Hard Corps: Uprising

I thought I would try out a review, and see what people think of it, so here we go.

A couple of weeks back, I expressed to my brother a desire to play a side scrolling shooter, something you don't see all that much of any more.  I quite like the Metal Slug series, they are quirky and fun, but really not worth 1200 microsoft points in my opinion.  Then shortly after I came across Hard Corps: Uprising, and my wish was granted.  With that in mind, I wish Sony would release Valkyria Chronicles 2 and 3 for the PS3... *waits expectantly*
So I bought Uprising yesterday and have been playing both solo and co-op.  Visually I found the game very impressive, it has a great style, with lots of stuff going on on-screen at any given moment, movement in the background, rustling bushes in the jungle, and so on.  The almost anime style graphics stand out from a lot of other games, with a lot of depth and detail, I was pleasantly surprised for a side scrolling arcade title.  The animations are clear and expressive, the enemies, though faceless, convey emotion in deaths and little background comedy scenes that are highly entertaining, deliberately like an amateur dramatics Shakespeare production.

The sound works well, effects and ambient all fit well within the gameplay, and are very apt for each level.  Nothing really leapt out at me, it is very much background noise really, but that is more than enough for this type of game.  The only thing that did stand out for me, is when you are causing damage on things like turrets and bosses, when they sound for some reason like an electronic dinosaur...
Gameplay is the key feature of any game obviously, especially in an arcade action heavy offering like this.  Side scrollers all tend to be very similar, move steadily right, pick up weapon upgrades, and shoot all the enemies running left, and the odd few that come from behind.  At its' heart it is nothing you haven't seen before, but Uprising adds quite a bit to this formula.  I haven't played the old Contra games really, aside from a few brief attempts many many years ago, so I have no idea what features are new for this.  Uprising features two weapon slots, allowing you to switch back and forth between two different special weapons, rather than just being able to carry one at any given time, and it makes a big difference.  Many of these games suffer when you lose your special weapon, resorting to the default weapon can make the game incredibly difficult, and not always much fun.  By carrying two special weapons, you can take a hit, lose one, and still keep blasting away with over the top wargear.  It really helps with the pace in my opinion, and lessens the chance of you being stuck against screenfuls of enemies with only a basic weapon.

The weapons themselves include a couple of genre standards, machine gun and spread gun, as well as a few more esoteric weapons like the very short ranged missile launcher (crash gun), and the ripple gun, which looks a lot like a pressure washer.
The enemies are nicely varied, with basic grunts that run across screen taking the occasional shot, to instant death snipers, robot alligators, and bats.  The tension is kept high as there are usually quite a few different enemies on screen at any given time, giving you a range of different attacks to overcome at once, jumping, ducking, and shooting your way past leaping frogs, arcing artillery, and lasers of doom.  Having a health bar comprised of several boxes does away with the traditional one hit kill gameplay style and gives you much better odds, eliminating some of the incredible frustration games of this type can cause.

the levels are very varied, and can change significantly within a level too

As well as the basic arcade mode, there is also Rising mode.  In Rising mode, you earn Corp Points, which you can then spend on your character between levels, or from the title screen.  Upgrades range from having more health boxes, lives, and continues, to starting the game with a special weapon, and can also purchase special abilities.  These abilities are context sensitive, activated with the B button, and include the ability to reflect incoming bullets, or vaulting over low obstacles when you are dashing.
The various upgrades are really well balanced, and make you think about what you want, there are no obvious choices, and no wrong options as you spend your well earned points.  It makes the game significantly more replayable as you grind levels (you can replay any level as many times as you like) to earn points and buy cool stuff.
It is a tremendous amount of fun, and in my opinion well worth buying, but there are a few issues.  Firstly, some of the checkpoints mid level can be a long way apart, if you die against a boss, you can often be pushed back half a level, having to battle your way through all over again.  The levels aren't too long, so you never have more than a couple of minutes of ground to recover, but if you die a few times, you will find yourself cursing, and I stopped playing a few times at the thought of having to do the same section over and over again, just to defeat one boss.
The other big problem I have encountered was playing co-op with my brother.  We played through the first two levels in rising mode, but I was the only one to earn any Corp Points for upgrades, he just had a default character and didn't earn anything.  When we relaunched the game from his account to check, he could earn points, but I couldn't.  This makes local co-op a bit of a waste of time, as one of you will always be the basic, un-upgraded character.  My brother does not have a gold account, so whether or not there is some way around this problem if you have two gold membership players, I don't know.  Hopefully there is some way for two local players to have a proper game together, presumably if you play online with someone you both earn points for playing?  It is a real kick in the teeth for anyone wanting to play local co-op, and seems to continue the unfortunate trend of ignoring this aspect of gaming.

Initially there are two characters available to use, Bahamut, and Krystal.  They have the same weapons, but Bahamut has 3 starting health squares, to Krystal's 2, making him easier to use.  If you are playing Rising mode, the points you earn can only be spent on the character you earned them as, and stages you unlock can only be played as that character too, each character is entirely separate in that regard.
The other two characters you see in the opening intro sequence (a very cool animated intro story showing you the protagonists) are available as DLC.  They are 200 points each, and whether you think they are worth it is of course entirely personal.  I downloaded and tried them both, in order to give you a thorough analysis.  Sayuri is an assassin, and has no gun, her standard attack is with a samurai sword.  It does significantly more damage than any of the guns, which offsets the problem of having o get in close to attack.  She does also have a charge up range attack, by holding X down for a few seconds, which is very useful against many of the ranged enemies, and for keeping out of trouble.  Harley though is less unique, he starts with 4 health squares, and apparently his weapon and health upgrades are cheaper than the other three, but he has nothing special aside from that, so I probably wouldn't bother spending 200mp's on him, unless you really want to play as a 70's rocker.
Between the four characters, there are two male, and two female, which I think is a good way to go, and each one has a very brief backstory (very very brief).  Given the separation of each character, you probably don't want to play too many, I am using Krystal and Sayuri, as they play very differently, but you probably wouldn't want to have games going for both Bahamut and Harley, for example, as they are so similar.

If you are a side scrolling shooter fan, this is definitely the best of them out there and I highly recommend it, it is colourful, much deeper than you might imagine for this genre, and loads of fun to play.  It is pretty hard, and can definitely give you many many hours of gaming, retrying levels over and over, upgrading until you can try that next challenging mission.
9/10

Genre Labels

Like a great many people on here, I am a fan of Yahtzee's Zero Punctuation videos.  They are highly entertaining and his views and cutting sense of humour are very similar to my own.  There is one thing however that annoys me, and that is his dismissal of certain games based on their genres.

Clearly Yahtzee is entitled to his opinions, and utilises hyperbole for the benefit of making quality entertainment, but both of his Dead Space reviews have annoyed me.  The main reason he pans them is because they do not match his concept of survival horror.  He wants to play a survival horror game like Silent Hill 2, and attacks Dead Space for not meeting those criteria.    This annoys because genres are a simple way of helping you to explain or understand something, or to find a book in a library.  Filing a game under a specific genre helps you identify things you may or may not like.

Genres however are not boundaries or limitations.  You will not find a dictionary definition of what makes a game a survival horror, or an action adventure, or anything else.  There are no rules or checklists.  They are a guide for finding something you might like, nothing more.  What happens in Yahtzee's reviews for both Dead Space games is that he labels them bad for not conforming to his preferences within survival horror, rather than approaching them simply as games.  Treating genres as a series of parameters a game must fall within to be good is just silly.

As gaming progresses, we are seeing more complex offerings, a blurring of lines and distinctions.  More and more games straddle multiple genres, some more successfully than others.  Feel free to dislike a game, just don't complain that it doesn't meet a set of criteria you have arbitrarily assigned it.

Haven't done one of these for a while, as I haven't been playing anything I hadn't already spoken about, but I have had a new gaming influx, and it is time for a run down once again.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

I am really enjoying this so far, just reached sequence 6, so about two thirds of the way into it.  As you will all know, it is largely more of the same, and if you liked 2, you will like this.  It has a few more tweaks, but nothing that needs to be discussed in detail.  The execution combos and the ability to call in an assassin make the combat even easier than before, and quite a few people have criticised this.  But I feel these complaints are misplaced.  In both the original, and in 2, you never had any trouble killing enemies, you could engage entire regiments and leave the dead stacked high.  Realistically, the kill streak and allied assassin's merely speed up the inevitable, and I feel keep things moving along nicely.  The kill streak in particular, pull off a successful counter attack execution, and all you have to do is push the stick in the direction of a new enemy, and press attack, to auto kill them too.  You could be forgiven for thinking that makes every fight too easy, but really, do you actually benefit from making every kill a separate successful counter attack?  the combos really just speed it up, and you have to dodge and block successfully to maintain the streak.

The game is not flawless, I have a couple of minor issues with it.  These are just cosmetic, nothing really major.  Firstly, those of you who played 2 will recall the jump climb ability that the female thief teaches you.  In Brotherhood, you begin the game with this skill, but when you lose your equipment early on, for some reason you lose this ability, even though it isn't granted to you by an item, and you have to wait quite a while before you get it back when Leonardo makes you a climbing glove.  Not important, just one of those slightly jarring moments.  The next problem I have is the wanted posters.  They appear on walls and platforms high up for your benefit, so that you can free run about getting them down.  I appreciate that it is for the player, but when you are trying to make an ancient city seem alive and natural, shouldn't wanted posters be at street level where the civilians can see them?  I can see why they are the way they are, but since the posters are not a challenge anyway, I feel Ubisoft would have been better off going for realism over gameplay on this particular issue.  Another issue i have with it is the civilians that fill the city.  In this game, as you remove Borgia influence and renovate the city, your popularity spreads, and citizens come to your assistance in fights.  The problem here is, as any of you who have played previous games will know, Ezio's blades seem to have some sort of magnetic attraction to civilians.  I can only imagine that guard's armour has the same polarity as Ezio's various stabby implements, and he slides away from them into squishy people.  The number of times you try to use the hidden blade on a guard, and Ezio turns slightly and executes a random civilian is ludicrous, and this problem is significantly compounded when citizens rush in to fight.  It is rather ironic that in rushing to your aid, they actually make the fight an awful lot harder, as you have to be very careful you don't stab them instead.  The final problem I have is that for a game entitled 'Assassin's Creed' the actual stealth/assassination missions are easily the weakest.  The game does not do stealth terribly well, and I find the missions where you cannot be spotted very irritating.  you only have to go near a guard and you fail.

Having just played shortly before writing this, I will add too a couple of times in a row where it has stated I failed the full synchronisation requirements, even when I didn't...

Despite these minor quibbles, it is an awesome game, loving playing it, and can't wait for the next installment.

plenty of colourful characters

FEAR 2

I picked this up on the cheap before Christmas, I loved FEAR and the expansions, but hadn't gotten round to 2.  With 3 coming out not too far away, I thought I better catch up.  Not played it too much so far with Christmas goodies to play, but so far it seems a lot like the first games, and I am enjoying it.

great AI as before, other developers really need to take note

Uncharted 2

Like Assassin's Creed 2 in my previous week in gaming blog, this is another game I had previously bought, completed, and traded in whilst I was unemployed.  Like Assassin's Creed 2, now that I am working again I have re-bought it to enjoy again (also got God of War 3 and Splinter Cell Conviction again too, but not played them yet).  This game is just awesome, a must buy if you are a PS3 gamer.  The story is great, the graphics beautiful, action is thrilling.  What I love most about this game though is that the characters are incredibly human.  Their discussions, their banter, insults, are all incredibly believable, you get into the spirit of the events, and you laugh along with them.  Nathan Drake is the reluctant hero you can believe.  He isn't macho, he is self deprecating, he likes a wry laugh.  The little jibes between characters are wonderful, and the whole experience is amazing start to finish, pick it up.

an incredible range of breathtaking vistas await you

Playstation Move

I am a tech junkie, I love trying out new things.  Whilst this has been out for some months I was waiting for there to be something I really wanted to play it with.  With Kinect I wanted to see what the tech was like, and bought it regardless of software.  With the Move, it is obviously a Wii for a more traditional gamer, so I was more interested in seeing how the games were implemented.  A few things are coming out soon (dead space, killzone 3) that will use Move in some way, so I wanted to buy it in time for those.  With the system I got Time Crisis Razing Storm, and RUSE.

I am a huge Time Crisis fan, they are the only games I ever played in arcades, and I spent many a coin in them.  They are just a great, fun lightgun game, and as far as lightgun shooters go, they are second only to silent scope (if I ever win the lottery, I am going to buy myself a set of the silent scope arcade machines).  Razing Storm was panned here on IGN, rating a pathetic 4, and the story mode of Razing Storm is awful.  The controls just don't work.  Instead of standard rail shooter, they have given you movement controls with the navigation controller, and it just doesn't work.  The ranking mode is traditional though, if very short, and is ok.  Dead Storm Pirates also comes on the disk, and is an ok distraction.  I wasn't terribly taken with it, but shooting skeletons and giant crabs is kinda funny.  Also on the disk is Time Crisis 4, which IGN also panned, but frankly it is a standard Time Crisis game, if you like the others, you will like this one, you know exactly what you are getting, and for a series like this, that is no bad thing.  You play lightgun games to wave a plastic gun round, it is a test of your accuracy, you don't play them for plot or character development.  I love Time Crisis, so I love 4 too, though it seems quite a bit harder than previous titles to me.  It is fun, great to play for a quick session, has some humerous moments, and great if you get two controllers and play co-op, good for getting a few friends round.

who doesn't like shooting undead pirates?

Ruse

With my laptop being at death's door, I have been unable to game on it, which means no RTS.  I am an RTS junkie, so this has been a real problem.  I don't want to play any console RTS games because I need a mouse.  When RUSE came out with move compatibility, this was my chance to get my RTS fix with a hopefully suitable system that works as well as a mouse.  I haven't played this too much either, having worked so much over christmas and new year, but I have enjoyed it so far.  Move controls work exceedingly well, making control and navigation incredibly easy.  As for the game itself, it is pretty cool, I am only on the early levels so far, where it gives you everything you need and you just follow the numbers to win, your granny could do it.  I shall have to wait until I get to missions where you build your own forces to assess its' RTS credentials, but so far the graphics are good, the zoom is smooth and responsive, from third person close up right back to command table sector view.



All in all the Move is a great system, absolutely accurate, and very easy to use.  It is basically a PS3 controller with a pointer, so you need no instruction on how to use it,   The Kinect suffered from not having a manual because it is such a different system, they really need to tell you what it actually does.  The Move though suffers no such problems, if you are a PS3 gamer, you know what x and o do, and you can probably work out how to point at a screen, so it is very simple.  The navigation controller is great if you are just using your PS3 to watch a film or internet tv etc. it is much smaller and more convenient than the standard pad, and great for navigating the menus.


What have you been playing?  Any opinions on the above?

The games I am looking forward to, and why...

There are quite a few games I am looking forward to, and here's what I want to see.  Two blogs in one night you lucky lucky people

Gears of War 3:
I am a huge Gears of War fan, having played the original on the PC (a much better version than the 360) I bought my 360 specifically to play Gears 2, I had no interest in Microsoft's ludicrously unreliable console prior to that.  The two games so far are wonderfully well done, and some of the all time best shooters.  As such I am not really looking for any big changes for 3, and basically want a continuation of the story.  The story and writing is something very fashionable to complain about, people like to crticise it, it is badly written, badly thought out etc.  I strongly disagree, I think it is very well written for the very simple reason that it conveys exactly what it needs to to be inkeeping with the tone of the game.  Gears of War is about large men with large guns having fun chainsawing stuff, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.  As such the writing needs to reflect that ethos, if all the cast spoke like they were in a shakespeare production, or like Hercule Poirot, it would be ridiculous.  Also, we have different genres for good reason, not every game needs or benefits from a plot like metal gear solid, convoluted and deep does not automatically make something better.  I enjoy rom coms, and I enjoy bizarre films like a scanner darkly, and very clever films like fight club or the usual suspects, that does not mean that Notting Hill needs some sort of Keyser Soze figure.  Likewise Gears of War would not benefit from being written by the guys behind Myst.
Gears of War is about lots of over the top action and awesome fun, and the writing reflects that.  The story is interesting and provides ample motivation for moving the plot along, which is exactly what you want it to do.  As such I feel it is pitched at exactly the right level.
What I would really like to see is a tightening up of one or two basics, not a change, but a tweak.  One is cover, I have mentioned several times before that the cover in gears of war can feel a little unnatural, artificially placed for the benefit of the shootout.  It needs to take a look at my beloved Vanquish, which feels very organic, like you are taking cover in whatever is to hand.  It blends with the setting well too, the colours work, the textures mix, and so on.  Gears does sometimes suffer from chest high grey walls on red ground, with everything looking quite smooth and neat, including the rubble, all placed a little too deliberately.
All in all I can't wait for this game, and was gutted when it got so badly postponed, damn you microsoft.

so hawt

Killzone 3:
Another of my favourite shooters awaiting its' third installment.  I never played the original, but love 2.  It is sci fi, but also dark, gritty and brutal.  There is a wonderful mix of the futuristic ISA in their clean high tech ships and guns, against the very world war one feel helghast, with their retro feel of trenches and steam punk industry.  More than any other game for me it really feels like war, the battles are violent and dirty, they create a feeling of desperation and hatred between the sides as you fight for every last inch.  There is nothing in particular I would like to see changed for 3, I had no real criticisms of 2.  The one thing I did find clunky was the controls in certain situations.  Mostly they worked fine, but as I liked to use a sniper rifle, holding one button to stick to cover, another to look over the cover, one to zoom, then one to aim, and one to fire, was actually rather hard to achieve.  Whilst people like to complain about sticky cover systems, they do free up a button and allow very simple means of cool looking motions.  Some way of easing up aiming from cover would be great.  Aside from that, more of the same please.

retro sci fi

FEAR 3:
Yet another shooter I love on game number 3 (at least in official numerics).  I played FEAR a lot and loved it, including the two expansions.  The AI is the best ever made, the atmosphere was excellent, story great.  It never did what you expected and avoided horror cliches, whilst giving you awesome guns to kill clever dudes.  I haven't actually played 2 yet, though I will do before 3, but I have heard that 2 focuses more on the action side.  What I want from 3 therefore is a return to the horror side a bit more.  All I want is a continuation of the great story and atmosphere.

Steel Battalion:
I love mech games, even if they don't love me.  I also love the potential on display behind the Kinect.  So the idea of stomping around controlling a mech, without a pad, is awesome.  I have absolutely no idea how it could possibly work, and I look forward to seeing how they do it.  The people behind the original steel battalion are obviously mech freaks too, given their original peripheral, so I have high hopes they will make a proper hard core mech game, that feels great.  So long as it doesn't turn out to be Mech Party, I will be happy.

the original was deep...

On the subject of Kinect, I am very intrigued by news of a Kinect Gears of War.  Like Steel Battalion, I have no clue how that could possibly work, but I have strong faith in the awesome Cliffy B that work it would.  I do not think he would be willing to put out a sub par Epic game just to make a Kinect cash in, I feel Epic must see a real possibility here, and I can't wait to see what happens.

Army of Two: 3
As far as co-op shooters go, Army of Two:40th day is the best by a country mile, and the ending was very cool.  As such I really hope there is another one in the not too distant future, continuing the tale of Salem and Rios in all their fist bumping glory.

Battlefield Bad Company 3:
I think the bad company squad are great characters, funny and interesting, getting into crazy situations and scraping through.  The game mechanics are brilliant too, blowing up buildings always rocks.  As such everything is there for a great sequel.  My only concern is the BC2 ending, **spoiler** Russians invade america.  It was stupid in MW2, it was every bit as stupid in BC2.  I am hoping they can do something with this story, BC1 worked because it was like the film 3 Kings, a few soldiers trying to get rich quick without anyone noticing.  BC2 had them as almost accidental heroes, trying to keep up with events beyond their control, it is great stuff.  An invasion though seriously risks that humour and personal involvement.  MW2 ruined itself by trying to do a Russian invasion seriously, and failed completely, BC3 can only succeed by maintaining the same irreverance and believable-ness that the previous two have had, it will have to keep the squad relatable and human and humorous in amongst the give gritty battle.

Dragon Age 2:
Origins was totally awesome, I have played it through multiple times and loved every minute.  I know very little about 2, but one thing that does concern me is the loss of so much character choice.  The character creation process of Origins was excellent, and the choice of race is an RPG staple.  I am not saying that making you play as a human is bad, or wont work, it could do fine, but I hope it is not an indication of a wider scaling back of the RPG elements in favour of a more instant action game.  Looking at some of the criticisms of Origins, like its' pace, I disagree with many of them, and I hope that 2 remains true to its' RPG roots and doesn't lose too much depth in favour of twitchy kill animations.

So, what are you looking forward to and why?

The week in gaming 04/12/10

So this week I have been able to play a few different games, and here's what I thought.
CoD Black Ops:
This is ok, it is decent fare but really nothing special.  The story is probably the best yet, but then doing a better story than previous CoD games is like doing better than Silvio Berlusconi in an anti sleaze contest, anyone can do it.  The gameplay works by and large, but the missions can be pretty tedious, a constant grind checkpoint to checkpoint, and is also significantly harder than Modern Warfare 1 or 2.  It has one glaring fault, and that is auto failing you for utterly ridiculous things you couldn't have guessed, forcing you to replay sections until you win through trial and error, which kills off any possible cinematic moment.  For example there are a number of sections where you must flee for your life, from police or an avalanche, yet you can only run for a few seconds, which leaves you stumbling along after your AI allies like an obese asthmatic, alternating every few seconds between running and walking.  At one point I failed a mission for not staying with my team when I was stood literally right beside them, another section where you are guiding people on the ground from a high altitude blackbird saw me fail because I didn't press a button to make my allies on the ground hide when enemies approached.  Now I would have thought that special forces operatives on a stealth mission would know to hide when there were enemies around, especially when your character actually tells them to hide.   But you have to press a button to make it happen, making you feel like you are controlling a group of rather stupid robots.  Other stupid game moments include automatically swapping your equipped weapon for a knife so you can silently kill some guards, even though you carry a knife at all times on top of all your other weapons.  It is an ok game, but frustration and bad design decisions so far have prevented it becoming anything special.  Like Modern Warfare 2 it is a very clear example of a game focusing almost exclusively on multiplayer, and handing you a basic, incomplete single player mode.  It is rather a shame that CoD has gone this way, given that people raved about the single player campaigns of the first few games, and their large set pieces.  Now the single player has become generic and stupid, tacked on in favour of a multiplayer game.  Maybe it is time for CoD to abandon the single player pretence and focus on releasing multiplayer only titles.

what is it with FPS' and crossbows on snow levels? not even very practical in that type of weather

Trials HD Thrills pack:
Trials HD is one of the best arcade games you can get, and if you don't have it yet, pick it up ASAP, you wont be disappointed.  Part racer, part physics puzzle, it is one of those games that frustrates you in a way that leaves you determined to keep going and beat just this one more level, sucking up hours of your time.  It is fun, amazingly well made, and with the second dlc out now, has a huge number of levels to tax your brain and reflexes, absolute arcade gold.

Vanquish
I said last week this is probably going to be my absolute favourite shooter.  This week I have to say, yes, yes it is.  Very very strong contender for game of the year, this shooter is the perfect bridge between careful cover use and hectic gunplay.  It is one of those titles whose simplicity belies its' depth and is a great blend of gritty shooter and arcade action, giving you a score for each level, statues to find and shoot, and some genuinely varied weaponry, it is a game you can keep coming back to.  I have tried the first unlockable challenge facing off against waves of enemies, and it gets very hard very fast, but just like Trials HD, it is frustrating in that great 'one more go' way.  The graphical style is beautiful, the characters are interesting, and the story is very solid.  There is enough plot to make you want to know what is going on, and how things will turn out, without it getting in the way of you sliding around very fast shooting robots in their big sensor-y faces.

Assassin's Creed 2:
I completed this game shortly after it came out, and traded it in for something else, as my lack of regular employment has lead to me sacrificing games in order to keep up to date.  But I had a gift card to spend so I picked it up again second hand to have another run through prior to hopefully getting Brotherhood for Christmas.  It is a great game, and stands up well to replaying.  Even with other new games unfinished, I have found myself playing this quite a bit again, meandering round the various locations and assassinating random guards for the hell of it.  Also, punching minstrels in the face never gets old.

"so I killed this one dude, and he was like this big! honestly!"

Mass Effect 2:
Another game I completed this summer, I returned to space to player Lair of the Shadow Broker.  I am on my second play through of mass effect 2, using the same character, putting me at a tasty level 30.  The game is so big that you can play it through a few times without getting bored.In   ME1 I romanced Liara, because there is nothing better in life than a hot blue alien space lesbian, and in ME2 I stayed true to that relationship, leading to a scene near the end with Shepherd alone in her room staring forlornly at Liara's photo.  As such I was looking forward to getting her back in the team and resuming that relationship.  The dlc is great stuff, plenty of content, some wonderful banter between Shepherd and Liara, a variety of missions, and more space sex.  I was slightly disappointed that liara doesn't become a permanent squad member, but all in all I thoroughly enjoyed it.

So then, there are my views, what have you all been playing?  Getting anything for Christmas?

The week in gaming 26/11/10

So, time for another gaming update on what I have been playing.
Valkyria Chronicles
Finally got round to finishing this this week.  I got to the final mission more than a month ago, but it is rather like a boss fight, and doesn't require all that much strategy, so I got annoyed and left it.  But I came back and finished it off, to a great ending.  It has a real feel good finish and is beautifully animated.  Also, once you finish you can play the game again keeping your high level characters, which is a lot of fun.  Still incredibly annoyed that the sequels are on PSP, I really want to play 2 and 3, but I refuse to pay £200+ for a handheld.  It has given me a desire to return to some other alternative strategy games too, like Fire Emblem and Advance Wars.

Call of Duty:  Black Ops
I received this for my birthday yesterday, so haven't played it all that much, but got a few hours in.  It feels more dramatic than MW2, instead of being one soldier in an army, like the opening MW2 missions, you are one guy in a small group doing ludicrous things.  It is about as stealthy and discreet as a sledgehammer, black ops really sounds like it ought to be a splinter cell style game, but it is more serious sam than anything.  If you want to single handedly win the Vietnam war, this is the game for you.  There are explosions and bullets flying everywhere, it gets pretty crazy.  I have also found it to be a lot more of a grind compared to earlier Call of Duty games.  It has the standard issue of your AI team mates being utterly useful, but some missions really do feel like you are desperately trying to reach the next checkpoint, to manage that extra step forward and it can feel like a bit of a chore.  You try sections again and again, hoping for that one go where you manage to get everyone, maybe your allies actually get a kill, so you can push into the next room and die over and over again there too.  I am a veteran of shooters, but this feels much harder than others, and a bit more arbitrary too, you get little help sometimes with regard what you are actually trying to do, and I appear to have been killed on numerous occasions by enemies behind me.

All in all, it is good, but not brilliant, and can be very frustrating.  The story feels very disjointed and random too with your character leaping around memories.  It is moments of brilliance separated by periods of tedious grind.

Vanquish
I need to play more of this game.  This could well be my all time favourite shooter.  It is a brilliant combination of cover based and none cover based shooters.  One major issue with cover games like Gears of War is that because you need cover for every fight, the placement of walls can feel very artificial, they feel like they have been put there deliberately to shelter you, rather than feeling natural.  Vanquish gets around this by using one simple method.  The cover can be anything from something you stand behind, to something you lie behind.  The widely varying size makes it feel much more realistic, like you are diving behind anything close by, rather than moving from one preset chest high wall to the next.  Enemies die fast enough that firing from cover never feels like slow target shooting, and there are enough enemies to keep you busy and mindful of your surroundings.

What really sets this game apart is the fact that any time you are bored of shooting from behind a wall and need a change, you can dive out, slide along the floor at high speed, and gun down Russian robots in slow motion.  What this means is that you can alternate between careful cover  based shooting, and high speed arcade fun any time you like, both options work really well.  This gives the game significant depth and mileage over games that rely on one or the other.  It is like Devil May Cry meets Gears of War.

Everything about the game oozes style, it is beautiful to look at, it flows very naturally.  The environments are varied, as are the actions needed in various sections, from running gauntlets of fire, to wide city squares, to cargo trains.  These are regularly interspersed with larger min boss type battles which do a great job of further breaking up missions.  The cut scenes are kept short and are well written, the characters various and interesting, which means you spend the majority of your time actually playing, not just watching.  There are very few loads too, making it feel like you can just play the game start to finish with almost no interruption.

I cannot recommend this enough to any shooter fan out there.

Review scores in gaming

Today I want to talk about something that comes hand in hand with games, and that is, as the title cunningly informs you, review scores.  This will not be a blog with answers, but of questions for the viewers at home.

yes you at home

Reviews can be very useful, we all know games are expensive, wherever you live.  Whether you buy five a year or fifty, you don't want to buy a bad game, you want to enjoy the experience.  So if you are looking to spend your hard earned dollars/pounds/euros/human skulls/rocks, reviews can help you spend intelligently.  The problem of course is that the process is wholly subjective, and very personal.
IGN is a huge site, with a great many readers, no doubt many thousands, and is certainly the largest gaming website I am aware of, and the most prominent.  Yet each game receives a score based on the opinion of one individual, and that score gets added to the database, and seen across the world.  Even with the best will in the world, you will not agree with everyone, and this being the internet, someone will probably even get angry, maybe their cat just spontaneously combusted or something, I hate it when that happens.  This could give the reviewer a huge influence on the success of a game, one viewpoint could inform many thousands of potential buyers.

One thing I find interesting when reading reviews concerns sequels.  For this example I shall require the assistance of Fallout 3, and Fallout New Vegas.  Fallout 3 received a very impressive score of 9.6, New Vegas 8.5.  This intrigues me.  In my opinion, New Vegas offers a much deeper experience, and this is down to basic mechanics.  The game allows you to focus on different skills much more than 3 if you want a pacifist option for example.  The crafting is far more involved, allowing you to make food, medicines, recycle ammo and so on.  This is compared to the Fallout 3 crafting of weapons, which felt incredibly tacked on and shallow to me, like an idea they never bothered developing.  New Vegas' faction system gives a more involved relationship with the setting than the basic karma meter of 3.  Now I hope that pretty much everyone would agree with me there, the very well received mechanics of 3 have been improved and expanded on, and successfully so, in New Vegas.  Yet despite this, the game got a significantly lower score.

you gave me how much?

So then, my first question for you.  How objective should a reviewer try to be?  I for example would consider the above mentioned changes to be fairly objectively better.  So, that leaves story, setting, and characters.  Now these are going to be highly subjective, and different for everyone.  So then, should a reviewer focus more on the mechanics, and less on the stuff that is open to personal preference?  Did you prefer the DC ruins, or the Mojave wasteland, and does your decision affect the actual quality of the game, or just your personal view?  let me know

make it high, or I will come for you

Now on to my next point.  There is one thing that really annoys me in reviews, and that is complaints that things haven't changed.  Step up Assassin's Creed 2, and Brotherhood.  Assassin's Creed 2 received 9.2, Brotherhood an 8.  Now, if you read through the review, the majority of it is complaints that they haven't really added anything to the game.  Now, my question is, should they?  I loved AC2, I am perfectly happy with more of the same, I do not feel that 'more of the same' is an objectively a bad situation.  Brotherhood changes the setting, continues the story, adds more items, and more characters.  Isn't that enough?  What is unclear in the review is how much the reviewer has knocked down the score because of the lack of new stuff, and how much is because they didn't like other changes.  Also, we don't know of course what the reviewer would have scored AC2 as, should you try and have the same reviewer follow a series in order to maintain continuity?

the fate of low score reviewers

9.2 to 8 is a big drop, and the phrase, 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' springs to mind.  So my next question for you lovely folk is: if a game has the same mechanics as its predecessor, can it/should it, be given a lower score?  I am more of the view point that if a game is worth one score, and the sequel doesn't change anything, then it ought to get the same score.  I do not believe that familiarity makes a game worse.  What if someone didn't play the original?  The sequel will be as new and exciting to them, as the original was to the reviewer.
So basically, what I want to know from you all is simple, how much of the reviewer's personal preference should be included in the review?  Obviously none of us are perfect, our opinions will always colour what we do, and personal opinion cannot be left out entirely, but should we give it free reign, or try to retain a degree of professional objectivity?

The floor is yours.