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The Conduit Game Review–It’s Like Red Bull, The Game

That headline, of course, will require some explanation.  If you’ve ever drank a Red Bull before, especially if you don’t do it often, what you get is kind of a sweetish, cloying taste (that for me put me vaguely in mind of chewable vitamins) followed by an incredibly twitchy sensation as the sugar and caffeine goes burning its way merrily through your endocrine system.  And, either ironically or by design, this is EXACTLY how I’d describe The Conduit, the newest first person shooter for the Wii.

Basically, The Conduit asks you to believe that all those things you scoffed at as merely tinfoil-hat lunacy, stuff like chemtrails and 9/11 being an inside job and aliens and whatever it is they’re doing out at the Denver International Airport, are all in fact very real.  This is already tough enough, but then they’ll follow that up by asking you to believe that the shadowy figures behind all of them actually brought a tinfoil-hat type INTO the conspiracy, and said tinfoil hatter actually accepted his new role.  From there, he’ll be heavily armed with all the latest government hardware and whatever he can manage to pick up along the way from the race of alien marauders who’s looking to set up shop on Earth.  Their technology tends to focus on things that are grown rather than built–their weapons use biomass as propellant and their locks are organic–and the centerpiece of their tech tree is the Conduit, a kind of interdimensional warp generator that seems to be similar to the old Stargate design.  But, as you’ll discover as you go through the game, there’s plenty of sneaky shadowy stuff going on here, and you may not be able to trust your own handlers as much as you’d want to…or even as much as you hope.

I give them all the credit in the world for assembling a sharp, sweet storyline.  Seriously, they clearly put a lot into it and it really is a fantastic story that uses plenty of the things we might find roaming around the internet at this very second.  They’ve got the plot on lockdown, and even the graphics and sound weigh in nicely for a Wii title.  Though everyone TALKS about the so-called Wii Syndrome, in which a game is automatically docked by virtue of being on the Wii, let’s face one indisputable fact–graphically, no game for the Wii has yet been produced that can compete with an Xbox 360 or PS3 title.  This isn’t bias, this is sheer fact, and if someone actually CAN point out a Wii game that CAN compete graphically with, say, Prototype or Haze or Killzone 2 or Fallout 3, then I will cheerfully and publicly retract this statement in the comments section below.

There’s only one other problem with The Conduit, and that’s the twitchy control scheme.  A first person shooter depends heavily on the ability to get the firepower where it needs to go, whether it be into a tank or an enemy’s sternum.  And when I’m trying to line up a shot, it really doesn’t help that the Wiimote will periodically jerk halfway across the screen from one small twitch of the wrist.  This will take getting used to.

But the fact remains–The Conduit just might be, all things considered, the Wii’s best first person shooter.  And if you love a good first person shooter with plenty of action, then you’re going to be all over this game.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time Game Review–Better Than You’d Expect

‘ll be honest with you, folks–you know I always am, but this time I have to be particularly blunt about what I’m saying.  I always get a little freaked out whenever I hear about an RPG for Nintendo’s Wii.  There’s just something so very…not right…about the idea.  See, an RPG, in the commonly meant sense of the term, involves a huge production and graphical overload and a story that goes on and on for days or even weeks.  And when you think of the kind of systems that can handle such a venture, “the Wii” is generally about as far down the list as, say, “Colecovision”.

But even I can be wrong–savor the flavor, kids, because this doesn’t happen very often.  I tried Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time and got a pretty good surprise out of it.

As for the plot…wow.  On RPG Cliche Day–okay, on a young man’s sixteenth birthday, he oversleeps, gets up late and dashes off to his Coming Of Age Ceremony.  Yes, they even CALL it the Coming Of Age Ceremony.  I’m both amazed and horrified.  Anyway, after completing said ceremony, he returns to the village to discover that his best friend’s little sister has contracted some kind of mysterious illness that resembles nothing so much as radiation sickness.  No, really.  And it gets better.  So now, on his sixteenth birthday, the boy has to violate the laws of his village and actually LEAVE to go find medicine to heal the “crystal sickness”.

Yeah, you heard all of that right.  An opening jam packed with cliches leads to a little girl getting radiation sickness that, if she survives it, will actually mutate her into being a super-strong entity with rapid healing powers, which turns out to be the exact same disease the hero had, and then the hero will actually break the law to go fetch medicine but no one seems to care about the legal issues here at ALL.

This may well be the most predictable and yet the most ridiculous game plotline I’ve ever heard.  I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen so many tropes in one place, only to be followed up by a ridiculous series of plot holes sufficiently large to drive a herd of chocobo through.

And yet, the game play isn’t half bad.  You’ll get some mini-games in the middle of this full-blown series of adventures, and there’s plenty of variety to be had here.  Sure, it’s all a bit cookie-cutter and plain vanilla, but there’s nothing necessarily wrong with it.  It’s a fairly fun game, and with a little bit of excitement.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time isn’t exactly the greatest game ever, but it’s a far cry from the worst, too.  There’s reason enough to give it a try that it’ll make at least a decent rental, even if it won’t wind up taking over your life.  If you’ve got a yen for RPGs and a decent tolerance for half-baked plotlines, you’ll probably have a good time with this one.

Resident Evil Archives Game Review–Time For A Sleazy Cash Grab!

Wow, Nintendo–this might be a new low, even for you.  First you had the nerve to release the original Resident Evil on the Gamecube with basically just enhanced difficulty and call it Resident Evil Zero.  And now, you step it up a tick by releasing the original Resident Evil on the Wii with basically just enhanced graphics and calling it Resident Evil Archives.

Seriously, this is the second time you’ve rereleased a game from 1996 and called it good enough.  Is there no limit?

But okay, you’ve done it, and now we have to live with it, so off I go, to review Resident Evil.  Again.  Thanks, Big N. Thanks ever so.

Resident Evil Archives is about a group of special forces types, the S.T.A.R.S (Special Tactics And Rescue Service) team, who’s gone off to investigate a rash of murders out in the wilds of the Arklay Mountains area just outside of Raccoon City.  And when the S.T.A.R.S team doesn’t report in, Alpha Team is sent in to track them down.  What they find is nothing short of horrifying, as genetically altered mutations now rule the Arklay Mountains region.  When Alpha Team takes cover in a sprawling mansion after being chased by a pack of mutant dogs, they discover that their night of horror has only just begun.  Now missing nearly half the team, the remnants of Alpha Team have to find out what happened to everyone else and get out alive, in the process discovering the truth behind what’s going on in the Arklay Mountains.

It’s no secret that the original Resident Evil was the start of something amazing.  It’s no secret that Resident Evil was a spectacularly fun game and if you’ve never had the pleasure of trying it out then you definitely should.  And I’ll even go so far as to admit that the Wii version really does have loads better graphics.  I only WISH the original Resident Evil looked this good.  But I’ve got serious problems with Resident Evil Archives.

One, there’s the obvious.  i really question the value of this game’s existence to begin with.  Considering that the PS2 is fully backward compatible with the PS1, and the PS2 is still selling like hotcakes, why would you need the Wii to play it in the first place?  This just reeks of massive sleazy cash grab.

Two, holy hell, the CONTROLS.  I don’t know where the nunchuk’s major malfunction was, but when it’s taking me a good three minutes to try to push the bureau into position in that damn sculpture room so I can snag the first floor map, I’ve got a serious problem here, and I don’t think it’s an issue of my own fine motor skills.

Three, there’s something very seriously wrong with the difficulty here.  I run into that first zombie, just off the dining room?  My first response has always been to back into the hall so I can line up my shot.  And I’m firing into this thing in as rapid a fashion as possible, but it just shambles up and starts chewing on me.  Next thing I know, I’m down two-thirds of my starting ammo capacity and my EKG’s blinking at me that I need a health powerup and bad.  Since when do these zombies absorb fire like that?  Oh, and you can forget about trying to take head shots.  That’s all apparently randomized now, even if you could get it to aim solidly.

So all things considered, this is a great game for anyone who hasn’t yet had the sweet joy of Resident Evil and longs to see it in brilliant clarity but not necessarily with the greatest control scheme.  If you’ve got a Playstation, or a PS2, or you’ve already played Resident Evil, there’s no reason at all to crawl through the Archives.

Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo’s Dungeon Game Review–A Warking Disappointment

Yes, I know that kind of punnage in a headline should probably get me shot by the pun police (whom as we all know are only permitted to carry chocolate guns for irony’s sake), but I do it because I CAN.  Now, that having been thoroughly exhausted, let’s wade into just WHY this game disappointed me so deeply.

But first, the incredibly confusion Square-Enix brand plotline.  A long, long time ago, before Cid got old and showed up with his airship in every Final Fantasy game EVER, Cid was just a young treasure hunter looking for a power source so he could build that airship.  And he, along with his partner, the titular little yellow bird, thinks he’s found it in the form of Timeless Power, a fist-sized jewel that seems to have a small galaxy inside it.  Anyway, just as he’s about to collect his airship battery, it’s stolen from him by a rival treasure hunter and he, his rival, and their pets are transported to an alternate dimension in which the ringing of a clock tower bell causes a vortex to open up behind a person’s head and steals their memories.

Still with me?  Good.  Because this hasn’t even gone off the rails yet.

That’s going to happen when the star baby named Raffaello falls out of the sky and lands in front of the clock tower.  He’s contained inside a rather large egg, and when it hatches, he emerges.  Raffaello has the power to open the memory-stealing vortexes, enter them, and start sobbing uncontrollably while clinging to a rainbow-colored floating puzzle piece (representing lost memory), thus forcing you (playing as the Chocobo) to follow him into the abyss and rescue him from what looks like nothing at all.  Repeatedly.

I’m only slightly kidding on that last part–you’re going to have to fight your way through a series of enemies to reach Raffaello on each level, but somehow floating star baby just wandered right through the horde of monsters you’ll have to fight.  Ah well, it wouldn’t be much of a game without the fighting, now would it?

I admit, that when I started playing this, I was pretty enthusiastic about it.  An action-driven RPG for the Wii? Sign me up!  And indeed, the gameplay was pretty solid and fun, and there was plenty of humor to be had in the dialogue, and the stories were pretty solid and compelling (except for the overarching one featuring green-haired star babies that hatch from eggs that are capable of surviving planetary entry but can be broken from the inside by a baby), but I rapidly found a flaw in the game.

Specifically, the sheer repetition.  I found myself dragging my Chocobo through dungeon after vaguely similar dungeon with only new monster types and new items to break up the monotony.  And sadly, the story wasn’t THAT compelling to keep me that interested.  I’m still trying to get my head around Raffaello.

I admit, this particular review is going to be highly subjective.  I was basically disappointed in how much of the game seemed similar to the rest of it.  I tired of doing the same thing over and over again.  And I’ll admit, the rest of the game was solidly done enough to make it a really good game.  So if you can stomach repetition, and don’t mind when things repeat themselves, and have a fair tolerance for redundancy (not to mention repetition and repetition), then you and Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo’s Dungeon should get along together nicely.

Jambo! Safari arcade port coming to Wii

If you’ve ever played Jambo! Safari as a kid in the arcade you’ll probably agree with me when I say this game kicked ass. Thankfully, Sega has decided to capitalize on the game’s ass-kickery and announced a Wii port.

If, however, you’ve never played this game all it basically is is driving around in various vehicles attempting to catch and/or photograph different African animals. Doesn’t sound fun? Well then you obviously haven’t played it.

The Wii port is said to be called Jambo! Safari Ranger Adventure with the Nintendo DS port titled Jambo! Safari Animal Rescue. Now if I can just dust off my Wii and find that Wiimote I misplaced after getting bored of Wii Sports months ago…

Read (Kotaku)

Monkey Island Coming To XBLA

LucasArts might be raking in money hand over fist via a near-continuous stream of Star Wars games but without a doubt one of their most popular series was the Monkey Island games, featuring aspiring pirate Guybrush Threepwood and gaggles of jokes. From an era when unimpressive graphics forced developers to either craft addictive gameplay or use cunningly written stories full of intrigue, humor or both.

The Monkey Island series was very heavy on the humor, wit endless jokes, humorous solutions to puzzles and general silliness. Originally released in 1990 it was an adventure game which still delights fans to this day. A listing for a ‘Special Edition’ re-release has hit German ratings board listings for the Xbox Live Arcade.

Unfortunately since this isn’t an official announcement there are few other details, but a graphical update would be likely, given the extremely low quality of the original visuals.

Broken Steel Game Review–A Perfect End To A Nigh-Perfect Game

And so, the last addition to the Fallout downloadable content block has emerged, and amazingly, it will change the way you play Fallout 3 forever.  It’s called Broken Steel, and what it’ll do to the game is create a series of changes that are vast and downright unnerving.

This time around, you’ll be able to resolve one of the most frustrating problems with Fallout 3—what happened AFTER you retake Project Purity.  You’ve just made the Capitol Wasteland a better place to live, and quite possibly killed yourself in the process.  Only now, even IF you were the one to take the poison pill yourself, you’ll manage to survive it and carry on the good fight, as our old buddy Three Dog would say.  And now, you’ll be assisting the Brotherhood of Steel (and not those Outcast putzes either—they got their chance in Operation: Anchorage and did they EVER screw it up!)  in three important overarching concepts.

1.    Help get the newly cleaned water out to the various ports and settlements of the Capitol Wasteland.

2.    Blast the godless heathen savage Super Mutants into insensate smoking oblivion, once and for all.

3.    While you’re at it, put paid to those miserable soulless heartless Fascisistic thugs known as The Enclave.

Sound like a plan to anyone else?  Oh yes.  Yes it does.

Considering how many times I’ve railed against first person shooters in these pages, you might well wonder how I live with the hypocrisy of loving Fallout 3, which is a first person shooter itself.  And if you were to ask me that, I’d look at you sorrowfully, shake my head with regret and tell you that Fallout 3 isn’t JUST a first person shooter.  It’s a first person ADVENTURE.  Most first person shooters like to focus on that last word at the cost of everything else, but it’s the rare ones like Fallout 3 that open up a world to you and let you run riot therein.  You can be a hero or a criminal in these games, and the sheer variety of things to do holds my interest with every step.

And indeed, Broken Steel will, as I’ve said, change the way you play Fallout 3.  One, the level cap has been lifted from level 20 to level 30.  Of course, there will also be a collection of new items for you to lay hands on, and you’ll have several new plot elements to tangle with as well.  The already deep, rich story of Fallout 3 gets nothing but enhancement from Broken Steel.

However, as good as this is—there are still some problems here. For those of you thinking the broken level cap will be an opportunity to catch up on those skills you missed, think again.  For some strange reason, the game will give you new skills and perks when you reach a new level.  I’m not terribly pleased about this, but I guess it could be worse.  And there are many folks who will discover, seemingly randomly, that they’re unable to even play the game in the first place—but for those people, it’s not even that much of a problem.  While you’ll miss out on the new items and new plot challenges, from what I understand the level cap will remain broken, allowing you to try out the new features.

As fond as I am of Fallout 3, I’m of the mind that the downloadable content so far has added spice to the original as opposed to really opening up game experiences.  Broken Steel, meanwhile, has done a solid job of opening the world up even further.  All I can say is, after six months of fantastic gaming, great work, Bethesda…and see you in Vegas.

Sonic The Hedgehog Game Review–Sega, How Do You Sleep At Night?

Sometimes I wonder how Sega sleeps at night.

And then I realize it’s probably on huge piles of money.

This is the inescapable conclusion I reached after playing Sonic the Hedgehog for the Xbox 360. Looking back at that sentence I still can’t believe I typed it without having an embolism or something. Yes, I played Sonic the Hedgehog for the Xbox 360 and I’m still alive to tell the tale. Yes, I’m also amazed by this.

Because once again, good old Doctor Eggman (whom I can’t stop thinking of as Robotnik for some reason) is back for more action with far more robotic minions than he should have (where is he getting the materials for all these robots, anyway?), to this time harass the citizenry of Soleanna, steal their princess, and attempt to seize something called the Flames of Disaster. This continues on for some time, with Sonic grappling with Eggman’s robotic hordes, until eventually Sonic’s counterparts Shadow and Silver get involved and the whole mess gets even more ludicrous.

While the plotline is so sufficiently convoluted as to be unrecognizable without a score card handy, there will be plenty of problems with this game. One, they built a Sonic game around this, which means you will spend a lot of time running around collecting rings. A LOT of time running around collecting rings. That’s sadly most of what Sonic does, and you’ll be playing Sonic a good chunk of the time. The controls will be woefully inadequate, and you’ll spend more than a little time trying to stick a jump or angle your fall correctly.

The first mission does a fantastic job of illustrating just how lousy this game is. See, in order to reach the first full level, you’ll have to have a special move that allows you to run along a string of rings. To get that special move, you’ll have to roam around town until you find a man who needs a pair of shoes tested. Once you test those shoes, you’ll then be allowed to PURCHASE the special move that allows you to reach the first stage.

Seriously, what’s the deal with that? It’s like they were trying to artificially pad the game in order to make it less like a complete joke. Believe me, I was getting REALLY sick of trying to get people’s permission to go on to the next stage. And the next stage wasn’t really all that fun either, so more and more, trying to save Soleanna and its princess seemed less like an epic adventure and more like a lousy day job.

Even worse are some of the game elements—for instance, playing as Sonic and carrying the princess with you allows you, somehow, to access some kind of force field. Carrying the princess of Soleanna around in your arms allows you to generate energy sufficient to deflect objects. Is she some kind of dynamo? A mutant, perhaps? Spending a little too much time near the large hadron collider in her hometown? Or just really craptacular Sonic setup? I’m going with the craptacular, myself.

Perhaps the final nail in the coffin is how, as you’ve probably heard, Sonic and the princess will be carrying on a quasi-romantic relationship, despite the fact that she’s a human being and he’s an anthropomorphic hedgehog. When asked about it, the princess’ voice actress Lacey Chabert gave us this little gem: “Ha! No, you’re just being silly. It’s not an inappropriate relationship. Let’s just say Sonic and Princess Elise have an attraction for each other.” Um…Lacey…that would be exactly the problem. The human being is attracted to the anthropomorphic hedgehog.

That’s bestiality. The textbook definition, in fact.

This is just sad, really—unless you’re absolutely desperate for a Sonic game, you can do vastly, VASTLY better than this.

Army of Two Game Review–Of Mice And Men, The Shooter Game

Playing through Army of Two is an experience that’ll leave you sad, in a way.  You’ll want to enjoy this game–you really will–it’s just that the game won’t actually give you very many good reasons to do so.  And yet, when it actually DOES, you get your sense of hope back, only to have it quashed once again by virtue of having no further reason to enjoy it.

The plot of Army of Two, sadly, won’t be a huge help either in terms of making you love this game.  You follow Army Rangers Tyson Rios and Elliot Salem as they become disenchanted with the army and leave to join a private military contractor outfit called SSC, Security and Strategy Corporation. From there, they’ll be running various missions over the course of fifteen years, and even be indirectly involved with a scheme you may have seen recently in theatres—to privatize the military.  And they’ll even work to bring about the downfall of said scheme, which is kind of weird considering they’re working for a company that would directly benefit from such a scheme.  And, even better, after fifteen years with SSC, they start their own company, Trans World Operations.

Yes, that would be the pun…two guys who make an army of two, who eventually become the army of TWO as an acronym.

This is actually a pretty fair storyline, and will send you all over the world doing a whole bunch of awesome stuff in an effort to keep organizations like yours, and the one you’ll found, strictly on the sidelines.  Of course, the problem with Army of Two is that you’ll have almost nothing to DO with any of this awesome stuff because you’ll be too busy running around and shooting stuff.

Much has been made over the fact that, if you’re playing alone, you get an AI partner.  This definitely qualifies as an interesting development, if it weren’t for the fact that your partner has mental candlepower somewhere in the crustacean range.  Seriously—I was holding a car door to use as a shield for this brain-dead troglodyte in Somalia so that he could get behind me and shoot.  I figured he’d be able to aim easily since I had my car door held in a fashion that suggested that every car in Somalia has somehow been reinforced with some kind of steel plating (seriously, folks, if you’re ever in a gun fight don’t use the car door as cover.  Any round of any serious power will blow right through it.  You’re MUCH better off ducking behind the engine block, because that thing requires a chain hoist to move.  But I digress.).

Wait…where was I?  Oh yeah, moron with the car door.  Anyway, I’m holding this thing, and I discover that my partner is so brain-damagingly stupid that I not only have to hold the cover up but I also have to walk him in FRONT of the enemy I think he should shoot because his skill with a rifle marks him as a CLEAR graduate of the Spooky Mulder School of Firearm Use (motto:  We’ll empty an entire fifteen-round clip into a swamp but we STILL can’t hit an alligator the size of a small car from a range of eight feet.).  And don’t even get me started on what happens if you give your partner a boost up to a ledge or overhang or some such and he gets shot before you can get pulled up to join him.  That’s just annoying.

You’ll also get to dress up in costume, including wearing patently ridiculous skull-shaped face masks (yes, that’s a brilliant move…nothing like going into combat with absolutely ZERO peripheral vision!  Clearly, their time in the Rangers taught them this.) and when you do a whole lot of killing you’ll be allowed to give your colleague a congratulatory fist bump to let him know he done good, because otherwise this knuckledragger would have nary a clue that he was doing something right.

Special side note: Army of Two must have some kind of problem with the military because they make it ABUNDANTLY clear how much more awesome it is to be a private military contractor.

Anyway, if you ever wanted to play a first person shooter from third person perspective and thought it would be awesome if Lenny and George from Of Mice and Men could handle the action, then Army of Two is the game you’ve been spending long nights awake for.  Otherwise, just walk on past and maybe try ANOTHER first person shooter.

Bully Scholarship Edition Game Review–Makes The Honor Roll With A Bullet

I’ve been looking forward to trying this one for a long time.  It’s true—this is the first time I’ve managed to get my hands on a copy of Bully: Scholarship Edition.

The biggest irony about this one is that it’s a next-gen update of a previous-gen release.  The first time I got my induction into the world of Bullworth Academy, it was back on the PS2.  But then, the tail end of 2008 comes along and, boom…Bully gets an update.  The Scholarship Edition comes packed with lots more new content, and frankly, is a whole new class by itself.

But just for a refresher course, in case you’ve already sampled this one back in the PS2 days, you play as Jimmy Hopkins, a young man with a lousy family life as his mother’s neck-deep in what seems to be a lifelong round of Wheel Of New Husbands.  Jimmy’s mom and newest hubby are about to head for a cruise ship for their year-long honeymoon, but something’s got to be done with Jimmy.  Jimmy’s new stepdad has just the concept—Bullworth Academy, a boarding school with plenty of problems.  Jimmy’s first meeting with one of the students is both opportune and problematic—he meets Gary, a kid with even more problems than Bullworth itself (he’s admitted to having ADD and being on medication that he’s recently stopped taking, and getting to know this scary bastard reveals that he’s got at least sociopathic tendencies.).  Gary’s given Jimmy an interesting idea, though—taking over the school.  But with four separate cliques in operation, and a whole town outside Bullworth Academy, such a feat won’t be easy for Jimmy.  And if Gary takes exception to Jimmy’s methods…well…Gary has the potential to make Jimmy’s life a living hell.

Who will win?  Who will lose?  And will Bullworth Academy be left standing?

This is about half of why I love Bully—the sheer epic of this storyline is fantastic by itself.  But when you add the OTHER half, couple in the spectacular variety of things to do in and around Bullworth, you get a game with all sorts of replay value.  I love how you gather new skills not by defeating enemies or collecting things, but by going to class.    Almost ironically, Jimmy is very much AGAINST bullying, and it’s his repeatedly stated goal throughout the course of the game to end it at Bullworth.  There’s a lot of unexpected fun in this game, and it’s especially worth mentioning as a result.

Sure, maybe the graphics look a little last-gen for a product developed so late in the season, and sometimes the game mechanics get a downright aggressively skewed in favor of screwing the player over—hypersensitive enemies, floods of enemies, you know what I mean—but none of this really gets in the way of a good time.  And that’s what Bully: Scholarship Edition will offer–a good time action game with an epic storyline and lots to do in between.

In no uncertain terms, this is a fun game.  I had literally hours of fun with it, and I gladly came back for more.  You may want to try the original first to appreciate the fullest extent of the additions and changes made, but it’s not strictly necessary.  The key take away?  You’ll have fun.  That’s what counts.

Sonic Unleashed Game Review–A Good Try That Just Doesn’t Hit

I’ve got to hand it to Sega, I really do—they’re trying.  While their efforts aren’t always successful, they’re at least taking a run at things, and that says a lot for them.  And their recent release, Sonic Unleashed for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and Wii, shows that they’re at least making an effort.

Again, not always successful, but again, an effort.

So once again, in Sonic Unleashed, Sonic is taking on his old nemesis Eggman, who must have some really deep pockets because this time he’s managed to assemble an entire deep space fleet of heavily armed attack ships to go after Sonic.  Naturally, it doesn’t take long for Sonic to turn them into hulls with massive holes in them venting atmosphere into the big empty that is space.  But the gigantic space fleet was just a gigantic distraction, as Eggman uses Sonic’s presence, and the Chaos Emeralds that power Sonic these days, to charge a weapon that manages to shatter the planet below and yet NOT kill everyone on the surface.  But this incredibly unlikely event also releases a beast known as Dark Gaia, whose power Eggman covets for his own to construct his dream empire, Eggman Land.  This in turn launches Sonic and friends into a whole new globe-spanning adventure in a bid to, once again, defeat Eggman and return Dark Gaia to its prison.

This is a whole lot of storyline, and you’ll be seeing it build throughout the game through lots and lots and lots of talking.  Occasionally, you will be allowed to participate in action sequences, but these action sequences almost feel as if they KNOW they’re being ignored, so they try to pack as much as possible into themselves.  It’s a lot like that old Mad TV sketch—I’m pretty sure it was Mad TV—where the divorced father gets custody of his son for only a few short minutes every six months, so he tries to do everything possible while in the confines of the small apartment he calls home.  There’s an impromptu birthday party, he teaches him to shave, and so on right down the line.  That’s what Sonic Unleashed feels like—you’re with your boring chatty mother three hundred sixty four and ninety-four / ninety-sixths days of the year, so when you’re with Dad, suddenly it’s a frenzy of activity before Mom takes you back.

Your head is left spinning by the sheer speed of Sonic’s daytime mode, and at night, as part of a weird unintended consequence, Sonic turns into a “werehog”, which is much large and musclebound than the original hedgehog, but also much slower, so these sequences are largely brawler action.  Also, you’ll get to ride on the back of Tails’ plane, the Tornado, and work the guns in a largely unimpressive button mashing sequence made all the more frustrating by the fact that you’re required to press buttons that appear on-screen, but generally won’t appear until it’s ALMOST too late to do anything about it.  So unless you couldn’t get enough of playing Dance Dance Revolution with your controller, you’ll hate these sequences.

And that’s the really sad part about this—I did have a lot of fun during the “dad’s time” action sequences, but I found myself so neck-deep in “mom”’s ridiculous chatting that I just got bored with this game.  If you can stomach a whole lot of chit-chat and like some pretty sweet action sequences, then Sonic Unleashed should be at least worth a rental for you.

Rise of the Argonauts Game Review–Chatty But Still Some Fun

Greek mythology has always been a fertile source of inspiration for game designers, especially considering the massive success of the God of War series.  But Kratos isn’t the only one who’s dealt with Ares and Athena and Zeus and such–in Rise of the Argonauts, you’ll be able to get a whole new side of the whole Greek mythology inspired action-adventure sort of thing.

Rise of the Argonauts puts you in control of King Jason of Iolcus, who was about to get married when his bride to be was suddenly assassinated by representatives of a supposedly dead assassin society called the Blacktongues.  King Jason, of course, didn’t take this lightly and went on a killing spree of everyone in the palace who wasn’t supposed to be there.  But after the blood was mopped up and the corpses were dragged out of the palace, King Jason was still left with a dead fiancée.  Thus, he set up a massive quest above the most technologically-advanced boat of all time, the Argo, to go forth and recover his fiancee’s soul and get it jammed back into her body before it boils off into a kind of metaphysical sludge throughout the cosmos.

In order to do this, you’re going to have to proceed through a series of quests to bring the earthly descendents of Ares, Hermes and Athena to the island of Delphi, where the descendent of Apollo, the Oracle, is already waiting.  Doing other side quests will also allow you to gain bonus traits and powers, giving you advantages in attack and defense as well as resistances and health bonuses.

There is, actually, a ready comparison for the gameplay on this one—it plays a LOT like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic with multi-level dialogue choices and customizable team-building with AI controls over your teammates.  It’s actually kind of fun in this way, but only kind of.  This allows for a pretty nice story to be instituted, and give you a lot of interaction sort of challenges to do.  How do you handle a situation?  Do you try and convince your conversation target to agree with you?  Do you appeal to their sense of justice?  Or do you just bludgeon your way through the conversation and hope for the best?  These options are available to you on almost every conversation, and will help determine how you progress through the game.

See, Rise of the Argonauts has a LOT of problems to it.  One, it’s going to focus heavily on that dialogue, and the voice acting is not that great.  Two, there’s not a whole lot of fighting to be had here.  I spent way too much time running around between goals and not nearly enough time busting heads.  And when I get into a game like this I expect to be busting a lot of heads from the moment I walk in the door.  I shouldn’t have to be waiting to start the beatdown for everyone to stop talking.  That’s just not right.

However, if you’re into a good story, Rise of the Argonauts will definitely provide plenty of that.  You just have to be willing to accept that you won’t have a whole lot to DO with that story, and if you can handle that, then you’ll likely have at least a rental-grade good time with this game.  Otherwise, you’ll probably want to go find a game with a lot more action in it..

Prototype Web Site Has a Countdown Clock

We’re really anxious to see what Prototype’s Web Site is going to reveal in about a day. Following the link below will get your right at their home page which features a countdown timer. According to it, in about 1 day and 5 minutes we’re going to see what Activision has planned for us. The game developer, Radical Entertainment said that the action adventure game will arrive sooner than planned, although it failed to give us more details. And that was before Christmas! In just a day we should finally find out what the Prototype is all about. Keep your eyes on CES 2009.

Devil May Cry 4 for PC will be “better”

Capcom’s popular hack-and-slash adventure series, Devil May Cry, will be heading to the PC on June 2nd with its fourth installment. However, the game itself won’t be a basic port of the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions.

Instead, this version will include two new modes, Legendary Dark Knight Mode, which means more enemies to fight, and Turbo Mode, which will make things a lot faster. The game will also run at a blazing fast 120fps, compared to 30fps on the console versions, and will support both DirectX9 and DirectX10. A demo will also be available before the full retail release of the game.

Playing a game like this on the keyboard isn’t exactly everyone’s cup of tea, so maybe a use of a 360 controller would be handy.

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Splatterhouse Revealed

The June issue of will be giving us a look at the newly announced next-generation Splatterhouse game, being developed by Namco. There are not too many details right now, but there is a lot of weight being held by a title like this. Splatterhouse was a pioneer in horror gaming released in 1988, which eventually lead to some great games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill. It was also the first game to ever get a parental advisory disclaimer.

The original game is also available on the Virtual Console for the Wii. Hopefully Rick will be kicking some next-generation ass.

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