2nd
March
2008
Destroy All Humans! is a pretty tight game, satirically capturing B-movie alien attacks with a GTA-type approach to gameplay; it’s only flaw seems to be a lack of being completely original.
(This is a review that I did before I started grading games, so the grades are based on my retrospective opinion of the game.)
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posted in action, destroy-all-humans-1, destroy-all-humans-series, open-world, playstation-2, review-repost, xbox-1 |
21st
February
2008
Jade Empire is BioWare’s second RPG for the Xbox console, following their success of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. While there’s a lot in common in the formula of the game, they have worked to change the combat to reflect the change in setting, focusing on an active, real-time combat system over the previous turn based system. While some of these changes are positive, ultimately the game fails for two major reasons: it is short, in that it’s about 1/3rd shorter than KOTOR, and that the difficulty of the game, by default, seems awfully easy. It’s not a bad game, just not a solid effort as we’ve seen from BioWare before.
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posted in jade-empire, review, rpg, xbox-1 |
7th
October
2007
posted in action, breakdown, review, xbox-1 |
30th
May
2007
As a short diversion between RPGs and other games soon to be out, I pulled out a cheap pickup of Breakdown. An original Xbox title now playable through backwards compatibility on the 360, it’s a first person shooter that takes the “first person” concept to nearly as far as it can go without wrecking the fun of the game. For one, while there is shooting and other weapons, you quickly become more involved with using melee combat to get past difficult foes, so you can swing one-two punches and upper cuts. Certain actions not shown in many FPS are forced on the player; you have to actually reach down to pick up ammo from dead soldiers or objects from the ground, and when you reach security doors, you need to pull out a security card and then swip it to get through. These actions aren’t overly trivialized – they’re just long enough that it’s risky to do them in the heat of battle; that is, the game prevents you, as you likely would in real life, from running to a dead soldier to grab their ammo while a gun fight is blazing because of the time it takes, as opposed to many FPS where you can do this as part of the game. It may seem a bit silly at first, but it actually works pretty well once you start getting into the midgame.
The game is unfortunately very bland in the graphics department. All the levels have been rectangular hallways so far with minimal decoration, and though while I’m still in a building, it would have helped to have some diagonals as needed. There was at least one interesting point as per the character gaining memories, I stepped out momentarily into a desert region (possibly part of some hallucination) while still in the middle of the building, to return to find that it likely never existed. But even there in the desert, there wasn’t much different to look at.
It’s also the type of game where I wish they spent a bit more time thinking about checkpoints (the only points that you can restart your game after game over or a save game load); there’s been a few that have had a semi-difficult fight followed by a rather hard one which, should you fail the hard one, you have to repeat both fights. I know the idea of quicksaves/loads isn’t really good for FPSs, but it would help with as distant the fighting portions are in this game, to err on the side of more checkpoints.
Definitely no big rush to finish this, but definitely one to finish.
posted in action, breakdown, first-person-shooter, initial-impressions, xbox-1 |
26th
March
2007
The first Destroy All Humans was a rather interesting Grand Theft Auto variation, where you took control of a Gray-like alien that turned to basically destroying all humans circa the Red Scare in the 1950s. Some of the human was pretty campy, but the game included both several nice weapons, telekinetic powers, and the use of a saucer for mass destruction.
Destroy All Humans 2 takes us a few more years now in the 1960s, where hippies teem and the KBG, recognizing that the new “president” of the States is actually an alien, take steps to try to stop their invasion. This, of course, turns your protagonist against the humans once again, sending him on yet another rampagn.
It’s still a GTA -style game, but now with more distinction between main and side missions (that it, it feels more open world than the first game). The areas are much larger, and now there’s a GTA warning style meter to indicate when more tougher foes will try to take you down. To take some missions, you actually have to talk to humans, and while you could body-snatch in the first game, you now either have to do it in a quiet area or get ready to either erase some minds or send out good vibrations to get the humans to ignore you and reduce the warning level. There’s more spaces to switch between saucer and on-foot action, and while in the saucer, you can now abduct different types of people to “synthesize” new powers and abilities for your character. The area buildings are still rather destructible and seem to stay that way as you move away.
The new additions are pretty nice , and the dialog/situations are still as campy as the first; it’s not a great game (yet) but still pretty enjoyable. It’s just odd that this game came out only for the original XBox (this last holiday season) and doesn’t have 360 backwards compatibility even though the first Destroy All Humans is listed on that list.
posted in action, destroy-all-humans-2, destroy-all-humans-series, initial-impressions, open-world, xbox-1 |
18th
February
2007
I had never played Manhunt when it first came out, thinking it was way too violent and gruesome. Of course, now that I’ve played through much more gruesome games (including the GTA games that followed it), and with pending news that a Manhunt 2 is on the way out, I figured it would be a good idea to play through this as well.
It’s an intersting mix of Thief-like stealth and action. Unlike Thief, getting caught isn’t the end of the world, as you can easily defend yourself against an attacker, but if you get caught by too many at one time, that’s a bad thing. Of course, the “thrill” of the game, to speak, is to get the special stealth takedowns using specific weapons as to meet the odd requirements of your benefactor, and using the shadows, tapping on walls, and generally using light and sound effectively can go a long way. A lot of the elements of GTA games can be found here: item circles for pickups and the color triangle indicators to show a target’s health.
The game’s seem to have aged well, the engine is obviously last generation but still with enough detail that makes it interesting to work through, along with Rockstar’s signature dark humor. However, I would have liked to seen more voiceover work for your benefactor when he gives you instructions outside of the controls, just to add some immersion.
posted in action, initial-impressions, manhunt, xbox-1 |
Destroy All Humans! 2 continues Pandemic’s mix of open-world and shooter, mixing up the formula from the first game a bit without affecting too much of the humor or other aspects to make a pretty decent sequel. Unfortunately, some of the changes come at the expense of making the game almost a non-challenge to complete, and thus resulting in a title, while interesting, is hard to spend an appreciable amount of time playing.
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords is a followup to the previous KOTOR game, this time developed by Obsidian Entertainment (borrowing heavily from BioWare’s resources), loosely tying the story to the previous game. While this is more that just an expansion or add on, changing some of the fundaments of combat for the better, other changes in the general overall structure in both story and game plot aren’t as strong, and make for a most disjointed game, but still reasonably enjoyable.
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR for short) is BioWare’s first major venture away from their lines of Dungeon & Dragons-based RPGs, though using the d20 system to apply it to the Star Wars universe with the help of LucasArts. (And yes, I’ve had this game for a while, but never got around to playing it or its sequel, but have been inspired through finishing Mass Effect to complete it). The game a great job of adapting the tabletop system to a semi-action RPG, though still has some of the same plot advancement trappings as the previous games, and unfortunately includes too many playable characters that, along with other inbalances in the game difficulty, makes some of them never see the light of battle in a single playthrough of the game, though may be possible to use them better on subsequent ones.
Breakdown, published by Namco, is a very different type of first-person shooter; the game uses a more realistic aspect of what you’d actually see and do if you were performing the actions in real-life. Some of these work great in the game, while some of these start to get annoying after a while, but it is still a unique approach. While the game has a pretty good story, some of the late-game aspects of the game leave much to be desired.