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You can’t keep a good fanboy-nerd down…especially when he is standing line raving and foaming at the mouth for his iPhone 3G.

In honor of the release of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots the VGMX arcade on the ..:: VGMX ::.. site has been updated with Metal Gear for the NES. Enjoy.

‘I could really use some over-sized cigs.’

As an added bonus Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! for the NES joins the VGMX arcade. As schweet as the Wii Virtual Console is not even they have Mike Tyson’s version of Punch-Out. Oh yeah!!

Super Mario Bros. for the Nes remains at the VGMX arcade.

Although long time members of the VGMX arcade, Sonic the Hedgehog and Pac-Man, have been removed from the VGMX arcade. They are gone but not forgotten.

Introduction

The original Condemned, in case you need a refresher, featured Ethan Thomas, an SCU agent (bullshit FBI division agent) who was framed, had hallucinations, got in plenty of bumfights, used various forensic tools to figure stuff out, and went around collecting various random objects. There were plenty of “OH SNAP” moments, lots of emphasis on melee combat (despite its various flaws), and while the forensics stuff was cool, admittedly there wasn’t enough of it.

This is where Condemned 2 succeeds…sort of. For starters, C2 features MUCH better graphics and cutscenes. The combat has been ramped up, too, allowing combos, counterattacks, deflection attacks, and all kinds of cool stuff. There are yet even more cool and clever items to fight with and hey, you can even drink liquor all over the freakin’ place, if you so choose. In fact, there’s plenty of cool things to discuss, so first, let’s compare it to the original. For starters, you’re no longer Ethan the agent, but Ethan the vagrant, meaning that you’re playing this one from an entirely different angle and with quite a break in between the two titles.

Last call is always a scary time when Ethan’s around

In the original, you could only hold one weapon at a time. The same is true here as well (until you receive a certain upgrade that allows you to holster a pistol, but whatever). You could only use one basic attack with each weapon. Well, that’s certainly different here. In fact, let me give you a basic overview of the control schemes…

Condemned

Left stick = move.
Hold down left stick = sprint (stamina meter drops).
Right stick = camera.
Click right stick = kick.
L1 = block.
L2 = taser (taser meter becomes completely depleted).
R1 = attack (cannot use when unarmed).
R2 = use gun as melee.
X = investigate (only during special scenes).
A = activate/pick up/swap weapon.
Y = check ammo.
B = activate/deactivate flashlight.

Condemned 2

Left stick = move.
Hold down left stick, then hit L1 or R1 = deflection attack/pistol whip.
Right stick = camera.
Click right stick = kick/groin kick.
L1 + R1 = block.
R1 = attack from the right/shoot.
L1 = attack from the left/aim.
L2 = sprint (no meter, but operates essentially the same).
R2 = throw weapon (handier than it sounds).
D-pad up = taser (uses batteries in this one).
D-pad down = put down weapon/pull out holstered pistol.
Tap X = pull out last used forensic tool (anytime).
Hold X then click left stick in direction = choose forensic tool (anytime).
Y = check ammo.
A = activate/collect ammo/pick up/swap weapon/holster pistol and pick up melee weapon.
Hold A = drink liquor.
B = activate/deactivate flashlight.

As you can see, the control system was more carefully thought out for the second one, resulting in a much better experience. When you have a gun, you can actually pick up more ammo, but only enough to reload your gun. It’s better, but it still doesn’t make a whole lot of sense and yes, the infamous “check ammo” button is back. I suppose at this point it’d be a good idea to discuss combos and such.

Ethan The Prizefighting Hobo

Best tag team match EVER!

Okay, it’s like this…there’s a new gauge that goes up as you take people down, use combos, etc. I’m pretty sure it’s called the chain gauge, but I can’t quite remember. The point is that when one of these bars (you only start with one, but you can acquire more) is full, you can, at seemingly random intervals, start a sort of action-time sequence where you have to hit the trigger buttons in the correct order to execute the enemy or possibly just wound them.

There are all kinds of combos, some more obvious than others. For example, left punch, right punch…one-two combo. You get the idea. It’s nothing too fantastic, but it’s an interesting feature that’s well worth investigating, if only for the ability to pull off the awesome executions. Now, in the last one, you had the ability to execute the enemy once they were stunned. Well, something similar happens in this one, except that you drag the enemy over to an environmental execution, most of which are pretty brutal.

One major gripe I have about the game, however…well, there are two and they regard combat. The developers took great strides to really improve the melee combat tenfold. The AI is much more aggressive as a result which, while possibly explained by the fact that I played through easy mode only thus far, doesn’t really address any sort of defense for the enemies other than simply using pummelling and sometimes overwhelming counterattacks to the point that you pretty much have to anticipate it each time, parry, then counter yourself in order to survive the tougher fights.

Granted, this causes you to be a smarter fighter and make good use of executions, your environment, etc., but where the enemies defended way too much in the previous one, they don’t defend enough in this one. Hey, at least the combat is faster and grittier, though. The other thing that pisses me off is they spend ALL this time developing such an awesome engine…and yet the last few chapters consist of several shootouts.

Suck Suck Bang Bang

Tom Clancy’s Rain-hobo Six

Now don’t get me wrong…the shootouts are good, but for a game that concentrates heavily on melee, why sacrifice all that to appease FPS fans toward the end? Maybe it’s no big deal, but I felt it was a little stupid. There’s a couple of other things to discuss about combat. On the one hand, there are LOTS of cool weapons to find and with the ability to throw them, there’s a lot of things that are clearly meant to be thrown such as bricks, pipe fittings, etc.

Unfortunately this leads to an ultimately annoying feature they added…weapon damage. Okay, in the first one, I guess it was alright that guns broke after a while of using them for melee, but ANY weapon can break in this one. Granted, most weapons are relatively durable, but things like liquor bottles, gumball machines, planks, etc. are guaranteed to break after just a few uses.

Let’s step away from combat for a minute, though, and discuss some more technical areas of the game. For starters, a lot of chapters feature optional missions. Some of these are simply accessed by tuning into live broadcasts via radio or TV by adjusting the antenna. Others involve forensics, finding and destroying madness devices (more on that later), and various other things. Depending on your collecting and investigating abilities, you’re rated once the chatper has finished.

Now in the last one that meant the possibility for achievements…but that’s about it. In this one you get upgrades depending on your performance. What kinds of upgrades? Well, let’s see…the pistol holster upgrade, soft step upgrade, steel toe boots upgrade, marksman upgrade, extended lifebar, etc. You get the idea. Of great importance is the rating for your investigative abilities.

In the last game you had a wide variety of forensic tools, but you were basically walked through, step by step, exactly what to do. It was really more plot-based than anything, though it was still pretty cool and had some nice surprises. In this one, you can whip out your tools at anytime. Yes, that sounded bad, but I don’t care! As you come across crime scenes and such, you’re clued in, once again, to the evidence area.

CSI Crazytown

Brokeback Hobo

You’re also given basic information on what you’re supposed to report, but you’re given the option of how to report it. As a result, you can give faulty or otherwise poor reports which weighs heavily on your investigative ranking. All this stuff is tallied in at the end of the mission to dictate your performance, which is directly related to your upgrades, so it’s important to pay attention and be thorough!

Finally the last two things I’d like to discuss are interesting in concept but annoying in execution. The first is the new lifebar and recovery system. In the last one, you had a standard lifebar and that’s it. In this one, you have multiple sections that make up your lifebar (and can acquire more through upgrades). If you wait a while without getting hit, your life will refill to the tip of the section your life is at…meaning if you have 75% or something of your 2nd lifebar section filled out of 3 sections, your life will only fill up to the tip of the 2nd section, thus leaving you with a maximum of approximately 66% of your lifebar filled until you can come across some medkits.

Granted, it’s nice to be able to have it at least fill up somewhat, but with as aggressive as the AI is, those medkits are DEFINITELY life savers…or are they? See, that’s the real problem here. In the last one, you really only needed one medkit and you were good. In this one, a medkit only fills up to the tip of the current section or the next section if the current one is filled. In other words, it could theoretically take multiple medkits to fill up your bar to its entirety. Balls.

The last headache I have to discuss in the game is just that…headaches. Well, they try to say brain-damaging sounds, but I’m trying to tiptoe around this as much as possible as it’s very heavily plot-involved. The main badguys in the game set up various madness devices that emit insanity waves and can emit these same waves themselves with cause you to have headaches and be unable to do anything but move until you’re out of range.

As a result, you are ranked on how many of the devices you destroy, but in the last few chapters of the game, these assholes come out of nowhere and often kill you because you can’t barely act in their presence. On the plus side, you get a somewhat similar ability, but it’s kinda crappy as it requires charging and all that. Anyway, that said…

Conclusion

The Good

- Melee combat has improved drastically.
- Upgrades are in abudance and directly reflective on your performance.
- Lots of new and cool weapons.
- Kickass graphics and environments.
- Plenty of detective work to do with a fairly open system that forces you to actually do some legwork.
- The gun system is done a little better, but only a little.
- Plenty of familiar faces and a kickass plot.
- Decent length for an action title.
- There are a number of cool chase scenes.

The Bad

- AI feels deliberately ramped up to be more aggressive with melee. Some enemies are ridiculously tough and boss fights are insane as well.
- Weapons can break. Ugh.
- Not as many “OH SNAP” moments.
- Hit detection is a bit off, especially in moments of auto-context-sensitivity.
- Emphasis drifts away from forensics and melee toward the end of the game, which is unfortunate.
- Early in the game, it feels like there aren’t enough good checkpoints.

And The Drunk

Condemned 2 is decidedly better than the original, but not enough to warrant a purchase of more than maybe $25. It’s still an excellent title with a few manageable faults, but as far as the scariness factor, it feels like a neutered version of the original. It’s not completely free of “OH SNAP” moments, but there are few in number and it just doesn’t feel as scary. Creepy, sure, but not frightening, per se.

Verdict: 8.5

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A special thanks to Gun Sage for that post.

Introduction

Up until Doom 64, I never jumped out of my seat when playing a FPS. I only mention Doom 64 because they really set a good atmosphere, though it’s probably not the best Doom game out there. Even then, I can’t say I literally jumped out of my seat, but it had its moments. The point is anymore when you think FPS, 90% of the time one of two things typically comes to mind: some sort of military shoot-em-up or some sort of borderline survival horror FPS.

Condemned is the latter, obviously. Now, I’ve seen a variety of responses regarding this game, so I’ll try to cover all the bases, but basically what you need to know is you get to BEAT THE HELL OUT OF A BUNCH OF HOBOS.

Bum Fights: The Videogame

The first thing I want to discuss in this title is the ambience and story. Even though it’s an older 360 title, this game’s got some creepy-sweet graphics. Unfortunately, there are a few glitches I found (enemies getting stuck in the ceiling, enemies getting trapped by Havok physics engine, etc.), but for the most part the effects and “OH SNAP” moments are there and in spades. Remember, too, that these are the same guys who did F.E.A.R. (Monolith), so often you’ll have various disturbing stuffs going on that’s all uber-sweet.

The game starts off with a heart-warming family dinner

Regarding the story, you’re some sort of CSI detective dude and on one of your latest missions investigating another serial killing, your gun is used to kill two fellow police officers. You’re innocent, but it doesn’t matter…you’re on the run. Of course, not only are you on the run from the law, you’re constantly dealing with LOCO INSANE vagrants who, for whatever reason, are protecting serial killers and are out for your blood.

Unfortunately, the story never really develops and explains WHY they want to kill you, other than some source of madness or something (the game ends on kind of a cliffhanger). Now that that’s out of the way, it’s time to discuss what could have potentially been one of the coolest aspects of the game, but why it falls short: melee combat. Fairly quickly in the game your .45 cal pistol is ripped away from you and you’re forced to resort to melee combat a la ANYTHING YOU CAN FREAKIN’ FIND.

For example, in the course of the game you’ll come across locker doors, desk drawers, paper cutters, iron pokers, 2X4s, sledgehammers, fire axes, and much more. And yes, you do find guns, but often you have to wrestle them out of the hands of vagrants. Among the guns you find are sub-machine guns, pistols, shotguns, and rifles. Last but not least, you have the ability to kick and also use a taser.

Each time you use your taser, it has to recharge for a while before it can be used again. Normally it just stuns the enemy for about 5 seconds, allowing you the ability to steal their weapon quickly. About halfway through the game, you get an upgraded taser which recharges quicker and will generally knock out an enemy. Now all of this sounds great…maybe a little too great. Unfortunately, there’s a few problems.

The Buildings Aren’t The Only Things That Are Condemned

All weapons are rated on scales of range, speed, strength, and blocking ability. You can only hold one weapon at a time. In fact, with guns, you can’t even get additional ammo or anything. Whatever’s left in the gun is all you get. Nevermind that…they don’t even add the gun info to the HUD. In order to see how much ammo you have left, you have to hit the Y button. Now…if this just real quickly displayed the number, I GUESS it would be okay…but no, instead your guy casually takes his time, opens the clip or whatever, and shows you…then slowly puts it back in…MEANWHILE A HOBO IS EATING YOU.

“I know what you’re thinking right now…did he fire 4 shells or 5? Well, to be fairly honest, in the heat of all of it, I kinda lost count. So I guess you’ve gotta ask yourself the question…WHY IS THERE NO FREAKIN’ HUD FOR AMMUNITION?!”

Another gripe I have is the combat itself. Okay, you hit L2 for taser, R2 for secondary usage (you will never use this), L1 to block (rarely works), and R1 to attack. Ah, but remember that speed rating? Yeah…most of the time you have to time it juuuuust right so that #1 it won’t get blocked and #2 you’ll actually hit the enemy dead on while hopefully dodging their attacks. Nice.

Further, that’s it. You don’t have multiple methods of attack. Oh, that secondary attack? All I’ve seen it do is switch your gun to melee mode when you still have bullets. DUMB. Wouldn’t it have been better if you hold down the R1 button to draw back, then release to swing? Or maybe tap it and do a quick, but less effective strike? You’ll find yourself getting overwhelmed with enemies later in the game and having to deal with this crappy system so often that you’ll SCREAM.

Kinda reminds me of that one scene from Equilibrium

Now look…again, all this wouldn’t be such a problem, except that you don’t find guns all that often, you can only hold one weapon at a time, even when you do find guns you often have to fight the enemies that are holding them WITH MELEE SOMEHOW BEFORE THEY RUN OUT OF BULLETS THUS MAKING SAID GUNS WORTHLESS, AND…each time you start a new stage, you start with no weapons. WHAT. THE. CHRIST.

The game deliberately does this not to add to the difficulty, but to force you to solve it’s little “puzzles.” See, let’s say you come across a locked door you need to get through. How is it locked? If it’s locked with a padlock, you need a sledgehammer to break the lock. If it’s cracked and worn but there’s no padlock, you need a fire axe to chop down the door. Got an electronic lock in your way? You need to break the conduit with a shovel.

The problem is this is done in such an obvious fashion that it gets old after about the fifth time you’ve been forced to do it. Lastly, it’s important to discuss your CSI l33t skillz. At various parts in the game, you’re asked to do some investigating with various tools. Now for me, this never got old. The problem is it’s not exactly a head scratcher. See, the game tells you what to do and how and even if you’re leaving the investigation area.

Condemned ringtones! Order yours today!

You can’t just pull out your tools whenever you feel like it and for that, it really dumbs down the overall investigation experience. Again, I don’t feel this formula got old as there’s a lot of cool stuff you discover, but I wish they left it more up to you and only provided subtle hints here and there. Well, that’s about it.

Conclusion

The Good

- You will jump out of your seat at least once or twice. Very creepy game absolutely littered with surprises.
- As mentioned before, nice graphics and effects, even for an older 360 title.
- Lots of cool CSI stuff.
- Shitloads of weapons.
- Excellent story, even though it does feel unfinished (yes, I’m looking very much forward to playing the sequel).
- Decent length for an action title.

The Bad

- The melee combat, which you’re forced to do about 75% of the time, is very lacking.
- Adding additional controls for checking your ammo and turning your gun into a worthless club was a really dumb idea.
- The ability to hold only one weapon at a time and constantly confiscating your weapon at the end of a stage is highly frustrating at times.
- The AI of the enemies is often too well done, allowing them to block and counter repeatedly as you struggle to hit them with a heavy, slow weapon.

And The…Spare Some Change, Sir?

Condemned is overall a great game with a few manageable problems that are more “how did they miss that/what were they thinking” as opposed to “I can’t freakin’ play this.” At times, Condemned feels a little unpolished as a result, but in terms of how it ranks as a survival horror title, this is a fun game. And hey, I picked it up for $20. It was definitely well worth the price.

Verdict: 8.0

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A special thanks to Gun Sage for that post.

Introduction

I was warned, sure, but I had no idea what I was getting into when I delved into Dark Sector. Honestly, even as I type this, I’m not sure what to think. For some reason, this game was banned in Australia, but I’m really not seeing why. What, because it’s violent? Man…when they get that ban removed, they’re going to have a LOT of Mortal Kombat games to catch up on, huh? Yeah, I’m being silly, but seriously, I’ve yet to experience any “OH SNAP” moments.

In fact, if I were to criticize it further (and I will because it deserves it due to all the hype), I’d say it’s not even on par with…

- Either Manhunt.
- The Tenchu series.
- Biofreaks.
- Turok. The original one for the N64.

Now that’s not to say it’s not violent, just unimpressively violent. Weak even. Perhaps I’m desensitized, but when I think banned, I think disemboweling a character and feasting on his entrails, completely uncensored, to gain points…or something. There are “finishers” in this title. Essentially, when you stun an enemy, you can get in close and tap the melee button to finish them off with an execution.

The most devastating execution I’ve seen so far is taking your glaive (yes, your razor edge boomerang thingy), jamming it into their stomach, slicing upward, then taking the enemy’s head off. Now, that sounds violent, but the gore just isn’t there. It’s fairly uninspired in that respect and this is coming from someone who REALLY enjoys blood, gore, violence, torture, and whatever other sick things you can throw in (why yes I did enjoy the Saw movies).

Resident Evil 4 = Not Zombies, Dark Sector = Metallic Mutants. Totally Different, Actually.

Let’s back up for a second, though. Gore alone doesn’t make a game (not anymore, anyway). Perhaps I’m being too harsh on this simple point. I’ll reiterate that I still don’t understand why this was banned ANYWHERE, but we’ll just let it lie for now. Dark Sector is essentially an over-the-shoulder third person shooter game that has a similar look and feel to Resident Evil 4 except that the enemies are not overwhelming (but can be cheap), auto-recover is there, there’s more effective use of cover, you never really feel like you’re struggling for survival, and the zombies are metal mongoloids.

Screenshot from Resident Evil 4 Dark Sector

In other words, this game attempts to carbon copy RE4 and that’s about it. That’s not to say Dark Sector is a bad game, but let’s be honest. It looks, feels, and smells like an off brand copy of RE4. Sure, there’s the glaive, a boomerang that dismembers people (eventually after repeated attempts), which makes me ESPECIALLY wonder why this was banned in Australia. What’s next? We ban a game in Ireland about drinking?

Dark Sector isn’t all bad, but it definitely lives up to it’s name: it’s really quite dark, both literally and plot-wise. At first the game shows promise by having a black ops dude or whatever come in and try to mess up this place, then gets messed up with “the disease” in the process. Okay, fine…at least it has decent cutscenes and it really seems like the plot is going somewhere. Unfortunately, by the second stage it takes a Bode Miller and swerves and crashes into what I like to call Winback Repetition Syndrome.

You mean you can take cover AND shoot?! THAT’S a breath of fresh air!

Winback was an awesome game at the time, but only because it reminded me of Time Crisis with the way you utilized cover and popped out to take potshots at enemies, then went back to reload. Ah, but it’s 2000 FREAKIN’ 8. Effective use of cover and shootouts are expected in a lot of games, but not to the point that it becomes dull. Literally, almost every scene in this game could’ve been thrown together as a rail shooter. Sadly, it may have been better like that.

Another thing I don’t get in the game is the use of money and the black market. Look, I think it’s cool that you can find weapon upgrades and utilize them on your weapons. What I don’t think is cool is you can’t buy back stuff you’ve sold, you can only have one small and one large gun on you at a time, you only have so many upgrade slots per weapon and they can’t be reversed nor does it add to the sell value, and the price is so ridiculous for the weapons you can buy at the black market that it’s almost not worth it since you barely ever come across money.

Good Day, Mate! Care For Some Boomerang Puzzles?

An interesting feature in the game that eventually becomes your living hell is the ability to control the glaive in slow motion after throwing it, adding elemental effects to the glaive by whacking it across various things, and taking apart enemies in slow motion (typically after hitting them several times with it). Why does this become burdensome? Because they felt the need to add puzzles.

This is what happened to the last person that attempted a glaive puzzle

Look, sometimes puzzles are fun, interesting, challenging, and maybe even exciting. Unfortunately, I don’t find having to navigate my glaive over and under various barriers with a timer running in the background, enemies at my throat, an incredibly high failure rate, and all this just to get a goddamn’d shock element so I can then run like hell across a level while the element is slowly disappearing from my glaive that I need to unlock a goddamn’d door to be fun AT ALL.

Yes, that is something that occurred recently in the game that caused me to just about have a mental freakin’ breakdown. There was no reason for this whatsoever. None. It wasn’t challenging, it was sadistic. I literally felt like I was punishing myself for something by having to do this part over and over again. Years from now when my daughter starts playing games, I won’t ground her, I’ll force her to play that part until she beats it…guaranteed it will be more effective!

So is there anything good I can say about this game? Okay, I admit, I’ve been harsh. Very harsh. This is primarily because it’s the most effective way to counter hype. Secondly, this game is annoying. It’s annoying because there are aspects that are fun to it, but it just gets repetitive and the puzzles are unnecessary. Maybe if the puzzles were simpler and there were less of them the game would be more fun.

The black market concept would only have been interesting if there was a way to trade in the glaive for not puzzles

If there really was some insane amount of gore (see Ninja Gaiden 2), maybe I would’ve had a sense of personal satisfaction by making enemies squirm in their own gore, torn flesh, and bile. Dark Sector falls short both in the violence and innovation departments. It’s another RE4, but not done as well. I’m not saying I hated it, but there are enough bad qualities at play here to make you want to hate it.

Conclusion

The Good

- Interesting plot.
- You can upgrade and buy weapons.
- The environments are well detailed.
- The glaive abilities are an interesting idea.

The Bad

- Dark and/or invisible enemies on almost pitch black backgrounds? Dumb.
- Frustrating, not challenging puzzles.
- Absolutely repetitive gameplay. And remember that I like RPGs and grinding, so that’s saying a lot.
- There’s never enough money or variety of things you can buy. It’s more worth your time to just sell a bunch of upgrades and get better weapons immediately.
- You can’t take enemy weapons for stupid ass reasons that really don’t make sense. See, it would’ve been cool if you could at least take them to salvage for parts you could sell or use to modify your own weapons. I’m just saying.
- The gore doesn’t live up to the hype, but that’s not a very strong argument for those that don’t care that much about violence.
- Annoying ass boss fights with no life bar so you can never really tell whether you’re hurting them or not. More puzzles, yay!

And The Dark

For an X Box 360 title, especially one as hyped as it was, this should’ve been a lot better. It seriously looks like a carbon copy of RE4, but it’s just not as fun. You can rent this title if you want for a few achievement points here and there, but I definitely wouldn’t recommend buying it.

Verdict: 6.0

P.S. I wasn’t serious about the forcing my daughter to play glaive puzzles comment. We all know child abuse isn’t something to joke about. Well, mostly.

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A special thanks to Gun Sage for that post.

Introduction

Let’s assume for a second that you were going to develop a game about being a superhero. Now, you could map out various controls for flying, but a lot of Superman games have come out and how many of them were actually good? Exactly. So instead of that, you’d probably have the character have superhuman strength, be able to pummel people rather easily, leap tall buildings, etc., right? Well, add in a well done gun/explosives/third person shooter engine with a tongue in cheek semi-arcade style feel and you have Crackdown.

Crackdown almost feels like inspiration for this commercial. Much like in Assassin’s Creed, you can bound rooftop to rooftop and climb just about anything. Of course, there are two gripes I have with this where Assassin’s Creed succeeds, but Crackdown OFTEN falls flat…mostly literally. My first gripe is even with your agility stat maxed out, it’s hard to tell whether or not you can make a jump until you try in some cases.

GRATUITOUS AMOUNTS OF FALLING

Carjacking is an entirely different term in Crackdown

This is especially ill-ridden in the final area where you’ll be on skyscrapers about 80% of the time. The second problem is you can’t latch onto everything. Problem here is sometimes it’s ambiguous what exactly you CAN latch onto. Windows? Check. A long vertical stream of windows? Bzzt, wrong. And of course, you won’t find out until you make that leap of faith and inevitably become pavement pizza.

It doesn’t help any that the narrator or whatever the hell he is taunts you when you die. Yes, taunts. It’s not something like “Well, there’s always next time.” No, try “That kind of performance isn’t going to get anyone anywhere!” Yeah. Very scoldy. It’s almost as if there’s a 100 year old cranky sumbitch behind you who SOMEHOW beat the game and is now making fun of you for every little goddamn’d thing.

One of the few moments where driving can be fun. Don’t blink!

Now so far, you may already be casting doubt on a decision to rent or purchase Crackdown. While I certainly can’t recommend a purchase, don’t turn away the idea of renting it just yet. There are a lot of things Crackdown does right, despite a few flaws. First, they (Rockstar) brought back the idea of character development and it’s done in an interesting way…mostly. For example, shoot a bunch of people and your firearms skills increase.

Well, that makes sense. In fact, this is true for also strength (pummel people with melee attacks) and explosives (use grenades, RPGs, etc.). However, agility and driving are the odd ones. To elaborate, strength allows you to really put the hurt on people with your barehands and also lift cars and such, firearms dictate your accuracy and effectiveness with guns, explosives enhance the blast radius and destruction of your explosive attacks. So far, this all makes sense.

There’s so much going on here that I bet everything’s levelling up

Agility and driving are a bit awkward, so stay with me here. Agility dictates not just how fast you move, but also how high you can jump. Driving dictates…well, your overall driving ability. That’s fine, except there are very few ways to enhance these abilities and they don’t make a whole lot of sense. In order to enhance your agility, you can participate in agility races where you have to hit various checkpoints while bounding across buildings and such, you can find various agility points that are stowed away in high up locations, and you can dispatch enemies with firearms from high altitudes…wait, what?

The last one is more of a gimme. Since it’s not terribly easy to beef up your agility and you pretty much need it maxed out to get to the final boss I guess they felt the need to throw more ways in there to beef it up. Driving is the annoying one. There are only TWO ways to beef up your driving skills and both are annoying…either participate in street races and beat the designated time (lame and you often have bad guys shooting at you in the meantime) or run over enemies.

Nevermind that the enemy AI is typically too good to just let you run over them or the fact that the car controls are deliberately slippery from the get-go to indicate ineptitude that you need to work on and you have an ultimately undesirable skill, especially since you’ll probably want to jump around the landscape anyway.

Working on explosives skill for fun and profit. Mostly just for fun, though.

But what about the actual game itself? Well, the best way to explain it is GTA without the missions. That may not make a whole lot of sense, so I’ll elaborate. In the GTA games, you go around, have a few safe houses, and can pretty much do whatever the hell you want until you accept a mission from one of the mission markers, at which point you’re dedicated to that mission until you finish or fail.

Just Another GTA?

So, what I’m saying is in Crackdown you discover boss locations (or you’re given them after you’ve helped out the police a bit and such). Your primary mission is just to take out the kingpins of each gang. However, that’s nearly impossible. Therefore, to increase your odds, you can take out the lesser bosses that are in charge of training, R&D, public relations, and what have you.

The point is that you don’t actually have to do that at all, but they’re there and are heavily guarded. If you take them out, guaranteed it will be that much easier to take out the kingpin. So the best strategy is to find all the checkpoints, then the lesser bosses’ locations, then take them out one by one. So not only is constant character development occurring in the game, you’re also slowly weakening the entire force of the gang and the primary bodyguards of the kingpins until you’re ready and able to take out the kingpin, then completely scatter the gang in a giant standoff.

Now there are only three cities and three gangs, so don’t expect the game to take you much longer than 10 hours to beat, but if you want to go around and get all the achievements or go multiplayer, you could theoretically get at least 20 hours out of this game. Maybe probably. Anyway, that said…

Conclusion

The Good

- Insane strength, speed, and jumping are at your disposal. Even from the get-go, you feel like The Hulk…but with guns!
- Leaping from rooftop to rooftop gives you an unprecedented amount of freedom, which is saying quite a lot given that this is already sandbox-style a la GTA.
- Without the missions, there’s no need for plot, story, or heavily restrictive obnoxious missions such as “Deliver the package within this time limit” or “Chase this asshole down before he reaches the checkpoint,” the game feels like a breath of fresh air.

The Bad

- Falling sucks.
- Going into ragdoll from explosions that don’t actually kill you initially, but may eventually if you just fell off a building and you can’t control your descent because of the ragdolling sucks.
- Even attempting to beef up your driving sucks. Sometimes you get lucky and get a lot of dumb enemies in one space to run over, but it’s rare.

And The FAAAAAALLLLLLiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnggggggg…blat

The game is easily described as GTA as an arcade game on crack. Even then, that’s not entirely accurate because you’ll maybe only be driving when it’s absolutely necessary. What can I say? Jumping is fun, even Mario knows that! This game would probably be a steal at $20, but like I said, it’s over quick. Very fun, but also short.

Verdict: 9.0

P.S. Special thanks to Picnicface for being so goddamn’d funny. You guys rock!

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A special thanks to Gun Sage for that post.

Introduction

When you think stealth, you often envision either ninjas or spies. Granted, you have games like Hitman, Manhunt, and a few others that break this simple stereotype, but they’re not quite the norm. What’s interesting about Hitman is, much like this title, it takes it from the perspective of a professional contract killer. Of course, what makes AC so much more interesting than that is it’s not done for money…it’s done for honor, pride, and the will of the master of the assassin’s guild.

For starters, let’s actually describe what an assassin is in this game. We all know assassins are stealthly and kill people, much like ninjas. Beyond that, we have various assumptions. In this game, however, you have flashier moves than that seen in the newer Prince of Persia games a la free running AKA parkour. What’s cool about this is it gives you the feeling of being able to go anywhere and do anything.

Here’s the problem with this, though. In the newer PoP games, you could run on any wall, grapple on ledges and such, swing off of bars…yeah, you get it. But all of these were meticulously placed. They were placed in such a way to force you to take a certain route, though fun, that was quite linear through a level. The problem here? This is basically PoP meets sandbox.

Crowd diving. Ur doin it rong.

Again…the problem? Well, there’s a bit of confusion. Sometimes the free running works very very well and you’ll almost surprise yourself with what all you can do and where you can go. Other times you KNOW you can grab something, but can’t figure out why you’re not. It doesn’t help any that even though the guards can’t do all that crap, they can throw rocks at your ass to knock you down and they can also climb ladders…so one way or the other, you can’t just stay in one place unless you’re hidden.

Of course, that adds to the adrenaline of the game. The stealth, the thrill of being chased, and much more come into play in AC and it’s all done very well. Or is it? There are a few gripes I have with all of these, so first let’s discuss “stealth.”

Hidden In Plain Sight

One of the cool features about AC is you can’t just get away from your enemies (normally) by straying from their field of vision. No, they’re a little smarter than that. As a result, you not only have to get out of their line of sight, but also “vanish.” Now, there’s a number of ways to do this…

- Sit on a bench and blend in with the commoners.
- Stroll along with scholars with your head down, pretending to be one.
- Jump in some hay.
- Et friggin’ cetera.

And that’s fine and all. In fact, it’s pretty phenomenal the first few times you jump off a ridiculously high area and land in a pile of hay, then wait until you’re clear, then hopping out unphased. Good stuff. But…there’s a problem. To you and me, line of sight means “I can see you, dumbass.” In AC, it almost seems a bit off. At times, you know they can’t see you and as a result, your visible meter indicates it as well.

This guy’s about to have a very bad day or a wicked awesome haircut

But other times it seems you can’t shake them. Ever. Even worse is if you’re unseen for a while, finally find a hiding spot, but then just seconds before you reach it…someone spots you! Well, then what? Unfortunately, hopping in your hidey hole doesn’t matter now because, as we all know even from Manhunt, the enemy will keep coming and even taunt you in the process!

Again, it adds to the thrill of the game, but sometimes when you’re just trying to run away, an enemy will grab you and toss you about, then suddenly you whip your sword out! I don’t wanna fight! And if I do, I’ll pull it out myself, thank you! Jeez! Anyway, perhaps I’m just smoking out my ass here, so let’s move on to…

Socially Unacceptable BS

One thing you often get dinged for in the game is noted as “socially unacceptable behavior.” What the hell does that mean? Say there are a group of knights walking through the city. You run past them. Uh oh, you’re in for it now! What, really? ya rly. You have to stay as low profile as possible at almost all times. Granted, it adds to the stealth, but this is another reason I don’t bother with the streets unless I absolutely have to.

Rooftop parkour is much more fun anyway. Of course, it’s not acceptable to be caught on rooftops either…but then, there’s something quite fun you can do to rectify that. Often guards will think you’re a beggar or whatever until you do something high profile/ridiculous. If you’re stealthy, you can sneak up behind rooftop archers and take them out with your dagger. If you’re not so stealthy, GRAB THEM AND CHUCK ‘EM OFF THE ROOF!

BWAAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAAA!!! The best part is they scream on the way down, splat, then you hear various screams and such as a crowd gathers, creating just enough distraction for you to carry on doing whatever.

Repetition

One of the key arguments people complain about in this game is that it’s slow, you don’t get to kill enough people, and it’s repetitive. Wait. Hold on. I can agree that it’s a bit slow because you have to travel to various locations early in the game, but it gives you a sense of scenery and countryside. The graphics and everything are quite impressive in the game and it’s definitely something worth taking in.

You could also complain it’s slow because you don’t just go and kill people…you actually have to do research first. How so? Well, often you have to pickpocket, eavesdrop, and interrogate your way to info that will be vital in describing your target and how you’ll reach him. Yes, this can get tedious, but it kinda makes sense. You could just have it where you say “See this freaking marker on the map? Kill it!”

“The black knight always triumphs! Have at you!”

Ultimately, the game makes you concentrate more on stealth and planning while also throwing in action here and there. Now let’s talk about killing people. You can kill whoever you want, whenever you want. You’re penalized if they’re just innocent civilians, but you get the idea. Often you have to save civilians from ruffian guards, which brings us to the hit/miss battle system that I’ll get into later.

Assassination target-wise, no, there really aren’t too many of them. But killing people in general? Just shut up…there’s plenty of that. Finally, repetition. The game works like this…

- Get basic info about target.
- Travel to kingdom.
- Go to assassin’s bureau.
- Gather information.
- Go to assassin’s bureau.
- Go to kill target.
- Go to assassin’s bureau.
- Go back to your master.

Tracheotomy…Assassin style

Wash, rinse, repeat. This is, of course, assuming you play straight through. There are plenty of optional things to do along the way. Nevermind that you’re playing in a sandbox environment with the ability to free run and all kinds of other cool elements are at play as well. Yes, it’s repetitive, but what game isn’t? Let’s take a look at Prince of Persia…

- Kill some enemies.
- Have a vision.
- Perform various actions in vision to get out of room.

And everybody LOVED PoP. Is it annoying to keep having to go back to the bureau? Well, to me, no, not really. You get info, gather info, share your info, rest, assassinate, go there to lay low, then return to your master. And again, that’s assuming you’re going straight through. It’s really not that big of a deal, but I guess to some people it must be a deal breaker because I’ve seen reviews range from 7 to OMG BEST GAEM EVAR!

Combat

This is the only aspect of the game I’d like to see changed. Okay, no, it’s one of two, but I’ll briefly explain the subplot later. I’m not asking for much…just something that works. It only takes about one or two hits to down an enemy. Great, right? Ah, but LANDING a hit may take forever. The enemies are GREAT at blocking. See, in PoP, you were landing hits left and right and only randomly do they actually defend and deflect attacks.

In this one, it’s pretty much expected that you will wail on an enemy over and over and over again until you finally land a hit, which SHOULD kill him. Now, you can use power attacks, counters, dodge, followup attacks, and what have you, but it’s all so delicately timed that often they don’t work! The timing is so picky that often it’s not worth trying, but you have to, especially if you’re fighting, say, 10 people at once or something…which can happen.

I guarantee you that somehow he blocked

Now you see why I was complaining earlier when sometimes your character gets distracted and enters combat when I’m just trying to get the hell away. Worse still is if you happen to get caught up in a battle with your target. Holy shit. Unless the target is some cowardly prick, you’re in trouble. Stealth is key, but when stealth fails, you’re in a lot of farking trouble, especially if you botch an assassination mission.

What. The. Fuck.

I’m going to briefly go over the absolutely unnecessary subplot. Okay, even though every screenshot about the game ever shows you in the 1100s in the Middle East messing people up, it’s actually just memories locked away in some dude’s DNA that’s being accessed by some overly complicated machinery for some unknown, mysterious purpose.

That’s right…instead of just describing the history of the cultures and assassins in general, they had to have this complicated side story going on that doesn’t make any sense at all and really isn’t entertaining either. Come on. You guys made Prince of Persia! Knock it off! And that, my friends, is Assassin’s Creed.

Conclusion

The Good

- Beautiful graphics and animation. You HAVE to see this game in motion. Everything is perfect from the environments to the shadows…it’s just amazing.
- Good AI. Maybe a little too good.
- The free running looks awesome and allows you to get to just about anywhere.
- Plenty of optional missions.
- Adrenaline-packed chases and plenty of fights.

The Bad

- Yes, it gets repetitive. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, but it demands noting.
- Defending every last one of my attacks then following up with cheapshots isn’t called adding to the difficulty, it’s called being a bumdumplingwank. Throw me a freaking bone here!
- Sometimes the free running doesn’t work and often at the most inconvenient times.
- You can’t swim. You’re an assassin…and you can’t swim. What is this, GTA? Ugh.

And The Stealthy

Assassin’s Creed may not be the best game ever and it probably isn’t for everyone, but as someone who really appreciates stealth gaming and the overall awesomeness that the newer Prince of Persia games provided, this is my dream game. It’s goddamn’d expensive right now, so I’d wait for the price to drop if you plan on purchasing it, but it’s definitely worth a rental.

Verdict: 9.0

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A special thanks to Gun Sage for that post.

Introduction

There was a lot that came into play this last weekend. See, I originally set out to get a Wii, but ended up getting an X Box 360 instead because when you can count the games you’re actually interested in playing for a console on one hand, it doesn’t matter what BS marketing or exercise potential it has, I want to kill something DEAD. Duke Nukem style, but obviously without the Duke Nukem as 3D Realms has deprived us for years.

And yet, that’s the funny part. Prey kinda reminds me of Duke Nukem 3D. I can’t quite put my finger on it. 3D Realms has always been a great innovator in making awesome environments, great level design, blah blah, but the point is it really feels like what a new age Duke Nukem should be minus certain lacking male chauvinistic qualities that I’ve come to expect and enjoy from Nukem titles.

Get him with your tomahawk young squall!

No, instead we get a Native American. Of course, this guy’s rejected his beliefs and is kind of a badass, so that’s cool. To make the game as successful as possible, they have your dude wielding a wrench as your first weapon, kinda like the crowbar in Half-Life, which is exactly what the marketing team was thinking (while working oh so diligently on their new Duke Nukem Forever teaser clip).

Pray For Prey

There are a lot of things that make Prey awesome, but a lot of them you’ve seen before. Granted, most of these came out AFTER Prey, but you get the idea. Wall walking, ceiling walking, gravity tweaking, portals, walking through giant anuses to get from one place to the next…wait, what? The basic story for Prey is that you’re on an Indian reservation and you want to get the hell off, but only if your girlfriend goes for it, but she won’t, so you’re stuck with Cherokee blue balls.

Well, I’m aroused

In a desperate attempt to get laid, you beat the hell out of some drunks, then the poo hits the fan…probably literally…as you and everyone in the bar and probably the tri-county area gets sucked into a giant alien mothership of sorts. You manage to break free with a little help and start kicking some alien ass. Then you die! Wait, what?

That’s right…you enter the spirit realm and there’s a bunch of trippy stuff that happens. What, you thought you were getting a spoiler? HA! In any case, you return to life and earn the ability to spirit walk, which is basically mental projection where you leave your physical body and go forward to solve various puzzles and such. As far as the weapons, well, there don’t seem to be that many, but what you do have is very functional and effective.

For example, fairly early in the first level, you acquire both grenades (some kinda exploding alien bugs or something) and an alien organic machine gun that can be used as a sniper rifle. So right there you basically have three weapons, not including the wrench. You also have a lighter, just in case you come upon dark caverns, which doesn’t happen too terribly often, which I find to be a good thing because it’s been overdone in games ever since Tomb Raider 3.

Whaddaya mean “it’s like Quake?!”

There’s also another gun that allows you to draw from various power sources and use that specific type of attack against enemies. For example, draw from a heated source, get fire balls, draw from some sort of freezer, get ice spray, draw from a power surge, get lightning bolts, etc. Finally, you also get a better machine gun type that can fire real grenades, an acid gun, and a gun that acts as you resident rocket launcher.

I guess one thing I’m kinda on the fence about in this game is “death.” See, you never really die, per se. No, you go to the spirit world, whack a couple of spirits with your bow and arrow, then go back to the real world…right where you were. In boss fights, this may happen multiple times. Worse still is that often boss fights are just a sign of things to come. How so?

Okay, imagine if you will, a cyberdemon being the boss of a level in Doom 2. Then, ON THE VERY NEXT LEVEL, having to fight them sparingly throughout the level. Granted, it adds a certain layer of difficulty to the game and hey, you often get a new weapon after you defeat the “boss,” but you get the idea. The game gets progressively harder and more obscure until you find yourself scratching your head as to what in the hell you could have possibly missed for several minutes…then you find it and feel like the world’s biggest dumbass.

“Welcome to the spirit world! You get an all day pass!”

Ah, maybe it’s just me, but this seemed to happen quite often. I have beaten the game and what I will say is though it’s not quite Shyamalan, there are quite a few nice twists. Plus, they open it up for a sequel, which I hope is a possibility as this game is great.

Conclusion

The Good

- Awesome level design. Plenty of surprises.
- Excellent graphics and animation overall.
- Great weapons and plenty of frenzied action.
- Altering gravity. Nuff said.

The Bad

- Not a whole lot of music. I’m not understanding this trend that’s picked up since the mid/late 90s where a FPS has to be SO serious and quiet. Yeah, crank some metal or something!
- May feel relatively generic in comparison to the endless list of FPSs out there.
- On the one hand, the spirit world allows you to be immortal. On the other hand, it happens so often when you’re in a boss fight or you’re simply stuck and experimenting that it just gets annoying.

And The Dripping Alien Anus

It’s no Duke Nukem, but oddly, it feels like what it should be. Awesome level design, great enemies and AI, awesome and functional weapons, frenzied firefights…this game’s got all that and more. It’s about 22 levels long, but hey, it’s $20. You can’t lose!

Verdict: 9.0

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A special thanks to Gun Sage for that post.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Luke Skywalker: You fought in the Clone Wars?
Ben Kenobi: Yes, I was once a Jedi Knight the same as your father.

The theatrical release of Star Wars: The Clone Wars tells an all-new story that leads directly in to this fall’s premiere of a weekly, animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars television series on Cartoon Network, followed by airings on TNT.

Best part Lucas is not directing. And if I learned anything from Genndy Tartakovsky’s Star Wars: Clone Wars it was that Lucas can produce and write but his direction is much to be desired[Indiana Jones proves this point as well].

The Clone Wars will take place between Episode II and Episode III.
And thats pretty much all the info they are divulging about that at the moment.

What we do know is that The Clone Wars feature film will be released on August 15, 2008 and it will basically be the first 3 episodes of the series which will continue the story this fall on Cartoon Network and followed by airings on TNT. Each episode will have a running time of 22 minutes, to fill a half-hour time-slot. George Lucas announced “there will be at least 100 episodes produced.”

There is a schweet  trailer on the http://www.starwars.com site. Check it out.

By: Gun Sage, Esq. from Morphine Nation

Introduction

Square-Enix has left me in quandary lately. On the one hand, I was a devout follower through the NES, SNES, and even PS1 days…but lately, I feel like they’ve failed me. Being the fanboy I am, I’m always hopeful they’ll be coming out with “the next big thing” that isn’t just their overinflated ego for what feels more like a has been company nowadays.

The fact is I want S-E to be at the head of the next big thing. Badly. Always. Period. Maybe even exclamation point. And that’s why it’s refreshing for sleeper titles like “The World Ends With You,” a name at least as long and pretentious as the entire Final Fantasy series combined, to come out and really only make a “Weeeeeeelllll, okaaaaaaay” kinda decision in buying it only to find out IT’S FAH-REEKIN AH-WAH-SUM.

The Ever Stealthy Strike Of The Sleeper Hit

Fonts courtesy of Jet Grind Radio

What you need to understand about TWEWY (which looks a lot weirder in abbreviative format than I thought) is, much like any good RPG, there’s a lot going on. For starters, you equip pins in order to assist you in combat with various psychic powers. At least 90% of these abilities are controlled via stylus. Some have you tapping enemies, others drawing lines across them, still others drawing circles, etc.

Sure, that doesn’t sound too appealing, but once you do it for a while, you understand how awesome all the different attacks are and how they flow together. Now, one of the…quirks…of the game involves your partner. Yes, in a brilliant move to ensure they were effectively using both screens, S-E decided that your main character, an absolute recluse/emo jerk of society, should operate in the bottom window controlled via stylus, while the other character, a Boston Terrier turned female teenager, attacks automatically in the upper window, or manually when you use the D-pad.

So while I’m using fire 3 and some such badness, she’s up there drooling over her shoelaces…nice…

Now don’t get me wrong…this can certainly make battles interesting, but having to alternate between the two constantly is the best method because THEY SHARE THE SAME HP BAR. She screws up too much, you both DIE. In my opinion, this is wholly unnecessary. Yeah sure, some will argue it’s a simple quirk, but I’ve died enough times from her incompetence to know better.

One cool feature, however, is that if you effectively use both of them well, you can often access an attack that hits all enemies with massive damage. Further, it contributes to your battle rating, which allows you more goodies at the end of a battle. Speaking of goodies, there are a LOT of items in the game. Now, about 75% of them are clothing. What’s interesting about clothes is there are brands of clothes that can go in and out of style.

As they go in and out of style, there will be certain effects in battle, which means they’ll be further amplified if you’re wearing an entire outfit within a particular brand. Also, individual articles of clothing require a certain amount of bravery to wear. I’m not really certain where they were going with this and honestly, I don’t think they know either. It would be one thing if it required a certain amount of strength to wear something, but the only thing I can discern about having the bravery level is that clearly feminine items have a high bravery rating and the female character seems to have about 100 bravery points over the main character, but even still, that could’ve been accomplished by having certain articles wearable by one, the other, or both.

The game is absolutely overflowing with awesome, well styled cutscenes. This is one of them.

Of course, I’m stating the obvious here. In any case, there are apparent stat boosts/negators and hidden abilities in each piece of clothing that are unlocked as you become friends with shopkeeps. How does one go about appeasing the shopkeeps? In a very Disgaea way of levelling up the shops, as you buy things at each shop, the respective shopkeeps start to recognize you as a regular and are more willing to fill you in on various hidden abilities (thus unlocking them) and make available evne more things to buy, including quest items which are purchased with rare items.

The Brown Burrito Strikes Again!

Another cool feature is that of food, consumption, digestion, etc. It’s weird and quirky, but follow me on this…

- You purchase/find the food (duh).
- You’re allowed 24 bytes a day. By day, I mean 24 hours. By 24 hours, I mean as in the real world.
- Certain foods require longer consumption times. In other words, a hot dog only requires 8 bytes whereas a full meal may require more like 16 or something.
- Each food has something it boosts temporarily as you’re working to consume it such as a temporary strength increase.
- Food is consumed by way of battle. If something takes 8 bytes to consume, that’s 8 battles before it’s totally consumed.
- Once something is consumed, typically you’ll get a permanent stat boost.
- Consumption does not equal digestion. After something is consumed, each byte must be digested. Since you’re allowed 24 bytes a day, that means each hour a digested byte will roll off.

As you may have noticed, there are real time elements at play here. Of course, there’s plenty more than that. For example, you gain PP (psychic power, not what you were thinking) for each equipped pin in battle. That’s cool and all, but you also gain a certain amount of PP for each equipped pin after you power back on the game when the DS has been off for up to 7 days. That’s right…in a way, you’re rewarded for NOT playing the game.

“You’re not wearing enough flair…”

There are at least a dozen other ways you can gain exp, PP, and what have you, but I think you get the idea. I won’t bother explaining the plot because it’s pretty involved, I’m likely to give away spoilers, etc. What I will say is there’s a lot of clever plot devices that make good use of the stylus, mind control, psychic powers, etc. This is one game I can say Square-Enix did right.

Conclusion

The Good

- Excellent style with graphics/animation.
- Cool, modern music and good sound effects.
- Awesome plot.
- Clothing system is fairly interesting and there are plenty of things to collect.
- Wide variety of attacks via pins.
- MANY different extras, quirky features, and much more.

The Bad

- Dual screen combat isn’t as great an idea as they so obviously thought it was.

And The End (Not The Sniper)

What more can really be said? It’s a great game, which is rare anymore for Square-Enix, but equally satisfying for a diehard fan like me. I really can’t speak for how long the game is as I haven’t beaten it yet, but regardless, it’s a very fun title and I highly recommend it.

Verdict: 9.5

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A special thanks to our good friend Gun Sage for that post.