of my minion deaths on spotty micromanagement controls - but like Pikmin, as the game marched forward, it seemed dedicated to demonstrate my minions' frailty with monsters that could kill the entire squad at once. Dwarves and masked raiders with firebombs that mass-murder from afar. Flying eye demons that spawn enemies ad infinitum. The game sends mixed messages: minions can grab new armor and weapons to become stronger, but they can die at the drop of a hat. And I can sacrifice hundreds of them to power up my own equipment (the whole forge system seems poorly thought out).
I would still really like a map. And the camera controls are, well, awful.
So the gameplay needs some tweaking and rebalancing, leading to some incredibly frustrating moments of powerlessness and sudden death. Which is a shame - because the game world is really a joy to be in, and I love seeing these fantasy tropes turned on their head. Being an evil overlord is awesome.
I've finished the main game, but I'm not done yet - there's a downloadable expansion yet to conquer! Plus I'm already pretty much sold on the sequel, I already ownthe prequel, and the DS spinoff intrigues me as well.
I was never big on Contra - it's too hard for me. In the company of friends, though, the quest to get to the next checkpoint without a Game Over can be quite fun.
That's where the genius bit of ReBirth comes in: it can be finished in an afternoon, with plenty of time to spare.
The game charms with its 16-bit visuals and music (with minimal use of modern graphical sophistication), and there's a campy, ridiculous story to boot. For a $10 bite-sized portion of Contra, this is pretty perfect. Just don't expect anything more.
Arkham Asylum isn't perfect. The game hits its peak too early - the last few boss fights, though not "bad" per se, aren't quite as good as the first ones. And not to say that backtracking is a pain, but returning to old haunts in the game's final segments feels flat, compared to the tense excitement of exploring them for the first time.
But that's really the worst I can say. This is a great game; more than just having solid mechanics and playability, it really benefits from the fact that you're skulking around and fighting goons as Batman, and that you run foul of his genuinely psychotic cast of supervillains. Arkham Asylum makes you feel like Batman. And that is fucking awesome.
The reviews I'd seen online generally maintained that the game has a shitty ending, which I wouldn't necessarily agree with it. It is a bit odd, sure - after defeating a mutated Joker (who de-mutates, of course), Batman flies back to Gotham, listening to a radio dispatch about Two-Face robbing a bank. Then after the credits, you see Killer Croc's hand reaching up out of the Gotham river, and grabbing a container of the game's Bane-on-steroids 'Titan' serum. So it might be setting up two sequels? But anyway, it feels just like what would happen in a comic book, and I thought it was plenty adequate to close the story without getting all melodramatic.
Solving all the Riddler's challenges was a blast - each area has a bunch of trophies, audio recordings, riddles and other stuff littered around. Once you get an area's map, it's a simple joy to just follow the clues and tool around. It really gives Arkham Island legs even after all the baddies are gone and the story is over.
There's also a Challenge Mode, where you play out scenes from the game's fighting and stealth segments a la carte. These sound like fun (especially the stealth ones, since there are so many different ways for these to play out); but I've had my fill of Batman for now, so maybe I'll come back for these another time.
Batman: Arkham Asylum is a fantastic game, and you should play it.
Progress: 84%, finished story (on normal) and riddles
Sam & Max looked pretty good, but the demos I've tried of later Telltale episodics show definite signs of improvement. So, long story short, I've already bought Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People and just need the time of day to get around to it.
Tales of Hearts came out in Japan almost a year ago, and the most recent hint of a North American release is from months before that. There's been word zero about this since last year, which is kind of a bad sign. Shame, since I definitely liked how the game system set-up looks.