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| Jeff's Video Game Reviews; Some good, some bad, some very ugly. | |
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| Topic Started: Jul 8 2008, 11:10 AM (455 Views) | |
| Jeff | Oct 27 2008, 11:55 AM Post #41 |
Lord of Pie & BBWs
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Okay, for today's video game review, I thought I'd do something a little bit different. Rather than just typing out the review of my experiences with a game, I'm instead recording myself while playing said game and then transcribing my monologue about the game - Parodius for the SNES - instead. If you guys like this style of review, I'll by all means utilize it again in the future, but we'll have to see. Okay, Konami logo. Good stuff. Skipping ahead. Let's see... 1 player, 2 player, options and... lollipop, apparently. Well, I've played the game a little bit in the past and from what I can gather, lollipop is a survival mode where you just go until you die, as opposed to the normal game where dying takes you back to a set point in the stage - if you die in lollipop, you restart right from where you left off. The game is basically a big parody of the space-shooter genre and... well, it's just really bizarre. If you let the title screen sit too long, you get a bizarre flashback and I'm not sure if it's the game's canonical storyline or the game's installments' history... this is the only Parodius title I've ever played... but from what it's showing, I'm gonna assume... well, I have no idea. And an octopus leaps out at me. Wow... *sigh* I'm stunned. Gonna play 1 player. There is a 2 player, but it's basically just alternating. You might as well play 1 player and pass the controller back and forth... Anyways, there are four playable character. Vic Viper, the generic, throw-a-way space shooter guy. Generic space shape, usual stuff. There's an octopus named... octopus. All the play styles are pretty similar, but the power ups are slightly different... There's twinbee from Konami's twinbee series... and a penguin named Pentarou. My personal favorite characters are Vic Viper and Twinbee, so I'm gonna play as Vic. Ah, yes, I should've mentioned it has an unusual [button] layout. You can alter that and lives count in the options menu, but I'm not gonna. Gonna go in with 3 lives, as stupid as I know that'll be in the long run... Okay! Flying through space. Good stuff. And some flying heads come out at me... with hats on. Pretty much anything in the game will kill you - except things that are very obviously power ups. The objective is to kill everything and not die. A simple idea, in theory, but theory is a rather traitorous thing... this game is hard. I don't know if they made the game obnoxiously hard for the sake of making the game obnoxiously hard, or if I'm just missing something and this is really just an elaborate parody of other space shooters that are already obnoxious hard... Oh, yes, one of the power-ups is a megaphone that yells random nonsense. "NO REVERSE GEAR?!" "NO PARKING HERE!" and "TEETH IN MY SOUP!" to name just a few. Ironically, that's the most powerful weapon in the game, so it only lasts a little while. *Sighs*. This is really, really weird. You start the first level in space, then go to a pirate cove... I don't know anymore. There are ruined ships in the background... the graphics are really nice. Aaaaand I died. Swell. Yes, everything is one-hit kill including getting too close to walls... at the very least, the game is kind enough to give you a free speed-up from the start of a new life so you're not totally helpless. Getting stuff from there is a bit more difficult. The bells are your best friends. If you shoot them a couple of times, they change color and give you different stuff. I know white is the megaphone upgrade, yellow gives you points... I don't know what they all are yet. I think the red one is a full-screen attack--and I died again. I either suck or this game is just obscenely hard. The problem is that if you play into the game long enough, it eventually either descends into a curtain-fire game, and around that point it really stops being fun... *Screams* There are blue power ups. Picking those up kills enemies, but not their bullets, so even if you clear the screen of enemies, you're never really safe. The game is fairly generous with power-ups, unfortunately, there is a part of the power-up chain, at the bottom of the screen, and as you gather power-ups, the next link in the chain is highlighted. If you have automatic play on, you'll be forced to use them at certain parts... and there's one that's a "!?" and if you select it, you lose all your power ups... it's equal to dying. Well, I reached the first boss of the game - a submarine... pirate ship... with a cat. No, I'm not saying that the cat is ON the ship, the ship... is build AROUND the cat. And the head... is sticking out the front, looking at you, and the paws are waggling on the side like wings... this is strange and kind of unnerving. Yeah... this game is really weird. Killing little miniature whales now. Power ups... for what it's worth... Well, now I'm over the ocean, and now the main boss of the first level, a massive penguin with its belly button highlighted - which is also its weak point. Wow... this game is making less and less sense. Unfortunately a lot of the bosses are basically curtain-fire... Again, I can't tell if it's hard because it wants to be hard, or just a parody of other space shooters... And now I'm back in space again... which is appropriate, since it's a space shooter... Wow... The music is really good. I like the music. It's nice that you have some freedom to move around. In some parts of the levels you have full control over up and down movement... unfortunately, that can become problematic - it loops. In some areas, it's a nightmare - and I died - where you can get stuck in a maze and if you're not fast enough you DIE, which means you're stuck because you lose all your speed upgrades which means you die again and again. ... Well, the game doesn't try to change the genre much. It's just really unorthodox... I probably won't be playing much longer... Let's see... good graphics for 1992... good music... fluid controls... and there IS a difficulty control, but it doesn't seem to change anything... or maybe I just need to play more. It's kid-friendly, because it's bright and colorful, but it's challenging for the adult audience... I mean, I'm killing giant clown dolls. This is really weird. Now wasps with cartoony eyes are trying to murder me... It's really hard to put this game into words... *Silence for a moment* Ooo! Boss music! Is this the boss of the level? ... okay... lots of enemies... wh-what? What is THAT?! ... Okaaaaay... I'm either going crazy or a giant exotic dancer is moving across the screen slowly from behind me... and I'm in danger of being trodden upon by her flashy, high-heel shoes... oooookaaaay... is this the boss? Well... I kinda hope not. This is really bizarre. I just... and killed by a penguin. *Sighs*. Wow. Wow. That sucked. Not at all what I was hoping for. Thankfully, when you continue, you pick up from where you were before - so this time I'll play as Twinbee. Okay, back to the weird exotic dancer lady and the penguins firing at me constantly. This is so not fair. I'm hiding between her legs... oh, God, that sounds horrible. I'm really stunned. She fills up most of the screen due to her killer hips and I'm maybe an inch wide! The worst part is that if you die, you're helpless, especially HERE of all places. That's another thing I don't like about space shooters, when you die, you lose everything you fought so hard to get, and if you get stuck in, say, a BOSS ROOM, you're screwed... this blows my mind. I am fighting a hi-res exotic dancer who is trying to step on me... I'm shooting her a lot, but it doesn't seem to do anything. I don't even see any obvious weak spots either... Ahh! She made noise, does that mean I'm hurting her? ... No, that means she's changing direction... Killed by a penguin. Wow, this game is so one-sided... The game is fun, if not completely off it's rocker. I mean... give it a try. If you want to, just download it - I wouldn't pay money for it. But what I wanna know is why Konami thought it was a good idea to put a giant exotic dancer in the middle of a space-shooter level. She's not even the BOSS, I can't even hurt her. This game is just so weird, I can't really bring myself to dislike it. That's what it is though - original. I don't know, maybe that's to its credit? Maybe I'm happier not knowing what comes after the exotic dancer. Wow... think of all the diseases I could've cured in the time I wasted fighting a giant, hi-res exotic dancer... Well, I suppose if you like space shooters, you'd like Parodius, but I have to take back the kid-friendly comment, because if there's a giant exotic dancer in level TWO, I hate to see what comes next. Especially when a later installment is literally titled "Sexy Parodius". My biggest complaints are the lack of co-op play, and the loss of all upgrades when you die. But, all-in-all, the game earns a well-rounded B. That wraps it up. For FAN, I'm Jeff, and I hope you enjoyed my suffering. Good night. |
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Come visit me and my thought processes at my website: http://www.publishedauthors.net/tdotdw/news.html "In the cold light, justice and morality always look corny and you can't wave the flag and look cool. But like it or not, society needs its heroes." - John Hart; actor who played The Lone Ranger. | |
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| Jeff | Dec 3 2008, 09:38 AM Post #42 |
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Lord of Pie & BBWs
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Okay, well, since I got absolute NO FEEDBACK FROM ANY OF THE 6 PEOPLE WHO FREQUENT THIS FORUM on the last review, I'm going to choose to kill the style myself. It was fun trying it out once, it'd be a nightmare to persist. Today's Game: Uninvited for the NES After having played LOOM as per Root's request I found myself a fan of the Adventure Game genre. I've even played the ludicrously hard Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy game which will kill you for taking too many turns inside the first room of the game. If pressed, I suppose I'd sway closer to the Lucasarts way of going about adventure games because dying in an adventure game - regardless as to whether you respawn or restart the game for it - is akin to jabbing the player in the skull with a dull stick as all it does is raise blood pressure. Then one day I happened to recall an adventure game a friend showed me back when I was a little kid. I couldn't recall the title, though I knew it was an NES title and was insanely hard. Somehow or the other I managed to get a hold of it again and sat down to play it. The game has a needlessly complex interface in that you're shown an image of what you're looking at (for better or for worse), a memo pad that acts as an inventory screen, a compass allowing for smoother movement and a list of commands most of which being fairly simple (Use/Open/Close, etc) and one or two that will be used one - AND EXACTLY ONE - time in the game (Hit, being a prime example). The game starts with a car wreck, though what caused said wreck is unknown, and you waking up in a car that the game informs you smells like gas. If you don't already know how to move - figure it out quickly - because goofing around will get you killed here before the game even really begins. Once you get your dopey behind out of the car, the game informs you that your sister went into a big, scary house that for all its tact and subtly should have a sign reading "DANGER! CLOSED DUE TO MASSIVE INFESTATION OF UNDEAD AND MOON LOGIC! KEEP OUT!". This proves that the protagonist's relationship with his sister is far more favorable than my own, but by the same token I don't think my sister is quite stupid enough to go into such an obviously dangerous area in the first place. That's the general plot line anyways. The first building you enter is reasonably sized, but at a certain point in the game you find the backdoor and find three MORE buildings you need to conquer, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. In the first building alone it's easy to get lost because each room only has one picture of it and only from one angle. This can get so that the picture you're looking at and the compass points at the bottom cease lining up and thus something that appears to your left is not always so. More than once this sort of thing has sent me in an endless loop of lefts in a situation where the room I needed was on my RIGHT. Swell. In addition, the game gives you loads upon loads upon loads of items you can choose to take with you with only about 20 being essential to your success and which ones are and which ones are not is a fact that the game leaves conveniently out of the item description. This can lead to some moments that TVtropes calls "Guide Dang It" moments. Let me give you an example from my experience. Fairly early in the game, while exploring an abandoned bedroom, I found a small ruby in a chest-o-drawers and the only information the game decided to give to me was that it was shiny and had magical power. In light of this I decided to take it as Adventure Game logic taught me that key words to look for are "shiny" and "magic". Well, imagine MY surprise when suddenly I began getting ominous messages at random periods telling me about an "Evil Force" permeating my being from an unknown origin. I don't quite follow where the game's going with this so I just decide to tag uncomfortably along, saving a bit more frequently than I had been up to this point before randomly dying. ... What? I didn't even do anything blatantly stupid this time. Turns out the ruby is essentially a time bomb, so I threw it away and everything was fine again. Guide dang it. One thing I should've mentioned sooner is that you can save at any time. This is quite useful because you'll be dying a lot. This stems from the main character - that is to say YOU - is the most literal-minded Adventure Game hero of all time. Classic example being that I told the hero to go through a door. The hero informed me that he didn't feel like it because the door wasn't open. That meant I had to OPEN THE DOOR then GO THROUGH SAID DOOR because the hero was too thick to understand that telling someone to go through a door implies opening it along the way but perhaps I was asking too much. Speaking of opening doors, this game will kill you for the most trivial of grievances. Another example is in order. Very early in the game there comes a time where you enter a hallway with five doors in it, including the one you came from, and a stairwell. If you attempt to open any of the doors, suddenly the monotonous music will subside in lieu of a catchy, happy-sounding ditty and the portrait of a southern belle as seen from behind will pop up in said hallway and the game will even make a comparison to Scarlett O'Hara in terms of appearance. My first thought was "Well screw that! This is an adventure game. Any damsels in distress can wait a minute!" I then opted to open the same door a second time. Scarlett turns out to be Skeleton O'Hara and the main character then got torn into kitty litter. The time when you can't even open a DOOR in an adventure game without being mauled by SOMETHING is tell-tale enough, but I foolishly decided to try again. This time I spoke to her and she gave a reply that was a mix of flirtatious and ominous which, had I spoken to her BEFORE being mauled, probably would have made me paranoid. This time I tried to hit her before she got the chance. Skeleton turns around. Main character dies. What, is he made out of SPONGE CAKE?! Well, as it turns out, even after Ms. Skeleton crops up you can go up the stairwell, a feat which, according to the way the picture of the hallway and the "lady" in question would not be in the hero's best interest (she's pretty much IN THE WAY). At the top you get a jar of some type of liquid that informed me would kill ghosts. Sweet, I thought, a chance to get some revenge on that shrew for MURDERING ME for the simple act of twisting a doorknob. Well, I saved my game and returned to the hallway and told that hero to USE that stuff all over her. The main character then told me he couldn't do that because I hadn't preemptively told him to take the lid off. Skeleton turns around, hero dies again, and I metaphorically toss the game into the nearest wall. That's just it, though. My previous examples were to point out just how obtuse aspects of the game were and the only worsen after a certain point. One false step means death which pretty much means that unless you have a guide you'll be grabbing every item in the game and trying to use them ALL on EVERYTHING until you make something happen and in some instances doing so means dying between each trial, meaning that you could literally be at this game for days and not make any headway. That does not strike me as good game design. At the very least the game could give you the SLIGHTEST HINT as of what to do otherwise the whole game is just stabbing in the dark. One last example just for pointing out how convoluted the logic here is. At one point you get bug spray. Well, that's an obvious choice, so when I see a little spider cross a handrail, I sprayed the handrail, re-entered the room and found a comatose arachnid to add to my inventory. Weird but freaking funny. I later stumbled into a room that used to belong to a servant of the manner, and upon finding a secret safe, the enraged ghost of said servant came out yelling at me like I'm the jerk. Well I wasn't sure exactly what to do and speaking to him was getting me no where. Naturally, I tried stabbing him with a knife. This resulted in the main character's deadification. Next was trying to smash his face in with an axe. Dead. How about that ghost stuff? Used already. Bug spray? Dead. It was just a thought. Well, as it turns out I was supposed to throw the spider at him, which, even in the grave, ended up being his mortal nemesis and the ghost fled. This left me rather dumbfounded as there is NOTHING IN THE GAME THAT TELLS YOU HE'S ARACHNOPHOBIC! The game is just littered with bad design choices and a complete lack of any consistent logic. Even the story comes off as badly schizophrenic as you find diaries from four or five different individuals each trying to tell the same story from varying angles which just reinforces the lack of coherency. Something about the 'master' and teaching magic and, oh who cares?! I'm just trying to find my functionally retarded sister who somehow got into and through these buildings without opening any doors or solving any puzzles. Wait, does that make me the functionally retarded one? Hmm... To the game's credit it has decent graphics (for its time), an okay soundtrack if you can stomach repetition, and is fairly prone to dragging you in. That's not to say I'm going to develop a paranoia of southern belles (far from it, I should hope) nor am I particularly worried at any point that a psychopathic killer will break into my house, it's just that the game's frustration is offset by at least a moderate amount of entertainment that stems from that "Look at me, I'm so smart, I didn't need GameFAQs to figure that part out" feeling. It's an okay installment in the adventure genre, but I can't say I blame you if you turn it into a Frisbee for your trouble. |
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Come visit me and my thought processes at my website: http://www.publishedauthors.net/tdotdw/news.html "In the cold light, justice and morality always look corny and you can't wave the flag and look cool. But like it or not, society needs its heroes." - John Hart; actor who played The Lone Ranger. | |
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| Jeff | Dec 20 2008, 08:06 PM Post #43 |
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Lord of Pie & BBWs
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Today's Game: Monster Rancher 3 for the PlayStation 2 Monster Rancher 3 is, obviously, the 3rd installment in the Monster Rancher main series of games, but actually the seventh game TECMO made of the license. At this point, the entire MR series had pretty much established itself for what it is - a series of life simulating games where you breed monsters from CD's. Not a terribly complicated situation in theory but the head-crushing depth the game offered made for one of the very best open-ended games on the market. Now, you've seen me rave about the MR1 and even seen my Let's Play of Monster Rancher Advance 2, so what makes MR3 so special? Simple. It's the very weakest link in the Monster Rancher franchise's chain, spinoffs and main games included. Does it suck? Well, that's what I'm here to discuss. First off, TECMO was wise in that they did not try to advertise Monster Rancher 3 as the young PS2's killer app. That would've been the metaphoric hanger into the fetus that was the developing PlayStation 2. And for that lovely mental image, you're very welcome. The first problem should be quite obvious. JUST LOOK AT THE DAMN BOX ART!!! For some reason TECMO thought it'd be in their best interest to cel-shade this game, and this was two years before Capcom showed the world how to make cel-shading not suck with the debut of Viewtiful Joe, so, naturally, the game is blindingly hideous from start to finish. I'm not the type of person who must maintain absolute realism for a game to be fun or interesting for me - in fact I love many cartoony and cel-shaded games such as Katamari Damacy or the aforementioned Viewtiful Joe. However, MR3 is SO bright and cheerful not only did I come close to getting at least one form of diabetes, I had repeatedly clock myself on the back of my skull to prevent my eyes from retreating into the darkest parts of my skull. Also worth mentioning was the pure destruction this art style has wrought. Vicious monsters like Dragons and Nagas were turned into plush dolls. The seductive succubi-esque Pixies reduced to lolita fetishists' dreamboats. And for some reason Mocchi is still in the game, I don't quite understand that part either. It's also worth mentioning that it's one thing to make a game with bad graphics - it's another to make them so hideous that they permanently scar the remainder of the series. Six new Monster Rancher titles came out after MR3 and the graphics are STILL reeling from the blow right between the eyes that was "cel-shading". So, is that my big beef with the game? Is it the graphics that make MR3 suck? Ooooooooh no. That's just the tip of the ice burg. First off, the difficulty curve. In most games, it's a gradual, rising swoop constantly forcing the player to adapt. The hardest part of MR3 is having the patience to complete it, because there IS no curve. It starts at rock bottom and drags you over it the entire way without once pushing you upwards. This is first made apparent in any monster's stat screen. In previous - and later - titles, a monster had six primary statistics making up its unique customization. Power - for physical attacks Intelligence - for mental/magic attacks Speed - for dodging Defense - for blocking Life - for HP amount And accuracy, sometimes called 'skill' - which is obvious. The issue comes from MR3's removal of the accuracy stat. Rather than making any given attack a 50/50 shot, the accuracy is 100% move-dependent. This means that attacks the game classifies as 'weak' have high hit rates and moves that are 'strong' have low hit rates. Even though other MR titles do this, they have never relied on the attacks 100% for accuracy. This quickly becomes game-breaking because if you get your monsters' stats high enough, a 'weak' move will still break your opponent's face, rendering what little challenge there could have been null and void. And to compound this little matter, the lack of an accuracy stat means that you can focus all your training efforts on the other five stats, effectively meaning that unless you intentionally stress and tire your monster out for giggles you'll beat the game within three creatures. Another issue is that MR3 jumped off the well-grounded cliff for a free fall of "Forget everything you know about the series and BS it as you go". You may not fuse monsters together as you could in other games. Instead, when a monster dies it leaves behind a crystallized gem resembling a heart-shape. I find it necessary to point out the obvious on this one because if you make it to the end of a monster's life cycle and your eyes have yet to shoot a defensive spray of blood at the screen, then congratulations, you're a stronger rancher than I. You then feed the "Monster Heart" to the next monster in line - in what is effectively an act of cannibalism - and they inherit a percentage of their predecessor's stats and traits, thus making it effectively game-breaking status by the second beastie. These things combined guarantee you'll never notice a single bump in that road that was supposed to be the difficulty curve. Another thing worth mentioning - if you can justify calling it such - are the expeditions. The MR games are famous (or infamous depending on who you ask) for their expedition areas. MR3 gives one to you at each seasonal shift, which sounds very cool in theory but is absolutely horrid in execution. At the seasonal shift, your training and preparation have the brakes slammed on them as you get a cheesy poem that acts as a transition into the 'expedition'. Only problem? You don't GO ANYWHERE!!! You just get to control your monster as they walk around and poke at things in the area you were raising them in. When you begin, you're offered between one of four items, dictating the length of this expedition: Free - short Cheap - slightly less short Moderately pricy - a bit longer Expensive for what little you get back for it - dear God, does this ever end? The most unnerving part of this expeditions is how the item - something along the lines of 'ranran' if memory serves me right - strongly resembles different forms of illegal drugs (a sniff, a powder, a leaf and a flower, I believe). Of course, drugs just might be a prerequisite to consider this 'fun' as the ONLY thing worth finding in any given location would be the "Field Master" who strengthens one attack on your monster of your choice. This means that the already broken accuracy/power conundrum becomes even more broken in your favor. Way to over-achieve, TECMO. Also, before I forget, whereas other Monster Rancher games had a Main breed/Sub breed system, MR3 throws this to the side and instead has monsters who live in one of the different fields you raise them in per monster, making for a grand total of 222 monsters in the game - that's only 7 more than the VERY FIRST GAME and HALF of Monster Rancher Advance 2's total for comparison's sake - and a very clumsy feeding system. It's not fun, it's not intuitive and even TECMO realized this and never did this again. Smart move, boys. Well, if gameplay and graphics suck is there any redeeming quality to the game? Well, the music is kind of nice, I guess, if a bit on the repetitive side, but nothing that makes me want to tear my ears off. Dear God, I hope not, I've already lossed ONE sense to this game I needn't lose two. Also the story was interesting in that you play in a part of an ancient civilization that's pivotal to the story of the MR world, and I suppose in THAT regard the game succeeds. TECMO's biggest problem seems to be a failure to realize what their fanbase consists of. In Japan, Monster Rancher is widely recognized and widely loved. In America, it has more of an underground, cult status to it. But the bigger the fanbase for these games becomes the more overwhelmingly it becomes people ages 15 and up, especially in the male demographic. There ARE female fans like Lisa Shock, but frankly she frightens me so who's counting, right? Thankfully several of these issues were fixed in Monster Rancher Advance and Monster Rancher 4, but unfortunately MR3's toxic legacy lives on in that the art style really hasn't fix that much of the damage just yet. Also, MR3 was very quick to drop a lot of the new, interesting species from the 2nd game's line-up such as Zilla, Centaur and even the time-honored Worm. In the end, TECMO may have a chance to redeem themselves now that the TECMO-Koei merger has finalized and with the release of the extremely popular (in Japan) Monster Rancher DS and DS2. Release those stateside, TECMO-Koei, and all may be forgiven. ... Maybe. |
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Come visit me and my thought processes at my website: http://www.publishedauthors.net/tdotdw/news.html "In the cold light, justice and morality always look corny and you can't wave the flag and look cool. But like it or not, society needs its heroes." - John Hart; actor who played The Lone Ranger. | |
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| Dietaku | Dec 20 2008, 08:10 PM Post #44 |
Grade A /B/tard
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Hehe. Nerdrage much, Jeff? I kid. I saw what they did to the pixies, and it was terribad to put it nicely. Good stuff, though. |
| "SHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANE!!" | |
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| Root | Dec 20 2008, 09:01 PM Post #45 |
The Speaker for the Dead
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Haha. I've never played the game and yet I still enjoyed this. Nice job. Maybe the next few games will be better. Then again...maybe I'll get my soul back, one day. |
Does being the only sane one make me the insane one, in a sort of way? Though my eyes could see, I was still a blind man; Though my mind could think, I still was a madman... "Yes there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run...there's still time to change the road you're on" | |
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| Rem | Dec 20 2008, 09:01 PM Post #46 |
Why yes, I do like snickerdoodles.
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Good review, as usual. And no, rooty. You can't have your soul back. |
 Have you ever wondered what color air is? | |
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| Jeff | Jan 22 2009, 12:23 PM Post #47 |
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Lord of Pie & BBWs
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Today's Game: Resistance 2 (PS3) Picking up a few years after the liberation of England in the first game (which I reviewed a few months back), the Chimeran threat has now begun its assault on America - from BOTH COASTS. Nathan Hale is given a promotion to Lieutenant and placed in a squad alongside of other people who have a resistance to the Chimeran Virus - thus giving you USEFUL (and unkillable, no less) allies with unique weapon sets to aid you in your missions. Okay, okay, so I reviewed Resistance 1, so the REAL question is "What's different"? Well, entirely new maps (some of which are ENORMOUS), a better-balanced damage/ammo system (you may now only carry two guns at a time, but the standard ground-pounding Chimera forces no longer require an entire clip emptied into them to kill one of them), a far more elaborate on-line mode (featuring co-op and competitive modes, but we'll cover that momentarily), the loss of a campaign-mode co-op, and some seriously HUGE boss fights. The game has solid gameplay, as before, and the controls are tight and responsive, but not overly so. The control scheme is a smidge different from the previous game, but not so that you can't adapt. My sole complaint about the gameplay is that certain areas of the game DEMAND platforming - and failure to do so will make Lt. Hale a light snack for waterborn nasties called aptly, Furies. The problem? The game is a FPS title - so you CAN'T SEE YOUR FEET. You essentially have to guess when you're at the edge of a platform, but seeing as only two levels sport segments like this and the fact that checkpoints are generously spaced out for you, it's not condemning. Also, the removal of co-op campaign mode is a mark against the game, but in some places it makes sense - primarily some bosses that just wouldn't WORK with co-op play. The problem with this? The bosses come in 3 flavors: 1) Huge but amazingly weak/simple 2) Small but gamebreakingly hard 3) Tedious but easy Even though amazing lengths were gone to to ensure level quality control through and through, the bosses come off as a coinflip between "insultingly easy" and "OH MY DEAR GOD, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME?!" hard. The fact is, the standard "shoot it until it stops moving" arena battles allowing for two-player co-op were just FINE in the first game, and though the level of strategy has gone up, once you play through the boss fights, it becomes pattern memorization from then on out. Though two-player co-op couldn't work when most of the battle is scripted events (and did make for some pretty epic moments) in practice, they were fairly weak, ending each chapter on what is essentially an anticlimax. Spoiler: click to toggle Speaking of co-op, Insomniac could've done worlds better. First off, local play is essentially DISCOURAGED, as the 2nd player's stats are not saved nor combined with the 1st player's profile data - AKA: Lost as soon as you turn the game off - and the 2nd player cannot play off the 1st player's profile data and is instead left to fend for himself. This becomes problematic when you're playing in troupes consisting of people who are level 60 and above. Oh yes, I forgot. In the co-op and competitive modes, you level up. In a first person shooter. Anyone else see a problem here? Essentially, you will not be able to do well in the competitive modes at first (and the sooner you embrace this fact, the better your life will be for it) so you have to slowly grind your level up until you cease sucking. Also, you collect what's called "Gray Tech" and use it to purchase new items as you play, but seeing as how you should consider yourself fortunate to get 5 of these per mission (which can take anywhere between 30 minutes to an hour or more) this doesn't add up very fast, but people who got it the DAY it came out are going to be worlds ahead of you, making for a very broken and one-sided experience. Insomniac can easily fix these grievances with a patch but I doubt they will. Oh, and to make complete sense of the campaign story you MUST play the co-op campaign too. Nice planning, guys. Okay, fine, I've been hard on the on-line play. It is still FUN and if you play as the Medic (my personal class of choice) being level 1 every playthru isn't all that crippling and you can even make do with the other two classes (Soldier and Spec Ops, receptively) and do just fine. A good example of this was when Cog-Sean and I were playing (on the same team by default since I was player 2) competitive "Capture the Flag" style. I got lost in the hallways we were in and got separated from everyone else then found some weird ball/grenade thing. The game then informed us that our team had the enemy power core (flag, essentially). I got excited and the conversation went as thus: Me: Hey! Someone on our team has the power core! Cog: Uhh... dude, YOU have the power core! Me: I do? OH, CRAP! I DO!!! I managed to make it back to the base, alive (somehow) and we won and even my minor contribution got me pumped to play again. The game is just FUN in light of its flaws. Okay, okay, okay. Bosses and poor planning on the on-line modes apart, my complaints are really quite minimal. What's important here is that the series is evolving - becoming more than it was previously by trying new things and that's a plus. Sure R2 could've been MUCH better, but it's a damn solid game from start to finish. The story is still as engaging as the last's - if not moreso due to Hale actually, y'know, TALKING this time around and the interesting new characters he works with. Solid gameplay, excellent graphics and audio, immersive atmosphere (if not a bit depressing thanks to the radio show host) are all part of Resistance 2's charm. In spite of my complaints - this game is incredible and anyone who has the chance to should definitely go and pick it up! |
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Come visit me and my thought processes at my website: http://www.publishedauthors.net/tdotdw/news.html "In the cold light, justice and morality always look corny and you can't wave the flag and look cool. But like it or not, society needs its heroes." - John Hart; actor who played The Lone Ranger. | |
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| Cog-Sean | Jan 24 2009, 02:26 AM Post #48 |
Doctor Seanafunkilus's musterion of Rock
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Your damn right that is an awesome game! and I know you can't wait to come over and play it again!!! |
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"A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him." | |
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| ddrattack | Jan 24 2009, 12:52 PM Post #49 |
The DDR of all things Rythm
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Resistance is my life... I'm so ashamed! |
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1:51 AM Nov 25
