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Assassin's Creed: Revelations

2012-02-18T04:53:23Z

It’s time to jump back into the animus with the next installment of the Assassin’s Creed series. A series that focused first on stealthy movement and calculated assassinations has grown less and less “stealthy” as time has moved onwards. Assassin’s Creed: Revelations returns with the open game world and attempts to flourish even more possibilities and choices within the over-world than the previous games while still preserving the driven storyline and careful calculated kills in set areas. AC:R follows the story right after AC: Brotherhood, which would be rather cool if all the events of the game (as fun as they are) actually progressed the story. As a bit of a spoiler alert, Desmond does some bad thing and blacks out at the end of AC:B. AC:R is focused around the entire time that Desmond is unconscious as he tries to put his mind back together. This leads me nicely into the story...

Desmond is strapped to the animus to prevent his brain from becoming Swiss cheese fused with socks. The animus starts up a sort of “safe mode” (called the black room) to keep him from being a vegetable where Subject 16 (from previous games) has stored his subconscious, now existing as “part” of the animus as his real body is long dead. He warns Desmond that his body is being flooded with too much information of his past lives, no longer able to sort out the “Desmond” human being from “Ezio” and “Altair”. To solve this, Subject 16 offers to help Desmond relive more of the final years of Ezio and Altair so his conscious can sort everything out. So it’s back to Ezio’s life, now aged yet still very awesome and deadly, to put a close to this chapter in the Assassin’s Creed series.

The player takes control of Desmond (in the “Black Room”), Ezio (Now in Constantinople), and Altair (In flashbacks). Ezio’s gear is mostly still nice and functional from the previous games aside from losing his double hidden blade (one of them breaks), sword, and ammo at the start of the game in a very cool cut scene. The game gives a “tutorial” of sorts to introduce newer players to the system controls that can be quickly completed by any veteran to the series with very “Yeah, I did that, I’m pretty awesome” results. The pace from here on is a long string of “learning” events and assassinations, which is where the game tends to stumble a bit for me. While the game focuses on finding “Keys” that Altair stored memory and some grand secret within, a huge portion of the game is just having the player run around and kill people with new tricks and tools that are used for JUST that mission (they can be used elsewhere, but with less efficiency). The old tools that Ezio acquired over his life are incredibly potent and deadly, an instant kill-silent-hidden knife, a godly swordfighter, the ability to disarm and slaughter a target, to perform a “kill spree”, a handgun (literally), parachutes to avoid falling to a gruesome and stupid death, a poison dart launcher, and his ability to run pretty much wherever the hell he wants via magic parkour just to name a few awesome things in his bag of killing. Revelations decides this clearly isn’t enough madness, so it adds a hookblade (which does a lot of random yet cool things that mostly revolve around movement) and bombs… cause when I think of killing silently, I think high grade explosives. These two tools allow you to tackle problems with either absolute stealth, clever diversions and brutal stabbings, or simply walk up to a target and hurl a grenade at their face, or walk up and start swinging your sword like a nut case or anything else you can think of from getting from A to B. They all end with the same result, a lot of dead people. Of course there are “full synchronization” challenges to deter the player from doing such random foolish actions, but usually no punishment for doing things “wrong” (aside from some REAL annoying “do not be detected” missions).

Stepping away from the killing spree that Assassin’s Creed has always been, lets talk about the rest of the world and the characters. Constantinople is pretty desert-like, it’s got a lot of Templars being jerks along with the royal guards being on edge due to royal issues. For some reason, the streets are littered with bomb components, beggars, and people who want to tell the Templars to kiss their… rear. Otherwise, everything seems to be doing just fine, the assassins are doing their thing but have had a bit of an issue with recruitment (which is a prompt for Ezio to make his own little gang of psychopaths… I mean assassins). Finding the “keys” seems to linger out of mind often as there’s more interesting things to look at. The city has numerous shops to purchase, Templar strongholds to “steal” for assassin use, random city events for money, and an “awareness meter” to replace notoriety from the previous games. As the player interacts with the city (renovates shops, kills guards/Templars/people, steals or just causes chaos) the Templars become “aware” of assassins in the city and will attack an assassin den (where they all hang out) should the awareness meter go unchecked. These “attacks” can be ignored (will have to retake the area, some of the players assassins may/will be killed upon losing the den) or the player can play a tower defense game… yes, a tower defense game. The game forces the player to do this once, then it can safely be avoided with ease as there are heralds everywhere in the city that lower awareness by 25% for little cost. Furthermore, the game rewards the player when they promote an assassin to master by making the attacks NEVER happen at that particular den. The defense game seems like a tacky (but fun) system that was thrown in at the last minute.

Still, the game isn’t any less fun than the previous in the series. In fact, it’s perhaps more amusing with the new tools to blow up guards or splatter them with something foul and watch them flail around in their own stench. The game is “easier” with the assassin guild similar to brotherhood. The player can ignore the story for long durations and train assassins to absurd levels which in turn, gives the player the best weapons and armor in the game as they reach master rank. I had the BEST possible sword, knife, and armor before clearing half the game. Did this make it less fun? No. It’s a reward for enjoying all that the game offers; it’s entertaining without being frustratingly hard or simple and dull. While it doesn’t offer the balance of free roaming and story progression that other games may hold, it’s still all rather entertaining regardless of how the player wishes to approach the game.

Revelations is beautiful to behold, the buildings, the sky, the water, the piles of hay… they all just feel “right” in the world. Everything blends together in a way that the world feels as though it would continue onwards without the player’s interference. It’s graphically solid aside from the bombs and ammo everywhere and an occasional rag doll going insane or being out of place during the assassination. Every assassination feels just right, every bomb blast feels appropriate for the time and material used, every person you push down or trip falls in comically style and stay down for a bit due to injury. Visually pleasing and fun to interact (or mess with) the environment and citizens of Constantinople.

The sound helps draw the player into the world of Assassin’s Creed just as it always has. Sewers have that dark, slightly moist and squishy sound as the player runs along the surfaces and the sound of marketplaces feels like being submerged within a shopping mall in modern society, people communicating, shouting, bargaining, saying “Hey what’s wrong with that guy?” as the player runs up a wall and out a window after pushing/tackling several people for no reason. Audio cues give a sense of paranoia and adrenaline just as they should. Gunshots, explosions, arrows flying by, everything blends together so well and bring the player into the game. If there is any complaint, is the people will often repeat the same lines of bewilderment as the player scales buildings for no apparent reason, and that’s really nit picking the sound.

It’s fun, it’s addictive, the multiplayer ranges from frustratingly stupid and hard to the most intense and adrenaline racing experiences depending on who is playing, it’s just a good game overall. It’s worth getting for the game itself, but as a piece of the Assassin’s Creed plot it’s really just a lot of history and a wrap up to Ezio and Altair’s stories so the company can finally move on to another character and time period. Looking forward to the next chapter in the story, but then what could the next over the top weapon possibly be? A hand held grenade launcher that you can attach to targets/buildings and detonate remotely? Replace throwing knives with disk blades so you can lop people in half? A cooler looking outfit for assassins that actually feels like a disguise? Maybe a quadruple hidden blade that has blades come out of your shoes? Whatever it is, it’ll probably be just as entertaining, if not a little repetitive as the series has grown.

Sequence

2012-02-11T09:11:23Z

From the small independent company Iridium Studios comes a true gem for the gaming world: Sequence. Sequence takes the simplicity of rhythm games and turns it into a game where one must balance strategy, skill, perseverance, and a bit of luck. Rhythm fused with role-playing elements, chance, reflex, it is all so many things smashed together that the common question is simply “What the hell is Sequence?” (So much that there’s actually a video to help answer that very question). In the simplest terms, it’s an RPG that uses rhythm as a form of “combat” to gain items and level up. A bit strange in concept, but it works perfectly together if you give it a chance.

Confusing mechanics aside for now, Sequence follows the “adventure” of Ky (the player), a college student who wakes up one day in a tower filled with horrible monsters that want to kill him (it’s just one of those days right?). No idea of how he ended up in such a cliché and suck situation, Ky is guided forward by his “Shepherd” Naia, a woman who more or less is watching over him and trying her best to keep him from dying a horrible death to the monsters I mentioned a bit ago. Luckily, the monsters don’t rely on brute strength (as Ky isn’t the best of fighters) but rather fight in a dimensional plane of magic, music, and rhythm. It’s a matter of skill and dexterity (and the occasional grind for experience) as Ky fights up the tower towards promised freedom and perhaps an explanation as to what the hell is going on with this whole tower.

Now lets get more confused with the actual game play of Sequence. To start with, there are three difficulties to choose from (which can be changed any time up till about 20% through the game, in which case it locks): easy (for those who aren’t musically gifted or dexterous), medium (for the talented and skilled people out there) and hard (for people with social problems or too much free time). As such, the game is either fun and innovative, or painstakingly difficult and frustrating (but so satisfying) depending on what type of challenge the player wants. Of course the game allows the player to replay any battle in the event of failure with a small compensation reward for trying and allows the player to backtrack to easier fights to farm items and experience. Speaking of experience, the players ability to “fight” are greatly affected by player level, large amounts of experience are given to the player upon successfully winning any fight. Of course, this is balanced by “item craft” which is necessary to create new gear, new spells/attacks, and plot items in order to advance in the story. In order to “create” new gear or plot items, the player must spend their own experience points to increase a raw percent chance of successfully creating the item. This can cost next to nothing up to several or ALL of the players current levels depending on the item and of course how lucky the player is as the highest chance of success is 95%. Harsh? Maybe, but nothing-in life is ever free. A mix between fighting, item craft, and luck to push forward in the story, progress being halted by the need to grind and get better and better at each song and its set rhythm.

“But Soda, you didn’t really talk about the game play itself”, yeah, I know. It’s really all just so complicated unless you’re playing the game itself, which is still a bit confusing. So let me wrap up the game play section talking about how Ky “fights” against the monsters. The player is shown 3 “fields” that can be switched on the fly with the click of a button. These three fields contain a set of directional arrows (left, down, up, right) and arrows (gems) that fall from the top of the field to the arrows below. Simple in theory, but remember there are 3 fields, Mana, Attack, and Defend. The Defense field contains arrows that, if missed, deal damage to the played based off of current defense and arrow color (which ranges from white dealing 1-2 damage to red dealing 10-20+ if the player misses). The attack field is blank until the player “casts” an attack (by pressing a selected number key) that summons a set pattern of arrows following the beat and pace of the current music. If the player manages to hit ALL of the arrows, the spell is cast dealing damage, creating a shield, or healing the player depending on what was selected. Missing any note/arrow during the cast causes the spell to fail and do nothing. Casting any spell costs mana, that’s where the mana field comes into play. The mana field is a near constant barrage of falling arrows that give mana if the player hits the mark as they fall. Missing a mana arrow has no consequence other than not earning mana, thus the field can be ignored if the player has no need for mana at the time. As such, the player has to balance attacking, defending, and recharging mana throughout each fight to different musical scores with different paces. Knowing when to recharge, when to attack, when to defend, when to ignore the defense field so you can finish a long spell is all part of mastering Sequence (and having any hope of survival on anything harder than easy). If there's any complaint about the gameplay, it's that it is a bit repetative with the whole "Grind, craft item, repeat" that most RPGs struggle with.

Sequence is simply beautiful visually due to the simplicity of everything. The characters and backgrounds may not have the millions of animations/details and “realistic” feel most people look for in modern games, but they fit perfectly with the fantasy theme that Sequence is aiming towards. Spells have a beautiful flourish of sparks and light upon successful cast that, while beautiful and interesting to watch, do not take the player out of the hectic pace of battle. It’s all just beautiful to behold for a small company, the quality speaks well for any of their future releases.

Now here’s where Sequence shines even brighter, the sound. The music is all custom made for the game, spanning 20+ original musical scores both to set the mood of the story, the calm feel of a safe room, and of course, the battles that range from a smooth jazz flow, an adrenaline pumping score, or a techno-space like trance. The music is just fantastic; I can’t come up with words to do them justice to how well it all ties together. To make it even better, Sequence is fully voiced by a terrific group that manages to capture each characters personality so well that it sticks in the players mind even if they only speak for a minute or so. The sounds all create a deep connection to the world of Sequence.

Sequence is available on Steam for 5 bucks; it’s a steal, seriously. Go, buy, this. I would say it’s good to support a new independent company, but this is based on the game simply being that great. Sequence is a gem that I would happily have paid double to enjoy and have even gone out of my way as to purchase the music from the brilliant artists (Literally, buying music, in this day and age?!). This game lived up to all my expectations and more. I look forward to Iridium Studios next work.

(At the time this was written Sequence was on sale)

Understanding DOTA - The Baby Steps

2012-02-04T05:16:11Z

This is a new web series that I am currently doing. I got signed by Machinima recently to do DOTA 2 and StarCraft 2 related content along with some video blogs. That's why I haven't been able to produce a lot of content. Some of us also hated some of the games in the market which is why we review old stuff or we just don't even bother.

So the following video is to give you a small introduction into the world of dota and how things work. Watching DOTA can be confusing sometimes because of how detailed it can be but it will be my job to break it down for you into small chunks so it can be easier to understand. Hopefully you will enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIMxXdRYkGQ&list=UUVYXLvQ-MF2badAbMB-Hk_g&index=1&feature=plcp

Red Faction Armageddon

2012-01-06T20:38:40Z

Mars, it’s big, it’s red-ish, it’s full of aliens and jerks in cult religions that want to kill you and rule the big red wasteland… wait what? Well whatever, welcome back to Mars with the final installment of Red Faction. After fighting for the planet time and time again (as well as blowing the crap out of about everything built and anything that moves) the planet is doing a bit better. It’s got some cool buildings, some roads not made out of dirt, cool technology and weapon, and the air is much cleaner than it used to be. Well, all that goes to hell right after the start of the game… but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Red Faction Armageddon is a third person shooter with role-playing game mechanics published by THQ and Syfy Games. The player is given control of Darius Mason (What’s with this family and blowing shit up and saving Mars?). Rather than the open ended/free roaming feeling that RF: Guerilla had, RF: Armageddon shoves you down a set linear path similar to the early RF games. This is done to drive the player onwards quickly with the narrative tale that unfolds with the grace of a house of cards on top of a washing machine. Lets jump right into that story now…

Darius Mason, son of the awesome guy from RF: Guerilla, joins as a mercenary engineer for the Red Faction to deal with Adam Hale, son of a jerk terrorist guy that was killed by Darius’ father, who wants to blow up a terra-former to bring an end to all the happy progress that has been made over the last few games as he is the “true ruler of Mars” and hates the Mason family for ruining his fathers attempts at eco-terrorism. Did that confuse you? Good, cause I don’t understand it either. Well, that goes badly, Adam Hale blows the crap out of the terra-former in what appears to be a suicide bombing, Mars starts to suck again and most of the people flee underground with Darius blaming himself and the people blaming the Red Faction for failing to stop Hale. Darius goes out to work for some money and ends up being tricked by the not-dead Adam Hale into unleashing a whole army of bugs and creatures that apparently were always sealed within Mars with an easily broken pillar of metal. Now, blaming himself once more for causing Mars to become a bigger ball of suck, Darius goes forth to try and rectify his mistake, kill the crazy bugs and crap that are ripping the people apart, re-kill Adam Hale for good, and keep up his relationship with some random attractive woman named Kara. Do you understand the story yet? No? That’s probably not a good thing cause that’s as clear as it ever gets. The game does not build characters up so you feel anything for them other than being forced to hear them talk to you or stare at them during a cut scene. The “dramatic” finale of the game feels so tacky and out of place that I’m certain it’s just done for shock value similar to what Modern Warfare has been shoving in our faces per game. The story itself is predictable, simple, and rushed, the characters are weakly connected to the player, and the ending is ok at best, not satisfying but not empty, it’s just an ending.

Lets move right along to the game play. It’s a shooter of course, so it’s most likely going to be one of those “super soldier” games where you run at hordes of crap and take the damage like a cool guy while killing things in mass or a take cover and fire at key targets kind of game. Well, no, it’s a poor mix of both. The game lazily introduces you to cover and destructible environments but that only helps against human enemies, which there are VERY few of. The majority of enemies are quick teleport-jumping creatures and bugs with long range attacks that have pinpoint accuracy or explode dealing an area of “F you” destruction to your cover. This is made worse that finding cover means very little as the bugs can just flash jump behind the player and start firing away. In simple terms, you will die very quickly on the harder settings to “What the hell just killed me?” as a bug teleports behind you and unleashes 2-3 salvos into your back, which you can’t deal with since 3-4 other bugs are in front of you doing the same thing. Fun. This is supposedly addressed with the super simplified aim system of “snapping” to targets. Holding the right mouse button will “snap” the players aim and camera at the nearest killable target to the current cursor allowing easy “right click left click” kills. This of course is done poorly as it takes away any player “skill” other than aiming half-assly and holding mouse buttons to kill a target that consumes 50% of your current weapon clip or several clips. It’s all very action-based, lots and lots of “what the hell am I going to do now” moments as you see a wave of bugs coming forward and the rare occasion of an actual person with a gun. It’s mindless shooting fun… I guess if you’re into that.

The game also gives the player the “Nano forge”, a wristwatch equivalent to being a time shifter (From Singularity), a Jedi (Push, shockwave, drain life, shield bubble), and whatever the hell that guy from FEAR was (Adrenaline mode for faster fire rate, cause being angry makes your gun shoot faster). You can rebuild destroyed buildings and structures (most of them anyways) to rebuild paths you may accidentally blow up so you can always have more “cover” to hide pointlessly behind. The Nano Forge is also the players “level up” system, using “Salvage” to upgrade various attributes and abilities. It’s fun to get crazy upgrades, but then they simply make the game “easier” instead of having a real impact. Things die slightly faster or you can take slightly more spikes to the face before restarting a whole area. All this following the “linear” game play route makes RF: Armageddon more frustrating than it should be. The player may push a button to have a magical “Go this way” line appear on the ground, this of course has to be spammed pretty often in certain areas due to the cluttered similarity of Cave 1, Tunnel 1, and Cave 2-5. If a game has to have a “Go this way” path highlighted to the player, it’s clearly not conveying the objective in an understandable way. It all feels like playing an “on the rails” shooter (which ironically, has an on the rail section that is really fun) with the illusion to roam about and get the rewards of ammo that the player may or may not need and some piles of salvage for upgrades that make the player slightly stronger. It’s just… tedious. But at least the powers and cool guns make it enjoyable in small doses (Singularity gun, it shoots black holes… then explodes… that’s awesome!).

Shifting gears, lets talk about the graphics. It’s pretty, you know, pretty as a cave or tunnel with old ironwork and murderous cult gunners and bugs can be. Mars is a big red ball of rock, dust, and storms; the tunneling underground of Mars is the same minus the storms and light. The biggest change in scenery would be walking through the nest of the bugs (gross, everything is all… sticky looking) or getting to pilot some type of vehicle (which is generally forced and over powered as hell) through a small section. Gunfire doesn’t feel as powerful as it should visually, lacking the whole “Hell yeah, I just shot a rocket at that” feeling. It causes several of the guns and creatures to lack that responsive feel and recoil from firing/being shot. Decent quality, very science fiction particle effects, but overall not as breathtaking or appropriate as other games.

Lets go over the sound quality. Voices are actually rather clear and appropriate at most times, characters will chime in with their personalities at set intervals (no random chatter) to try and build a sense of who everyone is. Guns sound… well like guns. Explosions sound kind of smaller and less amazing than the previous games. Bugs sound like gross squishy bugs and make “pew pew pew” noises as they fire spikes or whatever at the player. Enemy humans taunt the player in humorous fashion and make a satisfying “ARRRGGG” if you hit them mid sentence. The music is… ignorable. It’s there, but gunfire and bugs screeching or making squishy noises drown it out. It’s not the most pleasing audio sensation, but it’s appropriate enough.

So the end of Red Faction isn’t the masterpiece it could have been though it’s not a sour note at all. It’s simple enough, it’s fun in short bursts, has an ok story, and is generally interesting to play. It’s got a pretty fun multiplayer but it gets real old after about 2-3 days. It’s good… but not worth the current price. Rent it if you want to play “another shooter” or wait for the price to drop down some more. If not, it’s best just to remember Red Faction for the good ol times, blowing up a large structure with a few well placed explosives, watching it crumble with 10+ enemy units within it, and walking away like a cool person.

Link's Awakening

2011-06-14T20:35:10Z

Last week, buried in the furvor of a new console launch, Nintendo released its first few titles for the 3DS Virtual console, including The Legend of Zelda: Link''s Awakening DX.

How gamers my age look back on Link's Awakening tends to go one of two ways - They remember it as a game they picked up when they finished Pokemon and realized they had no other GBC games to tide them over for the launch of Gold and Silver, or they simply remember how much the ending sucked. This says nothing of the generation that came before us, who experienced Link's Awakening two years after A Link to the Past was released, and were caught up in Top-Down Zelda furvor more strongly (despite Ocarina of Time having a similar gap to the rerelease of Link's Awakening). So, how's the gameplay held up over two decades?

On first view, its easy to see qualities of the Zelda series that started here that would frustrate gamers in later adventures. Zelda's existence in the story is limited to Link opening the game mistaking Marin for her. Not taking place in Hyrule was part of what made games like the Oracle pair feel 'cheaper' and less serious, but somehow despite being not in Hyrule, and being far more.. liberal with its uses of properties (including encountering numerous characters from the Mario franchise), Link's Awakening still feels like a proper Zelda game, exploring feels natural, fresh, and invigorating, and even with the flimsiest pretences its hard to not get excited about the next dungeon, the items inside, and yet another instrument towards waking the Windfish and ending the dream that is this game.

Speaking of the dungeons, which for the only time in the Zelda series are never referred to as such or as Temples, are perfectly done. They are complex enough in scope to provide challenge to any gamer, yet small enough to be comfortable for on-the-go gaming in that you won't forget what you were up to when you need to put the system down. This could be said for the world itself as well, with a fairly large overworld featuring memorable and detailed settings, and colouration that does not feel dated despite the age of the game.

Gameplay is your standard top-down Zelda affair, with items bound to your A and B buttons, though I doubt anyone takes their sword off A except for some very stupid jumping puzzles involving the Pegasus Boots and Roc's Feather. I hope the person who green-lit that puzzle was pushed into one of the many pits I fell into after missing the timing. Each dungeon (and a few minor subquests) feature items that help cross the gaps that prevent you from sequence breaking in an open world, and all are fairly interesting and not totally gimmicky. Two notes are that the usually-common Boomerang is actually the product of a long trading cycle, and is a powerful enough weapon to drop the final boss in a single shot; and that this is the Zelda title that debuted the item now that comes to mind when most people think Zelda after a sword and shield - the Ocarina.

The 3DS screen lets the GBC colours shine clearly, but also brings a new wealth of problems. While you can save using a single restore state through the console, trying to save "properly" to relive the experience like the original is immensely frustrating, as hitting the SELECT, START, A, and B buttons was hard enough on the GBC, and with the 3DS's ridiculous design for Select and Start makes it immensely frustrating. Not as frustrating, however, as pressing the power button thinking it was start (as that location was Start on the DS Lite) and being told "Game software closed, do you want to go to sleep or power off?" No notifications or anything, just "Boom, hope you saved recently!"

While characters are fairly sparse in the game, the cast is memorable enough that you don't forget who is who, which makes the fact that the ending you thought was bad when you were eleven is still horrible even worse. At least potentially the most likeable character (Marin) gets some resolution, but this is a 1990s video game before difficulty was wrapped in protective foam, so finishing the game with 0 deaths is an immense challenge.. that is required to even see Marin's role in the finale.

So, has the game survived the test of time? Yes. I'm actually concerned Ocarina of Time 3D will remind me how portable games need to feel portable and be paced appropriately. This is an adventure you can still get lost in, but you don't need to be paranoid about missing your bus stop if you want to pick up and play on the go either. Most gripes are products of the 3DS hardware implementation, or rehashes of the same problem that's been there since 1993 - the goddamn ending. It makes you feel like there should be something else, just like in this paragraph.

Our Staff at E3!

2011-06-13T17:41:43Z

Our staff was recently at the Electronic Entertainment Expo and we tried a lot of products and games. The blogs I am about to link are from my experiences and I also included pictures of random things and signs!

I hope everyone enjoys my report!

http://gosugamers.net/general/blogs/3075 - Day 1

http://gosugamers.net/general/blogs/3080 - Day 2

http://gosugamers.net/general/blogs/3081 - Day 3

I didn't make a sign for the people who read our work but I really do appreciate everyone who comes onto this site. It isn't that I completely forgot but I thought it would be better if you guys read it straight from here. I hope everyone enjoys the report!

Singularity

2011-06-02T21:37:27Z

The whole world... in my hand... get it? No one? -Sigh-

Moving right along, Singularity is a first person shooter with a twist (as pretty much every first person shooter has been for a while) developed by Raven Software (Dev. team for Quake 4 and CoD:Black Ops download content) and published by Activision. Singularity takes its ideas from other FPS games like Bioshock, Metro 2033, and Call of Duty (mainly with a lot of bad guys being Russian, German or Nazi forces) and fuses them all together, albeit a bit half hearted in each adaptation.

The story is... confusing if anything. Russia finds something known as Element 99 (E99) which emits a huge amount of natural energy and of course uses it to make a bunch of crazy weapons (I mean, what else would you do with it?) and eventually create a large device that causes... well a singularity. This singularity causes temporal "jumps" that sends people within the radius backwards or forwards in time or drags others from the past into the present (most of which are VERY not friendly). A bunch of marines head to Russia to check out what the hell is going on. They promptly get shocked by a singularity wave, crash onto the island where the experiments took place, and, just as promptly, all die horribly with the exception of the player. The player jumps backwards in time to a burning building, finds a man who is about to fall to a firey death, saves him, escorts him out, then returns to the present to realize he just screwed time up REAL bad. Russians took over the world by force in the new present due to the use of E99 and the man the player saved (oopsie daisy). The player is then sent to find the "TMD" under the guidance of a group known as MIR-12 (which consists of like... 2 people) to fix the time back to what it was... or at least something that doesn't involve the world turning into a nuclear wasteland with mutants everywhere and Russians killing whatever moves (that includes you). The fate of the world... is in your hands... still no one? ugh my humor is wasted on the masses...

Gameplay wise, Singularity is a "normal" FPS feel with science and physics thrown against the wall. The player is given a very standard array of weapons, a pistol, combat rifle, shotgun, and a sniper during the start of the game. A few "special" weapons can be found as the player continues onwards (a minigun, explosive spike cannon, rocket launcher, and so forth) and each weapon can be "upgraded" in damage, reload, or clip size by finding limited weapon "cases", forcing the player to specialize in one or two weapons. Since simply having a gun in a virtual world is too dull, Singularity gives the player a Time manipulation device or "TMD" for short. The TMD gives the player the ability to age or revert time in incredible increments with the push of a button. The TMD starts with ability to rebuild a collapsed staircase, turn a scrap box back into a medical kit, or age an enemy so rapidly that he turns from flesh to bone to dust in a matter of seconds. More TMD upgrades and abilities are unlocked as the player advances through the story. Normal enemies would be too simplistic as well; as such Singularity has different mutations of humanoid beings due to the exposure to E99 in addition to the countless armed soldiers who seem to want the player to die asap. Some "phase" in and out of time allowing them to teleport and dodge your firearms, teleport explosive barrels to themselves and hurl them, or even spew out another mutant (gross).

Other than killing a bunch of horrible creatures and soldiers, the player has to solve puzzles here and there to proceed. These range from "move Box from A to B" and "Age object to open door" to "Age this object so it can fit into this slot, then revert it so it pushes the slot upwards making a gap, then crawl under said gap, age object, remove, put somewhere else...". In other words, puzzles go from easier than a 1-piece puzzle to a handful of tasks in precise order and a few with timing. Frustrating yes, but there's a handy button the player can push whenever to send out a "ping" that highlights the ground with "footsteps" to where the next objective is. However this does not "solve" puzzles but rather shows where the player must proceed, it is still up to the player to grasp the surroundings and figure out how to move on.

Graphic wise, Singularity has the same "gritty" feel Bioshock did, but a lot less charming and immense. Traveling around in time is rather interesting, but the locations don't change the fact that the enemies will always be 1) guys with guns or 2) some crazy monsters. Perhaps the coolest thing in the game is reversing time on a massive object (done via a "follow the ball" with your mouse), watching a ruined bridge reconstruct itself or a ship rise from a watery tomb is visually pleasing as well as a pat on the player's head of "Yeah, I just did that."

Sounds quality is ok, not as beautifully atmospheric as Bioshock (yes, I like Bioshock, I'm going to keep referring to it) but tries to copy the dark errie silence as well as the intensity of certain situations with musical cues. There are "recordings" of people which is taken almost directly from Bioshock to delve into the background of the game events, these range from eerie to simply put, scary as hell to help fit the mood. There is of course, a HUGE drawback to the "sound" of the game. There are NO SUBTITLES. This gets worse since the recordings are rather quiet and locked in place (Bioshock let you pick up the diaries) as well as characters speaking to the player while in the middle of a huge firefight with music going on... thank god for that "ping" function or I'd have no idea what to do at some points.

Singularity is a "good" game, not brilliant or great. It has flaws but many good points to cover up (still wish it had subtitles) as well as an interesting concept. The story is ok, not the best-written piece of the year but it still drives the player forward. I have a few issues with the actual plot as I'm really into the whole "time science" crap, but if you just play the game for a game without thinking about all the little points of "what if" and "if that happens then..." it's still enjoyable. Again, the game is good and has dropped in price quite a bit, but it's not as great as the games it tries to take after.

Need For Speed Hot Pursuit

2011-06-02T21:37:03Z

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit is a continuation of the Need for Speed series, a racing game that emphasized on exotic cars, over the top speed races, and occasionally the thrill of the chase by police forces as the player screams down a road in a car worth several million dollars.

Hot Pursuit differs from the older games in the series with the return of cops versus racers that has been absent since the 2002 entry of Hot Pursuit 2. There is no longer the ability to customize your vehicle to your liking like the previous entries that focused mainly around the street-racing scene. Instead of having to drive to certain spots in Seacrest County to initiate a race, you will have an overview of the Seacrest County and pick which races you wish to participate in.

The game has a campaign mode and online mode but sadly you cannot play this game via split screen. In the campaign you can either choose to be a racer or a cop and tackle about 3 different types of races while playing as racer has one extra race type. One type is a “preview” race which essentially is a time trial mode and is basically there to give you a feel of a new route. Throughout the campaign it felt like there was way too many preview races and even worse is when you are playing as the cops, you will get penalized each time you get your vehicle damaged. On the other hand, the hot pursuit modes where you either chase down racers or escape the cops are just fantastic. You earn experience for completing each race, which is used for unlocking faster vehicle and better weaponry to give yourself more of an edge.

Instead of comparing scores worldwide, NFSHP introduces the Autolog. This system tells you when a friend of yours beat your time on a certain course will cause an endless cycle to try and beat the other person. The Autolog will also recommend people to add as your friend if you’re into to that sort of thing.

Online mode basically has the exact same modes as the campaign except for the time trails ones. It can be a 1 vs. 1 or 4 vs. 4, cops against racers or you can have 8 people racing for the finish without any cops. The hot pursuit online is easily the most entertaining, having 4 racers trying to get away from 4 cops. The 1 vs. 1 mode can get a little frustrating with some players just doing things such as hard braking and going the opposite way over and over which breaks the intensity. Learning to use your weaponry efficiently is crucial to taking out other players because ramming them will not do as much damage as it does towards the AI.

Graphics are overall p good and the crashes look real nice. The music is alright but the ability to have a custom playlist makes it nice to listen to whatever you want. The graphics and sound of the game is p solid.

Overall the game is great fun unless you have some sort of OCD to get all gold medals in which point some of the time trial races well be a tad frustrating. The online pursuit mode is totes the best mode out of all of them as long as there is people out there willing to race. As with all online games you are bound to run into a few jerks who will try to do the cheapest things or simply play to annoy others.

999

2011-05-24T20:41:53Z

Ok so it's not like a dating sim at all... but it's pretty fantastic.

Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (more known and easily spoken as "999") is a cross between a visual novel and a point and click puzzle game. Dialogue choices shape the flow of the game and eventually shape the fate of the player. Developed by Chunsoft (Dev for some of the Dragon Warrior series as well as the PKMN Mystery Dungeon series) and produced (and localized for the US) by Aksys (Mostly known for Guilty Gear) for the Nintendo DS, 999 has been released "under the radar" of the common gamer. However word spread around of this sleeper game and copies quickly vanished from the shelves causing the company to run a second printing of the game, obviously this game was worth looking into.

999, as stated before, is a fusion of a brilliant survival story fused with point and click puzzle solving (similar to "room escape" games... actually VERY similar since the goal is to escape from rooms). The player takes control of Junpei, one of the nine people stranded aboard a ship. Junpei wakes in a sealed room, takes a few seconds to realize the door is locked with some type of card reader, tries to recall how the hell he got in such a situation, notices a strange watch on his left arm with the number "5" on it, and turns to see the window in the room blow open and water being to flood his room. The player must seek a way out of the flooding room by solving puzzles that apply math, logic, and observation (all of which are applied to later puzzles as well). Upon escaping the first room, Junpei quickly bumps into 8 other people, each different by huge tangents but with two things in common, no one clearly knows how he or she arrived and each has a "watch" with a different number. Before the 9 people, lies doors painted with numbers, to open these doors the players must "scan" his or her bracelet on a nearby reader and "register" to enter the room by having the digital root (math term, REAL important to this game) equal what is written on the door. Of course, that would be too simple as the player quickly discovers that only 3-5 people may enter each door and upon entering the door, the watch activates a timer of 81 seconds until it detonates a powerful explosive that was placed into each of their bodies. The bomb can ONLY be disarmed if the people who "registered" for a door enter the door quickly and find another device and register the watches of those who entered, thus if one person attempts to run through a door, he/she would be killed regardless and should one person hesitate to enter, those who entered will be killed. To make things even worse, there is a 9-hour countdown until the ship the 9 are stranded on sinks into the ocean. It's up to the players choices and puzzle solving ability to see how many survive this "Game" or if everyone aboard the ship is to meet a gruesome fate.

Avoiding any more story as to not spoil the game, I shall move on to the general review of the game.

The graphics of the game fuse the "real" world (backgrounds, items, puzzles, and so forth) with an anime/virtual feel for each of the characters. The limited number of expressions on the characters is a bit disappointing, but are done with near seamless presentation that it can be easily overlooked. All "important" items (as in the ones you can grab) can be viewed in a well done 3-D rendering mode to examine the item for more clues (the back of items often contains something important) or "fuse" items together in order to create makeshift items that can be used in the escape. The overall visual experience is rather enjoyable, the only complaint would be the lack of "movies" as most scenes are played out with still pictures, but each is visually pleasing (or disturbing) and fit the tone of the game perfectly

The sounds and music tie in with the "horror" theme very well. Dramatic cues and tension pounding bgm has the player's heart race as events unfold. Sound cues are dead on (hah a pun) for the situations, a countdown beep, a door slowly opening, shattering glass, the hum of machines, a stab wound, all done so well that the environment feels that much more real.

Gameplay is a list of scripted events and text dialouge (with some animations and character cells, pretty well done) with key points in which the player is allowed to make a choice about entering a door (or interacting with set characters). After a choice or two, the player is sent into a "Numbered Room" based on those choices and faced the challenge of escaping the room. Each room consists of searching for useful items, solving logical, memory, or math problems, and seeking out key items for later on as well as having extended interaction with the 2-4 people who came with the player into the room. This is very "basic" puzzle/visual novel gameplay, some frustratingly difficult or vague puzzles have "hints" should the player fail and "quit" the puzzle a set number of times, some items are difficult to find (as in it's hard to know what is useful and what is a waste of time) but otherwise the game plays rather smoothly.

However, the game itself can become frustratingly confusing due to the story being incredibly complicated and filled with science fiction, theories and crazy alternate reality ideas. There are huge walls of text that break down numerous facts and stories as the game moves forward. To actually "finish" the game requires multiple playthroughs, often hinted with the vaguest possible hints on what the "right" choice is. This results in replaying the same puzzles and rooms over and over until the player manages to catch on to what was "correct" (which can still be wrong, as there are two "endings" that have to be earned in a set order or the game just ends). One little slip up will result in a brutal and horrible death followed by restarting the game but "retaining memory" of the previous experience on the next playthrough (and the ability to skip already read dialogue).

As I am an avid reader who enjoys games just as much for the story as the gameplay, I loved the complexity and horror that 999 presents. However I cannot recommend it to the masses, but rather only to those who love visual novels with bit of thinking (perhaps the Phoenix Wright fanbase). While the puzzles are well done, clever, and often frustratingly difficult (perhaps because I'm not that smart) there are not too many to satisfy the "puzzle challenge" gamers. Overall, a good visual novel game and a brilliant read, but not the game for the common gamer.

Din's Curse: Demon War Review

2011-05-23T23:48:20Z

Din's Curse: Demon War is an expansion from the first game called Din's Curse which was about a man who was given a chance by the god Din to redeem himself in his second life because he decided to be a giant douchebag to everyone in his first life. Demon's War is pretty much the same thing except that they added a lot more demons, more quests, more mouths to feed, more town invasions and more variations in classes, basically more everything. Our writers here at rreload spent quite a bit of time on this game and we actually found some interesting bits to report.

The game play of Din's Curse: Demon War follows the basic Action RPG Hack-n-Slash model except with more of a similarity to Diablo rather than Kingdom Hearts. Everything is played in a top down perspective with randomizing dungeons, monsters, and treasure along with towns that let the player trade and sell with merchants with the money and loot that is acquired from killing creatures. Towns are quite interesting because the player can actually give NPCs (people who sit there all year and do not do anything) gear to fight with and the reason for this is because the towns can be randomly invaded with monsters so the townspeople need equipment to fight back. Managing the extremely strenuous tasks of dungeon crawling, treasure hunting, feeding the entire town, and also making sure people are not in debt are complicated and might be a horrible experience for first timers but after repetition, it becomes natural to manage.

I want to bring attention the customizable classes in the game. There are a few different classes to choose from but the number of classes that can be created are well over 100 due to the "hybrid" class option. The player can mix and match spells while creating their very own hybrid class from any of the current classes. Demon War adds a new Demon Hunter class and combining that class with another one can wreck all kinds of trouble from controlling demons to becoming one. There is always something to try out which keeps the game fresh since it is very game play driven.

The dungeon system in Din's Curse: Demon War is actually well designed. Most games normally have a generic dungeon with some huge monster at the end that the player has to go kill but in Demon War, the dungeons actually have life in them. There are tons of randomly generated enemies but the difference between these enemies and enemies from other games is that instead of having every enemy trying to focus fire the player, they all fight each other as well. It was quite intelligent because the enemies do not just camp the corners and wait for the player to come over there and kill them but they actually fight each other as well which can make for some interesting scenarios when playing.

There is multiplayer through LAN and through online portals to experience making managing everything a lot easier. When we were trying it, the servers did not have too many people but we played amongst ourselves but the neat part was that one other person can join while the game is in session. It was quite funny to hear the raging in Ventrilo when we were trying to take down one of the dragons.

Din's Curse: Demon War is not very "newbie friendly" because it takes a significant amount of time to read everything and get used to the interface. People who are veterans to this style of game will be a bit more familiar with everything but the amount of options and demands the game has is quite ovewhelmming. The game has a lot going on at times that we actually got angry over it but once we got into the game more, it started to become really fun. Equpping townsfolk was a tedious experience but it was a unique idea. The game itself is good but there is just so much going on that it might put people off from getting the game because there is so much to manage. Over all, the game is good. It attempts to go into multiple directions and suffers in committing to none of the directions in full. The shards and bits of multiple "great" games and ideas fuse together into a fun yet tedious experience.