AkibaTechno

Turok (Xbox 360)

Turok, or: "How to make a generic FPS and apply a license to it."

The Good
The Turok series is still viewed with reverence by Nintendo 64 fans, along with Goldeneye, as one of the first games to really get the concept of a console first person shooting experience right. While competing FPS on other consoles like Powerslave and Duke Nukem 3D on other consoles were good, they were merely ports that did nothing to really capitalise on the strength of each console. With success for the failing Acclaim came a sequel, then a tournament shooter, then another sequel. This is where the series began to stray so far from its roots that it barely resembled the Turok we all knew and loved anymore. Gone were the sprawling, fantastical jungle environments, replaced by ducts, corridors and building interiors.

Turok changed, into Half Life, and we were left with a game that while good, was not what we expected from a Turok title. Acclaim Austin, formerly Iguana Entertainment took criticism of Shadow of Oblivion on board and crafted Turok: Evolution for the Gamecube, PS2 and Xbox. We got our jungle environments back, along with dual analog, an up to date weapons roster and some nifty flight sequences shoe horned into the experience. Evolution had its issues with frame rate, frequent loading, ropey animation and bad voice acting but it was more like Turok than we had experienced since Seeds of Evil and it was a breath of fresh air.

Then Acclaim Austin folded. Turok was in limbo and a new game was on the way. Touchstone Games picked up the license and gave it to Propaganda Games and a little while later, we got a freshly baked Turok game.

In “Turok” you play Joseph Turok. A Kiowa Native American who was recruited into Whiskey Company due to his familiarity with the leader of a violent Mercenary band known as “Wolfpack”. En-route to a planet where Wolfpack is supposedly holed up Whiskey Company’s ship is shot down and then, with tensions rising amongst the group, they formulate a plan of escape back to Earth.

The first thing you’ll notice in Turok is that occasionally it looks beautiful. On more than one occasion you can see into the distance where Brachiosaurus are grazing, Pteradons are sailing through mountain ranges set against a watercolour sky. It’s quite magical at times. The dinosaurs look fantastic. They are animated realistically and exude an air of menace as they stalk the many caves and military complexes you will end up traversing. The scale of some of them is pretty terrific, most notably the Tyrannosaurus, while even the smaller dinosaurs like the Compsognathus run up to you with a curious nod of their head before skittering for cover. You’ve probably noticed by now that I love dinosaurs. Anyway.

Control is basically good. Turok moves and turns promptly enough and can hold two weapons alongside his bow and knife. One of the best parts of the game is how lethal the knife is. Anything can be killed with a simple tap of the right trigger prompting a brilliantly choreographed kill move either quietly or full frontal. It never becomes redundant, alongside the bow, and in that the balance that Propaganda managed to strike is quite accomplished. The bow, either equipped with regular or Tek arrows is quite lethal. It’s a brilliant stealth weapon when used in tall grass or from behind a box or girder and can even be used tactically; if you’re good at using it.

The Bad
I’ll be honest here, I didn’t love this game. It frustrated me endlessly with a parade of bad AI, physics glitches and shoddy level design.

To begin with most weapons secondary functions are basically useless or redundant. Dinosaurs are fast, angry and when there are more than three of them, will kick your ass. Grenades, unless the trajectory is calculated perfectly, will often miss their targets and hit you instead. The pulse rifle and flamethrower have a virtually identical secondary fire, the pistol is plain useless and the mini-gun is so inaccurate you’ll be lucky to hit anything at a distance. Very little thought went into the weapons in Turok, and considering the series is known for its outlandish, brutal weaponry a mini gun that turns into a turret isn’t really breaking any records for originality here.

To make the combat more frustrating Propaganda has included some “realism” in the game. I understand why they did this, and when it happens the first few times it is actually kind of cool and immersive but you learn to hate it near the end of the game. If you’re hit with a grenade, or a Dinosaur charges you, you will get knocked on your ass facing the wrong direction. There is a particular moment where you are tasked with killing an RPG wielding soldier however if you don’t hammer him with grenades he just rains a hell fire of RPG rockets at you, knocking you this way and that until the screen turns red for the 4 millionth time.

You die so often in this game it’s ridiculous. On Normal, four or five hits from a pulse rifle and you’ll be taking a dirt nap. Fighting more than three Dinosaurs at once? Just kill yourself. To make matters worse the checkpoint system is woefully inadequate. Instead of rewarding you with a checkpoint after a particularly gruelling fight you basically have to endure waves and waves of enemies and then a giant walking tank before the game decides you have proven yourself worthy of not having to do all of it again. You don’t always know which direction you’re being shot at from either, and I have been shot at through solid rock before. It’s a joke.

The level design is lazy and predictable. If Propaganda hadn’t yet convinced you Turok was just another license “modernised” to keep up with current trends the level design seals the deal. Gone are the sprawling, vivid jungles of games past. Gone are the ancient stone temples full of glyphs and carvings and interesting designs. Instead we get rock and metal. Everything is made of rock. There’s a little bit of grass, and a hell of a lot of rock. The environment seems to be constructed entirely out of big pieces of rock, like you’re just traversing one big mountain with a bit of moss on it. When you see trees, it’s a relief. It’s that overdone. Then there are the levels set in caves. For about half an hour you’re tasked with traversing a cave. It’s one of the most boring, monotonous levels in any game I have ever played. It features three enemy types, and one of those enemies is a boss. Then there are the levels set in military complexes. You have literally unlimited artistic license to produce any kind of environment you want because it’s the Lost Land which sucks things out of hundreds of dimensions and places and you go and make four or five levels set in military complexes. Bravo sir, you earned your $100,000 a year.

Also, the script is inane. Not only is the dialogue predictable and occasionally cringe worthy but the entire story is basically just Aliens. Also, don’t you think if Whisky Company was being sent to a hostile planet they would know just a little bit about it. It’s tantamount to saying; “O.k troops, our target is here somewhere, we don’t know where exactly and we’re not sure what country we’re actually sending you to and we don’t know what language they speak or what they look like but we’re sure you’ll find something. You’re smart guys.” I mean, how could they not know there are Dinosaurs on this planet. We’ve mastered interstellar travel but we can’t look at the surface of a planet and say; “Oh holy shit, Dinosaurs, screw that.” On the topic of the Dinosaurs they are just there. There’s this overdone, hackneyed story about old loyalties and comrade tensions and then occasionally it’s like Propaganda just said “Oh, there’s Dinosaurs too.” They are just inserted randomly when they felt like mixing things up. Too much emphasis is put on the derivative interactions with the human antagonists.

There’s multiplayer as well. But no one plays it anymore.

The Bottom Line
Turok is just another modern First Person Shooter. It’s not Turok, it’s got Turok in it but it’s not Turok. You could say I’m just pining for nostalgia but if you’re going to just throw together another status quo FPS with little imagination and broken game design and put the name of one of my favourite franchises on it then yeah, I’m going to have an issue with it.

I’m not saying Turok is totally without redemption. It is occasionally entertaining but there are so many missed opportunities, technical issues and game design missteps that is is inexcusable for such a venerable pedigree to be reduced to this.

Check out Turok if you’re curious. It’s at least playable.

By AkibaTechno on September 30, 2011

Resident Evil 4 (GameCube)

What? I’ve been playing this game for over 30 hours?

The Good
Never before have I been so totally immersed in a game before, so utterly sucked into the whole experience that I have willingly played through the same scenario time and time again in successive play throughs. The amazing thing is, I never get sick of it. I have never looked at my copy of Resident Evil 4 and said “Meh, I’ll play something else.” The only other game I can say does this to me is Sonic Adventure, but for completely different reasons. No, there is something amazingly indescribable about Resident Evil 4 that transcends genre and established conventions. It’s the experience on a whole that is so addictive, so masterfully executed.

Playing Leon Kennedy from Resident Evil 2 you must infiltrate a small European village that is supposed to be harboring the kidnapped daughter of the US President. From here, the rollercoaster begins and Leon is subjected to all manner of physically demanding endeavors to save his, and Ashley’s lives. From the village you travel to the castle of a local tyrant, the sewers beneath it and even a military installation on a far island. Each location is so unique in its atmosphere and presentation that you never tire of anything, no environments or scenarios are every re-used, you’ll only ever see puzzles once and each indescribably awesome act of heroism performed by Leon is always unique and exciting. It’s this sense of driving pace and rapid transitions between environments that keeps the game feeling fresh even if you have beaten it several hundred times, like myself. Leon controls exquisitely. His movements are slick and he turns on a dime, his basic move set is pure survival horror. His weapon is readied with the a depression of the R button and it is fired when A is pressed. Holding down the L button readies Leon’s knife which can be a last minute form of defense or a method of saving ammunition or breaking boxes and barrels to collect items.

The enemies Leon encounters all have different reactions to being attacked on specific areas of their bodies. For instance shooting a standard Ganado (Basic sort of zombie like enemy) in the knee will cause his leg to buckle, allowing you to follow up with a swift kick to send him flying into a crowd giving you time to retreat. If you shoot him in the face you will get the same reaction however this will not work on all enemies and some like the Novistadors (flying, insect like things that kind of resemble Drain Demons from Resident Evil 3) cannot be staggered and must simple be overpowered. They can however be counterattacked at certain times. The way the enemies move, act and work together to block you and crowd you is claustrophobic and panic enducing. In lieu of traditional horror effects this method of panicking the player works perfectly.

From regular old enemies to cinematic boss encounters the action in Resident Evil 4 rarely slows down and just when you think you’ve got everything figured out you get burdened with Ashley; The President’s daughter. She is dead weight, but forces you to modify how you play, trying not to harm her and protect her simultaneously from the crowds of enemies that are often just as intimidating as the ones when Ashley isn’t hanging off you like a clingy girlfriend.

Graphically Resident Evil 4 is by far the most beautiful game on the Gamecube. Character’s move fluidly and realistically, there is no ghosting and very few frame rate problems. I was very, very impressed with the way Leon looked and animated from his swaying hair to his immaculately detailed jacket. There is no faulting the aesthetics of Resident Evil 4, nit pick if you must however you will come up with nothing. The only graphical trick the game seems to lack is bump mapping.

The sound design in the game is to be applauded. The enemies don’t speak English with forced European accents, they speak Spanish. They actually speak Spanish. The acting is very competent and the music is exciting, chilling and works seamlessly with the action onscreen to work you into a fevered panic.

The best part about Resident Evil 4 however is the various little extras that are bestowed upon you for finishing the game. When you’ve finished the main scenario which can take anywhere from 7 to 12 hours you are then able to play Ada’s little side story wherein you are tasked with finding 5 Plaga samples on the Island. When this is over you unlock yet another weapon which can be bought and used in successive play throughs of the main scenario. After buying all of the extra weapons and trying out all of the costumes you can then play through Mercenaries Mode, unlock yet another hidden weapon and then go back to the main scenario, buy it, play around with it and then simply poke around and try and find everything the game has to offer. You will NOT find everything in the game the first time through, unless you’ve already watched someone play it or you‘re incredibly meticulous. I’m still finding things I’ve missed in the past. Even if these things are small like treasures or little cache’s of ammunition or money, the point is the game is packed with these little surprises to encourage to keep playing. Which you will, for many, many hours.

The Bad
The bad things about this game are small and piddling, however there are issues related to the fundamentals of the Resident Evil series which cannot be skirted around.

I’ll get all of the specific things out of the way first.

To begin with Resident Evil 4 is letterboxed and if you’re playing on a small CRT, forget about it. Also if you’re playing without component cables on a High Definition television this game is going to look muddy and horrible. Playing it in 480p or on a wide screen CRT TV are your only options to enjoy the visual fidelity as it was intended.

There are many moments in Resident Evil 4 that you will probably hate. I know there are certain parts of the game I’d rather weren’t there at all, they won’t completely spoil your run of the game, but they will frustrate you greatly. Expect Ashley to die a lot and expect to spend a while on the slider puzzle in the Castle.

At first the bosses in the game are intimidating and often times gargantuan struggles that you will just scrape out of in the harder difficulties. However, once you learn that the Rocket Launcher kills everything in one shot, including bosses then you won’t be able to resist the temptation to simply buy one before the fight and blow the boss to hell in the opening moments.

Then there is the elephant in the room. What the hell happened to the Zombies? I was one of the people asking that very same question when this game came out. Sure, it is fantastic however it also has next to nothing to do with the well established Resident Evil mythos. I love the characters but the characters don’t mean anything if the other elements us Resident Evil fan boys and girls love so much are completely missing. The horror is gone, the zombies are gone and the T-Virus is a total no show. I have a big problem with this. It is all well and good having a sort of reboot of your franchise, but completely omitting every single element that was popular with the fans in the first place is akin to spitting in their face. Would it have been so hard to make this game, but with Zombies? Replace the Ganado’s with Zombies and no one would be able to tell the difference. Is it the speed you’re worried about? You introduced Crimson Heads in the remake back in 2002 for crying out loud. To me, the remake of Resident Evil back in 2002 had enough of a contemporary edge to make the series relevant again. It introduced strategic elements like burning bodies, gave us a fluid control scheme and the fantastic defensive weapons system.

The Bottom Line
I hate Resident Evil 4 as much as I love it. I hate it because it ended the franchise I loved so dearly and openly mocks me every single time I turn on the game by calling itself Resident Evil 4. As masterful and technically solid this game is, it still isn’t Resident Evil.

By AkibaTechno on September 11, 2011

Mario Kart 64 (Nintendo 64)

An addicting, unbalanced kart racer.

The Good
First of all if you've never played Super Mario Kart, go and pick it up. Seriously, it's so cheap these days you'd be silly to not have that must have piece of nostalgic brilliance alongside Illusion of Time, Super Mario World and Super Turrican.

Conceived originally as Super Mario Kart R and featuring Magikoopa some tweaking was employed and the finished product was released to pretty unanimous praise. It's easy to see why the game was initially praised. It's incredibly addictive and you won't be able to render yourself from the Nintendo 64 controller until you have had your fill of every track the game has to offer.

I have never been so compelled to stay up to ungodly hours, a bottle of beer in my hand, my friends by my sides on the couch. Raccuous laughter until the sun came up. Absolutely magical.

That's where the magic in this game lies. It really brings people together to enjoy themselves with some of the best multiplayer gaming ever produced.

Outside of the multiplayer there is a fleshed out single player mode. There are four cups to participate in with tracks that gradually increase in complexity as you complete each concurrent one. They are based loosely on characters or places featured in earlier Mario games and while imagination in one might be quite apparent in others there is no imagination at all. In general though, they are quite interesting and fun to drive around on.

Speaking of driving. The racing mechanics are improved, obviously, over the original Super Mario Kart. Each racer, like before, has their own statistics but within weight classes the changes are more or less cosmetic.

Items are much more potent this time around with a selection of items that might displace someone from first or form a shield of shells around your racer.

The graphics in Mario Kart 64 are simple, but traditionally the simplicity of the graphics in Mario games has been charming and it is no different here. Environments are richly detailed and the bright, vibrant colours give everything that warm, cartoon like quality that Mario games exude in spades. It's hard to fault the graphics when they are so stylised, it's like calling the art director a failure for trying to make things look a little different, or in this case; consistent. Kudos.

The Bad
Mario Kart 64 comes apart in only one instance; single play. When you're playing the Grand Prix mode and you're racing on the highest difficulty the AI will constantly ruin you. It stops being fun. When you see racers you blazed past using a golden mushroom rocket up behind you for absolutely no reason you begin to resent the game for cheating.

Rubber banding is cheating, in every sense of the word. In fact, at the climax of the last few races the only way you're going to beat them is by constantly restarting, or luck. Whatever works for you. The dire frustration I felt seemingly getting absolutely nowhere despite memorising every last turn and straight of a course almost ruined the game for me.

Put the difficulty back a couple of notches to 50CC and it's a completely different game. I don't know how they ruined the AI so badly.

The music is pretty hit and miss. Most of the time you don't even notice it, but when you do it's either sounding awful or good. It's really inconsistent.

Saving a ghost run of your best times requires the use of almost an entire controller pak. Buying a new controller pak just for Mario Kart 64 is a little ridiculous. It's like Knights of the Old Republic using up an entire Memory Unit or Jet Set Radio using an entire VMU to store Graffiti.

The Bottom Line
Playing Mario Kart 64, in any context, you're guaranteed to have a good time. With friends, it is an absolute gem of multiplayer mayhem with some brilliant arena's, addicting game modes and outstanding replay value on a whole.

Single player is inconsistent and unbalanced. While fun on lower difficulties when playing on higher difficulties the rubber banding of opposing racers becomes such an issue that it begins to suck the fun right out of the experience.

Balance issues aside, this is still a brilliant game. It looks fantastic, features really solid control and is packed with features, tracks and extras.

By AkibaTechno on September 8, 2011

Burning Rangers (SEGA Saturn)

A solid game and incredible technical achievement.

The Good
If there are any doubts about what the Saturn is capable of then games like this are sufficient to prove that the console had the capacity to compete with competitors.

Burning Rangers was one of the last games ever released for the console in the West. Sega Saturn Magazine followed the development and release religiously and naturally gave it a glowing review upon its release. Having played it through and finishing it several times I can assure you it is outstanding, but it is not without its own foibles.

Burning Rangers takes place in the future putting you in the oversized shoes of Shou Amabane or Tillis (just Tillis); two "Burning Rangers" or "Firefighters with laser guns and jet-packs". At its core the game is a pure action/adventure offering with platforming elements wherein you are tasked with going from A to B, rescuing civilians and putting out fires. The actual fire fighting is simple enough. You simply shoot the flames with your laser either with a single shot or with a charged laser blast for the more intense green, blue or pink flames. There is also simple combat in the game with a few boss fights thrown in for good measure. It's generally quite exciting and well paced, and there is a certain element of randomization that keeps the game feeling fresh.

Characters control with a highly accurate analog configuration. Naturally, the game is compatible with the 3D controller and making precise movements (which is important near the end of the game) isn't overly sensitive. Your character is also equipped with an outstanding jet-pack system that lets them avoid rushing fire, float gracefully over gaps and rapidly dodge left, right, up and down with minimal effort. A couple of touches I especially liked were being able to hang on ledges if you narrowly miss a jump (which, in my opinion, should be mandatory in any platform jumper) and the fact that your character automatically clears small gaps eliminating overly pointless button pressing. They are small things, but nice touches nontheless.

The graphics technology designed by Sonic Team for Burning Rangers is some of the most sophisticated on the console. Environments are rendered with complicated architecture, the camera adequately tracks your character with minimal hang ups and textures are clean, vibrant and varied. Each location in the game is vastly different and full of transparent windows showing off things like beautifully rendered fish tanks and vibrant explosions and fire that casts coloured lighting over everything around your character (and onto your character themselves).

The music in the game is generally quite good. The title track "We are Burning Rangers" is adequate however most of the other music in the game is nothing to write home about. Dialogue is a different story, certain characters are well performed while others don't seem to have put any effort into matching the facial expressions of their avatar on the screen they were watching while recording the lines. More on that later though.

After finishing a mission the game remembers who you have saved and sends you "fan mail" (yes, the Burning Rangers get fan mail) that gives you a bit of an insight into what would otherwise be ancillary characters designed solely as level goals. It's a nice touch actually and although the mail is a little breezy and bereft of content it's nice to see little touches like that personalising your play experience.

The Bad
Burning Rangers has a few niggling problems that don't kill the experience for you but still detract to a certain degree.

While the graphics are outstanding there is a fair bit of clipping going on. Occasionally the camera will swing around and leave you staring into a black room with nothing in it but a few flames burning away. Another camera issue arises when trying to turn and jump backwards. The game will recognise that you're trying to move backwards, but instead of turning you around it activates your jet-pack and just rockets you backwards off of the platform you just ascended. It's not an issue too often, as generally environments are easy to navigate and you do have manual control over your camera. It's worth mentioning nontheless.

I mentioned before the lack of quality voice over work. Characters like Shou and Chris are generally easy enough to listen to but Reed, Big and Tillis are either irritatingly high pitched or off puttingly monotonous. Also, there is a distinct lack of music during gameplay. This could be because of Sonic Team using the DSP for graphical effects or simply to generate atmosphere but music only tends to appear during cutscenes or boss fights.

One last thing is a translation issue that I noticed. Multiple times throughout the game you see Reed's name printed as "Leed". It's just a little instance of Engrish creeping into the game but it's fairly prominent. Also Big's last name is Landman. Big Landman.

The Bottom Line
Burning Rangers is a very impressive technical achievement. The game is replete with stunning graphical effects some thought the Saturn wasn't capable of such as real transparency and coloured lighting. This is no mere tech demo though. Burning Rangers is a really solid gameplay experience with superb analog control, great level design and addicting gameplay that rewards quick reflexes and meticulous searching.

There are a few apparent issues regarding clipping and some audio and translation issues but this does not take any shine off of the amazing graphics, outstanding gameplay and great lastability.

Burning Rangers is an example of how capable the Saturn really was. This, along with games like House of the Dead, Panzer Dragoon Saga and Shining Force 3 were an incredible swansong and is a title not to be missed for Saturn owners.

By AkibaTechno on July 2, 2011

Alone in the Dark (Xbox 360)

More like Alone in the....whatever, this game is terrible.

The Good
Let me briefly explain my personal experience with Alone in the Dark. Back in 2008 I was on the edge of my seat waiting for this game to be released. I had watched all of the trailers, including the impressive technology demo’s highlighting the cutting edge fire effects and improvised weaponry system. With graphics, scope and sound and general game design that seemed pretty cutting edge for the time I naturally pre-ordered the game. I can actually remember the day I went to pick it up. I was, naturally, very excited and had played it briefly that morning before work when I went to trade my receipt for the game. I only had about 15 minutes to spare though and didn’t have a chance to get past the opening. So, later that evening I sat down to play Alone in the Dark and after playing it for a little over 2 hours turned my Xbox off in disgust and returned the game for a refund the next day. Obviously being 3 years ago I can’t remember my exact motivation for returning the game the next day but I believe it had something to do with the frame rate, multiple glitches and a total system wide freeze that made me restart my console.

After that, I thought I had washed my hands of Alone in the Dark forever, frowning upon it at all possible convenience. Recently however I saw it sitting on a shelf in EB Games, brand new, for only $12. I thought about it for a little while and shrugged, thinking that maybe I owed it to Eden Games to give Alone in the Dark another try. To put my bias aside and try to power through the game, faults and all, to get a proper picture of the state of the whole experience. After sitting all of the way through the game now I can say Alone in the Dark is not a game that is totally without merit, it is however, one of the worst games I have ever played. The weird thing is, like watching an episode of He-Man or the old A-Team cartoon I can’t help but have this odd, guilty pleasure affinity to the it.

You play Edward Carnby, waking up with amnesia and unable to transition to 3rd Person mode. After being forced to ruin your thumb blinking to clear your eyes for 10 minutes you then take control of Carnby in what is actually a fairly impressive introduction. It’s exciting, the action is well scripted (which is more than I can say for the dialog) and it does a decent enough job or setting up the mythology that is to come.

You bump into your love interest Sarah who inexplicably decides to accompany the foul mouthed super hero whom she bumps into in an elevator and along with Thiophile (that is his actual name) Paddington you escape to Central Park where he promptly shoots his own face off for no apparent reason. At this point, nothing in this game is making sense. However as this is the good section we will discuss the redeeming features of Alone in the Dark, which are actually in abundance. For the first half of the game ammunition is at a premium and other than for eliminating smaller enemies your gun is completely useless. Therefore you have to rely on the...interesting combat system. It is actually a pretty good idea. The right thumb stick corresponds to what is currently being held in Carnby’s hands and rotating the stick causes Carnby to slowly wave around whatever is in his hands. More violent movements of the stick causes Carnby to lash out either swinging savagely from left to right or delivering a punishing overhead attack.

This degree of control over how a character uses items is a pretty refreshing change from simply hammering the A button to attack. It’s not a perfect system by any means, but it is semi functional if you take the time to understand it.

When ammunition is more common you can begin pouring what I assume is kerosene on your bullets to turn them into flaming bullets. In order to properly kill enemies you have to light them on fire, similar to burning zombies in Resident Evil (the remake) in order to prevent them returning as Crimson Heads. Enemies have fissures running through their bodies which act as weak points that must be shot with flaming bullets in order to properly kill them if no sources of fire are present. It’s a little cumbersome and awkward but for the most part it becomes second nature to just pour some liquid on your bullets before fighting. In all honesty it is hardly worth complaining about.

This brings me onto the awesome inventory system. This is my favourite aspect of the game. Instead of a static inventory screen everything is done in real time by looking inside your jacket. Items are combined by highlighting them, pressing x and then choosing the item to combine the prior with. For instance, combining a bottle of vodka with a rag and lighting it makes a molotov cocktail. You can also hold two things at once in your right and left hands. Depending on the combination of items in your hands Carnby can do different things. For instance with a bottle of liquid in one hand and a knife in the other he can pierce the bottle and leave a lightable trail or with a can of rust remover in one hand and a lighter in the other you have a makeshift flamethrower. Eden Games really put a lot of detail in certain parts of the game from the refreshing inventory system to the different style of combat and the ability to pick up and move almost anything you can see. You can hot wire cars, shoot the entire door handle off of doors (or burn the door down) and approach fights from many different angles using fire in creative ways. I really did enjoy a lot of what Alone in the Dark had to offer. The graphics in the game are very polished, the soundtrack is absolutely outstanding and the DVD style scene selection for quickly returning to certain parts of the game is quite an interesting concept as well (using this scene selection does preclude you from earning certain Achievements).

The predominantly free roaming nature of the game is actually sewn together quite well with intelligently paced exploration of sewer systems, museums, castles and cataclysmic landscapes forged by the horror unfolding in New York City. These areas all feature unique challenges in the form of physics based puzzles, boss fights or logic puzzles. One of my favourite puzzles involves you having to pull a sword off of a wall in order to sever a guards hand in order to open a biometric reader securing a door. This kind of quirky puzzle design abounds in Alone in the Dark and in general the challenge of them is always fair and never outside of the realm of the average persons intellect and patience. I quite enjoyed figuring out how to utilise my inventory in the way that Eden intended to solve these puzzles.

The Bad
That’s pretty much all of the praise I can give to Alone in the Dark. To be brutally honest there isn’t any one particular problem that causes the game to slip up and ruin your day. It’s a lot of little nagging problems that begin to weigh you down in a heady ocean of frustration and broken mechanics.

First of all the story is a wafer thin rehash of every “good vs. evil” narrative ever bashed out on a wash out writers Powerbook. Carnby is one dimensional and the propagation of a relationship with Sarah feels forced and unnatural. On the topic of Sarah she spends the entire game getting kidnapped, whining, almost dying and constantly irritating you with incessant text messages that amount to nothing more than updates on Paddington’s journal that almost always say; “this happened and it made me feel this way now I’m going to do this let’s hope it works”. Carnby is constantly swearing at and abusing what is essentially the devil himself. Either he has giant Viking balls or he is as intelligent as his badly cut hair. One piece of dialog that caught me by surprise at the beginning of the game with its sheer dumbassery was this pearl of writing genius:

SATAN: “Now give me the stone” Carnby: “I don’t have your stone. And fuck you anyway!”

Carnby says this in such a badly paced, stilted and insincere way that is was almost as if the person playing him had no idea what or who he was talking to in the session. It is like the director just poked his/her head in and said “there’s a bad guy and you’re angry! Also, read it like you are thirteen and you are telling your teacher to shove their homework up their ass”. It’s awkward and painful most of the time to listen to the characters interact with one another but it’s not always this god awful, so that’s a plus.

The thing I find most distasteful about Eden’s treatment of the series protagonist is that they have tried to bundle the mythology from the original Alone in the Dark games into the reboot while ignoring the reboot from 2001 completely. The New Nightmare is probably the best Alone in the Dark game that was ever made. The atmosphere was spot on, the story was great and the game play was accessible and satisfying. Why completely skip it over? You can’t just ignore the reboot because you’re rebooting it again if you’re including other mythology from previous games in the series.

The gameplay works when it damn well wants to work and it would appreciate it if you stopped trying to make it work. In general, driving around and exploring Central Park is a relatively painless experience until you realise you are at the mercy of three ruling forces in this game; the A.I, the close to broken engine and the game play. The A.I is brain dead but ceaselessly irritating. Eden throws more enemies at you than rotten fruit at a beheading and there isn’t always fire around to save your bacon. Therefore you end up running around a lot begging for whatever is trying to eat you to leave you alone in a scene reminiscent of a Benny Hill sketch. Enemies jump on your car, pummelling it while completely ignoring basic gameplay rules like “drive fast = leave me alone”, something that is established very early in the game. They will pull you out of your car forcing you to endlessly jump back in and try to hot wire it again only for the same enemy to do it again. Kill it however, and another one shoots out of the ground like some sort of unholy geyser of frustration. Then in plain old normal combat you will constantly get overwhelmed while trying to fiddle around in your inventory, you can assign favourites but honestly they should just leave me the hell alone. You’ll get backed up into corners, knocked around and over, stabbed multiple times and blinded. Combat is so imprecise and difficult to get the hang of that it is borderline infuriating. Like I said before, you can get the hang of it, but I shouldn’t have to “get the hang” of the combat in a survival horror game. When you notice one of the most important things in a game of this genre has been ballsed up so early you know things are only going to get worse from here.

Then there are the various technical problems that I found while playing. I have fallen through floors, failed to grab lines, become stuck in the side of a cliff, become stuck in a door, wedged myself between two stones and found myself unable to get out and finally the game has frozen three times forcing me to restart and lose all of my progress. In all three instances there was literally nothing at all that should have caused those crashes yet they happened. I wasn’t taxing the game and I hadn’t poured lighter fluid on it at this point it just froze. The thing is, when these things do occur they really do come as a surprise because in general, the game is competently enough developed for the most part. It’s like the gaming equivalent of bipolar. You’ll be steaming along with a smile on your face saying “you know what, this really isn’t that bad after all!” actually enjoying the game and feeling quite happy when suddenly you get trapped in the side of a cliff. Then you get sad, then frustrated and angry and ultimately turn off the game. Then you come back to it, that sense of enjoyment comes back and then you fall through the floor, cue frustration and anger. Do you see a pattern emerging?.

The Bottom Line
This game prevents you from enjoying it. It is literally close to broken due to the amount of times I have seen some sort of game breaking bug or freeze mire the experience. There are times when it is very good, the music is great and the graphics are providing some nice realism and atmosphere and then Carnby is sent hurtling into a wall by one of the insanely overpowered enemies who is currently having a physics seizure and flailing around wildly. Suddenly everyone in the room is acting like they have been overcome by seizures and out of sheer astonishment at how terrible the game is you just have to turn it off.

I gave you a try Alone in the Dark, I really did. I thought I owed it to Eden Games to play through the entire thing but I all I have to say to them now is “I want my $12 back”.

By AkibaTechno on May 21, 2011

Jet Force Gemini (Nintendo 64)

A really patchy Action Adventure offering from Rare.

The Good
Jet Force Gemini is an interesting little gem tucked away in the Nintendo 64 library, without a shadow of a doubt. However, as much as I can acknowledge its position as an often overlooked gem I can’t rightly recommend it now. Much of the Nintendo 64 library has aged well. Games like Super Mario 64, Top Gear Rally, Body Harvest and Perfect Dark remain as fresh and entertaining today as the day they were released. Jet Force Gemini however, has not aged well.

That isn’t to say Jet Force is a total washout. After all, there is a good section here for a reason. There’s a good section because every game has a long list of positives and a long list of negatives (or maybe not in some cases...Ocarina of Time, Shenmue etc.). The “good” list for Jet Force Gemini is looooong.

Allow me to demonstrate.

Rare were undeniably the most prolific second party developer on the Nintendo 64. Their games constantly refreshed and revolutionised genres. Jet Force Gemini was an attempt to merge their two distinct styles; mature and childish, into one game. Therefore Jet Force Gemini sits in this interesting little niche all of its own. It’s a game that is, in essence, very violent. However, it maintains a pastel coloured, childish veneer which makes all of the violence seem humorous and cartoonish. In a way, it’s genius as it appeals to literally every type of gamer. This would later raise problems, but that’s for another section.

The game attempts to fuse many different types of genres into one contiguous gameplay experience; run and gun, platform and shooter. It works in each individual respect with varying degrees of success. None of them are perfect, but they all pretty much work on their own. There are three characters, with only one being playable until the two others are met later in the game. Juno is the first character and has the ability to walk over lava. Vela can swim and Lupus the precocious hound can activate little rockets on his paws to float over gaps. Depending on where you are in the story with each character dictates how far you can go with others. It’s an interesting gameplay dynamic and this non linearity bodes well in extending the length of the game.

The basic gameplay experience is pretty similar for each character. You work your way through levels collecting little koala things called Tribals (there’s this whole song and dance about this intergalactic insect tyrant called Mizar trying to take over the galaxy and these little Tribal guys sent the Gemini crew a distress call. A classic and somewhat cheesy “let’s topple the big angry dictator” type story), upgrading your weapons and collecting heads along the way. Yes, you collect the heads of your fallen enemies. Remember when I mentioned before there is a certain mature element to this game?. It manifests itself with splattery explosions, dismemberment and the execution of hostages in equally gory style. Yes, I said gore. Blood flies everywhere, granted it’s pink and green but it’s still blood. It’s hilarious, over the top cartoon violence at its best.

Graphically, Jet Force is a pretty strong game. Running in widescreen mode the super crisp textures and great character skinning lend to the sumptuous visuals you’re treated to in this particular cartridge. Enemies look great and the particle effects are quite competent. I’d say the most impressive thing you’ll notice about the graphics in Jet Force is the sheer scale of things being rendered. Huge outdoor environments go for miles in every direction with complicated cave structures and mountains looming in the distance. Interiors are filled with huge, well textured pillars that light up the expansive halls with some impressive lighting effects. The amount of graphical frippery on display here leaves your inner graphics whore very satisfied. You can’t really fault the way Jet Force looks. It’s just outstanding.

There is tons of play to be found in Jet Force. It’s a long game, full of things to do. Backtrack and find all of the capacity upgrades, do all of the robot missions, play the various mini-games. However, the most enduring feature that will keep you coming back to this game is the multiplayer option. Whether you’re playing as Floyd (the handy robot sidekick) or duking it out in the death match mode (with tons of enemy models to pick for your character in addition to the hero characters) there are tons of things to do in Jet Force beyond the lengthy single player game.

The Bad
The problem with Jet Force Gemini is that it’s a lot of really incohesive, good ideas. It just doesn’t gel. You try to do one thing and the game makes you do something else. That, or the awkward and unwieldy control scheme wrenches control away from you and gets you killed (which happens a lot). It’s seems like Rare was really going out on a limb, experimenting with lots of different ideas. The issue is, there seems to be more experiment here than actual cohesive gameplay experience.

Let’s start with the controls. They’re not great. Remember how I mentioned that there are three distinctive types of regular play?; run and gun, shooter and platform. Well, each one works pretty well on their own, however once you start combining them you run into trouble. For instance, you are happily running around exploring when you come across a group of enemies, now, you know what to do. You begin firing, however as soon as you begin firing the game transitions to the forced “shooter perspective” which turns you translucent and kicks in this reversed control scheme that totally disorientates you. It’s really jarring and really irritating. Try aiming precisely and you run into further problems. The analog control is really twitchy for the precise aiming mechanic. It’s very, very difficult to lay your crosshair over something, and keep it there until you kill it. Most likely, your target will move, meaning you have to try and aim again while also side stepping with the C-Buttons to stop from being torn to pieces by the bastard AI.

So that’s run and gun and shooting, what about the platforming?. It’s not great. It works, in the sense that you can jump on platforms relatively simply but it isn’t always that simple. Vela and Juno control fairly well despite a slippery delay when stopping however the camera is astonishingly bad. It’s lazy, and makes platforming a chore. You have to constantly snap it to your characters back and even when you do this it’ll just end up floating slowly away anyway, or you’ll have to just re-adjust it again when you move 4cm to the right because the slippery control almost makes you fall off a ledge into a pit. Also, who the hell gave Lupus such a wide turning circle?. Actually, a better question, who thought platforming with a dog would be a good idea?.

There are these bursts of brilliance and the game really shines. Then it just stops being fun for a little while, then does something cool, then drops back down to first gear. Levels degenerate into “kill x amount of enemies until door y opens” and “collect red key”. I’m not even kidding, they incorporated the monolithic coloured key system from Doom into this game. Who the hell likes looking for a bunch of random coloured keys to open a door?. Give me a puzzle to open a door, make me kill more enemies, just don’t make me go looking for another goddamn coloured key.

Then there’s the final nail in the gameplay coffin. In order to properly finish Jet Force Gemini you have to collect every single idiotic Tribal in the game. Every single one. I’m not even kidding here. You need to go back to every single level and collect every single one of those suicidal idiot koala freaks or you can void your completion and go and play something that doesn’t force you to tear your own hair out from frustration to finish it. They run in front of an active firefight, or better yet, just stand there waiting to get their heads shot off. Eventually, it just ends up being more fun finding the Tribals you can find and blowing them to pieces with grenades or the Tri-Rocket Launcher.

Look, I’ve written a lot already so I’m not even going to mention the atrocious frame rate, monotonous level design, lack of spoken dialogue and cringe worthy music. Oops, I guess I did. Well, there’s those things too.

So anyway. Jet Force Gemini is just very hard to play in the sense that it makes you want to stop playing it after a little while. I’m pretty darned good at my gaming and I have a fair amount of patience however there a lot of negatives here that really hurt the gameplay to the point of making it a chore to progress through. I might have sounded unfairly critical here however I’m just being honest. When it comes to Jet Force Gemini I just don’t think it deserves to be called a classic.

The Bottom Line
Jet Force Gemini feels like an experiment. It’s a lots of different ideas doing different things at the same time. For the most part, it works. You can play the game, however after a while the glaring problems become really grating. The game plods along, looking great and offering a distinctly unique progression mechanic and an initially compelling fusion of gameplay styles. After a while the samey level design, incohesive controls, boring sound and tedious replaying of levels begins to take its toll. I could only recommend Jet Force to library completionists and Rare fans. To everyone else reading this review, there are many better games you could be playing on the console. I never thought I would say this about a Rare developed Nintendo 64 game, but it’s just not very good.

By AkibaTechno on March 3, 2011

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (Nintendo 64)

Not quite as fluent or progressive as Ocarina of Time but still enjoyable.

The Good
Majora’s Mask is the follow up to the immensely successful Ocarina of Time and it does a pretty good job picking up where the original left off. In this rendition of the Legend of Zelda our hero Link is riding Epona through the woods when his Ocarina is stolen by a mysterious masked Skullkid. Link is transformed into a deku scrub and from that moment he embarks on a quest to thwart the destruction of Clock Town and stop the insidious Skullkid from doing whatever is he is aiming to do while possessed by the mask he is wearing.

The flow of the game is very different to Ocarina of Time. You’re kind of expected to know what to do at all times, bar the helpful introductory tutorial when you begin the game. There is a three day clock and the way time flows affects the game in many different ways. People’s schedules adhere to the clock, things might appear at certain times and places might only be accessible on certain days. You need to memorize all of these things and work out the patterns to finish side quests are further the primary one. After three days have been exhausted Clock Town is destroyed, however you can rewind time whenever you want to the beginning of the first day and it isn’t as game breaking as you would first assume. It’s very easy to pick up where you left off, bar some particular occasions that I will get to soon. The two quest elements; primary and side quest, kind of bleed into each other occasionally and it’s very easy to lose yourself in the sidequests. On the whole, they’re pretty well designed and quite engrossing. Lots of little stories are playing out in Termina and you’re only a very small part of the grand design, even if you are the protagonist.

In addition to the regular Zelda style questing (solving problems thusly opening a dungeon, identifying the next problem and so on...) there are neat gameplay mechanics that have been introduced to differentiate Majora’s Mask from Ocarina. To begin with the emphasis in MM is on mask collecting. Each mask does something different, imbuing Link with a myriad of different special powers. There are also four transformation masks that turn Link into a Goron, Deku scrub or Zora guitarist. There is also another transformation mask that does something very, very cool. But I won’t tell you what it is. Each form has a set of distinct strengths and weaknesses and even when you’ve moved on from the area that requires the mask you’ll have to keep putting it on to solve other problems as they arise. It’s brilliant and keeps the game really refreshing.

The core gameplay dynamics beyond the mask collection and time system are essentially the same. Majora’s Mask is very samey, with many things recycled from the first game. It’s not essentially a bad thing. Ocarina of Time played like a dream and Majora’s Mask feels a lot smoother thanks to the RAM expansion and refined control scheme. Link feels lighter on his feet and performs some (entirely cosmetic) cool flips when he jumps now.

The good graphical elements of Ocarina of Time have been improved with slightly increased texture resolution (it is noticeable, especially in areas like the spring time Mountain Village and Great Bay), slightly improved polygon counts and a slightly increased level of graphical tricks like motion blur and lens flare. You can tell Majora’s Mask looks better than Ocarina of Time, but it takes a little while to notice the improvements. Probably the most telling improvement in the game is the sheer scale of things. The extra RAM is put to good use to render huge caverns, mountains and expansive bays with very minimal pop-up. It’s very, very impressive. The two most impressive looking parts of the games though have to be the rotating dungeon in Ikana Canyon and the beautiful Moon area. The moon is stunning and rendered beautifully.

The Bad
Majora’s Mask is a good game. However, it has its fair share of foibles.

To begin with, A LOT of elements from Ocarina of Time have been recycled here. Not just sound and textures, basically every single (minor) character model from Ocarina of Time has been magically teleported to Clock Town and given a new vocation. It’s all well and good having nice little references to a prior game but recycling nearly every single supporting player so you don’t have to render new ones is a little lazy.
It doesn’t matter what mythology they want to spin to make this move seem less lazy, but from a game design perspective it’s just weak. There are maybe six new characters in Clock Town.

On the topic of recycling Nintendo picked some of the worst moments of Ocarina of Time to put back into Majora’s Mask. The sneaking sections from Gerudo Fortress and Hyrule Castle are in there, as is the “go the wrong way and it’s back to the start” exploration section from the desert. There’s even the Lost Woods with monkeys. Nearly every single enemy from Ocarina of Time is present in Majora’s Mask to the point that it’s actually a surprise to see something new. I mean, to make pirates do you think they rendered people that looked vaguely like pirates?. No, they took the fortress guard character models from Ocarina of Time and called them pirates.

In terms of resources used in the game for every new element there is something that has been recycled and repurposed for use in a different environment. The level of recycling is just silly.

Most of the time Majora’s Mask plays quite well, however I’ve been left scratching my head on several occasions in terms of not knowing what the hell I was supposed to be doing. One particularly frustrating occasion left me having to repeat the same course of action 3 times before I finally figured out I had gone about the entire quest line wrong and I had to go looking for something new. This wasn’t a case of me being ignorant, it was just purposefully vague. It was making me rely on trial and error to progress through the game. In any other Action/Adventure/RPG this wouldn’t have been a problem but because of the way the time system works where everything resets after 3 days it meant I had to constantly repeat the same actions over and over again until I got the sequence right. By that point, tedium and frustration had well and truly set in and I had begun to get sick of the game. Perseverance won the day and I continued, however it should never have gotten to that point. I just don’t appreciate trial and error gameplay. In it, you have to do everything slowly and methodically. In Ocarina of Time each event kind of flowed into the others very elegantly, while there is this constant jarring jump from sequence to sequence in Majora’s Mask as you rigidly adhere to the vague trading sequences.

Also, Goron racing sucks.

The Bottom Line
Majora’s Mask plays well most of the time. It’s a fairly smooth ride with a really interesting time based quest that requires a lot of thinking to progress through in a timely (see what I did there?) manner. The myriad of little story lines at play are really engrossing and the multitude of side quests are real time sinks. The game plays like a really refined Ocarina of Time and design of dungeons and bosses is beyond reproach. I absolutely adore the mask transformation mechanic and collecting all of the other masks is really addictive. In general, Termina is beautiful and rendered very competently. Each compass direction holds its own distinct beauty and mystery with detail crammed into every corner.

It’s just a shame Nintendo spent so much time working out how the time system would work that they forgot to include more new things in the game. Nearly every single NPC model from Ocarina of Time has been repurposed for Majora’s Mask. Nearly every enemy from the original is present in the game, every piece of incidental music, every texture, every item model (bar some noticeable exceptions). Why does Termina have dodongo’s? Why are the pirates dressed identically to the Gerudo Fortress guards from Ocarina of Time?. Even gameplay elements from Ocarina of Time got recycled for use in Majora’s Mask. The game also loses its way now and then, forcing you to constantly refresh the time line to get a simple item collection sequence completed.

With all of my criticism, it makes it seem like a I didn’t like playing Majora’s Mask. That couldn’t be further from the truth. If that was the case, why did I keep turning my Nintendo 64 back on?. As much as I might have liked it to be perfect, this is not a perfect game.

As a sequel to Ocarina of Time though, it doesn’t feel like a sequel. It feels like an extension of the game. It’s just way too samey. Is that a bad thing? Not neccessarily, because you know you’re going to have a good time. That is what is important when playing a game; to have a good time, and that is what you get with Majora’s Mask.

By AkibaTechno on March 3, 2011

Body Harvest (Nintendo 64)

An utterly sublime gameplay experience.

The Good
I picked up Body Harvest for $12 along with Jet Force Gemini and Top Gear Rally. While the other two games are classics in their own right it was Body Harvest that really compelled me to sit with the vacant stare of a drug addict for hours.

To begin with, I'd like to avoid making comparisons to Grand Theft Auto as it's a very inaccurate comparison to make. The two games are totally different. They have one or two similarities however it's not a "GTA clone" or a "GTA style game". Body Harvest is a game with certain open world elements and the ability to drive vehicles, that is where the similarities end.

In Body Harvest you play a time travelling bionic commando named Adam Drake who has to eliminate an insectoid race of aliens trying to annihilate humanity by "infiltrating" certain time periods. So Adam travels to Greece, Java, America and even the future putting his huge orange boots to the insects and ultimately saving the day and then they probably have a party although that is nowhere in the game.

To be honest, you don't play Body Harvest for the story. It's not great, but more on that later. No, you play Body Harvest for the polished and compelling to the point of addictive gameplay.

The basic flow of play is as follows:

<> Adam lands in time period. <> Adam orientates himself, perhaps procuring a vehicle. <> A harvester wave is detected driving Adam to the next narrative point. <> Adam eliminates the harvester wave, solves a problem and moves on to the next harvester wave.

This is repeated until Adam finds his way to the shield generator powering the shield for that local area. You see the aliens strategy is to drop individual shield segments over regions of a country. Within each shield segment are sent harvester insects that collect people, eat them and probably metabolise their delicious energy. If you kill the harvester insect in a particular wave, there is no threat as regular soldier type insects don't seem to attack people. Frankly, you'll end up killing more people than them.

So, that is the basic flow of play. You get a location to check out, kill the harvesters, destroy the shield generator and move on. It's fluid and exciting as combat is generally very well executed. Adam is equipped with a standard pistol from the get go but can pick up shotguns, machine guns and rocket launchers amongst other things. There are also special hidden super weapons which you have to do some adventuring to find. This is where I begin talking about how unique Body Harvest is.

To begin with, the regions Adam journeys around are huge. There are mountain ranges, lakes, small cities and volcano's. Many aspects of a natural landscape are recreated to some degree on the Nintendo 64 hardware. At any point Adam is free to explore either on foot, in the air or on a boat. Adam is fairly slow on foot so finding a vehicle is a necessity if you want to get anything done. There are around 60 different vehicles in the game and you are free to drive anything that isn't locked, normally by some sort of mission you haven't done yet. Each vehicle has its own set of statistics including fuel, armor and weaponry. Most buildings are freely accessible and are fully furnished with interactive decorations like barrels and chests of drawers that often hold helpful items and weaponry. You need to learn to examine everything thoroughly as seemingly innocuous candles and torches could hide functionality like opening a secret passage.

Now, this might seem like a lot of good ideas thrown together without any sort of cohesion or sense. In fact, it all works. It works very well. Most of the time you are gently being prodded from objective to objective, getting in and out of vehicles before coming across a town or structure that you want to explore, all of the while fending off random insect attacks. It all feels very natural and fluid. It doesn't come across as too artificial, which could have made the whole experience feel impersonal and too overly structured. You are encouraged to explore though, and aren't penalised for doing so. You only have to defend people during harvester waves. In any other circumstance you are free to just do whatever you want. It's this refreshing freedom and depth that sets Body Harvest apart and makes it feel so utterly compelling. There is a lot to see and do and you're free to do it all at your own pace. You don't do what the game wants, you do what you want within the confines of the game and it's fantastic.

Body Harvest is very long. Very, very long. If you did everything the game has to offer we're talking about 20 or so hours of gameplay. You will be playing this game for a very long time and even then you WILL want to go back and replay it.

The sound design in Body Harvest is beyond reproach. I mean, the music is absolutely outstanding. I read somewhere that DMA Design at the time had one of the biggest sound departments in the video game industry and it shows. The music tracks in Body Harvest are very clearly MIDI's but it is difficult to tell at first. The melancholy piano and wailing strings that accompany Adam on his journey are incredible and are some of the best pieces of music I've ever heard in a video game. This applies only to the ambient pieces however and not the action tracks which are fairly generic. The tracks that play when you are adventuring and exploring buildings are outstanding and deserve commendation.

The Bad
Body Harvest isn't perfect. It has very obvious flaws, which aren't game breaking, but are very clear to see.

To begin with the graphics aren't very good. The textures are overly blurry, characters are blocky geometric lego people and the frame rate is wildly inconsistent. It's inconsistent to the point of impacting on the gameplay experience more than once. While the aliens tend to have a fair bit of variety in their designs they are still composed of jagged green, brown and orange chunks of varying arrangements. Animation of civilians is atrocious, enemies are jerky and slow to animate and if it wasn't for the fairly competent environmental design and great vehicle modelling the graphics would be a total write off.

The frame rate impacts on gameplay more than once during the course of the experience. Bosses, which are huge, already slow down the frame rate however when they start firing missiles at you and explosions start filling the screen the frame rate dips further. This makes it difficult to fight the boss and will turn you into a free meal for the AI as you wildly try to position yourself in a way that won't get you killed while the game slide shows away, Even outside of boss fights the frame rate hitches wildly in the worst possible situations. When hordes of insectoid aliens fill the screen and you want to make a hasty getaway the frame rate sometimes decides to be a bastard and send you careening off the side of a cliff. It doesn't happen all of the time, but it is too frequent to totally overlook.

Most of the time objectives are fairly straight forward and easy enough to accomplish. Other times however the objectives might be clear but how to actually accomplish them is incredibly obscure and frustrating to figure out. Seemingly unconnected areas on two different places of a map might contain the solution to a problem but you just don't know and end up having to travel aimlessly for up to an hour before getting too irritated to continue. It isn't too prevalent, but like the graphical problems it's too obvious to overlook.

The Bottom Line
Body Harvest is a woefully overlooked classic. It's frustrating that more people haven't played it, because I have developed a deep fondness for this game.

DMA Design put a hell of a lot of effort into this game from the incredibly polished gameplay to the wonderful sound design. It does have it's fair share of problems however they are easy to overlook when you realize how utterly absorbing the gameplay is.

Do yourself a favour and pick this game up, you will not regret it.

By AkibaTechno on February 13, 2011

GT 64: Championship Edition (Nintendo 64)

A flat, uninspired, creatively dead mess of a game.

The Good
What do I like about this game? It was free. It came with my new Nintendo 64 which I had to buy after my last one was water damaged.

If I was to be generous GT 64 has a relatively inoffensive front end with a decent menu. The basic foundation of racing is satisfying enough for about 10 minutes and the illusion of sunlight on your car, buildings and the road is fairly competent.

The Bad
In all honesty GT 64 isn't bad in the way Superman or Bubsy 3D are bad in the sense that it doesn't border on being an unplayable blasphemy in a cartridge. No, it's bad because Imagineer are hacks who don't bat an eyelid at releasing a rushed, unfinished game and whose credits include Hanafuda and Seifuku Densetsu Pretty Fighter. So yeah, they're not great.

GT 64 just feels unfinished and hollow.

The actual driving model is atrociously basic. The physics are laughable. Calling them first generation would be an insult to first generation driving games on the Nintendo 64. You lose barely any speed when crashing into a wall and rival racers bumping into you seems to lack any sort of tangible consequence. Merely tapping the control stick left or right causes your car to fish tail like a garbage truck with two flat front tires.

When you're not marvelling at how basic and inconsistent the driving model is you can be bored to tears by the progression the game offers. Having only 3 tracks with a long and short variation of each you'd assume the game would be short wouldn't you?.

Well, it isn't.

It isn't because in order to race you have to qualify every single time you progress to the next round meaning you have to run three laps before you have to run another three laps to actually race. If the game was actually fun this wouldn't be such a big deal, but it isn't, so it is a big deal. Having to repeatedly drive solo over and over again through Blur Town becomes really tedious very quickly. There is nothing interesting to look at and you clearly won't be enjoying the experience of driving your Imagineer branded garbage truck through the rigidly geometric turns of this ugly, creatively bereft faecal deposit.

All of this negativity and I haven't even gotten onto the topic of the graphics of GT 64. Well, what can I say? They suck. Not only does the game run at a brisk 12 or so frames per second under circumstances where you're the only one driving but when there are more than 2 cars in your general vicinity it dips even lower. What is causing the frame rate dips?. There is virtually no detail in the environments. Occasionally a few boxes which are meant to be buildings pop up in front of you and then disappear almost immediately after you drive away from them. Texture detail on roads, buildings and cars is really, really poor. Textures are stretched, blotchy messes of ill defined origin. Trees look like big, green lollipops and bushes are pretty much the same. To make matters worse there is fog everywhere and according to Imagineer weather effects are tantamount to applying even more fog.

Sound?.

There are some hideous midis that play during the menu screens and nothing while you're racing. Your car makes some nice, albeit heavily compressed noise however when you brake it sounds like someone is shredding paper. There is also a crowd noise that plays when you get near the badly rendered stands however all you can really make out is what sounds like someone rustling a brown paper bag and this one guy gargling water. It's atrocious.

Is there replay value? Who cares? I don't know why you'd sit through the entire thing to begin with.

The Bottom Line
GT 64 has virtually no redeeming features. It's a game that seems rushed, unfinished and it's pathetic that it is all too familiar to the equally uninspired and depressing MRC that preceded it. No wait, I take that back. MRC had at least a tiny amount of imagination invested into the game design with the on road/off road dynamic.

GT 64 is nothing more than a by the numbers racer that doesn't even succeed in meeting the status quo. It's a racer that doesn't even get the racing part right. There is no sensation of speed due to the hideous frame rate and every car controls like an incessantly fish tailing garbage truck. The graphics are vomit inducing mashings of blocks and ultra low resolution textures plastered onto low polygon models of bridges and what I think is meant to be a castle but could be a big, medieval themed restaurant that got dropped into the Europe stage.

I don't like this game at all. There is no reason to like it. Some games that get derided have at least one or two redeeming qualities that save them from being complete and utter write off's. If you pay money for this game however, you are wasting it. There is nothing redeeming here, there is no silver lining. GT 64 is a boring, rushed and uninspired racer that fails to do anything it sets out to do.

Nice one Imagineer.

By AkibaTechno on February 4, 2011

Doom (SNES)

A pointless money grab of a port for a console that didn't need it.

The Good
I recently found my way to playing Doom on the SNES after I decided to take a break from making Master System videos for my Youtube channel. After playing the first two levels of the game I physically couldn't play it anymore. It was actually giving me motion sickness; stress headache and all.

I can appreciate what Williams, and more specifically Ray Landers, were going for when they endeavored to develop a SNES port of Doom. It's an interesting little piece of technology to show off to people curious about the Super FX chip the console uses to generate 3D graphics.

The novelty of playing Doom on the SNES is an interesting one and the instrumentation of the background music is quite good. Also this console port of the game contains every level and enemy from the PC original.

There are just so many concessions it doesn't seem to have a point to it.

The Bad
Doom on the SNES, although finished, feels incomplete.

According to many publications on this port of Doom it contains every level from the PC original and they are all faithfully recreated. A look at the first two levels of the game basically moots this point. While the levels might be faithful in the respect that the physical rooms might be present, lots of things like walls and other aesthetic elements have been removed.

In addition to this, there are no floor or ceiling textures and while this might not seem like a big deal it goes a long way to making the game look ugly and unfinished.

Enemies can only look in one direction eliminating the hilarity of monster infighting. The worst thing about the enemy sprites though is the way they scale. When they are a few feet away from you enemies become a mess of pixels moving around the screen occasionally firing a pot shot at you without changing their animation cycle. It's ugly.

This scaling problem extends to everything in the game, including wall and door textures. As soon as you move away from something, it loses detail and becomes a shifting, ill defined blob. The scaling is really harsh and it not only looks really, really ugly but it actually made me feel motion sick after playing for a little while.

The frame rate is also very low, making Doom guy feel like an 80 year old arthritis sufferer. This is the final nail in the coffin. The game is ugly and unrefined and then the frame rate turns out to be abysmal as well. It renders the game not unplayable, just not fun. It's slow, and ugly and it shouldn't exist.

The Bottom Line
Doom on the SNES feels unrefined and unfinished.

So what if it contains every level from the original Doom? That means nothing while it is busy being slow, ugly and exasperating. It is not fun to play and actively hurts you while you are doing it.

There are very few redeeming features to be found with this port of one of the most important games ever made. The SNES might have a huge library of great games, but this definitely isn't one of them.

By AkibaTechno on January 11, 2011

Headhunter (Dreamcast)

Without a doubt, one of the greatest games on the Dreamcast.

The Good
To begin with, I'd like to assert that Headhunter is by no means a Metal Gear Solid killer, nor was it ever intended to be as such. What Headhunter presents is a sad and tantalizing glimpse of the first steps of Dreamcast development that would have seen it catch up to the other truly "next generation" consoles like the PS2, Xbox and Gamecube. Headhunter presents gameplay and design elements once thought either unsuitable to the Dreamcast or impossible by those waiting for the next big thing (in this case the PS2.) Shenmue was the game that proved that the Dreamcast was powerful and if consumers had given it a proper chance Headhunter proved it had the potential to compete.

To begin with, Headhunter is built around fairly linearly followed action/adventure paradigms. However instead of simply feeling like a carbon copy of Syphon Filter or even Metal Gear Solid Amuze elaborated on established formulas and created a package of fundamentally next generation ideas wrapped in the comfortable veneer of a "current" generation action game.

The world of Headhunter is split up into districts which are freely explorable during certain portions of the game. These areas are very well rendered, feature traffic that stops at lights and obeys road rules and flows naturally and realistically. The city is explorable solely on Jack's motorcycle with only your destination or the LEILA offices explorable on foot. This creates a feeling of direction and purpose, eliminating any inessential wandering and driving the player to achieve their goals. Knowledge of the layout of the city is paramount during certain portions of the game where you are forced to speed through it with a very tight time limit.

Jack himself controls using a combination of next generation and "current" generation mechanics. His movement is incredibly fluid and realistic, being able to stick to walls and roll to avoid gun fire. His firing is controlled using a lock on system that does not allow total freedom in aiming but does eliminate the frustration of unnecessarily missed shots. The bike controls are more of a mixed bag, holding down the right trigger causes Jack to pop a wheelie and accelerate quickly while gradually depressing it causes him to slowly build up speed. Popping a wheelie means you lose control of the bike however, so you must learn to mediate how and when you accelerate.

One of the major draws of Headhunter is how the world is accessed. Certain portions are locked by Jack not having the necessary clearance to enter. To unlock higher clearance Jack must perform well in LEILA tests. These tests take place in virtual reality and judge how well Jack handles a motorcycle, how stealthy he is, his proficiency in armed combat and how well he can combine skills to overcome an enemy force. This is an interesting way of pacing the game and the LEILA tests themselves are cleverly designed.

Headhunter performs well as a game that bridges the gap between generations, giving players a glimpse of how well the mechanics of the next generation would function on the Dreamcast without forcing the player to immediately adapt to a whole new methodology of playing games. The graphical competency of the Headhunter engine only furthers my point about the untapped potential of the console. Headhunter looks amazing, with realistic environments and gorgeous high resolution textures and effects like rain and reflection. Tiny incidental details like a computer, an engine or a chair have had the utmost care in rendering, making the world of Headhunter a believable one full of believable things. When on the road the variety of buildings, attention to detail in car textures and environmental detail almost make Headhunter a faultless visual treat.

The soundtrack to Headhunter is one of the prime examples of the fusion of next generation with "current" generation. The voice acting is competent, if not a little cheesy at times. The star of the auditive experience is the music. Richard Jacques has composed a soaring, almost absurdly patriotic set of orchestral pieces that catapult you into Jack's shoes. These pieces sound like they belong in a big budget, Hollywood motion picture. The constant procession of ultra stylish music never failed to endear me further to this beautiful package.

The Bad
With so many positive aspects to this game you'd obviously be wondering what exactly is wrong with it. The issues lie within the "current" generation mechanics that are fused with the next generation ones.

To begin with, as impressive as it is to drive around L.A there is very little to see or do. The ambitious notion of being able to freely drive around the city comes at the expense of the city not feeling alive. There are no pedestrians and the impersonal feeling of not being able to walk up to buildings makes it seem like both the city is dead and nothing more than a solid slideshow designed for you to simply crash into periodically. Speaking of crashing, the LEILA system which relies on you earning skill points through driving is well intentioned but ultimately frustrating. It gets to a point at the end of the game where you must accrue 1300 points, after being forced to drive like a maniac through the city slamming into cars and walls due to the imprecise nature of the motorcycle control. It gets to a point where you begin to feel cynical towards this system as it is stopping you from doing what you want to do and that is control Jack and advance the story.

While everything is rendered with the utmost detail some enemies animate rigidly, lack detail and appear somewhat rectangular which makes them look like robots dressed as bikers. This isn't a problem later in the game however due to the fact that you're fighting these guys, who mysteriously disappear when they die most of the time it is very noticeable.

Boss battles tend to drag as you are constantly killed by their unstoppable barrage of attacks. It's not that the bosses are hard, it's that you must the exact pattern and methodology for killing them or you'll constantly be forced to restart the fight. Additionally bosses have way too much health and a lot of the time you'll come out of a fight with only a small amount of health. The fact that Jack uses an auto-aim system to fight as opposed to free control over his view also complicates matters as if there are enemies around or destructible pieces of environment Jack will often aim at those and suffer wounds from the boss.

Load times are a little excessive. Not enough time was spent trying to minimize these and due to this problem every time you go from district to district or room to room you must sit through a load that can be anywhere from 15-20 seconds. This segmentation is exasperating after a while and even though it won't make you turn the game off, having to sit through load after load after load begins to grate after a while.

The Bottom Line
Headhunter stands as a testament to both great game design and a platform that could have launched ambitious development on the Dreamcast. We all know this didn't happen however and as such Headhunter is a very sad game to play. You see the potential, yet it was never given a chance to be tapped.

The fusion of "current" and next generation elements gave players a chance to taste the future while remaining somewhat within their comfort zones. The game controls fluidly and intuitively, Jack is a delight to use and shining graphical accomplishments of Headhunter are to be applauded. The soundtrack by Richard Jacques puts you in Jack's shoes and the level of developmental competency in this package cannot be denied.

The issue is Headhunters most ambitious features are also its most flawed. L.A feels dead and being unable to get off Jack's motorcycle lends to a feelings of watching a slideshow zipping past you, the flawed skill point system showed promise but ended up being frustrating instead and the auto-aim system augments the irritation caused by the already frustrating boss fights. The level of competency in regards to the engine also comes at the cost of lengthy load times which will have you sitting around while your trigger finger is itchy.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the Headhunter, it's just that some of the ideas were not given enough development and QA time. What we have is a fantastic game which gives credence to the notion that the Dreamcast had so much more to show us, so much we will never see.

By AkibaTechno on December 30, 2010

Dino Crisis 2 (PlayStation)

An exciting, varied and addictive departure from the original.

The Good
The original Dino Crisis was something special. It was Shinji Mikami's first survival horror game rendered in 3D and his first survival horror game in general outside of the Resident Evil series. Dino Crisis featured a lot of game play mechanics that would be introduced in later Shinji Mikami works and although these things had been used before (quick turn, firing while walking - see: Deep Fear) Dino Crisis popularized their use.

In Dino Crisis Mikami created a new niche which he personally dubbed "panic horror". It was interesting, and although it doesn't contain zombies Dino Crisis was, in a lot of ways, scarier than Resident Evil.

Dino Crisis 2 was about as big a departure from the original formula as Resident Evil 4 was from the series leading up to Nemesis and Code Veronica. Much has changed, but a lot has stayed the same. You still fight dinosaurs, you still play as Regina and you still have a constant sense of dread and panic about you as you romp around the jungle. The way panic is elicited in the player is different here though than in the original game.

In the original Dino Crisis panic and apprehension was generated by dinosaurs following you into rooms, suddenly jumping through windows or being basically invincible (see: T-Rex) but Dino Crisis 2 is different. In Dino Crisis 2 you are overwhelmed by dinosaurs. They spawn almost endlessly from the jungle around you and while it's a little unrealistic, it certainly gets your heart rate up.

Unlike the original, which is a wholeheartedly survival horror affair with the requisite save rooms, items boxes and inventory management Dino Crisis 2 is more of an action orientated affair. It isn't necessarily about horror anymore, but the panic is still there. Your guns hold insane amounts of ammunition and you will use it, especially on the harder difficulties. You can hold a sub weapon in tandem with your main weapon which is activated by pressing the circle button. This is used as a defensive measure or to solve puzzles. I liked this mechanic, it kept things interesting by making me think about what I had equipped. It's not perfect, which I will discuss later, but it keeps the game interesting.

That is one of the hallmarks of Dino Crisis 2; it remains interesting and fresh throughout the entire experience. The game play is constantly being mixed up. One minute you're blasting dinosaurs in the middle of a steamy jungle and the next you're shooting triceratops from the back of a jeep. Each of these little departures from the main formula is well balanced and a lot of fun. My personal favorite was using a flare gun equipped as my sub weapon to rain hell down onto allosaurus trying to block my path to Edward City.

The core game play is solid enough. Regina and Dylan control very much like Regina did in the original Dino Crisis. The controls are essentially identical, however she moves a lot quicker and of course, has access to sub weapons. Your character will auto aim at the nearest enemy and while it doesn't always work, it is handy when a dinosaur is off screen.

This brings me to the biggest deviation from the original formula; the use of pre-rendered backgrounds. I personally think it's a good thing, I have no qualm with it. The backgrounds are beautifully drawn and although they are just drawings, they are anything but static. Mysterious particles float in the air, shadows dance and water shifts. It's nothing like what Square achieved with Parasite Eve 2, but Capcom did an admirable job of providing players with a beautiful, believable environment to ramble around in. The static camera angles combined with the emphasis on action does take some getting used to, make no mistake. You do acclimatise to it though, and when you do you won't notice the difference or you just plain won't care.

Other than the beautiful pre-rendered backgrounds Dino Crisis 2, from what I can tell, uses a very similar rendering engine for everything polygon based as Dino Crisis. Regina looks fundamentally identical, if not a little smoother and Dylan looks quite good as well. The scale of some of the dinosaurs is very impressive and there were virtually no drops in the frame rate while the massive end boss was being rendered. It's all very smooth, quick and pleasing to look at.

The soundtrack, on a whole, is fairly solid. There are some real standout tunes and some excellent ambient work (3rd Energy Facility comes to mind...) and if you're a Dino Crisis veteran every guttural scream, squawk and screech emitted by the dinosaurs in the game will be familiar.

Dino Crisis 2 doesn't lack replay value. There is an interesting little Dino Coliseum you can unlock complete with the original roster of characters from Dino Crisis. You can also unlock several of the dinosaurs to fight with and go head to head with another player.

The Bad
Coming from Dino Crisis I would be remiss not to mention how different everything is. It plays similarly, albeit with a different rendering method for the backgrounds, and this takes some getting used to. This is especially true when one considers the way the game throws dinosaurs at you like rotten fruit at a beheading. I loved the challenge, but someone expecting a repeat of Regina's first adventure in the jungle will be sorely disappointed. If you don't enjoy action games, you will NOT like Dino Crisis 2.

One of the biggest issues I could see is dinosaurs flying off the edge of the screen onto your character. They are pre-defined spawn points, but unless you know they are there you will get torn to pieces. I'm not criticizing the new challenge or game play style, but this kind of cheap shot mechanic does not fly with me.

I would have liked weapons to be balanced a bit better. At a certain point in the game when you can buy the anti-tank rifle and heavy machine gun respectively you have essentially turned yourself into a walking weapon of mass destruction. I would have liked weapons to have specific advantages and disadvantages that played into the characteristics of the dinosaurs. Instead it's a one size fits all kind of situation. I think that would have worked well here, but unfortunately that isn't the case.

The Bottom Line
Dino Crisis 2 is a departure from Dino Crisis, but not in a negative way. Shinji Mikami keeps what made Dino Crisis so fantastic; the panic, and presents it in a different way. You're constantly surrounded by dinosaurs and the only way you can survive is by shooting your way out. You will get overwhelmed, torn to pieces and will keep coming back for more.

Don't expect this game to be anything like Dino Crisis. Apart from some engine and control similarities, these two games are really nothing alike.

By AkibaTechno on December 30, 2010

Virtua Cop 2 (SEGA Saturn)

Probably the greatest light gun shooter there is.

The Good
Developers have a very interesting complex when it comes to producing light gun shooters. They are obsessed with including things like a story and intricate plot lines and cinematic quality soundtracks.

Time Crisis 4 was laughable because it took itself too seriously and the more recent House of the Dead games are trying to build on a story that wasn't even there to begin with.

Virtua Cop and Virtua Cop 2 stand as a testament to light gun shooter perfection. You're just a cop, who shoots things and things explode and the credits roll.

Virtua Cop 2 takes place across three different crimes committed by an evil consortium of criminals trying to destroy the city. They get up to all sorts of nefarious shenanigans from robbing a jewelry store to taking a ship's crew hostage.

So, naturally, the police get involved. That's it, that's the story. You shoot bad guys, shoot out car tires, shoot exploding things. It's like all of the best moments from an action movie sewn together with the option to occasionally take alternate routes to extend the replay value of the game.

The game isn't particularly long, but it doesn't need to be. You're there to just shoot guys. Had a hard day? Go and shoot some criminals. Wife giving you a hard time? Go and shoot some criminals. You don't want dialogue and exposition and unskippable cutscenes, you just want to be a badass with a gun and a license to kill. The funny thing is though, you are encouraged not to kill anyone. If you shoot a criminal's gun out of their hand you incapacitate them and get what is called a "justice shot." Of course you are also rewarded for spinning them in the air with multiple body shots. So, make of that what you will.

That is where Virtua Cop 2 nails it. It doesn't matter that the game looks fantastic, with incredibly smooth character models, super crisp textures and great, dithered explosions. Virtua Cop 2 plays perfectly. That is all that matters.

With a controller the game plays fine. The crosshair is a little sluggish at first but can be tweaked to your liking. You can speed the crosshair up and reloading is achieved by a simple movement of your thumb. I can see some people actually preferring using a controller to using a light gun.

Replay value is through the roof with this game. In addition to being able to play with classic Virtua Cop threat markers and scoring you can also change things like your firearm and also try playing on harder difficulties. Maybe you'd like to play the game completely mirrored? The option is there, why not use it?

The Bad
Virtua Cop 2 is short. Very short. It's a 20 minute game from start to finish. If you judge games on how long it takes to initially finish them then you're not going to be impressed.

Depending on your skill level Virtua Cop 2 is either going to be very easy or very hard. The earlier parts of the game are a cake walk in the tea park however later in the game you get virtually no warning before you're fired upon. The game rewards memorizing patterns, bear that in mind.

Musically this is a very weak game. The sound in general is quite terrible. I hate to say it but the sound samples are scratchy, badly compressed and the music is more miss than it is hit.

The Bottom Line
Virtua Cop 2 is undoubtedly the single greatest light gun shooter in existence. Sega knew how to make them back then, forgoing a pointless story for some non stop action and excitement. What you might perceive as shallowness is actually a value that has all been lost in recent years. Virtua Cop 2 is intended to be fun, for short periods, over and over again.

It has depth for those that wish to seek it, it's got replay value and it's got charm. Virtua Cop 2 belongs in your library, pick it up when you can.

By AkibaTechno on September 24, 2010

Halo: Combat Evolved (Xbox)

O.k, here is my real opinion on this classic game.

The Good
The fact is, when I wrote my last review for Halo: Combat Evolved I flat out lied. UnicornLynx had recently written his own take on the game, out rightly condemning it as gimmicky, convoluted and full of terribly in cohesive elements. Eager to impress him I wrote my own take on the game, despite the fact that I have loved the Halo series for years. Recently, I've felt the emphasis on multiplayer has come at the expense of the campaign but the early years are something to be appreciated.

So, I wrote the review, condemning one of my favourite games. Lying in bed this morning I remembered something I usually tell people about games; "Don't take reviews as gospel, and don't base your opinion on other peoples. There may be enough elements in a game that appeal to you more than someone else. This means while others might think it's terrible, there is something about it that endears that game to you." There, I had totally back flipped on the philosophy I came up with in order to appease someone that has distinctly different tastes from me. However by that same measure just because Halo isn't some obscure adventure game from a Russian studio no one has ever heard of before doesn't mean it is terrible.

So, I apologise for intentionally deceiving people. Here is my real opinion on Halo: Combat Evolved.

I first played Halo in 2002. I was 13 and at the time I was still enjoying the back catalogue of bargain Nintendo 64 games that the market was awash with following the release of the GameCube. I was invited to a friends house (how the hell do I remember all of this?) and the first thing he did was fire up his new Xbox so we could play Halo. My jaw dropped. This was the most beautiful game I had ever seen in action. It was the first game I had ever gotten a real "next generation" feel from. I felt like this was meaningful progression.

So, Halo takes place immediately after the Pillar of Autumn comes out of hyperspace following the destruction of Planet Reach. The ship is assaulted by the mysterious Covenant of alien races that has some sort of issue with humanity being in their neck of the woods and you, as the cybernetically enhanced "Master Chief" manage to escape with the ship's AI loaded into your helmet.
You crash land on the mysterious Halo ring world that is simply floating mysteriously in space and embark on a mission of resistance and then escape when the tables turn later in the game.

Halo is a game that, instead of feeling like multiple parts thrown together in an in cohesive mass of good ideas, feels like an actual refined package. The HUD elements, movement and combat have all be refined beyond reproach. The recharging shield concept was pretty revelatory (pretty much every FPS uses a variation on it now) and the combination of pulse pounding combat and the ability to melee attack made for some awesome battles. Then there is the seamless integration of vehicular combat with the on foot shenanigans and expansive battle fields which render with very minimal impact on the frame rate of the game.

The story was complicated (for the time) and featured a cinematic quality soundtrack with very competent actors providing a voice for each character in the game. The way the exposition unfolds also has this grandiose, cinematic feel to it. I don't mean it's complicated like "Half Life" (vague and confusing) I mean the developers put a lot of effort into making Halo seem like a movie.

There are subtle elements like playing the game that are easy to miss. To begin with, when you look out into the distance on the Halo ring you can actually see it arcing up into the atmosphere. Below you is a vast sea that seams to stretch forever. The forerunner structures are huge and complicated and while this becomes a detriment later in the game the architecture is both beautiful and monolithic. Such care went into the conception of Halo, that is why it deserves such praise.

The Bad
To begin with, there are moments that just seem to go on forever. Covenant drop ships just seem to keep coming and you begin to silently ask the game to let you continue playing. This is irritating.

The huge waves of enemies are great, however occasionally you will get cheap shotted by some Grunt standing behind the Elite's with a plasma grenade or a bunch of needler shots. You will then consequently go flying into the air and back to the last checkpoint.

There are locations that tend to get repeated in the game and unfortunately these particular locations are some of the most boring locations imaginable. Long purple corridors that open into longer purple corridors with a bunch of locked doors or expansive Forerunner corridors that lead to additional Forerunner corridors. There are only two points in the game where this happens, but they are very tedious and depending on how many times you die can take up to half an hour to complete. Backtracking is a bit of a problem in Halo, just be warned.

The Bottom Line
So, I love Halo. I love it because of nostalgia and I love it because I appreciate the effort Bungie put into trying to make a really different style of FPS. The elements like seamless integration of on foot and vehicular combat, the recharging shield, expansive environments, aggressive AI of multiple enemy types, vastly different weapons and beautiful soundtrack all give Halo credibility as a true classic.

There are problems like any game; the frame rate dips now and then, the enemy AI will occasionally cheap shot you, environments drag sometimes and the flood are irritating (while still being necessary for the plot) however these problems are fairly minor compared to how enjoyable the rest of the game is.

This is a must have for Xbox owners.

By AkibaTechno on September 19, 2010

Halo 2 (Xbox)

O.k, I lied, I love this game.

The Good
O.K., if you're not keeping up with current events here is what is going on. UnicornLynx hates Halo, I love Halo. I wanted to impress him, so I wrote a scathing review of Halo and Halo 2 after he posted his. It was silly, sycophantic nonsense and a complete denial of my philosophy of playing what you like, not what others like.

Halo 2 is an excellent follow up to the original classic released in 2001. The idea behind the game is that Master Chief made it back to Cairo Station, which is basically a big gun orbiting Earth, after the destruction of the Halo ring and the decimation of the Covenant forces who tried to cleanse the human (and flood) infestation on it. Unfortunately, they find Earth, destroy the gun platforms and begin invading...one place. No one knows why, they just are. As Master Chief, it is up to you to defend Earth, after all, she's all we've got. But it's not just humanity that is fighting tooth and nail in this instalment you have the added benefit of seeing the events of the game also unfolding from the perspective of the Covenant through the eyes of a scapegoat Elite dubbed the "Arbiter." The Arbiter levels are some of the best in the game and include the plasma sword for the first time as a usable weapon.

The first thing you notice upon beginning the Halo 2 campaign is how much Bungie overhauled the engine in anticipation of the game's release. The texture resolution has improved, the general scale of everything is three times what is was in the original Halo and the combat has been super refined. Your jumping is less floaty, your melee attacks are quicker and more precise and you can dual wield certain weapons to form devastating combinations.

The flow of the game is a lot different to the original Halo. You begin on Cairo station, moving to Earth and finally to the Delta Halo ring that you end up travelling to along with a Covenant Battle cruiser. There is great variation in the level design of Halo 2, the meandering through identical corridors has been eliminated and back tracking is non-existent. It's a constant push forward through the Covenant forces.

There is a lot to like about Halo 2, like the increased vehicle presence, the ability to hijack vehicles and the additional weapons like the SMG's (two of these things become handheld lawnmowers) while the pistol has been replaced by a more balanced "Magnum" which is more of a sidearm than anything. Vehicles play a bigger role in the game, so to does finding alternate routes through levels (such as jumping across rooftops in New Mombasa.) Basically the way you travel through levels has had a lot more thought put into it, making the trips far more interesting than the original Halo.

Graphically a lot of new things can be found in Halo. Sun glare was present in Halo but it is far more pronounced in Halo 2, the resolution of textures is vastly increased and bump mapping has been incorporated to great effect in the engine. Building architecture is far more complicated and interested and while it provides some great eye candy it also provides players with lots of tactical options when it comes to approaching combat situations.

The soundtrack is as fantastic as ever. Martin O'Donnell knows how to produce some amazingly cinematic pieces, blending them with electronic beats and the occasional roar of a guitar to mix things up. It's great stuff. Additionally the actual characterisation of the Covenant and the inclusion of spoken lines for them means some excellent voice actors join the mix and lend credibility to their race beyond a bunch of moving targets.

The Bad
While I appreciate the lengths Bungie went to creating more complicated, interesting levels it is easy to lose track of where you are supposed to be going and occasionally get turned around. It doesn't happen very often but it's irritating when it does.

When using AI team mates on your mounted guns they tend to never hit anything, meaning you have to trust them to drive your vehicle, which is an even more hazardous prospect.

The story peters out in the end to a sort of whimpered finale that leads into a sequel. It's not a definite ending, not a huge deal, but if you don't have an Xbox 360 being able to see the conclusion is not an option for you.

The Bottom Line
Halo 2 is a fantastic game that will take you around 12-15 hours (depending on your skill level) to finish. Honest refinements to the formula such as dual wielding, the ability to hijack vehicles, the refinement of combat specifics like melee attacks, the addition of weapons like the SMG's and Plasma Sword lend to some variation in your technique and emphasis on multiple routes and exploration is refreshing.

There are few things to fault in this game and the things that I do fault are minor and niggling.

Halo 2 isn't perfect, nor is it the best game ever made. I wouldn't even class it amongst the best games ever made. It is however a good, honest sequel with great refinements to an already engaging formula.

By AkibaTechno on September 19, 2010

Outtrigger (Dreamcast)

An insanely addictive shooter for Dreamcast fans.

The Good
I have to hand it to the Dreamcast, on top of being one of the most beloved consoles of all time, it also managed to feature some of the most respected FPS franchises of all time despite the obvious flaw of only having one analog stick. While most Dreamcast shooters (including Outtrigger, but I like to play with a controller) took advantage of the keyboard and mouse peripherals that were available for the console other shooters, like Outtrigger, gave the player a pretty cracking set of customized controls to make playing an FPS on the Dreamcast controller a bit less of a chore.

Outtrigger is an adapted NAOMI game about a counter-terrorism unit. You have the choice between 4 characters with their own distinct weapon load out. You also have the option of mixing and matching weapon load outs with various character models to create your own unique character, which can be used in any mode. You could then take your character into the Arcade or Mission modes or head online (which you can STILL do if you have some like minded Dreamcaster's willing to create a server) to waste hours with this game. It's that addictive, even playing against bots (thank you sweet baby Jesus for AM2 including bots) you can find yourself just sinking hours into the frantic, over the top shooting action this game provides. There are also little touches here and there that let Outtrigger transcend any accusations of being simply another Quake 3 knock off. Every time you kill someone, they drop a coin, which is freely collectible by anyone. Collecting this coin adds one to your score. This means no one player can dominate a game, it's a great equalizer, if you can get the coin before the other player.

So, the game plays great, with tons of great modes and excessively customizable characters. How does it control on the Dreamcast controller? Pretty good, not perfect, but pretty good. My favourite configuration was using the analog stick to look around and pressing the face buttons to move and strafe. It's a little awkward at first, and you have to get used to not being able to look directly up, but once you overcome these quibbles you'll never scoff at single analog FPS play again. I'm fairly sure Quake 3 on the Dreamcast had this configuration too, but I haven't actually had the chance to play that game yet (don't worry I do plan on getting around to it) to find out.

I've seen some pretty good looking Dreamcast games, but Outtrigger has to be one of the best looking games in the library. On top of running at 60 fps (I'm not kidding) it looks insanely good with detailed character models, realistic textures with minimal blur and some great explosion effects.

The music and sound effects are fairly decent in Outtrigger. The theme for Library, Oedo and the Refinery level are pretty good but the rest is fairly stock, I think it's a matter of taste whether you like the music or not. The sound effects fare better, being better than average.

The Bad
The control scheme is awkward, if you don't have a keyboard and mouse going from that or dual analog to single analog and face button control is awkward. It takes a while to get used to and before facing anyone I'd recommend running through some of the missions or just face off against bots to get an idea of how the game plays. The lack of vertical view is also a bit of a downer, meaning the difference between a kill in other FPS games to your quarry escaping in Outtrigger.

There are lots of modes, but they can be breezed through in a few hours if you're getting good at the game. Also some of the darkened levels are irritating, even with the presence of Night Vision Goggles (which are very cool.)

The Bottom Line
Outtrigger is a great game. To me, it feels kind of like playing the FPS equivalent of Power Stone. It's a fast, frantic, insane experience with factors that can easily equalize a game and stop people from dominating. There are tons of modes and tons of customization options which translates to lots and lots of replay value.

The game looks great, sounds good and although it takes a little while to get used to, Outtrigger is one that shouldn't be missed by Dreamcast fans.

By AkibaTechno on August 1, 2010

Black (Xbox)

Sad, sweaty gun porn.

The Good
Black is one of the worst games I have ever played. The developers tapped into that shameful, primal desire to shoot things and blow shit up and ended up creating this total joke of a game. Therefore it is funny to play this game in short bursts. That's a positive attribute I suppose.

The gun models in Black look brilliant and the fantastic faux HDR and depth of field effects are very impressive.

The Bad
Black is at its core nothing more than gun porn. It's one of the shallowest, most vacuous things I have ever played. You play someone who might as well just be Doom guy running around eastern Europe blowing up slums while killing the exact same Russian guy over and over again.

The laughable thing is, there is supposed to be a plot here. There is an arms smuggler known as the William Lennox who is part of some sort of overwrought, ridiculous operation called Seventh Wave trying to fuel countries in political turmoil with arms. It gives me a headache even thinking about the trite, Tom Clancy-esque crap that the game relies on to carry the flimsy gameplay.

If you REALLY want to play Black, you will play it for the shooting. Criterion not only put no effort into providing a compelling FPS experience they actually omitted things like jumping and the ability to OPEN DOORS, most likely to fit in some more pew pew sound effects. This effectively turns your character into a camera on a stick with a gun sticking out of it. There is not one ounce of realism in this game. I don't expect my games to be ultra realistic, but by 2006 I would expect to be able to jump and open doors in a first person shooter. Oh, I'm sorry, you can open doors but you have to shoot them with a shotgun to dislodge them from their hinges. You don't have a shotgun? Too bad you never learned how to turn a doorknob.

The level design is atrocious, amounting to nothing more than a monotonous, endless slog through eastern European slums, refineries and asylums. There are no level goals, no objectives, only the exact same collectibles every single level and a hilarious parade of this identical Russian guy.

I'm not exaggerating. It's basically the exact same person every single time, whether he is dressed in riot gear, an army uniform or some sort of other generic garb. How do I know? They all act and sound identical. The AI is absolutely woeful. Your enemies will walk up to you firing their weapon or slide in and out of cover. In a game that offers nothing more than simple shooting having bad AI is not a good thing. There is one hilarious example of the crappy AI that stands out from all of the others. There is a riot shield bearing soldier later in the game, who kneels down and protects himself from grenade blasts when you throw one near him. However he just totally ignores you while he waits for the grenade to explode. What does this mean? It means he leaves his back completely exposed letting you simply throw another grenade at him blowing him to high hell.

One last thing. When you shoot people in Black, which is pretty much the only thing you can do, they emit sparks and small puffs of smoke and fall down in an awkward, comically timed scripted animation when they die. It's like you're fighting hordes of Putty Men from Power Rangers.

The Bottom Line
Black is a game that could only appeal to the most testosterone intoxicated of players. It has virtually no substance, no variation in level goals, no conceivable objective system, ugly environments with no variation and an endless procession of the most brain damaged AI opponents I have ever faced. The control system is archaic and inconceivably rigid and the story is one of the most hackneyed I have ever witnessed.

The only redeeming feature of Black are the gun models and nice lighting effects. That's not a very long list is it?

By AkibaTechno on August 1, 2010

Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon (Wii)

A profoundly moving game, unlike any I've ever played.

The Good
Fragile Dreams was one of those games I didn't intend on buying until I ended up walking past it in the store. I had read the reviews, listened to the word of mouth and watched the footage. My mind was not totally made up. There were reasons I considered buying the game; the Japanese dub, the immersive atmosphere and the impressive implementation of the IR pointer on the Wii remote as a flashlight. There were other games out there though, yet I inexplicably ended up settling on this. I'm glad I did as well, as I was constantly moved, almost to tears, by this beautiful game.

Fragile Dreams tells the story of a lonely 15 year old boy named Seto. After the old man who was taking care of him died he was left with nothing other than a strange crystal and a note telling Seto to head towards the red tower that punctuated the night sky outside of his observatory home. So Seto set off through the empty cities and deserted streets, scrambling through the crumbling relics of abandoned buses and cars, festooned with weeds like the empty buildings all around him. Soon Seto came across a young, silver haired girl who runs away and triggers in him a desire to be with someone, anyone. Seto's loneliness spurs his journey and fuels his resolve as he trudges through the mysterious world of ruin and abandon.

Seto's predicament is incredibly profound. I found myself so connected to him, relating to his situation in a very tangible manner. Seto is after all completely alone, yet he repeatedly reminds himself that he cannot be the only one who feels this way, convinced that others out there are searching just like him for companionship in an otherwise cold, lonely world. I find myself thinking this a lot, and a lot of the sadness I felt through the game was based on that empathy that Seto's predicament generated. In my personal situation, in a world of billions of people I am effectively alone. Those walking on the streets with me may as well be ghosts, simply flitting by completely indignant towards my existence. Yet I know eventually I will find someone just like me, who is simply seeking companionship, just like Seto. The scenario is pure genius, appealing to that sense of alienation everyone feels at one stage or another. It's this meditation on companionship and human emotion that causes Fragile's story to transcend what is otherwise a fairly standard mad scientist story.

Fragile's game play depends on fairly tried and true action/adventure dynamics with some light RPG elements to add that spice of achievement to the hacking and slashing. Seto moves forwards, backwards and strafes using the Nun-chuck. His view and flashlight are tied to the Wii remote, which realistically illuminates his surrounding environment wherever you so happen to point it. Pressing Z on the Nun-chuck causes the camera to lock itself behind Seto and the C button causes him to crouch, offering access to tight spaces. It's a very stress free control scheme and the pointer controlled view is really intuitive once you get the hang of it.

There are several classes of weapon; Light, Medium, Heavy and Ranged with each class offering a specific benefit over another. For instance a Medium weapon might be slower than a Light weapon but can be charged and swung around in a circle to hit multiple enemies at once, whereas a Light weapon can strike multiple times in the time it would take to hit once with a Medium weapon. Depending on the enemies you are encountering you can switch out your weapons accordingly, until they break that this.

Yes, weapons can break. This requires you to discard and replace them. It's not as tedious as it sounds and it takes quite a while for a weapon to break, normally it only happens after fighting a boss. Your inventory can be managed by heading to a bonfire, which also functions as a save point, in addition to healing you and letting you barter with a traveling merchant dressed as a chicken. He's a charming fellow and isn't totally one dimensional, his character is eventually elaborated on and although it's a little out of left field, his motives for doing what he does are heartbreaking. From the bonfire screen you can manage Seto's inventory, placing things you don't need in the suitcase which automatically sorts out all of your weapons, healing items, memory items and quest items saving you the pain of doing that yourself.

Personally, I think criticism regarding the bonfire save system is not only unfair but totally childish. The criticism in reviews I have read has targeted it as an archaic game play mechanic based on the item box system introduced in Resident Evil. While this comparison is somewhat accurate the implementation in Fragile is totally different. The game essentially plays linearly, with one or two instances of back tracking to obtain a quest item or find an alternate route to somewhere else. Bonfires are provided quite liberally and are very obviously placed. Those having trouble playing the game with this system are either very spoiled or are incredibly inept at playing video games. It's arrogant and pompous to totally discount it, as there is a strategy involved in how you use the bonfires. I won't go on about this anymore, I just wanted to add some balance to the criticism being leveled.

The environments Seto rambles through are haunting shells of better times. An amusement park sits rusting against a twilight sky, filled not with the delighted squeals of children but rabid dogs and spirits. A once well maintained field sits unkempt and overgrown, rides infiltrated and slowly being destroyed as nature reclaims her stolen spaces. At another point Seto finds himself in a crumbling hotel, a tree penetrating the walls and essentially becoming part of the building. Dirty curtains twist and dance in the breeze as bright sunlight casts shadows over the mossy concrete inside the ransacked rooms.

Every room and hallway has been constructed with this haunting loneliness, the signs of civilization nothing more than old relics slowly being turned to rubble by the encroaching weeds and tree life. It's all rendered in such a magnificently subtle way, from the discarded teddy bears to the gentle to and fro of the leaves on a tree through a window. There's always something for you to see, to remind you of how busy and alive these places used to be, it's genius artistic direction.

In regards to the tech, it's incredibly solid. Seto and the other characters in the game are rendered with immaculate detail, their lips synching perfectly to the dialogue. The vibrant colors of some scenes contrast with the dim twilight of others, with Seto's flashlight doing nothing to alleviate the sense of isolation and creeping dread that these areas exhibit. The texture work is beyond reproach, with everything plastered with distinctive, high resolution imagery. Though there isn't a lot of variety to them enemies are animated well, with distinctive form and character from the ghostly jellyfish to the moaning women with pins coming out of their backs.

An important thing for me to note is the soundtrack, or distinctive lack thereof. In scenes where music isn't necessary, it isn't there. All you get is the echoing stomp of Seto's footsteps and the wind as it courses eerily through tree branches and dank tunnels. When enemies come into range a maudlin piano begins to play accompanied by sad strings that follow you until you either dispatch your foes or run out of range. So yes, there is boss and regular encounter music. There is also the music that accompanies Seto's revelations and discoveries, the tender melodies that play when his heart is broken and the heart-wrenching piano dirge that accompanies your final encounters. Like every other stylistic element in this game the soundtrack is incredibly refined and accomplished.

The inclusion of both the English dub and Japanese original voice over track is very appreciated. I don't pretentiously ignore the English dub of anime and video games (when you rarely get the chance to choose between the two) it's just I've never heard a Japanese dub I haven't liked. English dubs tend to be decidedly terrible, with many things either lost in translation or characters exaggerated or played wrong. So for me personally it was very nice to be able to play the game in Japanese, I appreciated the effort. Just out of curiosity, I played through the game in English. It's not bad, the dub is about on par with many higher quality anime dubs. So, whatever language you play the game in you will get a competently acted story.

One final thing I'd like to mention about the audio are the Memory items which are picked up as the game progresses. These items function as short stories, superbly acted pieces of mini-fiction that give insight into the minds and feelings of people before the great catastrophe that befell mankind. There is no practical use for these, however they add a layer of depth to the entire experience that goes beyond anything I've seen in a game before. They add a dimension of humanity to the entire experience. You know everyone is gone, but in games along a similar vain we don't really care. In Fragile you understand the loss of life so much better than if this feature was left out of the game.

The Bad
There isn't much about Fragile I didn't enjoy. What I didn't enjoy were tiny things. For instance, some enemies are designed to drift in and out of existence, this is understandable however it also means if you don't have your wits about you you will suffer a few cheap hits. In addition to that enemies can block corridors which was a little frustrating. It was difficult to sometimes see some enemies with a Ranged weapon equipped as you are denied the use of a flashlight when using one.

There is no checkpoint system in Fragile and if you are particularly daring and like to go without saving something disastrous could happen and you could end up going back an hour to your last save if you die. If you remember to save regularly it's not a problem, remember what I mentioned about the abundance of bonfires.

Some hallways are far too long, with little to do while you spend 5 minutes simply running in one direction to get to a door.

The Bottom Line
Fragile Dreams, in my opinion, is a masterpiece. It's a game that worked so intelligently on so many levels to evoke the most profound emotions in me. I felt so connected to Seto, I identified with his plight and I was genuinely moved, almost to tears, during the 10 hours it took me to finish the game.

The game play is rock solid, the engine is polished and the variety of environments and scenario's leaves the game feeling fresh up until the very end. There is a lot about the game I haven't even mentioned from the cat's you find on your journey to the occasional distractions here and there. I'll stop now and let you see for yourself how fantastic this game is.

By AkibaTechno on July 31, 2010

Super Mario Sunshine (GameCube)

Aargh this f*&*ing camera!!

The Good
Super Mario Sunshine was released in 2002 to pretty much universal acclaim. IGN gave it a 9.5 and I'm fairly sure Eurogamer was ready with a 10/10 for this bad boy. It's an interesting game because it incorporates storytelling devices that Shigeru Miyamoto tends to avoid in his other games. The most notable new feature is voice acting, however I can get to that later.

In Super Mario Sunshine Mario is off on a vacation with Princess Peach in a hilariously camp giant pink jet. They land on Isle Delfino (which is probably like the Mushroom Kingdom's Florida) and right away Mario is accused of vandalism. It seems some sort of shadowy imposter has been running around grafitto-tagging the beautiful buildings and natural environment of Isle Delfino and standing accused of a crime he didn't commit Mario is forced to pay penance by cleaning the entire island. With a helpful talking water pack strapped to his back called FLUDD he travels around various locales...cleaning. It's more exciting than it sounds really, after all it's Mario.

Our portly plumber controls almost identically to his appearance on the Nintendo 64 save for a couple of new FLUDD specific moves and a new spinny, jumpy type thing that can be used to clean himself or get to higher places. The FLUDD pack is used to glide, rocket about and clean off the goop that is covering Isle Delfino. The pack also talks, meaning it is used as a defacto guide around the island and provides hints every now and then. I quite liked the addition of the FLUDD pack, the whole cleaning aspect of the game had the potential to be an outright bore but miraculously it's really quite fun and satisfying to clean away all of the mess and end up with a pristine beach or side walk. The FLUDD pack is also used to defeat enemies and as I mentioned before, is an aid while platforming. The platforming is quite weak in Sunshine, so the inclusion of the FLUDD makes potentially controller breaking portions of the game very bearable, until you are forced to go without the FLUDD pack. This brings me onto the new “secret” areas. These “secrets” aren't really very secret at all, they are always very obviously placed. The secret areas are FLUDD-less portions of the game that play like a more linear, back to basics platformer. You are tasked with going from A to B negotiating obstacles while trying not to fall into the void below. These secret areas range from really inventive and fun, to downright malicious.

The level design in Sunshine is very solid and interesting. The game shines (no pun intended) when Mario is tasked with simply going from A to B, practicing his platforming mastery while defeating enemies and collecting coins. There is a lot of this in the game, but not nearly enough. Level goals vary from racing to defeating a boss enemy to breaking into a spa to collect a shine sprite, the requisite collectable in the game.

The shine sprite's are supposed to power the island and without them...well it's not really clear what the big deal is with the shine sprites. The island isn't imploding or anything because they have all been scattered, it's more of a minor inconvenience really. Anyway, the point is, they function like the stars did in Super Mario 64. Your progress through the game isn't really governed by the amount of stars you collect though, it's mostly down to finishing up to episode 7 of each level. It's a nice new progression scheme, one I like. You still find yourself grinding those shine sprites though, the game is just that addictive. Graphically this is one of the best looking Gamecube game's out there. The engine is super solid. I have not noticed the frame rate dip once while I have been playing and the vivid, almost pastel like textures and gorgeous environmental effects like heat haze are just superb. Mario animates fantastically and I especially like the awesome way he seems to demolecularize when he enters a level. I'd like to note the approach towards the aesthetic elements of the secret area's as well. They seem to have this spherical texture that wraps around the void that the simplistic platforming elements are suspended in. They are very minimalist areas and I was very charmed by them.

The Bad
Super Mario Sunshine is a game of extreme's, either it's being extremely good or extremely bad. I've never found myself just mildly frustrated by this game, either you can do something the first time or you constantly have to restart. The problem isn't the fundamental dynamics the game relies upon. I already said how solid these are. The problem is the lazy, ill programmed and downright malicious camera system. The camera is an insufferable prick, pardon my french. I cannot tell you the amount of occasions it has totally screwed me over, doing ridiculous things that really, it shouldn't be doing. It's the main reason the secrets range from awfully fantastic to just plain awful. If the secret is a relatively simple one with a course that doesn't wind too much the camera will do an adequate job of keeping up. However if the secret has multiple levels, snaking turns or giant moving things the camera will totally ruin your day. The main problem is that it is lazy. It takes forever to circle around to an adequate view of Mario meaning you'll constantly have to manually manipulate it to get a view of the action that won't get you killed. Having to concentrate on executing difficult jumps while manipulating this piss poor camera is a pain in the ass and ends up causing way too much undue frustration. There are even indicators that the team knew the camera sucked and without any extra development time to spare on it applied a quick fix. When Mario heads behind something a silhouette will appear, with little question marks indicating enemies and objects. If the camera naturally snapped to a decent three quarter perspective of Mario under normal circumstances there would have been no need for this. Also, when being launched upwards, instead of fixing itself on Mario and zooming out to give you an indication of where you are heading the camera stays where it is and points directly up at Mario meaning you're basically flying blind. It's atrocious. Like I said, if your current activities are relatively simple there probably won't be a problem but when things heat up, the platforming because more demanding and the environments become more complicated, you're going to notice how utterly broken the camera system is.

Another thing I wanted to mention was how monotonous the whole tropical setting for the game becomes. It's always sunny and there is very little variation in the general aesthetics for each area. I get that the team was trying to convey the illusion of this cohesive environment but the variety in artistic direction suffers because of this and frankly it becomes a little tiresome. The inhabitants of Isle Delfino are also pretty much all identical with a bit of pallet swapping going on here and there. This goes for the music as well. Apart from a couple of awesome tunes (which happen to be remixes of music from better Mario games) a lot of the music in Sunshine is just an endless variation on this one theme with a different crappy instrument. The only regular level theme worth mentioning is Noki Bay, and even that isn't worth downloading. The soundtrack is forgettable and lackluster. Frankly, I expect better from Kenji Kondo.

I just briefly want to talk about the story for a moment. I admire Shigeru Miyamoto for finally including something of a more meaty narrative to power the game along, but it's just not very good. It's like very little effort was put into it, we know who the antagonist is going to be, it's not like the game was going to introduce any new major characters. Therefore it stands to question whether the inclusion of such a weak, poorly acted narrative was all that necessary. Peach still ends up getting kidnapped, the antagonist still ends up being Bowser, so why convolute it beyond an opening cinema to establish what is going on?.

The Bottom Line
I got totally addicted to Super Mario Sunshine and kept playing it for hours despite its flaws. There is a lot to like about the game and the core platforming game play is incredibly solid and satisfying. The game is a blast when the challenge is to simply negotiate a platform challenge while collecting coins and grabbing that shine sprite at the end. The variation in level goals was a treat, but ultimately I just wanted to platform, and I wish there was more of it in the game. Sunshine is beautiful, with one of the most solid graphics engines I have ever seen on the Gamecube and the FLUDD pack, which could have been nothing more than a forgettable gimmick, ends up becoming a really cool platforming aide.

The camera system however ends up taking the greatest aspect of the game and smashing it into tiny pieces on the ground. The camera is a total prick that constantly sabotages your efforts at negotiating the tricky secret areas by not following Mario, following him too rigidly or becoming stuck on things. It wasn't taught to negotiate simple obstacles, stick to Mario properly or zoom out to give the player an adequate view in the appropriate circumstances. I just don't understand the almost universal glowing praise when this piss poor system was implemented 6 years after Super Mario 64 which was supposed to have kicked off this dynamic camera revolution.

While I loved Super Mario Sunshine the woeful camera, monotonous artistic direction, lack of real platforming, weak soundtrack and flimsy narrative keep it from being a truly great game.

By AkibaTechno on July 10, 2010

Resident Evil (GameCube)

Chillingly atmospheric, this should have been Resident Evil 4.

The Good
I own every single Resident Evil game ever made, so to say I'm a bit of a fan of the series is an understatement. My first exposure to the series was back in 1998 when I played a demo for Resident Evil 2 at a friends house. I was pretty affected by it and not just because it was full of gore and body parts flying all over the place. I had never experienced a Survival Horror game before and these alien mechanics the game relied on baffled my developing 8 year old mind.

Years later when I began to collect video games one of the first things I resolved to do was amass an enormous collection of Resident Evil merchandise. So, suffice to say I know the entire series back to front.

The remake of Resident Evil caught my attention when I picked up a Nintendo Gamecube product catalogue back in 2001. It showcased the photo realistic graphics of the game and made a pretty big deal about the Resident Evil series making its way to the Gamecube. I didn't actually get to play it until last year, for a few reasons which aren't particularly pertinent right now, and I wish I hadn't waited so long.

A familiar setting

The remake of Resident Evil takes place in identical circumstances to the original released in 1996. The Arklay Mountains surrounding Raccoon City have become a dangerous place full of sightings of feral animals and packs of men attacking Hikers. A special police taskforce named S.T.A.R.S Alpha Team is dispatched to investigate and when they go missing Bravo team is dispatched to find them. The team is abandoned and seek refuge in a seemingly derelict mansion. From here, the horror ensues and the main protagonists Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine must battle the monsters that stalk the halls and find a way to escape the hellish mansion before they succumb to the resident evil (see what I did there?) inside.

Tried and true Resident Evil gameplay

The Resident Evil series has been both a staple source of praise and derision in the 14 years it has been circulating. In the time it had been bubbling away in Shinji Mikami's mind the series had gradually evolved up until 2001, when Resident Evil was released. Every single refinement that had been instituted in the series until then made its way into Resident Evil (and if you haven't already figured it out when I say Resident Evil I'm talking about the subject of this review and not the original.) The tank controls have been discarded for a more fluent 3D control scheme that incorporates the life saving 180 degree turn from previous games. Your character controls so smoothly, any criticism from the past concerning the controls are quickly forgotten.

In addition to the sharp control scheme you also have recourse when grabbed by an opponent from the front. Your character can utilize defense weapons like stun guns and phosphorous grenades that do very cool things when an enemy grabs them. It saves health and adds a degree of strategy into how you approach encounters.

In addition to this a new form of Zombie has been introduced named the Crimson Head which is a regular Zombie that hasn't been beheaded or burned. You can carry around a flask of oil which you need to pour on the corpses of Zombies and set them alight to kill them properly, or as I mentioned before you can seperate their head from their shoulders. The tension involved in whether or not a Zombie will rise up again as a Crimson Head adds a new degree of horror to the game.

All of the refinements, additions to the roster of enemies and options for defending yourself add this contemporary edge to Resident Evil that games like Code Veronica seemed to lack. While Code Veronica was a great game, it lacked any nuance or subtle refinements. The transition to 3D environments was wonderful but it added little to the game itself. Resident Evil feels like a meaningful evolution of the series, one that was due.

It looks like it plays

Resident Evil is a beautiful game, a stunning game. I can't really emphasize how amazing it looks. It's the dictionary definition of photo realistic. Environments look amazing and flickering lights, shifting shadows and tree branches add a layer of atmosphere to the game. Character models display a similar level of polish and animate superbly. They are textured immaculately with realistic facial animation and emotive expressions. The environments are smack of grunge and funk, they almost emit a musty smell as you wander through the decaying hallways. It's superb artistic direction.

The Bad
Resident Evil plays well but lacks any sort of contemporary checkpoint system. You still rely on ink ribbons and although this may not mean much to you, it's still a system the game relies on.

There are very little unlockables other than some modes that just make the game a little harder.

The Bottom Line
Resident Evil is a beautiful, photo realistic game with gameplay that is ultra refined and the most satisfying of the classic series to play. There is little about the gameplay I can fault.

It's a classic love letter to Resident Evil fans, something you should really experience if you even have a passing fancy for Survival Horror.

By AkibaTechno on July 6, 2010

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii)

Ah, sweet obsession.

The Good
The Legend of Zelda series has always seemed particularly mythological to me. I played the original NES games on my father's console as a child and then when Ocarina of Time came around I was astounded at the level of depth, graphical polish and the level of addictiveness the game offered. Majora's Mask wasn't as a big as a revelation for me, although I did enjoy it. I for one, was not put off by the use of time travel in the game as a mechanism to push you forward as things lost could quickly be re-obtained by rolling around the field as a Goron for a bit. It was just a bit "me too" featuring more or less identical progression to its predecessor released 2 years earlier.

I enjoyed Windwaker on an entirely different level to the other games. It offered something drastically different, with a renewed emphasis on exploration and turned me into an almost compulsive collector (which I already kind of am with video games in general.)

The little games in between like the Four Swords Adventures and Minish Cap didn't particularly appeal to me enough to warrant a purchase as I was waiting for another real instalment of the series to be released. Well, it was a long wait between Windwaker and Twilight Princess.

When Twilight Princess came along I was in the middle of my little Nintendo hating spree where I totally ignored everything they were releasing. It's frustrating to me now in retrospect to think of how ignorant I was to deprive myself of the fantastic games being released on the Gamecube and at the launch of the Wii around that period.

Recently when I had my little change of heart and became a warm fan of Nintendo I purchased Twilight Princess in addition to a couple of other games with my console. I have been consistently amazed by this game. There's just something indescribably appealing about it that fills me with this sense of elation while I'm playing it.

Link (or Frank or whatever you want to call yourself) is a goat herd who lives in Ordon Village. While running an errand to Hyrule Castle he is mysteriously struck down and turned into a wolf. He finds himself with a mysterious, petite companion named Midna who gradually warms to him more and more as she accompanies him on his adventures. Link (Frank) learns that the evil King of Twilight known as Zant has his sights set firmly on the kingdom's Princess (guess who?) and thusly his journey begins in earnest.

Link controls very well. The nunchuck is used to maneuver him around the world, pressing A to roll and lashing out with the Wii remote to strike with his sword. Holding Z on the nuchuck raises Link's shield and in time further uses for it become apparent. As the game progresses Link can learn Hidden Skills which augment his current stock of fighting moves. These Hidden Skills are mostly used to quickly dispatch an enemy or are defensive like the Shield Bash. They aren't particularly easy to find though and you must do a bit of exploring to find them.

The flow of the game is such that it will be familiar to Zelda veterans but isn't samey to the point of being tiresome. The game is paced intelligently with lot's of story slipping neatly into intelligent gaps in the exploration. The pace of the game is driving and although you're never really explicitly told what to do it is hard to become lost as the nature of the clues provided for you are balanced perfectly. For instance, occasionally a red target will appear on your map, giving you a general idea of where you need to be but what needs to be done there remains a mystery. It keeps the pace up, while not ruining the gameplay for you.

The nature of the dungeons is also refreshing. The "dungeons" in Twilight Princess are unlike other games in the series. Most aren't temples or obvious caves but towers, mansions or mines. They flow so organically into one another that sometimes I didn't actually realize I had entered a "dungeon" area. It was a genuine surprise and that's what I like in a game, that element of unpredictability that keeps things feeling fresh.

To think the vast world of Hyrule once fit on a single Gamecube disc is somewhat unbelievable. Every inch of the world, which is huge, is rendered with immaculate detail from soft lighting filtering through trees to the many tiny details on rock faces and buildings. The muted tones of the world may not appeal to everyone, but they do to me. It makes Hyrule feel organic, grass isn't luminescent and tree bark doesn't glow a sickly brown. The pastel colors similar games use to render the world have been omitted here for a more day dreamy, fantastical presentation that makes the world look like a beautiful painting at times. Although Hyrule is split into many very distinctive provinces the land doesn't feel fragmented at all, with each unique portion of the land flowing naturally into one another from the scorching Gerudo Desert to the winter wonderland that is Snowtop Mountain.

The soundtrack is one of nuance and variety. The theme that plays when exploring the field is driving and inspirational, urging you to adventure through it as you gallop around on your horse (whom by default is called Epona, but I renamed Greg.) Town themes are jaunty and fun, boss battles play with a variation of the main theme thrown in with traditional Zelda style battle tunes and even minor incidental music displays that level of stylistic polish the rest of the soundtrack shines from.

Twilight Princess is a Zelda game of course, so then it is safe to assume the level of collectables is quite high. In this entry in the series the main side quest collectables are Golden Bugs and Poe's Souls. The characterization of the individuals who request you to collect the bugs and souls for them is eccentric and charming. Apart from the requisite collectables there are the typical heart pieces and expansions for your wallet and quiver. These things are always fun and satisfying to collect and they are here for you to find.

The Bad
There is very little not to like about Twilight Princess. Most of the criticism is in regards to some of the presentational mechanics that have become characteristic of the series. To begin with there is a lot of text to wade through, sometimes too much text and in the transition to the Wii it would have been nice to find this entry in the series with voice acting, even if it was just for major cutscenes. It's not a major detriment and anyone with even a moderate attention span should be able to sit through the text, as it is very engaging. It's just been a long time since Ocarina of Time, it's probably the right time to take that next presentational step and add voice acting.

The camera is a jerk at times. It's a pretty rare occurrence, but it always seems to happen when you're standing precariously on the edge of a cliff staring over a bubbling pit of lava or shifting sand. The camera will try to snap behind Link, yet get stuck on something or the lock on system won't work properly. Like I said, it's very rare, but it certainly did happen.

The Bottom Line
As of writing I've sunk just under 30 hours into Twilight Princess and I intend to invest many more returning to Hyrule over and over again to immerse myself in the magnificently rendered world. The adapted control scheme, beautiful presentation, intelligent and masterful pace, genius dungeon design and engaging story made me so happy while I was playing. I almost instantly fell in love with Twilight Princess and the minor faults concerning the presentation and camera really don't mean anything. This is officially one of the greatest games I have ever played, an example of gaming Nirvana, and something every self respecting gamer should experience.

By AkibaTechno on July 2, 2010

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth (Xbox)

A fantastic game, if not broken to the point of being almost unplayable.

The Good
Before I started playing Call of Cthulu I had no idea what the big deal was with H.P Lovecraft. I had never read any of his stories or watched any of the poorly made college films based on his source material. Part of the reason I avoided his work was because it was a popular thing for "alternative" teenagers and to a lesser extent, adults, to latch onto. They would look at you with disgust if you didn't know who Lovecraft was, yet they knew little about the mythology beyond reading one of his short stories in between writing bad poetry. There are also those who genuinely love Lovecraft's work and appreciate how instrumental he was in horror becoming mainstream.

Headfirst seemed to come from that second camp. They appreciated his work, resolved to treat it with respect and ended up creating a fine game. They were not pretentious though, the game doesn't rely on you having scrutinized Lovecraft's entire body of work. Call of Cthulu is a license done right, and to see this happen always gives me a warm feeling.

A large portion of Call of Cthulu is based on a pen and paper RPG. You play a private investigator who, after losing some of his life to period of darkness, resolves to take on a missing persons case. He travels to the town of Innsmouth and after some investigating is almost killed by the inhabitants. The rest of Dark Corners of the Earth is centered around his journey to discover what happened to himself and what happened to Innsmouth.

The artistic direction in Dark Corners of the Earth is to be applauded. Innsmouth itself is moody, faces peer out of windows and doors close as Jack walks past. The inhabitants are twisted and loathsome, watching Jack with suspicious eyes as he walks past. It's all definitely scripted, but it adds a degree of depth to the atmosphere that is missing in many survival horror games.

Because in the end, above all else, Dark Corners of the Earth feels like a survival horror game.

The gameplay is a combination of FPS action and stealth elements with a degree of investigative puzzle solving thrown in here and there. Jack relies on fire arms and more silent bladed weapons to fight the various twisted inhabitants of Innsmouth however most of the time it is better to avoid fights whatsoever. If Jack is injured instead of the standard "health kit" items the player must apply certain treatments specific to the injury sustained. For instance if his leg is injured it must be splinted, if it isn't he will hobble and his jumping will be compromised until the injury is taken care of. The gameplay in general is fantastic, Jack controls flawlessly and sneaks and jumps intuitively. Firing weapons relies on a steady hand and in a refreshingly realistic dynamic enemies can be killed with a single well placed knife thrust instead of requiring a barrage of slashes.

The variety of environments is remarkable and Headfirst seems to have mastered the art of backtracking. In many games, backtracking is employed as either a way of extending the length of a game or artificially convoluting puzzles. Backtracking in Dark Corners of the Earth feels natural and how it is employed here relies on you keeping your wits about you and watching for things that could potentially be useful later on. It isn't simply "I need to go back down 8 hallways to use red key on red door" it is more "I walked past a broken valve a little while ago, maybe I can use this valve handle there?"

The environments look good as well, which is a blessing. Each crumbling building sits with moody light being cast on it from a dirty bulb. Most characters look good, some don't, typically they do though. The weapon models contain decent enough detail and environmental effects like heat haze in the refinery and chill air linger around Jack as he explores.

The sanity mechanic introduced in the game transcends the foundation laid by Eternal Darkness as a launch title for the Gamecube. In Eternal Darkness your sanity was drained when enemies were nearby and if your sanity ran out the game would simulate odd things happening to either your character or your television set itself. In Dark Corners of the Earth your sanity doesn't break the fourth wall, it is there to make you want to keep Jack alive. If you don't keep him away from corpses, odd sculptures of things Cthulu can channel the screen will blur and Jacks world will warp and deform. If his sanity drops too low he will take his own life either by beating himself to death or shooting himself.

The Bad
Dark Corners of the Earth shines in its opening moments. The chilling cinematic nature of these, the feeling that you're simply part of something much bigger and grander is lost as you progress through the game and it becomes essentially nothing more than a corridor shooter. There is little technique in how you play beyond repeatedly using trial and error to either tediously log a mental path for yourself or risk jumping out guns blazing to face hordes of respawning enemies.

O.k, say that's a bit of an exaggeration. This game never turns into a twitch shooter, but it also doesn't do a good enough job of keeping its fires stoked to consistently scare and intimidate you.

When you've come to terms with what the game demands of you you begin to realize that you don't get enough healing items to compensate for the vast amount hits you will take from enemies when you are forced to engage in combat. They are insanely overpowered and can take a lot punishment, while you can only take a few hits before being rendered critical. Additionally, if you take too much damage to one particular body part you will find yourself consistently running out of that one item you need to heal it.

The monotony of environments begins to take its toll after a while as well. I don't know whether or not it's simply because I can't stand dank, boring tunnels and generic stone temples but past Innsmouth the environments lack character or anything interesting for that matter. The dynamic, claustrophobic nature of Innsmouth contrasts greatly against generic mansion A and generic industrial building B.

What didn't I like about the game? The engine. The engine is one of the most unrefined and bug riddled ones I have ever encountered. Whether it was dropping frames or stopping the game from advancing there were so many occasions where something potentially game breaking happened that I almost lost count. I got stuck on ladders, stuck behind ladders, stuck in a vent, the ship scene wouldn't end, enemies wouldn't stop respawning when they were supposed to, events wouldn't trigger etc. etc. It wasn't just one or two things, it was just an endless procession of bugs and glitches that ruined any suspension of disbelief that I had built up. I mean, I have never had to start a game from scratch because of a fault left in by the developer but I had to do it twice with Dark Corners of the Earth. Frankly, I'm embarrassed for Bethesda having released such an unfinished game.

The Bottom Line
Dark Corners of the Earth is a compelling game full of frightening elements that consistently surprise the player. The sanity system is pure genius and the driving, cinematic nature of the opening moments is simply nail biting. The gameplay is solid and the combat is violent and visceral. Having to heal your limbs independently from one another is, at first, a cool concept and the rendering of environments is beyond reproach.

It's a shame then that the game becomes a boring slog during the second half that displays none of the creative flair that the beginning of the game exhibits. The health system becomes a problem when you come up against waves and waves of ridiculously respawning enemies and the sheer glut of game breaking bugs that riddle the package are inexcusable.

While I enjoyed the presentation of the mythology and the gameplay when it worked, Dark Corners of the Earth becomes a tad too mediocre and broken to recommend.

By AkibaTechno on June 24, 2010

The Conduit (Wii)

A much needed reprieve for Wii owning FPS lovers.

The Good
Recently I've had a bit of a change of heart. I used to be one of those irrational morons who would hate the Wii for absolutely no reason. I was one of those people who didn't perceive it as "hardcore" enough to scratch my gaming itch. All of this changed when I watched Nintendo's E3 conference in which Shigeru Miyamoto demonstrated the Skyward Sword. Was it the gameplay that changed my mind? Not particularly, was it the graphics of the next Zelda installment that changed my mind? No. In fact my change of heart had nothing to do with a game, it was Shigeru Miyamoto. He burst through that partition onto stage and demonstrated the game with such conviction and vitality. It was his smile. He was so happy at what he had helped to create. That man's happiness changed my mind. I was so bitter towards him for creating things that others didn't. What did I have to hate about a genuinely good, happy man who only wants people to enjoy themselves?. Then something kind of fell into place and all of the hate went away.

I had lumbered under the assumption that you could only game on the PS3 and the Xbox 360 for too long and so I went and traded in my PS3 and got myself a black Wii, a decision I am not regretting. To think I had been depriving myself of this console just makes me realize how silly I was to deny it.

So here I was, with my new Wii and a plethora of games to choose from. What better way to begin than with one of my favourite genres? The first person shooter. I followed the Conduit while it was in development and IGN were giving blow by blow coverage of its development. It seemed like a real winner with advanced graphics other games on the Wii lacked and a really customizable FPS experience. I picked this up along with a couple of other games and took it home to try it out.

The Conduit begins with a flashback that harkens to events encountered later in the game and acts as a nice little tutorial to introduce you to the fundamental dynamics the game relies on. You are introduced to destroying conduits (the titular portals that the insidious Drudge use to gate into the war zone D.C becomes), using the A.S.E and becoming familiar with the controls. After this the game begins in earnest and Ford (the protagonist) is placed several days in the past to the beginning of events.

When you begin the game you notice two things. To begin with the control is outstanding. You use the pointer to aim your reticule, this fluidity adds a degree of control over the whole experience like I have never encountered before in an FPS. The closest thing you could liken it to is using a mouse. The difference is using a mouse feels clinical, it feels like you're going through the motions positioning the cursor over an enemy, clicking the left button and firing ad naseum. The Wii remote being an extension of your arm making the experience more organic. If you find yourself becoming overwhelmed you can lash out by thrusting the Wii remote forward to execute a melee attack and throwing grenades is accomplished by flicking the Nunchuck forward. If, for some reason, you're not comfortable with the default control scheme you can not only mix up the button configuration but the dead zone, or the invisible boundary that dictates when your view begins to rotate. You can also re-size your HUD, relocate elements or remove it completely. This kind of control over EVERY single element in an FPS is pretty much unheard of even in the most "hardcore" of experiences on other consoles. To put it bluntly, it's genius.

The second thing you notice when you begin the game is how good it looks. The texture work is vivid and smooth, some areas of the game seem so organic and realistic that it really impressed me. Character models and weapons are bump mapped competently, shining and shimmering while particle effects light up the screen in a dazzling display of high developmental standards. Even characters that aren't bump mapped are so well designed and animated that they will never fail to drop your jaw. Even the tiniest of incidental details like trees or piles of rubble or even cars have had the utmost detail packed into them to make the crumbling D.C around you seem as organic as possible. There is definitely room for improvement but the Conduit should be considered a design standard for Wii FPS in future.

The A.I is generally quite good, but isn't without its foibles. Enemies will try to flank you and will naturally go for cover. The Drudge opponents, who are armed with their own unique weapons will also use the secondary fire on their weapons which involves charging them before firing. Your human "Trust" opponents will try and blind you with flash bangs, with the occasional hilarious consequences. In general the combat is quite solid, there is plenty of it and it is evenly paced to balance the combat with exploration and ambiance.

The Conduit comes with a few notable features. To begin with it features a fully feature online, competitive multiplayer mode with experience system and multiple skins to use for your character. The game also features cheats, an achievement system and bonus promotional material that can be unlocked with the right codes. The achievements range from killing a certain amount of enemies, using a certain weapon a number of times or collecting disks or messages. Anything that extends the replay value of a game is welcome and the Conduit features plenty of it.

The Bad
The Conduit does a lot of things really well, but some of those things are so fundamentally flawed it is hard to overlook them.

To begin with the particle system in the game is great, but there is just too much of it. When more than one person is using a Trust weapon the screen is so full of particles it becomes a chore to simply see what is going on. Another problem with the weapons is how you can just sort of fall down occasionally, dead, without any understanding of why you died. This normally happens when a Drudge charges their weapon and fires it either off screen or as they come around a corner, which is a surprisingly common occurrence.

Another problem with the combat arises from the Conduits and egg sacks littered around the levels. If there are any of these around, enemies will constantly re-spawn. This isn't a problem most of the time as you can just destroy them however if you don't know where they are or the Conduit is one that isn't designed to close then you have to put up with waves and waves of enemies. This is frustrating, as you are forced to shoot things or use the A.S.E to hack into computers while you get pounded by enemy fire. This can potentially force multiple restarts, as you can probably guess, it's really annoying.

Then there is the A.I which is normally quite good. Unfortunately there are just moments that make you want to slam your face into a desk. I mentioned before that Trust soldiers use flash grenades however they use them like regular grenades, detonating them so close to themselves that they blind themselves as well. When the duration of disorientation subsides you can see them wobbling about letting you shred them with gun fire.

There are too many situations where you are forced to trudge through multiple corridors that look virtually identical or bland, industrial sewer areas. There is very little variation in the aesthetics of each area and the repetition begins to grate after a while. You'll be walking down a hallway saying "this must be it, it must change after this" but it doesn't change until you finish the level.

Then there are the story elements. The acting in the game is abominable, with some lines being read wrong with incorrect intonation and laughable pacing. The story itself is forgettable and run of the mill. The conspiracy elements are interesting, if not a little vague and aren't elaborated enough to form anything truly compelling.

The Bottom Line
What we have in the Conduit is a game that truly gives hope to Wii faithfuls looking for a solid FPS experience to sink their teeth into. The solid engine, outstanding graphics and customizable experience in general makes for an FPS that even eclipses those on more powerful hardware. There is nothing else like the Conduit out there in terms of what it delivers.

It's a shame then that High Voltage delivered a package that has the capacity to frustrate as much as it impresses. The combat is hit and miss, sometimes causing you to die when there really didn't seem like a reason for you to die. Constant enemy re-spawns lead to the game feeling like you're playing Gauntlet at times and the bland hallways and murky sewers do not make use of the superb graphics engine the game runs on.

That said, I did really enjoy the Conduit. It's probably the most technically accomplished FPS on the Wii and one you should definitely pick up before the sequel hits stores in 2011.

By AkibaTechno on June 21, 2010

Jak 3 (PlayStation 2)

A beautiful yet messy and fragmented experience.

The Good
Being a PS2 collector comes with its own set of prerequisites. You need your first party 8 MB memory card, your shiny black Dual Shock 2 and a library of must haves for the system. Amongst the hundreds of games worth owning on the PS2 is Naughty Dog's Jak and Daxter series which became a staple on the console. Just like Ratchet and Clank the Jak and Daxter series became synonymous with the PS2 and is widely regarded as one of the most accomplished video game series of all time despite being so short.

Jak and Daxter is one of the few PS2 games I've felt such elation from playing that I would willingly forsake sleep to see where I was headed next. The beautifully rendered, seamless world and super refined platforming mechanics made me an instant fan. The issue is when I read the review for Jak 2 and came to the realization that the platforming had become an aforethought to vehicular combat I decided to pass on it altogether. I couldn't understand why you would change the style of the game into something like a bare bones GTA clone masquerading as a platformer and this reluctance to accept the transition made me miss it. I had previously read a review for Jak 3 on IGN and the columnist who wrote it seemed like he was seizing from joy at having played such a revolutionary game. This particular review also mentioned that the two games; Jak 2 and Jak 3 shared a very similar style with Jak 3 featuring more substance and being more refined. With this in mind I decided to borrow a friends copy of Jak 3 and came away both eternally frustrated and bewildered as to where all of that time went while I was playing it.

Jak 3 takes place shortly after the events of Jak 2. Haven city is besieged by Steelheads and with no one to blame the people point their fingers at Jak and then deftly use the hands attached to those fingers to throw him out of the city. Jak is saved by the enigmatic leader of the waste lander city of Spargus; Damas. The game then takes off with a interestingly paced introduction to the varying mechanics that comprise Jak 3.

At first Jak is only able to explore Spargus and the vast wasteland surrounding it. The desert is punctuated by magnificently rendered mountain ranges, palm trees and small lakes. The sheer detail packed into the world that streams with virtually no load times is something of a processing feat. Jak is able to drive various vehicles of differing specifications and weapon mounts with each one being able to hop to some degree. The vehicles control fundamentally well and the fact that each one differs in its handling, acceleration and jumping ability gives you some interesting variety in how you approach the wasteland. When you are eventually able to return to Haven you are able to use Zoomers and Speeders to navigate the streets in preference to Leaper Lizards.

Jak retains his Dark Jak abilities while some are added, the most noticeable change though is the ability to transform into Light Jack and heal, stop time and fly amongst other things. As you can imagine being able to stop time allows for some ingenious puzzles before long and the ability to heal whenever you have light eco gives you some much needed relief when you are inevitably pounded by enemy fire.

I haven't played Jak 2 so my knowledge of the game is relegated to what I have read in reviews. The freedom the player is granted however is the most noticeable addition to the Jak 3 experience. Jak controls fluidly, jumps tighter and fires his weapons with deadly precision. The auto aim system is impeccable and the numerous upgrades available for your weapons will have you scrambling around for every last precursor orb you can get your hands on. Precursor orbs are spent on secrets like cheats, concept art or things that actually affect gameplay like weapon modifications and vehicle upgrades. It's an addictive system and mediating what you spend your precursor orbs on becomes a paramount concern.

When I picked up Jak 3, my paramount concern was whether the flow of the game and the change in style would be too jarring for me to enjoy. If I looked at Jak 3 on its merits as a somewhat stand alone title using an evolution of a style established with Naughty Dog's first PS2 game then I can see how impressive it is. It's beautiful and features seamless environments. I can't fault the control scheme and the variety of mission types and vehicles available to the player leaves them with a sense of freshness throughout the entire experience. The humor hasn't been lost and Daxter's humorous dialogue compliments Jak's hard as nails lines fabulously.

The Bad
While I can recognize how good the experience is that Jak 3 tries to provide the player, it just doesn't work. For most of the game the progression is essentially linear, you have the illusion of choice however in the end you end up doing the same thing every time. You find the icon on the map, talk to someone who gives you a mission, the mission is completed, rinse and repeat. There is an enormous wasteland itching to be explored but there is no reason to do it. It's a dead place, obviously, but it didn't have to feel empty and boring.

The variation in gameplay is something that seemed to have approached with the subtlety of a pick axe to the face. With each faltering transition from plot point to plot point the player is thrown into a car or a tube or sewer and it all feels so fragmented and disjointed. The flow of the game is broken primarily because the player has their hand held almost the entire time. You can occasionally go and indulge in some side quest tom foolery but these are short, the pay off isn't worth it and they are well hidden. In fact the first couple of hours of play take place in an entirely linear fashion as Naughty Dog lay the table with everything you need to know. It's long and tediously protracted. I kept asking for the game to being in earnest and with each cutscene another thinly veiled tutorial would begin. These sequences end when you finally get to travel to Haven, however this transition brings with it it's own problems. Some situations are repeated like treks into the sewers albeit with a slightly different path however hearing "Now you have to go to the sewer" for the third time ends up forcing a sigh from your lips.

Then there is the exasperating trial and error game play. The magic of Jak and Daxter was that you didn't need to know everything that was going to happen simply to progress through the game. The flow of it was fluid and natural and provided a challenge but never frustrated you. Jak 3 consistently frustrated me, virtually every single mission that wasn't a platforming stage has some sort of infuriating quirk or stage section that forces you to know it is coming. The vehicles, while controlling well have a horrible collision detection system. If an enemy slams into your side you will cease to move until you either force them out of the way or they move themselves. The situation is the same for rocks, trees, walls, virtually everything that you hit you will stick to and when in a race, this means a restart is in order. Get ready to see the "mission failed" message a lot as the trial and error format becomes more and more punishing. It means something that should take 3 or 4 minutes ends up taking 15 minutes.

The lack of platforming is something else that might concern you. I know that to stay relevant developers need to institute change in their formula's or they risk being left behind. It doesn't matter how many times I remind myself this though, I will still lament the lack of emphasis on platforming. The situations where you do get to platform are so well designed, so tightly orchestrated and so plain enjoyable that when they ended and I was forced back into tedious races, rocket rides and protection missions I just died a little inside.

Then there are the little things that pop up here and there. Occasionally music refuses to play, which is a mixed blessing as the music is frankly woeful. There is not one single piece of music in Jak 3 that I enjoyed. I normally find at least one track to download, but there was not one that I couldn't describe as anything other than painfully mediocre. Naughty Dog; veritable royalty in the world of platforming also occasionally seemed to forget how to construct good platforming. Normally, the platforming is faultless however you'll find that the camera will zoom out throwing off your sense of depth and forcing you to simply take leaps of faith. When the camera does take itself off Jak it does so in a way that makes it impossible to initially compensate for and disorientates and frustrates you.

The Bottom Line
I liked what Jak 3 promised me, a free form game with an emphasis on exploration with some platforming amidst many different varying styles of play. It looks good, Jak controls well and the dialogue is full of wit and charm.

The tedious, trial and error game play, the feeling of fragmentation and the simple misdirection the series took leads to me believe Naughty Dog was trying to do so many things at the same time that they forgot to focus on delivering on the promise that box of the game displays. Jak 3 is just a mess, I don't like it and I don't see how they could have ended the series like this.

By AkibaTechno on June 17, 2010

Silent Hill 2 (PlayStation 2)

A masterpiece and a benchmark for smart, psychological horror.

The Good
In my restless dreams...

Today, I would like you do to something for me. If you have the chance, please go to your local Gamestop/EB Games/GAME store and have a look at the selection of games on offer. If you notice an endless slew of corridor shooters, Halo clones or poorly developed "casual" games then it doesn't surprise me whatsoever. The video game industry is different now. The video game industry has mass market appeal wherein if everything is bigger, bolder and better then it is a guaranteed seller. Take Modern Warfare for example, quite possibly the most popular series of the last few years yet totally bereft of creativity. That isn't to say it is impossible to find an inventive, quality game, it's just harder than say 10 years ago where the shelf was full of them because that is all developers had.

The story of Silent Hill 2, the conceptual design behind it and the execution of the marketing promotions stands as a testament to a time that modern gamers and kids born after 1995 couldn't possibly begin to understand or appreciate.

Silent Hill 2 was comprised of a team of men that were so irrepressibly talented and that displayed such genius in the subtleties surrounding the game design that any awards they received for the game were well deserved. Masahiro Ito sat for hours in front of his mirror, studying his own facial expressions in hundreds of positions to get the perfect set of expressions for his characters. Akira Yamaoka retreated to his home for 3 days merely to compose the games iconic theme song and Hiroyuki Owaku employed actual psychological phenomena such as the division between Eros and Thanatos when writing the scenario.

These men didn't simply rely on motion capture, a stock horror storyline with a simple twist and a thumping electronic soundtrack to rely on scaring the player while they played the game. The level of immersion, the way the characters moved, the sound design, the believability and ambiguity of the storyline were all paramount concerns. In other words, virtually every single stylistic element of Silent Hill was polished to an incandescent sheen in the same space of time it takes developers now to roll out another Halo clone or casual game collection.

The level of commitment the team displayed while developing the game is not immediately evident, which is a shame. The labours of love are something that need to be allowed to soak in to appreciate. When you begin to notice subtle environmental hints like gunshots in a wall or subtle changes in a characters intonation that you might have missed several times before the layers begin to pile up and you feel how much of a grand work that Silent Hill 2 is.

Being so isolated, so alone in a totally alien place is the fundamental driving force behind the fear generated by Silent Hill 2. From the long walk at the start to the dark, quiet buildings that dot the foggy town you are always alone and no one is there to help you. You cannot call a helicopter or a buddy in a jeep, there is no one left to call. James is thoroughly alone in this horrible place, yet he is also accompanied by a ghost, or is she really who she looks like? Is it all in James' tormented mind?

Controlling James is very familiar, R2 readies your weapon and X fires it. Your inventory is basically lifted straight from Silent Hill and the line up of weapons is very similar. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the way James controls but the combat can be a bit hit and miss.

One genius feature introduced in Silent Hill 2 was the prompt to decide the level of difficulty when solving puzzles as well as general gameplay. The variety provided by this mechanic requires a level of familiarity with the puzzles on previous difficulties and when playing on hard the cryptic and baffling clues provided by the game require some real thinking, that is if you haven't played the game before.

The general flow of the game, gentle prompting from location to location and genius design of the "dungeon" areas eliminate any wandering you might encounter through the vast, intimidating streets of Silent Hill. The actual map isn't at all big, however the brilliant use of volumetric fog and the inclusion of optionally explorable alleyways and side streets lend to the town feeling much more massive than the map alludes to. You feel so tiny and fragile, helpless and alone. It's one of the most effective devices at eliciting fear in a player I have experienced since the Camera Obscura in Fatal Frame.

I wanted to mention Akira Yamaoka. I am a devout fan of this musical genius' work. He has this innate ability to stir emotions in you through his music. I'm not simply saying his music makes you feel frightened, sad or happy. I'm talking about something deeper. His music makes you feel the basest versions of these emotions, something in Akira's music has the power to burrow into you and force the most profound depression, anxiety or contentment from you. Every chilling, otherworldy sound effect that is uttered from the aberrations that stalk the streets and every single foot step has been meticulously recorded and filtered to augment James' dire situation. Take time to appreciate Akira's work as it is one of the highlights of the entire experience.

The Bad
With so much effort into presenting a believable environment with believable characters it is a shame that James seems to run in a spastic sort of way, flailing his arms as he blocky feet pound the pavement. Everyone else animates fine, there is just something odd about the way James runs and walks with an almost cocky self assurance.

Some environmental details that were not intended on being the focal point of a room lack textural detail and look slightly cheap. It's noticeable in things like bed frames, shop fronts or signs. You're not going to notice it a lot as you'll have other things on your mind, but it's definitely there.

Combat is a little hit and miss. Camera angles occasional work to your disadvantage as you'll have to judge the depth between you and an enemy on the fly and often the enemy will come off better. It happens with bosses as well, I've been in situations where boss fights should have been shorter but I simply kept missing shots or melee weapon swings because of the way the camera angle was designed.

The Bottom Line
Silent Hill 2 is a profoundly moving game, full of subtlety and psychological nuance that is missing in a modern video game market bereft of creativity.

The sheer level of dedication displayed by a team composed of genius level designers, scenario writers and art directors shines through an almost faultless veneer of graphical competency. Each face has been exhaustingly designed, each character has been built from a foundation of typical human flaws, each location is packed with subtle detail and tense atmosphere and each chilling encounter leaves you out of breath and with chills running down your spine.

What few faults there are make no difference to your enjoyment of and immersion in the games twisted reality. Silent Hill 2 is like nothing ever made nor will any game ever transcend how visceral and terrifying it is no matter how closely they ape the style.

By AkibaTechno on June 14, 2010