It is very difficult to find a game these days that is all that it’s cracked up to be.  Expensive marketing campaigns, ludicrous promises to the consumer, and excessive media coverage are all issues that are plaguing the industry and is likely the biggest reason why so many people experience  buyer’s remorse after rushing out to buy the next “big game”.  Games just do not live up to their hype anymore and rely on flashy graphics and high production value to sell themselves.  That said: Mass Effect 2 lives up to every single ounce of hype that it’s ever gotten.  Hands down.

This game is fantastic.  Visuals, sound, gameplay, and story all come together here to make one truly amazing work of art.  I don’t even know where to start.  I guess the best part of this game, if I were forced to choose one, would be the plot.  The story picks up where Mass Effect 1 left off, where a very large laser gets all-too-cozy with The Normandy’s  hull.  The ship is a complete loss, but you are eventually rescued from the vacuum of space by Cerberus, a controversial war machine of the human race, which has dedicated itself to chasing down The Collectors.  The Collectors are a race of malicious aliens seeking to amass a large pile of humans for some nefarious purpose.  Your job is to assemble a crew (on your NEW Normandy) to help you fight The Collectors and stop the invasion and abduction of various human colonies  while also discovering just what they’re doing with them.  I won’t spoil any details, but the story was one of the most dynamic and suspenseful pieces of writing I’ve seen in quite some time.

Gameplay is also wonderful.  The cover system is straight out of Gears of War, and it’s done very well.  Combat is heavy and well balanced.  I did find that my crew members would occasionally wander off out in the open, but I never had to revive them more times than was allotted to me (you get 3 res’s per mission).  Battles don’t just feel like battles, there is a clearly defined goal in each one and the arenas are so diverse that I rarely found myself getting bored.  The decision making that you do throughout the game makes even more of an effect on your overall outcome.  During the last mission (no spoilers ahead, I promise) you actually select your team leaders and assign roles to each person.  Who you select to do what determines how the mission comes out at the end.  Assigning the hulking Krogan to sneak around will likely result in your mission’s monumental failure, whilst assigning the stealth specialist to do so will end in success.  I wish this dynamic was presented more than once in the game but this is a small gripe.

Production value here is second to none.  This. Game. Is. Beautiful.  BioWare selected the Unreal III graphics engine to power this game, and by god does it look stunning.  It is quite possibly one of the prettiest things I’ve ever seen rendered real-time.  Voice acting is quite nice, although the issue with proper mouth movements is still present from the first game and can take away from the experience for some.  For me, this wasn’t a big issue and didn’t annoy me in the slightest. The pinnacle of production value for this game was likely when I landed on Ilian for the first time.  You arise out of the docks to see a living, breathing futuristic city straight out of a Sci-Fi novel.  My jaw could do nothing but drop to the floor.

Honestly, I could go on and on about just how FUCKING AWESOME this game is but you’ll never understand until you just go out there and grab it.  It is clear that BioWare learned from mistakes made in Mass Effect 1 and applied those lessons to the squeakquel.  It it, thus far, the best game I’ve played this year and is worth every SINGLE penny of the cost.  If you buy anything out of this last wave of games, get this.

- Wow.  I’m never gonna pick that up ever again.

This is an irony with certain games; no matter how good a game can be sometimes, you just don’t feel like it’s worth playing the same levels, the same way, through the same story again.  There are certain advantages in games like Final Fantasy VII, Saints Row, Fallout, and Sands of Time that allow the player to want to play the game over and over, and Crackdown really has none of the defining characteristics that make it one of these games.

For example, in Final Fantasy VII you can choose different powers to take on each play through, allowing you to experiment with the different characters and Materia combinations.  In Crackdown the abilities you get are set in stone as to when you’ll get them and, for the most part, how powerful they can be at the time you get them.

In games like Fallout you can replay the game multiple times with varying skill sets and see the multiple endings.   But Crackdown only has one ending…and only one character with just different skins.  The variety provided by those skins adds nothing to the gameplay and the ending isn’t worth working to get to once you already know it.  It’s needless to say that it’s predictable, and obvious to say poorly executed.

As for Sands of Time, going through an intentionally linear game with lots of puzzles can be great fun a second time, if both the puzzles and the story are well done.  Sands of Time is probably one of the greatest examples of seamlessly meshing story and puzzle platforming.  A player may want to retread this ground not only because of the gameplay but the story, like rereading a great book or watching a classic film over and over.  And in Saints Row there are multiple gangs and lots of little side missions, you may want to replay it to experience the gang warfare in a different order and to play different side missions.  These two blatantly opposite games, one being extremely linear and the other very open world, use their key elements to make themselves well worth a second go in their respective ways.

And that’s really where the biggest problem in Crackdown lies, it’s a linear game pretending to be open world.  You first have to kill off the Chicanos, than the Russians, than the Chinese, in that order.  If you stay from it you’ll find that you would be easily slaughtered and left unable to jump high enough to get up the taller buildings.  There’s no variety, but they pretend there is.  While there is a difficulty curve it should sink up with your character’s progression from one gang to the next without fear.  The story is atrocious and the puzzles usually consist of button-mash the baddies.

All that said it was a FUN game.  It’s just that I can’t see it having any replay value after the first go, and therefore a game with some serious flaws.

This game has you picking a team of 3 players from the Capcom and Marvel universes. It has a tag system which is actually a good thing and makes for very competitive matches when you are low on health slamming the two buttons down for a crutial tag in. This game also has more than just Street Fighter characters for the Capcom side, they have Captain Commando (a character made for the Capcom company, the first three letters of Captain and Commando make up Capcom), Jin, Hayato from Star Gladiator, Sonson, and Mega Man with two other characters from that series. I am sure you can guess who the Marvel side is represented by the most, but they also have other random super heroes from different backgrounds which really can fill out the roster very nicely. Speaking of the roster it has a total of 56 people to choose from which is a big list. All the fighters can do their own super combos when your super meter is full but if you want to destroy with full potential you will figure out the way to have a team super combo which will destroy the other trio you are trying to make it past. The thing you need to do is experiment to find the best team with the best combo and I think that I might have found a few of them in my own right which I will talk about later in this review. Each player has their good and bad sides and if you spend enough time playing it you can easily find out how to be technical, speedy, powerful, or a cheap little bitch of a person with your team.

Mind you I am sure when this game gets released in the USA again that the character select screen will not be in Japanese.

I have to review this game for what it is so I can give you a preview of it in case you somehow have not had the pleasure of playing this game yet. This game is pretty…and I cannot say that enough. The art on every single person is nothing short of straight up beautiful. The backgrounds are artistic and they are perfect for this game. If the background had a clock in it, it would actually sync up with the clock in the machine to give you the correct time which is a nice touch. Every single animation is done perfect down to a T, they even include a 2-d version of Jill Valentine and the damn Tyrant that she fights in the Resident Evil series and that looks great as well. They spent alot of time getting all this together after they made the original Marvel vs Capcom, more or less because the fans wanted it and I am glad that these superpowers in the industries they are in decided to give the fans what they want.

Now as far as characters go this game is ridiculous with the amount of different styles that are in this game so I will have to discuss them in a pretty big scope here. There are very few street fighters that were in the series that were not involved in this game such as T-Hawk and Dee Jay, and they were not in this game I would guess to popular demand saying that they do not need both those shit-holes in the game to take up space and be terrible. See a lot of the characters are pretty similar to other characters in the game. Cammy is a fast yet not powerful character, so her speed makes her good against slow characters. At the same time Spiderman has the same type of style, him and Cammy even share a super combo that is pretty much identical, his being the Maximum Spider and hers being the Killer Bee Assault. Then again you have your standard middle of the road fighters such as Ryu and Ken who are just like they are in street fighter 2 except that Ryu’s fireball is fucking gigantic compared to Ken’s and even Akuma’s. There are also big ass slow guys that join the fight and can be awesome and terrible at the same time, for example Juggernaut is the most powerful person in the game but is by far even slower than the Hulk or even Sentinel which is incredible with how slow they are. Look for the sake of this I will discuss a few characters in more details just to tell you who to look out for and who to play as.

Gambit is fast, very fast in fact but obviously his power will be a little less than the average person. He makes up for it though with his super combos and even with his regular special move that freezes the opponent in place if they get hit with his “Kinetic Cards”. If you can stand to use a speedy person then he is one of the people you need to look for. Speaking of X-men there are two versions of Wolverine in this game, one being bone claw, and they other having his standard Adamantium  claws. Both characters are fast, and can do quite a bit a damage although Bone-claw Wolverine is slightly faster and not as powerful, while both of them can take a lot of damage….too bad he can not regenerate his health as fast as he does in the comics though. To finish off the speedy characters that I enjoy I have to say that Cammy is badass. In this game you can dash and it is not very hard to take advantage of this with her because she might be the fastest person in the entire game, if you are against a person that cannot avoid a rush all you have to do is go and dash towards them then Cannon Spike, dash back and repeat….if you want to be a cheap bitch about it all. I am a street fighter fan-boy, and I love Ryu and Akuma…but in this game based off a overall basis I have to give the advantage to Ryu. Akuma is powerful yes but they did dumb him down for this game so people could not just destroy constantly with him like they have in other games. Once again I must say that the fact that Ryu’s fireball takes up 3/4th’s of a character model when thrown gives you a great weapon to keep people at bay with. On the same level as him I think is Captain Commando, who actually is slightly faster than Ryu, and is probably  a little more powerful but to do combos with him is slightly harder than one would initially think. Up next is Jill Valentine from the Resident Evil series. She is quick and actually can rack up some damage if you know how to use her. She uses dogs and zombies from the RE series to actually perform special moves, one of her super combos actually has her call up the tyrant to destroy your ass with three gigantic slices from his big claw. In my opinion her best move is how she has a counter attack where she pulls out her Beretta and as long as you keep hitting the strong punch button she will fire up to nine shots right into the person who tried to hurt you. Venom is a badass in this game and yes he is slower but his attacks are actually quite quick for a man of his size. His specials can do a lot of damage but you really have to get used to his style to use him effectively, Iron Man (and also War Machine) in this game is the same way so if you choose to use them be careful. Out of the slowest characters I can only stand Sentinel and Juggernaut. Juggernaut I will use almost never, but Sentinel is a very good character. When you are up against someone who must dash in and attack, or someone who cannot fight from a distance then you can be the worlds biggest bitch with Sentinel. He shoots out a laser from his mouth which can go the full length of the screen but nevertheless.

Jill summons the tyrant to completely obliterate SonSon and her little friends.

Personally I cannot stand any of the Darkstalkers characters in this game because they are not the people I used when I used to play the game in the arcade. Where in the Hell is my Jon Taliban, he is a werewolf and he is not in this game. I also hate a lot of the other characters in this game that are part of the Marvel side. There are so many generic characters that are useless unless your going to exploit the game which is what a lot of these people that play the game do. Mega Man is in this game and he is such a little bitch…I am sorry to say it I never was a fan of Mega Man but even I realize that Capcom has finally spent all their time making sure that he is between the ages of roughly 8-10 and that he is the biggest pussy in the fighting universe. B.B. Hood has more balls then Mega Man ever could. I will say this about my favorite fighting game of all time, there is something that I can easily gripe about.  Damn near every character has a infinite combo, which would not be so bad had they not been so easy to pull off. A little while back while I was at an arcade with a group of friends, I found a MVC2 machine and decided to play it. While kicking a huge amount of ass I had a random guy come up and ask to join me, and low and behold all he did was exploit the shit out of this game and yea he beat me but I actually held my own until about 10 seconds left in the entire match so to me that is a victory in itself. If you are going to play anyone in the arcade beware that your ass will get exploited more than likely, or even if you play this against a decent player on X-box Live you will have this happen as well.

The final boss in this game is hard, and if it’s your first time going up against the bastard named Abyss…you will lose unless you pull off a huge amount of bullshit. He has three forms and each form is crazier than the last. His first form has him dressed like a huge metal samurai, which throws lightning bolts and tridents at you, while he can also fire a huge laser from his chest. Fast characters are really good against him if you can just figure out exactly when to block and when to counter an attack with a super jump to just go over him completely. If you get past him you will face a green goo like substance that looks like it’s made of Slimer from Ghostbusters. This form will actually shoot lasers, and taunt you the whole time…attacking him with a close ranger character is not a good idea at all because of the damage he can cause so you really need someone from long range like Ryu or Gambit. The third form is a huge dog like demon from Hell. This thing is the length of 75% of the screen and the entire height of it if he is on screen at all. He constantly teleports and has the ability to keep shooting things from across the screen so your best bet is to constantly back up so you can block if he attacks and then just keep going for him. You must be careful though because if he hits you with a super combo he can kill all three of your players so fast that you will not even be able to react to what you just witnessed on the screen. I have not lost to the boss since the first time I went up against him actually. Once you figure out his pattern of all three forms he is not difficult but that first time you face him will be a monstrous  task to say the least.If you have a team with a good super combo it makes it a lot easier as well…any team with Gambit has an advantage because he can freeze the first two forms with his super combo. Honestly I still think the best super combo team I have found is Gambit with his cards, Ryu with a gigantic fireball, and to finish it up Iron Man with his cannon shooting a crazy amount of ammo at the sad sap in his way.

Example of the “Iron Man” Tony Stark owning face with his cannon.

Overall this game is almost perfect. I cannot think of a better fighter that I have played in my life. Even Street Fighter IV is not as good as this game in my opinion. You need to get ahold of this game on the marketplace, they have redone the sprites and made everything even prettier, you need to get it off the marketplace anyway because unless you own a Dreamcast and the actual game from 2000 when it was ported you kinda got fucked because all the other ports were apparently nothing short of terrible. I have no idea how much this game will be when it finally comes out but regardless what it costs I will purchase it. I have said before and will say it again Capcom could make me pay 50 dollars willingly to get this game all over again and relive the fun that I have had while playing it. If you play this game and you honestly do not like it, I will actually understand but will ultimately be confused at how you can not stand a game like this. It has a lot of ups and a few downs but all together this game does nothing but jut amaze me constantly every time I play it on my Dreamcast or in the arcade which is why I cannot wait to pick this up on the marketplace. Thank you Capcom and Marvel for listening to what the fans have been craving this whole time…although I hope in the future sometime that they will make a sequel to this game and revamp the series again.

I may be a fanboy but this asshole is just ridiculous.

When Halo came out I had the chance to play online for the first time extensively. And “extensively” was about an hour and a half. That’s the most I played Live until recently, when a 360 & Call of Duty: Modern Warfare entered my home and set up camp. For the past month my brother and I have been working our way up the ladder. Through head shots and achievements, ranging from taking out multiple enemies with a ‘nade to falling to your death, my skill has risen to where I can talk shit and feel somewhat justified. I talk shit when I’m not winning because it’s fun, but there’s nothing like the pride-obliterating-bitch-slap (P.O.B.S.) of having the skill to back up the “mad shit” one would exclaim.

However, most of the things I hear could be placed under the “diarrhea talk” category [sorry for the grown-up talk, kids.] It is in no way an issue of vulgarity, rather, an issue of variation. I hear the same shoddily constructed dumbshittery being loogied into my right ear roughly 60-75% of the time I’m on there (and no, I didn’t do the math.)

Did somebody send out a memo telling everybody to include the words “nigger,” “fag/faggot” and “your mom” in their silly attempts at worthwhile banter? Is there a quota to fill?

A slice of advice in avoiding an immediate spam storm of diarrhea-talk, pick a name that you are CERTAIN of. You can’t avoid it all the time, shit will be spoken and you’re gonna have to grow a pair. But if you have a name like “MtnDewd” or a trite reference like “FamilyGuyKiLLa8584” you’ve signed up to be a target in more ways than the game intended. If you’re not 100% behind your name, scratch it. You may have to defend it and if you can’t you won’t be consoled. CoD4 Live is not a medium where you’ll find mercy, especially when fecal vocality is involved. Belie’ dat… or “believe that” for you white folk… like me…

Shitty shit-talkers flood the toilet that is CoD4, but a flush is on the horizon. For there are great shit-talkers who will save your sanity from time to time. At one point I laughed so hard I botched what would have been a fairly simple shot. Because of the refreshment of being caught up in laughter of that magnitude I wasn’t bothered… I was busy trying to keep from hitting the hardwood floor.

Playing CoD4 Live without the headset isn’t as fun, but you can still hear what is being said. For obvious reasons, being able to retort is the enjoyable option. Without it you’re forced to listen to the assbelches of the many, lacking the ability of interjection. If you don’t have the headset you’re better off listening to music at a decent level. Not too loud, you’ll need to hear gunshots and explosions to stay alive a little longer.

“Modern Warfare” is a hoot and 1/2 after you learn the ropes. It’s a matter of being able to calculate the severity of the situation while simultaneously acting to defuse the enemy. Whether you’re playing H.Q., Domination, or Team Deathmatch, putting an enemy on ice is a priority to ensure you’re not the one hitting the dirt in a series of bullet-riddled convulsions.

You never know what side of the line of fire you’ll be on. One minute you’re American, the next you’re this . I’m not a fan of war per se, however, I like war movies and games to a degree. They are an effective way to make people think about the wars going on everywhere. Otherwise, who knows how little it would be brought up!

CoD4, though fun for awhile, gets old. Once you reach the level cap you have a choice of taking the Prestige route, starting over to do more work for a fancier looking badge. Lame. Move on, come back to it from time to time. But it really isn’t a game worth losing more hours of your life than you already have. But be warned, it’s not like riding a bike.

If you haven’t played Street Fighter 4 yet, go out and get to it. By far my favorite game in the series. One of the things that makes this game so badass is the soundtrack. Enjoy this double take today, with 2 songs! I’m sure I’ll be pulling more jems from this OST as time goes on, so stay tuned!

PS3 – Street Fighter 4 – Theme of Ryu

PS3 – Street Fighter 4 – VCN Stage

Wow… opinions were quite varied on this game.. And while I’ve been told that I’m the only one in the entire free world that could have a shred of doubt when it comes to this huge release, I’m gonna have to stick to my guns. So here you have it, both Keith Stidham, and I, Tom Webster duke it out over what RE5 is and could have been. Seriously people, blood is everywhere from the fist to cuffs!
Tom:
Resident Evil… when the first game came out, it revitalized and changed the way people looked at Survival Horror games, essentially breathing life into this gigantic genre that we all know and love. What Capcom did with this amazing game is recreate it. Not to say it wasn’t enjoyable, I liked RE2, I played through it, it was enjoyable. But it was basically an expansion pack for Resident Evil. Same graphics, animations, concept. This happens more often than not in this industry. Well, that game was remade and released countless times under various numbers and subtitles until that one glorious day: Resident Evil 4. At one time a true Gamecube exclusive, Capcom took up their sword to retrieve their fallen kingdom. They once again reigned as champions of a genre, truly recreating what “Survival Horror” meant to video games. Sadly enough, though, it seems this once righteous king has slipped back into his old ways.
Capcom has once again capitalized on their huge success with Resident Evil 4 and we all should have seen it coming. I was worried when I first saw the trailers of RE5, noticing that Capcom chose to use the exact same animations that were in RE4 for this new game. I threw these worries away thinking, “Ok… its just a trailer, a tech demo, a teaser, they used the same content from 4 just to show off what they have been working on… they’ll change it by release.” Needless to say, I was completely wrong. Not only have they recycled animations, but they’ve recycled all of Resident Evil 4. I’m not saying this is a crime against humanity, I loved Resident Evil 4. I love Leon kicking ass and not bothering to take names, I liked the new creatures and how everything was very do or die, but when I see “Resident Evil 5″, I expect something different. Sure, take the same concept, the amazing balls-to-the-wall run and gun action, take the terrifying “Fast Zombies”, but do something different with it. Capcom has instead chosen to re-skin Leon and make an expansion pack that adds co-op. Now I love co-op as much as the next guy, and its quite a nice change to have a computer-controlled partner behave intelligently, but the game is just Resident Evil 4 with a makeover. I don’t mind the core gameplay being the same, I think they really hit on something good with 4, but I do have a problem with reusing the same animations, voice clips, and enemy AI as the previous game in the series. It seems lazy to me. If you’re going to call this game Resident Evil 5, it should be more than a cosmetic change, there should be something fundamentally better about RE5 than RE4. Capcom should give me a reason to buy this game other than “Umm.. its in Africa (among other place), looks, smells, plays, and feels like RE4.. and LOOK OVER HERE CO-OP!”
With this demo, and that’s just what it is, a DEMO, Capcom has once again let me down. Granted: Its not a finished product. The current release date for this game is March 26, 2009. Other than basic bug testing, the game is done, they can’t change the game enough to differentiate itself from RE4 by that date. Unless Capcom pulls a Nintendo and pushes the release back another six months, don’t expect another Resident Evil game, expect an expansion pack, because that’s exactly what it is.

PS- I’m a little bitch and I take it in the butt everyday, but I use Vaseline so I only have a small rash.

Keith:

This week we take a break from classic gaming to discuss everything from Dead Space to Little Big Planet. Up on the list we’ve got Gears of War 2, Wii Music, Chrono Trigger, and many more. Check this one out!

72 Pin Connector Podcast: Episode 019 – Upcoming Games