Way too many reviews.
I am so backed up with the reviews I like to do with every game I finish. This month I got a rental pass for a month so I have been playing lots of games. Here are the ones I have finished so far.
Far Cry 2:
Great combat, like the open world concept, it allows for some interesting combat options. I love how you can approach a mission many different ways, if you want to burn a place down you can, if you want to snipe you can, if you want to run in guns blazing you can. Also some of the main missions were rather interesting. The problem is this game is too big for its own good. The game is filled with worthless side missions, like Assassin's Creed last year you get like three mission types and they just repeat all over the game world. There is no way to get around the world quickly, there are bus warps but they are in the far corners of the world, doesn't help much. So most of the game you are driving around, you always get attacked at the same checkpoints cause enemies respawn as soon as you leave, its damn annoying. After 15 or so hours of the same thing you just want the game to end. Also this whole promise of a dynamic storyline was total BS. The story sucks, your partners add nothing to the story, if they die nothing really changes, nothing you do in the game changes the outcome, you just choose what ending you want at the very end. I really enjoyed this game at the start, I really want to like it, it has a lot of content it just leaves you with a hollow feeling. There is multiplayer which I did not get into but that seemed cool, also a level editor that was a bit complicated but peole were making interesting stuff out of like Mos Eisley. If you plan to play online there might be more for you but as a single player game it disappointed me cause you can see that it could be so great but its not.
Overall Score 7.9
Tomb Raider Underworld:
I have not played a TR game since TR3 so I this is a bit new to me. I like the new controls, its in that PoP, Uncharted style controling (again if TR did this first sorry, haven't played it). But something feels off, the controls are a bit loose, its not bad cause I still got around for the most part just fine, it just didn't feel as refined as the above mentioned games. Then there is the camera which starts to shake or just ignore what you should be seeing for no apparent reason, again not the worst camera but you will die because of it more than once in this game. There are also weird glitches, Lara would float on objects, or a key object would fall over and almost lock my game up (but I got through it by exploiting a glitch). So its not the most polished game, it does looks realy good graphically but still not top tier or anything. There is a story but I have no clue what is going on, to me its about a pair of boobs with guns trying to look for her mom.
That said TRU is still a great game, if you want that adventure like spirt in your games where you walk into a massive room with all sorts of pillars, switches, and statues and you need to figure out how it all works, then this game is for you. There are some great platforming (not in the mario sense, in the climbing around sense), especially toward the end they really start to through obstacles your way as you climb and hop about. The puzzles are decent, its never a head scratcher but its always more than just pulling a switch, its muti-tiered large in scale puzzles.You go to a good variety of locations, each having something that is so large in scale that it will make you go woah.
Whuile the platforming and puzzles have gotten better for some reason the combat has not changed at all since the PS1 days. Yeah you get some slow-mo insta death move, whatever, other than that you still auto lock on enemies and flip about. Its there, its fine, it doesn't do much. In fact the old games handled it better cause you had to locate the weapons, you had to locate ammo for them, they actually had enemies that were so hard using a pistol would be a very bad choice. Also there were no boss fights at all, no T-Rex moment, no giant dragon battle. What happend? Why do the old TR games have so many more memorable moments than this game. Vehicles, or should I say vehicle cause you only use a bike, was also dumbed down. I really enjoyed the vehicles in TR2, it added some variety. I do like TRU but in the end I had to ask myself is this game really better than those first ones way back when and the answer is no.
Comparisons aside its a great action/adventure game, not sure I recommend it to buy, its like 8 hours long with no real replay value unless you want to find the hidden treasures (another aspect that has gotten worse, in the first games they were always very well hidden, in this game they sit in vases and crap). I can't deny I had a lot of fun with this game, it could be soooo good if they put a bit more time and effort into it.
Overall Score: 8.0
Mirror's Edge:
What a breath of fresh air this game is. Its really unlike anything I have played before. The first person view point makes the running and sort of platforming so visceral. It's intense, when guards are chasing you, bullets are flying through the air and you have to navigate around rooftops at full speed its a big rush. It looks beautiful, I love how the colors contrast with each other, everything is very bold, so it has a great look to it. The controls are fantastic, always felt that I was always in full control of Faith, it allows for very split second manuevering. There is combat in the game but I dont consider it bad like some do, it does its job. It's not about taking guns and shooting people, though you can, its about quickly disarming or taking down your enemies with a quick strikes or fast reflexes to disarm them.
So I think the gameplay works really well but its pretty much the same thing from beginning to end. If you played the demo that is basically how the entire game will play out, there is no variety in gameplay, there are no new moves to learn or anything. What you are doing at the start of the game is exactly what you will be doing at the end. What changes are the levels and set pieces of which there are some really exciting ones. The story mode is a really fun adventure but its short, 5 hours or so, beating the game left me wanting a lot more. Personally I dont feel like the game actually starts until you finish the story mode, I feel like the true beauty of this game are the speed run modes. There are two types, the full stage speed runs where you have to complete a full level under a certain time and the time trials which are small sections of a level broken down into a sort of obstacle course with a time limit.
The time trail offers focused challenges, to get the best ranks you really have to find every shortcut and perform the most highest level of acrobatics to get by. To help, you can download the ghosts of anyone on the leaderboards, if it wasn't for them I wouldn't have known have the stuff you can do. I gained a better understanding of what Faith can and cant do, I learned to look at the levels in a different way, to analyze all possible routes. I got so hooked into this mode, I just had to get good times, I couldn't even get the highest rank in most, it was seriously really damn hard but I finished all the challenges with at least 2 out of 3 stars, so I am proud of that. Then there is the full stage runs which takes that time trail concept and blows it up, now you have to do a near perfect run over an 8-9 minute span. At first its like, how the hell do I make it in that time, but its possible, all levels have certain routes that can chop off big chunks of time. Most importantly though you have to be perfect, you need to make all the best jumps, you have to get by any enemies as fast as possible, you got to be at the top of your game to do this. What a rush it is, I got that same feeling I do when I played a Sonic game and I was going for the S rank and everything had ti be perfect. You will die, you will fail a hell of a lot, you will want to smash your controller into a million pieces but when you finish, wow, what a feeling.
Mirror's Edge has a good story mode but for me thats not the beauty of the game. Its a freaking hardcore, skill and speed challenge, it tests you gaming skills like few games do. The overall game is a bit simple, it does one thing but it does it so damn well. I think everyone should try this game out.
Overall Socre 9.0
Sonic Unleashed Wii Version:
A quick note to start off, the Wii version and the HD versions are two different games. They share the same story and same locations, thats basically it, all the levels, skills, hub worlds, extras, etc are completely different.
Sega... oh sega, do you have any idea why we like Sonic. Here is a hint, its not because of Tails or Knuckles or any of this bleeping friends. We want Sonic gameplay, now dont get me wrong variety is nice but in moderation. this is a game that is literally split in two, one side has a good sonic game, the other is a crappy beat em up/ boring platformer thing. Here is the major issue, the werehog half is like 3/4 the entire game!! What the hell is wrong with you Sega!! Why the hell would any of us want to buy this game to play your stupid piece of crap attempt at I dont know what, its just uninspiring and boring! I counted the levels, there are 7 main Sonic levels, there are 25 main werehog levels and one werehog level is longer than any Sonic level. AHHHHHHHHH!!
Sigh... ok about the game its split into two types of levels as I described above. You start off in a hub world, where in the HD versions its an actual world to explore, here its a 2D menu where you just clock on a location and read text, all you do is click all the options eventually one will take you to your level. If you aren't going to put the full world to explore then dont bother with a menu. The stage you play will either be a sonic one or like a million werehog ones strung together. Lets say you are lucky and you land a Sonic one, off you go to what is easily the best aspect of the game. The sonic levels are good, but I dont think I can even say they are better than Sonic Heroes... I cant even say its better than Sonic and the Secret Rings. In this version the levels are all about getting to the finish line as fast as you can, there is no scoring system like in the HD versions, all you have to worry about is time. Sonic has a boost much like in Rush which he can use to go fast for a short time, this refills with rings or by chaining enemies. The levels usually have long stretches of nothing, of just road for you to boost on, compared to what I have seen from the HD versions the levels are empty. There are multiple paths to take, a lot of them actually, so it is fun finding how to get to the best routes. The game sort of feels like a Sonic Rush (seeing how those devs worked on the wii version its not a surprise) with worse level design. There are flashes of pure sonic brilliance where you are doing crazy loops, chaining enemies to find hidden areas, oh and I love the 2D sections. But I dont know, the focus on just getting to the end on time kind of makes it feel more like a race course than a platformer, its like Secret Rings but without automatic movement (funny how that game actually controls better). I still had my fun with it, getting S ranks in the later levels proved to be a slight challenge. If the whole game was like this it would have been good, not the best Sonic game but a game I would feel good about.
Sadly its not all Sonic, there is a stupid werehog to deal with. Here you go around ugly levels beating up enemies and maybe navigating a few jumps and obstacles. The wii controls on this are terrible, its not like Zelda where you just slightly move your wrist to attack, here you have to alternate between mov both the wiimote and nunchuck to string a combo. Every move he has is some combination of shaking both controls, to fight you basically have to flail about like an idiot. I could close my eyes and just shake the things and every enemy on the screen would be dead after a short time. There is nothing to the combat but mashing. I switched to the GC controller cause I could take the shaking, every single action involved shaking, to go up a poll you had to shake, you couldn't press up. Even with the GC controller it was still a button masher. When it was trying to have platforming elements it would be hurt by the slipper nature of the werehog. To dash you press a direction twice, for some reason he will start dashing for no reason, its really sensitive. So say you need to make a precise jump, you jump you hold in the direction you want to go, you make it but oh crap he started to dash, off the ledge he goes, you die. I had to be far more careful controlling this guy than I ever should in a game that wants me to make jumps like that. I know I am tearing this mode apart but its not the worst thing ever. Its not Sonic 06, its not broken, its not even terrible, its just boring.
To pad the length of the game you unlock secret missions, normally sonic secret missions. All these do is take a portion of a stage and give a dumb objective like get X amount of rings, or finish it in the time limit. These are kind of pointless cause if you got through the level in the first place odds are you accomplished all these goals already. Secret Rings does this type of thing but on a much larger scale and with actual challenges that make sense. In this game it feels like a desparate attempt to make up for the lack of sonic levels. As you finish stages you earn emblems, after a certain amount you unlock these secret rooms in the temple (a hub area to enter main levels), each of these rooms are a sort of mini puzzle to earn extra lives or unlockables. The cool thing about these rooms is that the puzzles involve shifting back and forth between Sonic and the werehog, you have to use their different skill sets to solve the puzzle... why in the flying bleep is this not how the werehog levels are!!!! The changing mechanics, the puzzle elements would have made for a far more interesting game for the werehog, what were they thinking.
This game was just a big disappointment. Hell the boss fights weren't even that great, normally sonic games have some good ones. I still have hope for the HD versions, it has more levels, a better balance between the two characters, and a lot more elements that feel like SA. But I stree that this is not Sonic 06, its not bad bad, its just meh.
Overall Score 5.9
Star Wars Clone Wars Lightsaber Duels:
Hey I get infinite rentals for a month, stop laughing. Yeah so i decided to try this out and it wasn't horrible, just empty. I played this for a total of 3 hours and did mostly everything. This is a SW fighting game based on the Clone Wars cartoon show (which is awesome now BTW), you use the wiimote to input comands, cool idea but inprecise. What I loved most about this game is how the characters talk to each other when they fight, depending on who is fighting how they have a conversation that is directly related to who is fighting. It adds so much to the battle when they are verbaly jabbing each other. It actually feels like a SW lightsaber duel. The stages also feel alive, things are going around in the background, sometimes droids will take shots at you (they will attack only if you are an enemy). Everything about the atmosphere and way the fight plays out is awesome, sadly the combat is simple and the game is about as featureless as they come. You can choose between like 9 characters, there is a story mode which is over in like 40 minutes. There is a battle mode where you simply take one character and fight all other characters. There is a challenge mode which gives you goals to perform in the fight, this is easily the most interesting but again its a bit short. And thats the whole game. The game is gorgeous on the Wii by the wii, great character models, great backgrounds. They have such a damn good idea going for them but its like they didn't even try. I can't really recommend this to anyone but little kids who will be happy with just waving a wiimote to have lightsaber fights, there just isnt enough game to be relevant, if you can do what I did and just rent it for a few hours then do so just to see it cause it is kind of cool.
Overall Score: 5.5
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