Hands on Injustice: Gods Among Us

Soloman Grundy was born on a Monday, smashed Flash on a Tuesday...

After playing more than seven rounds of "Injustice: Gods Among Us" at this year's Penny Arcade Expo, and sneaking in a few more after that (much to the booth staff's displeasure), I am actually impressed and excited for this game.

I was skeptical at first when seeing "Injustice: Gods Among Us" at E3 this year. There wasn't enough information present there for me, and I might have missed the hands-on demo on the E3 show floor, so there's also that.

For those of you who are fans of  "Dead or Alive," you're going to love the environmental attacks and stage shifts that are at your disposal in "Injustice." We watched as Flash and Cyborg, recently announced as a playable character by the way, battled it out in the Batcave

Now, Bruce Wayne has a lot of toys, one of them being the Batmobile. Thank goodness he puts a giant red button on one of his computers that fires missiles out of it, which really helped Flash get out of the stage's corner after Cyborg boxed him in.

That's right, you can use the Batmobile in your fights.

Cyborg wasn't having any of that, though, and punched the Flash so hard he fell all the way down to where the Batboat docks in the underwater portion of the cave. On his way down he hit pipes, rocks and all manner of obstacles that really took a chunk away from his health. The fight raged on and hanging electrical wires proved fatal for Flash as he was knocked into them frequently by Cyborg's uppercuts.

We were shown demos like this at least every hour, and I personally liked the one they did with Superman and Nightwing, who also a newly-announced character. Catwoman has also joined the roster recently, so there's at least three girls for you to kick  superbutt with.

When I actually got to play the game though, I had to try out Superman and just see how powerful he was.

Now, the controls are extremely similar to that of "Mortal Kombat," so if you're a fan of that franchise or familiar at all with their combos, then you're in like Flynn with this game.

I got to fight a few battles against Wonder Woman, and it was pretty intense to say the least. My opponent and I duked it out in the Fortress of Solitude and I got beat pretty soundly in the first round by Wonder Woman's lasso and sword. Once I figured out how to use Superman's heat vision, I kept the other player at a distance, then rushed them.

Gut shot!

The Fortress has its own quirks and interactive items to fight with, like Superman's Kryptonian spaceship. And when I say interact with, I mean that Superman picked it up and smacked Wonder Woman across the face with it. It was kind of brutal.

Combat is different for each character.

Superman and Wonder Woman are slow and plodding tanks, but they're able to rush effectively since both of them are actually floating above the ground rather than running.

Batman and Nightwing are ranged attackers that can mix it up at close range.

Flash can actually speed up and slow down the entire game so that he can work in some fast combo attacks.

People seemed to be having trouble playing with Harley Quinn as she was slow but powerful. Solomon Grundy was also kind of the same and people tended to stick with the powered folks more.

Cyborg was the one that I really didn't see people play with all that much.

Of course, there has to be finishing movies right? No killing moves, but damn there are some painful looking things there. Each character has a small meter at their side of the screen, like in the newest "Mortal Kombat" where you power up their common attacks, or charge it to do a super attack.

Flash's finishing move involves him runnning around the world to charge up a punch that knocks his opponent into the air. He then speeds behind them and promptly knocks them back to Earth hard.

Superman knocks his foe into space, then smacks them back to the ground like a meteor.

Wonder Woman calls in some Amazons that trap the enemy so she can wail on him mercilessly. So on and so forth.

Something I found rather cool (a stylistic and mechanical choice on the part of the developers) was that there is no round announcer and no stoppage in the fight. Each fighter has two health bars, and when one is reduced to their last health bar, there is a sound or a hit that signifies that the fight has moved to the second half.

Now, the other fighter could still have both of their health bars, but it just shows that the wounded one is on their last legs. Also, there's custom dialogue for each combatant and their specific opponent.

The representatives from Warner Bros. said they wanted the fights to feel like blockbuster movie battles, without the feel of a fighting game. I think they did a pretty good job, actually.

The game is fun. Real fun. Will it capture your attention for hours at a time? Maybe. There's apparently a story to the game, too, so we'll see what that's all about when more details come out.

As for more characters, there were a lot of empty spots left in the character selection screen when we played. Someone in the crowd asked about Aquaman, and the company rep said, "We cannot comment on whether or not Aquaman will be in the game."

That means yes, in my opinion. I just want to stab someone with his trident.

The closest thing to a trident so far is Nightwing's electric staff.

Hands on Dishonored

Bang bang slice!

After one and a half hours in line, I finally got to play it. Worth it? Yes. Was it everything I hoped? Probably not.

Bethesda's "Dishonored" is a fascinating game with beautiful set pieces, stunning graphics and interesting game mechanics that will have you wanting more and more. Unfortunately, it is a little frustrating to play if you're just shoved into the game with so many abilities and skills you have no idea where to begin.


That might have been Bethesda's greatest fault with all of last week's Penny Arcade Expo. The game looks solid, there's no denying it. However, "Dishonored" is not a game that you can just dive in and play right away.

Think of all of the other games that this company creates.

Would you drop a friend of yours into Whiterun, past all of the tutorials, with full inventory and several dragon shouts and tell them to have at "Skyrim?" No, because the game is too complex. Neither would you shove someone into New Vegas and tell them where Ceaser's Legion was, the NCR, and Mr. House and just say "Good luck!" for "Fallout." That's just not how you  show off a game.

In the demo, I was tasked with kidnapping a doctor in a particularly slummed-out area of town near the water. Guards aplenty, I had to use my wits and insane amount of powers to get to the doctor, incapacitate him and then escape with him over my shoulder.

Seriously, that's what they had us play.

Luckily for Bethesda, the game was pretty fun to play. There is an item and power wheel that you can bring up to make your immediate inventory more personalized or fit the situation at hand. You have a crossbow and a pistol for silent or loud, attention-grabbing attacks. The sword is also useful and you can perform some nifty finishing moves. In your off-hand you have the ranged weapon or some sort of spell. From teleportation to possession to time stopping, there's a lot of variety. Bethesda was even showing a video of men being swarmed by rats who ate them alive. Gruesome, but cool.

She doesn't get paid enough to let stuff like this slide.

People will be alerted to your presence, so you might have to hide bodies instead of just leaving them out in the open. Loud noises attract attention, and even innocent bystanders will give your position away to guards. I had killed several men in a warehouse-type area, and when I moved to some upper rooms, there was a cleaning woman who screamed when she saw me and a guard came running, pistol and sword in hand.

I also had a variety of ways to sneak, climb and fight my way into the target location. It was actually cool to kind of go back and see, "Oh, I can do it that way next time," or "Dude! I didn't even think I could do that!"

Your character is able to jump and double jump to get to those hard-to-reach places, and there is some ability to scale buildings and walls. It kind of reminded me of "Mirror's Edge" without the free running and more Mario jumping. Think of the game as controlling like "Bioshock," combat like "Fallout" or an "Elder Scrolls" title, with the ambiance and stealth of "Assassin's Creed."

The character animations, set pieces and overall world as a whole are mesmerizingly interesting. It has the field of a sort of Elizabethan-steampunk England and is something we've never really seen before. If you have, however, forgive me for not being as thorough a gamer as you. The only thing I can equate it to looking like is "Fable 3."

There's all sorts of interesting folk lounging about in "Dishonored."

My biggest gripe with "Dishonored" was that it was actually pretty hard to control. I have a feeling this would play better on the PC with the smoothness of mouse movement rather than dual-analogue sticks. Bethesda's games always seem to be made more for a PC rather than a console when it comes down to it anyways.

I recommend the game based on my time playing the demo - despite my frustrations. I can't guarantee the rest of the game will be executed well, however. Wait for some reviews to come in and then we'll try and give you the most comprehensive look we can before the game launches Oct. 9.

Hands on ZombiU

Aim for the head!

Ubisoft’s Wii U title that has been passed around and casually looked at by press and gamers is something of a mystery. At this year’s E3, I was able to watch some people play a mode of the game where a single player fought hordes of zombies that came in waves as they held a point down. What I got to experience first hand at the Penny Arcade Expo this weekend was an entirely different story.

Jumping into the shoes of a survivor, I had to escape Buckingham Palace and survive the zombie hordes within. Inside, I had to scrounge for ammo to go with my handgun and the Royal Guard carbine that I had looted off the ground. The people at the demo booth told me that the game relies heavily on survival and tactical instincts, making you really conserve your ammo and get down and dirty with the zombies if you have to.

That made sense as I only had eight rounds for my pistol and three rounds for my carbine. But what I did have was an unlimited supply of skull bashings thanks to my handy-dandy cricket bat. Very “Shaun of the Dead” if you ask me. And like Shaun, I aimed for the head and cracked a few zombies in the skull a few times to make sure they were good and double-dead.

That's pretty much how it looks when you play the game.

The game’s menu is on the Wii U gamepad, so instead of having to press pause, you just look down and slide the inventory in to view, and the game on the screen pauses while you rummage through your pack to figure out what you want to use or discard. Now, this is a really interesting use of the gamepad and I actually liked it. What was hard was that the mini-map was down there as well, and having to look at my hands while also running on the screen was a little difficult. Especially when little red blips show up on it to tell you where zombies are and you don’t immediately look at the controller to see if there’s danger. It’s going to take a lot for gamers to get used to that on Nintendo’s new system.

The graphics were good. They were passable for current-gen systems but nothing too impressive for a next-gen machine. I suppose that’s actually a compliment for a Nintendo console as they’ve never been the most graphically-intensive machines on the market. Often times, if you crack a shot off at a zombie’s head, you might actually give them a real close haircut and expose their brain.

Zombie John!

Something fun was that when I actually died in the demo, I was put in the place of another survivor and I actually encountered my past-self in game as a zombie. When I killed that version of me, I could loot myself and get all of my previous items back. That kind of reminded me of the old "Diablo II" mechanic where you could loot your corpse. Something fun they were doing at the booth was also allowing you to use the camera on the Wii U to zombify yourself and I was told that you could even put zombie-you in "ZombiU."

All in all I think that “ZombiU” might present an interesting experience for a title on the Wii U. The game isn’t anything new, but it utilizes enough of the technology available in the system for it to be somewhat interesting to people who pick it up for the first time. I’m equating it to “Red Steel.” Hopefully it is much more refined and well executed than the other Ubisoft flop. Keep your eyes out for this game to come out Dec. 31.

Hands on Metal Gear Solid Rising: Revengeance

Here it is - the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Konami’s newest installment in the “Metal Gear Solid” series, “Metal Gear Solid Rising: Revengeance.”

Silly name not withstanding, I went in with an open mind to this demo as I’ve never really played much of the “MGS” series to begin with. I’m sure there are some people who will feel that I’m not really capable of doing a solid report on “Revengeance” because of this, but I’ll be purely reporting from a mechanics and gameplay standpoint.

The demo at the Penny Arcade Expo in Washington this weekend had us tackling the game as Raiden, newly outfitted with cybernetic parts like the Six Million Dollar Man. In the demo, he was equipped with a crazy lazer-sword a la “No More Heroes” that could basically slice through anything. Raiden could pick up weapons as well as sneak, but it just didn’t feel like a “MGS” title. What it did feel like, was “Ninja Gaiden.”


I’m not sure if that is blasphemous or actually really appealing to Kojima fans, but I honestly felt like I was playing that dressed up in “MGS” skins with the occasional exclamation point flashing above an enemy’s head as he became aware of me. How could he not, after all I had practically no stealth capabilities whatsoever.

I actually cut up a Metal Gear monster thingy with that sword of his like it was nothing.

Attacking is your standard button-mashing combo fare that many might equate to “Dynasty Warriors” or “God of War.” I have to give them credit, though, with the game mechanic that let you actually slow down time and pick the direction that your blade would run through your enemy. It made me think of the “Afro Samurai” game where you could slice the tiniest parts off of enemies in slow-motion.
 

The entire scenario was a virtual-reality training session for Raiden to become familiar with his new cybernetic implants. I have no idea how he has become a cyborg and I won’t speculate as to whether or not this is a cheesy or interesting plot twist. Cyber-Raiden kicks a lot of ass, cutting baddies and the occasional watermelon into little slivers of meat. On a fluke, I attacked a random pillar that was just sitting in a courtyard where I had a mini-boss battle, and found that I was actually able to use the sword slashing mechanic to dice up the column into little stone pieces. Of course, the archway it was holding up promptly fell apart, but I was genuinely impressed that there was some environmental destruction evident in the game. Kojima is really known for producing games that have attention to detail.

He just does not look like a happy camper.

I found the game's controls a little difficult to use. Raiden was far too sensitive to commands and I found myself running into objects a lot. Also, the screen is flooded with digital images and information about objectives and directions and attacks and combos that I felt a severe case of sensory overload. I understand that he’s a cyborg now and he’s got all sorts of fancy ocular implants, but I’m not  a cyborg and I don’t need that information shoved into my face.
 

Honestly, the demo was fun, but I wasn’t impressed by “Revengeance.” Maybe it’s because I’m not a “MGS” fan and maybe it could be that I’m just not seeing the full game. Whatever the case may be, I feel as though the game steals a lot of elements from other franchises such as “Ninja Gaiden,” “Dynasty Warriors” and even the quicktime events from “Resident Evil.” Granted, those are all proven mechanics that have sold over the last decade, but from what I know of “MGS’s” history as a stealth franchise I don’t really see this as a new direction that will revitalize the fanbase. Even some of the hardcore fans that were there seemed a little put off by it when I asked them. Then again, there were some people who thought the game was really awesome. It will be interesting to see who shows up to buy the game when it comes out on Feb. 19 of next year.