Devil May Cry Review

The New Dante

We are taught never to judge a book by its cover, but sadly that's what "Devil May Cry's" fanbase has been doing to the new reboot in the DMC series. You'll hear whiny fanboys complain "It's not Dante," or "This game has been ruined." To tell you the truth, I kind of felt this way too until I actually started to play the game and, well, to those who shared my old sentiment I bring this message: Shut up and sit down to play this amazing game!

Dante is back in Ninja Theory's reboot of the "Devil May Cry" franchise, and while he looks a bit different he's still the same badass we've come to know and love. This game retains all of the old "DMC" traditions while adding some new ones to the mix.

"DMC" is a new take on the series starring Dante as a demon-slaying badass who is repeatedly dragged into the world of Limbo by monsters out to kill him. He soon meets up with a medium named Kat, who is part of the Order run by Dante's long lost brother Vergil. Together, they seek revenge on the demon king Mundus for murdering their mother and banishing their father.

The storytelling here is top notch due to the fact that every cutscene is motion captured and read live. It all helps immerse you in this new retelling of Dante's origin. The dialogue, while well written at times, can be just a joke. Dante meets one of Mundus's generals and they proceeds to have a "F@ck you" competition with each other. Not exactly the best work of the year, but it does get across the point that this is a younger and more brash Dante. Still, it could have been worked on a bit more. Don't worry, there are still a lot of classic "DMC" lines so it's all good, fanboys.

Kat joins the roster of DMC women

The gameplay has been reworked a bit while still keeping the foundation the previous games have laid. Dante has access to his trusty sword Rebellion and his duel pistols Ebony and Ivory along with new weapons he'll pick up along the way. The control scheme has been reworked, so switching between demon and angel weapons is just a simple hold of the trigger and release. This adds so many layers to the combat the I felt was always lacking in the previous games.

Aerial Combat has been re-vamped 

The combat is amazing, making you feel like a total badass when you switch weapons and lay down unholy death on these demons. The style-point system is back as well and adds a bit of replayability when you're trying to go for the highest combo score out on the leaderboards. The thing with the style system is now it seems way too easy to get the coveted SSS rank that you would have to strive for in past games. In fact, it's like this for the combat in general. In the past games, I would have to moderate myself in attacking then dodging, but now I can just hack away and get praised for it. To counteract this, "DMC" has seven - yes seven - difficulties.

The visuals of the game are gorgeous. While almost greyed out in the human world, once you hit Limbo the visuals come to life. Limbo has a wide assortment of bright colors to show off the lunacy of the world. Bits of the city are torn apart as the demons continue on their quest to stop Dante. As you walk through the levels, you'll also notice the floor rotting with grime, webs and blood making you want to get out of their as soon as you can. It's something that has to be seen. Limbo is like art. Mind you, art made by the mind of a mad man.

Kickin' ass in Limbo

The bosses themselves add  to the visual aspect by being sick, twisted creatures of demon lore. Just wait until you see the succubus and try not to be disgusted.

The soundtrack reflects the visuals as well, ranging from hard-hitting tracks from the band Combichrist to electro-dubstep from the trio known as Noisia. All the tracks work well with what's happening, adding a sense of urgency and just plain badassery.




Dante may be starting over, but he sure did hit the ground running. "DMC" has instilled new life in a franchise that hasn't been seen since the launch of this generation of consoles. While this game is a bit easy, and its dialog can be a bit juvinile and lackluster, the reworks to the game make it easy to look over that fact. That's why it's easy to give "DMC" an 8/10. Clearly Ninja Theory has hit the jackpot here.

Surviving the dead: a review of ZombiU

No one seems to be interested in that sale back there.

The thick shadows press down on your field of vision. The flashlight is running out of batteries, and that means that even if you turn it on you'll only have a few seconds of bright relief before being thrown back into the inky blackness. Their heavy breathing can be heard practically all around you and the radar on your Prepper Pad is sounding off multiple targets so quickly that it is almost mimicking your heartbeat.

No more bullets, one medical pack, a candy bar and the trusty cricket bat that was given at the beginning of your long trek into the dingy London Underground. Hardly an arsenal. How much longer can you hold out against the pressing darkness and the thought of the fiends shambling towards you, invisible, before you crack and run back the way you came? Or how much longer before one of them sneaks up behind you in your moment of indecision and panic and ends it altogether?


"ZombiU" really throws you hard into the survivor role. It never lets up, never gives you a break and sure as hell never stops. All that sounds like the game is full of sprinting undead, like those of "Left 4 Dead." No, I'm talking about the speed of your heart and your thought process. The dead in Ubisoft's new game don't move that fast, but that slow gait makes for a tension that riles you up.

As you see them approach, you mentally gauge the distance between you and them, whether or not your bat can reach them or not. Are they too far away for the bat? Do you have time to switch to your gun? Do you have enough bullets in it? How good of a shot are you to put them down quickly? All of these questions run through a player's mind, all the while the zombies continue to move towards you.

Not only are items and inventory a worry when fighting the enemy, but health and damage must be monitored as well. There are really very few hits that a player can take from the zombies before they are food. Not only that, but a player can die instantaneously if the zombies are too close and grapple them.

This insta-death spawns you as another survivor who has been drawn in by the mysterious Prepper, a man who is bent on finding ways to survive the apocalypse and full of theories as to how it happened. This serves two-fold, though. The ability to lose your survivor so easily means that the attachment the player places on the character can either draw them to be reckless and take many risks or be severely cautious.

Knowing that if the survivor dies the new character can kill the previous's risen corpse and retrieve the lost loot seems to give the player a bitter-sweet taste, knowing that not all survive in these scenarios, but if you do for so long you feel extremely proud of yourself and accomplished.

It's scary when those fuzzy hat guys actually move, isn't it?

There's something to be said for a first-person perspective in a game like this. "Dead Island" had a more fast paced and open feel to it, so the player was able to take in the scope of their surroundings and plan out how they would tackle a situation. Of course, there are times when close-quarters combat happens, which is more the style of "ZombiU."

Enclosed spaces in apartments, the London Underground, a supermarket and on and on. There are very few places where the player can move back and regroup away from the oncoming hordes. Not only that, but the limited perspective heightens tension and freaks me out to no end in all honesty.

How does this compare to games like "Resident Evil?" Well the open field of vision allows for more zombies to be in the area, giving the player larger numbers to deal with. It helps that the game also gives the player much more ammo and firepower to deal with the hostile forces. "Left 4 Dead" does a similar thing, though their weapons and ammo are much more powerful and plentiful to compensate for the first-person perspective.

"ZombiU" is a solid game. With or without the story it has some very well put together mechanics, decent graphics and works well in compatibility with the Wii U gamepad. The survival gameplay is well done and many will find it enjoyable. There are some clipping issues, some confusion with how to read the radar and it did in fact freeze on me twice while playing. Sometimes the player will get lost or not know how to get to certain locations without a little help from outside sources.

All in all, the game is a 7 out of 10. An excellent launch title for the Wii U, lacking in some qualities but performing admirably when creating an environment of fear and tension. A very well-done zombie game.

Halo 4 review

 

“Halo 4” is like a love letter to the Halo franchise. Almost all of the memorable parts of every mission throughout the single-player campaign brought back fond memories of previous Halo titles. The best parts of the multiplayer portion of the game are throwbacks to fan favorites from previous Halo titles. This is the Halo game that fans wanted. This is the Halo that gives players the experience they've always loved. It's the closest we can come to playing “Halo: Combat Evolved” for the first time again, but with the awesome pre-rendered cutscenes from “Halo Wars,” the impressive multiplayer from “Halo 3,” the strong, strong personal story from “Halo 3: ODST” and the (good) armor abilities from “Halo: Reach,” and it's a damned good time.

Campaign

The direct continuation of the story of Master Chief, now often referred to as John, and Cortana floating aboard the disabled aft section of the frigate Forward Unto Dawn picks up roughly four and a half years after players left the two floating through space toward a mysterious alien planet now know as Requiem.

The story this time around focuses much more on the emotional strife that Cortana and Master Chief undergo throughout their adventures, and attempts to humanize the typically silent super soldier most players have come to recognize as a sort of surrogate for their own experiences within the game world through the degradation and impending insanity of the artificial intelligence that has been at his side through the past three games.

This filling of the shell that was Master Chief by 343 Industries, the group now in charge of all things “Halo” from here on out, while more fully developing his character and his interactions with other characters within his universe, also takes away the ability for players to insert their own feelings and emotions into their vessel throughout the events of the game.

That's not to say that Master Chief is constantly voicing his emotions and opinions to Cortana, he is still a very silent protagonist, but he does ask more questions and often offers his companion some emotional support during her more violent episodes of what is referred to as AI rampancy – essentially a being like Cortana reaches the age of seven and thinks itself to death.

All this tugging of heartstrings does quite a good job of making players feel sadness for the Chief, who is losing the closest thing to a friend he's had for the duration of “Halos” one through four.

Aside from the shift in storytelling, gameplay is true to the franchise's tradition of solid, balanced first-person shooter mechanics.

Fan favorite weapons like the battle rifle, designated marksman rifle (DMR) and beam rifle return alongside the light rifle, suppressor and boltshot, which belong to a new class of weapons used by the first new enemy class in the “Halo” franchise, the Prometheans.

The Promethean Knight is the toughest of Chief's new foes.

This new enemy class includes flying Watchers, Crawlers that attack in packs and the very tough Promethean Knights, which are slightly tougher than the franchise's old standby Elites.

Watchers will actively seek out and protect and even resurrect Knights from the dead, while crawlers will group up and overwhelm players.

This teamwork from the Prometheans forces players to adapt new strategies during firefights that serve to spice up the typical formula from past games in the franchise.

Multiplayer

Competitive Multiplayer:
“Halo” multiplayer has always been what keeps fans playing for years after release, and “Halo 4” is likely to hold onto players well into the next few years.

A major new feature to multiplayer is the ability for players to create loadouts similar to the custom classes in recent “Call of Duty” games. These loadouts allow players to choose starting weapons, grenades, an armor ability and tactical package like unlimited sprinting or extra grenades.

Competitive modes like capture the flag, oddball, king of the hill and standard slayer return as well as an updated version of the fan-made zombie gametype, now called Flood mode, in which two players infected with the Flood from previous games seek and and infect players. There is also a new capture-and-defend mode called Dominion, in which players take control of bases and build shields and turrets to defend the positions for as long as possible.

Flood mode is not without faults. Team confusion and players finding ways to hide inside walls plague the game mode, making it near impossible to play at times. These kinds of things are fixable via post-release patches, but for the time being entering a game in Flood mode is hit or miss.

Dominion is the most impressive new mode in my opinion. It is very similar to king of the hill, in which teams capture and hold bases on a map for as long as possible, but with the added ability to fortify each base. Over time, players controlling a base can build one or two defense turrets and spawn in vehicles to use in battle.

Flag carriers are now armed with a magnum for self defense.

In addition to new modes, one new vehicle appears in the game: the Mantis. It is essentially a bipedal tank with a machine gun on one arm and a missile launcher on the other.

Multiplayer is scored differently this time around. Rather than winning based on total number of kills per team, players get points for performing various actions during matches.

Assisting other players get kills nets you points, which encourages teamwork more than in any other installment in the series.

The point system can frustrate in slayer matches occasionally because there are instances where the player on the winning team with the most kills doesn't come out on top because another player with less kills made provided assists and netted more points overall.

Certain game modes like slayer and SWAT allow for instant respawn, which is another first for the franchise. Instead of waiting the normal 5 to 10 seconds to respawn between deaths, players can press the X button to instantly re-enter the battle, which serves to speed up the action and the match overall. This ability unfortunately encourages some players to rush into potentially dangerous situations without proper planning, sometimes resulting in defeat of the entire team.

The instant respawn ability is only present in these few gametypes, however. So you don't have to worry about it in capture the flag or dominion gametypes.

Cooperative Multiplayer:
While players still have the opportunity to play through the main campaign cooperatively in “Halo 4,” the developers have included a weekly episodic cooperative campaign called Spartan Ops with every copy of the game so that players can get fresh content for at least ten weeks after launch.

Each episode contains a short movie telling the story of the Spartan IV soldiers aboard the human ship Infinity roughly three months after the events of the single-player campaign as well as five missions that are ideally played with a group, but are possible to play alone.

I found that playing the missions over Xbox Live is very laggy most of the time, and most players don't use microphones to communicate during missions, so I may as well have been playing alone.

Players take control of Spartan team Crimson essentially running errands for Spartan Commander Palmer, who pipes up periodically throughout missions to make fun of the scientists aboard Infinity and tell you so kill all hostiles in the area.

Spartan Ops offers weekly missions for players and their friends.

Every missions eventually breaks down to that simple objective: kill all the bad guys.

So far two episodes of the Spartan Ops missions have been released, and episode two's missions are the exactly the same levels as episode one's except they are played in reverse. I don't know is this is going to be a common trend throughout the episodic content, but I find it to be very disappointing.

If I want to play the same levels over and over again, I would. Don't try and tell me I'm getting “new” content each week and just flip over the content I already have.

The short movies included with each episode are entertaining, and the animation is stellar. Not much has been done yet in terms of character or story development, but there are still several weeks left of content, so I will reserve judgment of it until season one is finished.

Primal Carnage review

Do you like dinosaurs? Of course you do. Who doesn't? Don't answer that.

Would you like to fight dinosaurs? How about devour humans as a dinosaur. In this "Counter Strike" meets "Turok" game, you can do just that. Get ready for "Primal Carnage," available now on Steam.

Just what is "Primal Carnage," you ask? Well, it is a multiplayer game wherein two teams, dinos and humans, face off against each other in a battle to the death that would make Charles Darwin proud and the producers of "Jurassic Park" drool at the sheer brilliance.
Some of you are probably really concerned about the teams being even. I mean, I was, because honestly dinosaurs are way more powerful and deadlier than humans. At least, according to every single movie I've ever watched.

That being said, it is a fairly  balanced system. But, I'll get into that in a second after I detail the classes and teams.

What does help to balance things out is the ammo and health caches for each team spread about. Humans can find first-aid boxes or ammo crates, while the dinosaurs can feast on the various flora scattered about the map to replenish their health.

For the dinosaurs you've got your velociraptors, flying dinos, spitting dinos, charging semi-t-rex dinos, and your t-rex.

The raptors can run fast, sneak up on the enemies and their alt-fire is this awesome lunging jump that has them maul the poor victim to death.

The fliers are actually really helpful because they've got this skill that allows them to see where the enemies are if they screech while in the air. Not to mention it's pretty fun to pick up a human and drop them from the tree tops to their doom.

The spitter is handy, much like the Boomers in "Left 4 Dead." They can blind the humans, and then allow the team to converge for a feeding frenzy of awesome.

The ramming t-rex dino is pretty much the heavy for the dino team. It can crash through the human forces and go toe-to-toe with the best of them.

The t-rex itself is the equivalent of an actual tank. It lumbers about with an enormous amount of health, but has a crap turning radius and really slow speed. However, it basically does an insta-kill no matter what.

You might need a bigger gun than that...

What I was actually impressed with was the fact that the giant t-rex can't spawn unless there's a proper amount of people on the server. This means that the game actually ensures that it's a fair fight between the teams without actually giving one team the dinosaur equivalent of a nuke to trounce the other.

In the human corner, you've got your machine gunner, shotgun surgeon, pistols guy, rifle lady and flamethrower dude. Now, the alt-fires for the humans get a little varied because each is suited to do damage in their own way.

For example, the commando machine gunner can fire grenades from his gun. Trappers can actually shoot a net that traps the dinos and allows the humans to run up and kill them. It's smart actually. I found myself trapped a few times while pouncing at a human and thinking, "Damn, I had him! But, that was kinda cool."

The maps are cleverly crafted to allow both humans and dinos to hide in large shrubbery or sneak up behind each other. This means open floor plans with very little elevation, which also means a little running around aimlessly. Of course, there are roofs and walkways for humans to run up to and attempt to gun down dinos from above. But that becomes moot when the raptors can practically jump onto the roofs of low buildings and the flying dinos can swoop from above. That and the spitters have a pretty good range to get folks on buildings.

Here's a fun little design choice that I liked. When you play as a human, it's all first-person, while as dinos it's in third-person. This means, as a human, you're literally watching your back and turning around frantically to make sure that the dinos don't sneak up on you from behind. I was blindsided dozens of times by pouncing raptors. However, the rex's weight means that the screen visibly shakes when one is nearby, so you know to duck and cover.

As a dino, the flares from the pathfinder or the tranq darts from the sniper blind and disorient the whole screen so that you will actually turn away from the bright light, or run from combat as you stagger aimlessly and sluggishly until the effects wear off. Clever ways to level the playing field for both sides.

Unfortunately, the game suffers from a few problems that, while totally fixable, are very common for multiplayer slugfests like this.

Fighting without a shirt and that safari hat are actually dino-hunting musts.

The raptors are almost too fast. Even while playing as one I had a hard time not over-shooting the target from sheer movement speed with both the melee attacks and the lunges. This might also have to do with the fact that you have to be incredible precises with every weapon. Humans and dinos. I mean, like, Bethesda targeting system accurate.

I found it nearly impossible to melee a human as a dino within the first three strikes before I finally connected out of sheer frustration and luck. Meanwhile, the humans are spraying-and-praying about in the hopes of hitting the almost unbelievably speedy raptors or how-the-hell-did-I-miss-that-sized rex classes.

In the midst of all of this, it's a meat-grinder. Sure, I was on a server where people were getting upwards of 17 kills or so. But they were also dying a dozen or so times themselves, making the kill/death ratio not nearly as impressive as any other multiplayer game like this.

As a human, I found myself rushing into the fray, shooting wildly, and then respawning within three minutes to do the same, almost infinitely until the round ended. As for dinos, I felt like I'd run about, pounce on a human or pick one up, only to be shot from the sky or blown to pieces by three or four enemies.

Not to mention the de-evolution of tactics that most people seem to go through. At first, the round starts good. The dinos are weaving through the map, trying to hunt down the humans, while some of the humans try to stay in groups and others go off on their own in the hopes of trying to bag a couple kills themselves.

As the round progresses, it seems like all the humans will invariably find a corner near a weapon or health cache and stick there with flares and wait for the dinos to come into the line-of-fire. The dinos will then send spitters to blind the humans and either a rex or a rammer to break up the humans and the raptors will swarm in. Half of each team will die, and then those that respawn will go back to their positions on their teams.

People will get bored of this, some will use the respawn to try and outflank the other team, which then results in entire teams respawning from death, and the cycle to repeat itself.

The game is a hard 7, maybe a 7.5. It's fun, but it suffers from meat-grinder syndrome and there is definite room for improvement. You may not even get to play a match to find out because often times I find myself having to restart the game half an hour after one try because the game will tell me that there's no servers available. Then when it opens up again, there's like 7 or 8.

So, if you do get online and get to play with a nice 20+ person game, you'll have fun, but probably only want to play for half and hour to an hour. For the money, it's a good buy, but you really have to want to play these kinds of games to try it. If you're looking for a study in how to do things a little differently or on how to make a new spin on the "Counter Strike" formula, this is a great study tool and example. I'd check it out purely for academic purposes if I was a game developer.

I can see your house from here!

Assassin's Creed 3 review

This review is a bitter sweet situation for me because of the incredible amount of love I have for this series. "Assassin's Creed 3" was my personal most anticipated title of this year. That being said, I'm going to have to be extremely harsh with it in terms of this review because there's no way my love of the franchise could possibly overlook the glaringly obvious problems with this game.

Of course, I will be speaking on the awesomeness as well, but just know that stuff's about to get really real.

I'll try to avoid spoilers if I can.

The good news is that this game is incredible. It's written well, the story does justice to the rest of the franchise and I'll be damned if it doesn't look better than previous "Assassin's" games as well. Everything has been turned up to 11 and Ubisoft spared no expense.

Both Boston and New York are wonderfully built and lovingly re-created in a way that is both impressive and expected in this franchise. You really do get to see what 18th century living was like, and for American fans this will be a treat to see the early colonization of their country.

As is standard in the franchise, several famous historical figures make appearances throughout the game. From Benjamin Franklin to Sam Adams and George Washington, each individual plays an integral, through-provoking part in the story. Except for maybe Ben Franklin, but he's the Leonardo da Vinci of the game.

Oh, and Desmond finally gets to go someplace other than the cushioned seat of  the Animus. We travel with him to New York, Brazil and even back to Italy where he was held in the first game by the modern-day Templar organization, Abstergo.

Honestly, the scale of the game and the sheer power behind it was extremely impressive and pleasing to someone who is a fan of the franchise.

With the addition of two new protagonists, Haytham and Connor Kenway, the game also has a deeper story line that breaches more on the topics of deception and right and wrong more than any other game in the series so far.

Pull out a dollar bill to see this guy from another angle.

Connor questions the propaganda that Sam Adams and his fellow patriots put out because it is dishonest and immoral, while Adams explains that it is necessary to combat the British rule. Connor also calls out the hypocrisy of their fight for freedom when they own slaves.

Haytham attacks the ideas of the Revolution at its core, and even provides completely logical reasons for George Washington to be replaced by a more capable individual. Clearly, the creators didn't want to pull punches and really wanted to expose a lot of historical truths much like they've done in previous games.

Where combat is concerned, the game is a little more streamlined, but also a little more complex.

 While your character can string together attacks, heavy enemies need to be slowly disarmed so that they can be killed more easily.

Also, guns are still available, but they require a long reload time, so the player can't count on just blasting their way through a situation like they previously could with Ezio. However, there are multiple ways other than the use of firearms to kill those around you that are just as effective.

With the silence of the rope dart that allows Connor to hang, pull and snare his enemies, you have an additional silent weapon to accompany your bow and arrow. The hatchet replaces the knife slot that was in previous games, and the weapon wheel is customizable so you can prepare yourself for any sort of engagement beforehand.

Did we mention that there is naval combat now? That's right, you can now sail the East Coast and Caribbean Seas to thwart pirates and stop evil doers. Not only that, you can upgrade your ship as well.

Connor's got a base of operations, like Ezio did with his villa, in the form of a settlement on the frontier. By visiting all the areas in the game, you can even recruit settlers from all around to improve your own settlement and up the amount of items you can trade or make to improve your home and the surrounding area.

Now for the bad news. I'm sorry to say that this section may even be longer than the good parts of the game.

Holy crap are there clipping issues with this game. I mean, really. I understand we've not really had steeple roofs in the franchise very much, but quite often I found Connor falling through them into nothingness. Be prepared to have a frustrating time running across these rooftops as the game often glitches when trying to climb all over them.

You'll find yourself avoiding the rooftops almost entirely during this game, unless you absolutely have to use them, because honestly, they're useless when getting away from enemiese.

Thankfully, the game has provided you with shortcuts through the buildings that you can exploit. But really, it's best to just avoid getting chased. You're better off standing and fighting.

The notoriety system has become more compartmentalized, giving you four levels. Incognito, Level 1 (where enemies sorta kinda notice you), Level 2 (where they will approach you quickly), and the incredibly tough Level 3 (where you are not safe no matter what you do).

Occasionally, you'll do these awesome three-person kill combos.

Should you find a town crier, you can be reduced to Incognito if you're Level 2. A Printer for wanted posters will eliminate Level 3 and only be available at Level 3. Wanted posters only take you down a single level. This would all matter if they were easy to find or come across. Which they really aren't. So good luck with that.

Too many collectables. Seriously. The pages of Ben Franklin's almanac, or almanacs depending on how you look at it, are super hard to collect. You know why? They freaking move. Yeah, when you spot one, you have maybe 30 seconds to try and get level with the piece of floating paper so that you can catch it. I mean, I was running directly under a page for four roofs because I couldn't get high enough to pounce on the flighty parchment.

You know what else? They disappear if you don't get them within the time limit, and respawn at a later time. So you can scream and shout at the game again and again if you don't get it the first time.

As for your settlement, I really found absolutely no need to do the trading system there, or even collect the settlers. I was there so little that none of it mattered. I was honestly there more times to do the naval missions (which are awesome by the way), than I was anything else.

Get this. If you send out a trading convoy, it has the possibility of getting attacked. If you don't go to the frontier, find the convoy, and protect it, you will lose the money and inventory. I'm serious. When I got there the first time I saw about 10 armed guards and shouted at my game, "WHAT ARE YOU HERE FOR IF NOT TO PREVENT THIS FROM HAPPENING?!"

Hunting is...pretty useless. I hunted a crap load of animals even before I got Connor to be an assassin and had 3,000 British pounds before I even had to really buy anything. The hunting, frontiersmen and brawler challenges all add spice like the Courtesan and Thieves Guild ones, but they're also just as pointless.

Again, you can recruit assassins and send them out to do missions and liberate states while training them to help you with missions. Certain assassins can be sharp shooters, brawlers and even start riots for you to cause a distraction. Too bad I never used them either. Seriously.

Oh, yeah, and remember how everyone complained about the traveling between locations in the first "Assassin's Creed" on horses and crap. Buckle up, that's back. Sure you can fast travel to certain locations, but be prepared for a five minute horse ride or a ten minute run somewhere. It's...painful.

The secondary objectives to get full synchronization range in difficulty from doable to completely asinine. It's not helped by the fact that the game itself is extremely unhelpful. Sometimes you'll do all the secondaries, and find that you don't get 100% because there's a hidden secondary of doing all of the secondaries in a single playthrough without starting over at a checkpoint. Seriously, it didn't tell me that during the mission that I had to do them all without restarting the mission to get 100%.

Sometimes the game glitches so poorly that the game won't even realize it's preventing you from continuing. The Paul Revere mission is a perfect example. During the mission, you ride with Revere to warn the patriots that the British are coming. Simple, right?

No. No it's not. Because Revere will have to follow you to each door to tell you if it's the right house. Guess what? Second time I had to do that? He just stopped telling me which house it is, so the mission would not go forward. I knew which one it was, but it wouldn't activate the door until Revere said it was the right house. We just stood in front of each door for several minutes, waiting for something that wasn't going to happen.

Those kinds of bugs will pop up every now and then. Sometimes the enemy will spawn so close a fire line will make it impossible to get to a location in the given time. Other times, things like the Revere incident will occur.

The problem with this game is that there's too much. Too many extraneous things to do.

Eliminate hunting, and no one would care. Why? Because a settler you get will hunt for you and you can sell those pelts instead. Or just limit hunting to the settlement entirely.

Eliminate the travel in the frontier. No one wants to do that.

Don't take out the naval missions, but get rid of the assassin recruits, or at least the missions for them.  Honestly, I rarely did those.

Get rid of some of the collectables, specifically the almanac pages. As the meme says, "Ain't nobody got time for that."

"Oh, let me just run right into this line of fire, no big deal."

If some of these changes were made, the game would be perfect. Unfortunately, it's not. This might be the most well written and creative of the "AC" games, but it feels like the most over-stuffed and poorly put together of them all.

I wanted to give it a 10. I really did, but I can't even give it a 9. It's a 7.5 or 8 if I'm being honest. A 9 feels too generous with the bugs and clipping that are too evident and frequent to be excusable. Especially when the bugs limit game progression. The annoyance I felt bumps it down a grade too. I've never gotten a headache when playing these games, but this "AC3" gave me one.

If you are a fan of the franchise, you need to buy this game because it's incredible. But, you will be disappointed in a lot of areas, frustrated beyond reason, and utterly furious at times. Be prepared for that, and enjoy what you can.

Hotline Miami review

Okay, so I really didn’t know what to expect from this game only having the trailer and people’s tweets to go off of, but I’ll show you the trailer and let you make your own assumptions and draw your own ideas about it, then we’ll to the review.

If that wasn’t enough to make your head tilt to the side in a sort of "Whaaaaat?" gesture, then you’re a better person than I. However, I spent the $10 on Steam and downloaded the game. It’s amazing. You can quote me on that. It. Is. Amazing.

While it may not look like much, the game is a cleverly constructed piece of top-down shooting and crazy story. You may not understand it right away, but it is just enough to keep you from going, “Is this game just killing people randomly?” If it was, there would honestly be no real lasting appeal or motivation to continue playing after you got tired of it the first time.

Fortunately for us, the game has an eerie sort of Stanley Kubrick/QuentinTarantino thing going on that is both disconcerting and incredibly hypnotic. The music is just the right kind of late 80s lazy with a creepy indie vibe to it that makes you cringe but also entranced. Honestly, the game is a cross between one of their movies and “Super Meat Boy.”

This game is not for the faint of heart.

The game expects you to die and even encourages you not to give up. I found myself not frustrated or angry when I got killed, but motivated to do better and to keep trying. It does a wonderful job of teaching you that none of the situations in the game are impossible, only that they require a solid bit of thinking.

You’re able to shoot, stab, cleave, throw, punch and crush people to death. But be warned, every shot and hit is a one-shot-kill, even to you so there’s no stand-offs and there’s no way to charge into a room guns blazing without feeling like you’ll get mowed down yourself. You have to be smart in how you tackle certain situations.

Luckily, you’re able to move the screen a bit to see what’s ahead, if only a little. But the biggest help are the masks. The main character, a nameless man who is killing all of these people at the behest of mysterious voicemails on his phone, goes to each job with a rubber-animal mask on his head.

You can unlock new masks that have different powers. Some make throwing weapons automatically lethal, others make it so that dogs don’t attack you or display certain secrets spread throughout the missions.

It’s not an overly complex game, and there’s not a lot to talk about because you truly have to experience it for yourself. It’s worth the $10 and it has a lot of replayability because at the end of each level your score is tallied and calculated off of your combinations and creativity of kills. That, and the secrets and unlockable masks are fun to get.

Yeah, this is a pretty accurate description of the game in a single frame.

This game could have been done wrong in so many ways, but it’s so good that I’m thankful to find an indie game that shows the ability to remake an old type of gameplay and make it fresh and innovative. If you haven’t played it yet, you really should. It’s only just been released, so there will be bugs, but if you have the patience and the will, you’ll really have fun with “Hotline Miami.” It's a 10/10 throwback to crazy arcade games with an interesting story to keep you going.

Medal of Honor: Warfighter review

While Electronic Arts’ franchise pre-dates “Call of Duty,” it doesn’t seem to even come close to the quality of its younger competitor anymore. “Medal of Honor Warfighter” tells you exactly what kind of game it is when you open the box and you find that the multiplayer disc is on top and the single player campaign disc is on the bottom.

Basically, that says the developers put very little work into the single-player campaign, and the multiplayer is where the game shines. Writing that statement makes my soul ache because, goodness gracious, the multiplayer is not well put together. I’ll talk about that first since that’s what EA wants you to focus on first when you buy the game.

The main menu for multiplayer? Awful, confusing, cluttered with information and downright annoying. I can’t even begin to go into detail because, honestly, I played several hours of it and didn’t even venture past just finding the Team Deathmatch option and jumping into it.

A player has a team of about five or six classes to choose from, each from a different country. The more point and kills you rack up as a class, the more you can unlock other countries and weapons. This is kind of silly since none of the countries have any sort of advantage over each other and the weapons can all be altered and customized, but none of them have more firepower than another.

This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense since sometimes it’ll feel like an opponent’s gun will just utterly destroy you before you even get close to killing them. I’ve unloaded entire clipsinto people and they haven’t died only to find myself shot twice at full-health and get killed.

None of this is made up for by the terrible maps, the often useless streak-perks such as mortar barrages or helicopter spawns and the utterly baffling discrepancy of the graphics from multiplayer and single player. Honestly, the textures are always behind when loading and it looks like an entirely different game at times when you play online rather than offline.

Yes, there is environmental destruction and sometimes it actually helps.

The only redeeming quality of multiplayer is the fireteam system. The game pairs you up with a partner on your team so that there are four teams of two, and by sticking with that individual you can get extra points from their kills and success and vice versa.

It’s a neat little idea about making you care about what happens to your team and working together. Honestly, it reminded me a little of “Ghost Recon: Future Soldier,” just not well done.

A friend and I played together and the saddest thing we found was that if we stayed in a single building on a couple of the maps, we could actually cover each other and camp the entire match, racking up enough points to almost be the best team for the whole game.

He said, and I quote, “This game makes me so depressed I want to just finish this can of Pringles while we play.” That about sums up multiplayer: a depressed person sitting in the dark playing “Warfighter” and eating and entire can of Pringles.

Multiplayer in a nutshell: the graphics are not as good as single player, the modes are not that enjoyable, the weapons and classes really don’t make a difference, the streak perks don’t make that much of a difference and are useless on certain maps, the maps are poorly constructed and frustrating, and none of it is made up for by the fireteam system that is only just slightly rewarding.

And now we move to single player. What’s to say about this other than it tries too hard to be a “Call of Duty” or the “Battlefield 3”-style campaign and it obviously isn’t.

The prologue mission is eerily like the ending scene in the recently made “A-Team” movie. There’s another mission that is eerily similar in beginning objectives to the gulag mission in “Modern Warfare 2” and I’ll be damned if that is the best of all the shooting missions.

I’m going to be honest here and say that the two driving missions, a chase sequence and an escape one, are the best missions in the game. Let me repeat that. TWO DRIVING MISSIONS ARE THE BEST MISSIONS IN A FIRST-PERSON-SHOOTER GAME.

Either they’re the best because they’re first person too and you really feel the urgency in each scene by looking through the car as you would normally, or just by the fact that they’re structured very well and control excellently.

Lookout! It's a bad copy of another game! Oh wait, it's us.

Other than that, the sound design is superb and the door-breaching is kind of fun, but when that’s your main check-out-how-awesome-this-game-mechanic-is thing, you’re in trouble. Especially when one of your missions is literally to fire a single shot at someone. I kid you not, the mission is literally to shoot one person and it takes about five minutes.

Also, the cutscenes are…iffy. The character models are not pretty to look at and I really don’t care about any of them, not even the main soldier characters. I’m also confused about the man who is actually structuring all of the missions himself because he’s just some guy in a room with a laptop and computer screens. Is there no structure to the army anymore or can any man with a network of intelligence agents just send special forces troops anywhere in the world?

At first, I wanted to give the game a 7 because, frankly, it is a game and it does run. However, I can’t in good conscience give it anything above a 6. Maybe a 5.5 out of 10. It’s just honestly not that good. I felt bad for spending money on it. I really did. This game is definitely something not to go out and buy right away. Wait for it to go down to $30 or something and then give it about an hour and a half’s worth of thought before you go into the local game store. And ask the clerk’s opinion as well.

Resident Evil 6 Review

These two look familiar...

Zombies, zombies, & even more zombies! This is just only a fraction of what the latest iteration of the “Resident Evil” franchise throws at you in an attempt to separate you from the undead.

“Resident Evil 6” is by far the most ambitious of the whole series. Sporting not one, not two, but four different campaigns to play through, each with their own style

The question is though, with four different campaigns, is it enough content to make the game a great one?
The answer is a yes and no. The game has a lot of content to play with, but by the time you complete two of the three campaigns, you find the third stretches on and your only goal is to finish the third as quick as you can to unlock the fourth story.


That’s the only bad part of the story mode. The story itself is seen through the eyes of Leon, Chris & newcomer Jake. Leon’s story is a nod to classic “RE” games with a more horror feel to it.

Spooky!

Dark environments, few herbs, and even fewer bullets all the while there are tons of zombies trying to feast on you. Chris's story has more of an “RE5” vibe. Its straight shoot'em-up against a new type of enemy called the J'avo who can mutate any lost limbs in to new weapons.

Sadly though, this is the one story that lacks a little compared to the rest. It’s largely due to the focus on shooting but it’s still good enough to play through.

Jake's is a mix-up of both Leon’s & Chris's. Since he is Wesker’s son, there is a focus on melee combat which is easily the best melee combat in the series. His story revolves around him and Sherry being chased around the globe by Neo-Umbrella.

Ada's story is just a kind of behind the scenes to the other three characters, but it is one of the most enjoyable thanks largely to the stealth and her trusty grapple gun. Each character has a fraction of the story and playing all clears up the whole picture.

The gameplay is still reminiscent of the “RE4” and “RE5” style but with some tweaks. Players can now dodge to all sides of their own accord without needing a quick-time-event. This comes in handy now that enemies run, jump, and shoot at you in every level.

On that note QTEs are back and now there a more of them. There is almost one for everything which is nice, but can make you feel flustered having to to push them or dodge every couple of seconds.

Another addition is that the inventory system has been simplified to be able to switch to any weapon or item on the fly. Generally, everything has been streamlined to deal with fast paced action that leaves little time to just sift through your items.

Partners are now invincible and smarter than in previous games. They will actually avoid danger and come to your aid when you need it. Capcom has listened to the fans criticism after the fiasco known as Sheva. Overall the gameplay is good enough to keep you enticed throughout the game.

The graphics look okay considering they’re still running on the same engine as “RE5”. Characters do look a bit more detailed than its predecessor. At times it has kind of a glossy feel which may not mix with the zombie ooze fest, but overall it’s not too bad on the eyes.

Ada looks prepped for some serious action.

 The soundtrack is perfectly in tune with game. It helps add tension when you hear an unwound piano being slammed as you’re being overpowered by the hordes. It also varies from character to character. Leon’s has more horror type instruments playing while Jake & Chris have heavy drums and orchestra melodies to go with the action. Ada has a kind of cat-sleuth vibe to it with soft melodies. With all the differences. The music still manages to hit the right note at the right time.

All in all, “Resident Evil 6” is a good game, not the great game we were hoping for but a good game none the less. Despite the, at times, lackluster story and streamlined gun-battle segments, It is still worthy of the price tag. That’s why I have to give “Resident Evil 6” a 7/10. Now "get the hell out of here!!" (That's the most overused line in the game.)

Dishonored review

Watch out for tallboys. They'll spot you from a mile away.

 It's raining. He's been standing on the stone wall for at least three minutes watching the guard patrol, waiting for the right moment to teleport behind him, subdue him and hide the body.

He'll have to be quick though, that gun tower is going to spot Corvo if he stays too long in the open. Thankfully, the bone charm will help him knock the guard out in half a second.

He's stopped now. He's...peeing. Ew.

Now's Corvo's chance. He Blinks behind him, wraps his arms around the man's neck and knocks him out. Possessing one of the plague rats by the wall, Corvo sneaks into one of the drain grates and breaches the walls of the previously impenetrable stronghold.

Will he slaughter the men within using his sword and gun? Or will stealth rule with a crossbow and sleep darts?

That's "Dishonored" in a nutshell. The game blends stealth, tactical combat and investigative puzzle solving in a delightfully sinful revenge story.

After playing the game at this year's Penny Arcade Expo, I was a little worried because the demo was so overwhelming that I didn't enjoy it as much as I wanted to. Thankfully, the game itself is so rewarding that I'm pleased to announce it is as good as it looks. But, it really is an acquired taste and requires a lot of patience.

The story of "Dishonored" sees Corvo, the bodyguard of the Empress and the character that players take control of, framed for a murder that he was powerless to stop, as well as the kidnapping of the Empress's daughter, Lady Emily. Corvo must clear his name, find Emily and take his revenge on those who used him as their patsy. All the while, the kingdom is in turmoil due to a deadly plague that threatens to overtake the capital city.

Because there's a lot of game here, I'll focus more on gameplay because the story is actually pretty good and I'm afraid I might give away important plot points if I talk about it too much. Suffice it to say, though, that I will make some comments on certain gameplay elements that might tell you how certain missions could end, but I will try and be as vague as possible.

That is a creepy mask.

The trailers love to show all of the blood and gore that can cascade across your screen in a symphony of screams and chilling expressions from Corvo's victims.

Using a duel wielding system, the game allows you to have a power or ranged weapon in Corvo's off-hand, and his sword in the right.

Similar to "Assassin's Creed," the crossbow can be used for stealthy ranged kills, and his pistol for loud and satisfying blasts of death. Of course, the crossbow can be fitted with non-lethal darts which can incapacitate rather than kill if you're encountering a lot of innocent bystanders who might give away your position. Or if you're not into the whole, "slaughter everything that moves" mind-set.

His powers include teleportation, slowing down time and even possessing small animals and people like a ghost. I found that the most useful power allowed me to see through walls and locate living beings up to a certain distance as well as their lines of sight -a necessary power when playing the stealthy route. There's also a uniquely satisfying power that summons swarms of ravenous rats which devour your foes in seconds. It's also really gross to watch.

Bone charms, small collectible items found throughout the ruins and safes of "Dishonored," grant small stat boosts. I find these extremely helpful and like to tweak the ones I have for my specific play style.

Of course, that means the other four dozen charms are utterly useless to me. Why would I want one that grants me mana if I drink from faucets when I have one that gives me increased mana regeneration when using potions? Well, I might run out of potions but that's beside the point.

The Runes that Corvo finds scattered around the game world similarly allow him to level up his powers and make them more effective or powerful.

These runes and bone charms provide a basic leveling system without actually leveling up. What's interesting is that, apparently, you can play the entire game without taking any more powers than the one you're forced to have due to a plot device.

I think it's interesting that the developers actually give you the option to make Corvo a mystical assassin or a man who relies on his own physical prowess. Not only that, but it appears you can go the entire game without killing a single person.

Um, OW!

How is this possible when you're supposed to get revenge on those who wronged you? Well by finding the non-lethal solutions to every assassination, of course. These courses of action are longer and much more complicated than outright killing the target, but who wants to fight through hordes of guards or ruin a perfectly good masked ball when you can get some poetic justice instead?

The non-lethal methods really change the game from a tale of bloody revenge into "The Count of Monte Cristo" with magic and plague and less treasure chests full of gold.

You can upgrade Corvo's arsenal and tools by spending the cash you find toward the technical genius of the awkwardly-perverted Piero. I call him perverted because I saw him peeking through a keyhole at a chick taking a bath. No joke, you can find him doing that.

While he might be weird and creepy, Piero can upgrade your boots to make them less noisy for sneaking, amplify the range of your weapons, and even up your carrying capacity of certain ammunition.

The real impressive stuff in "Dishonored" is the multitude of ways you can go about accomplishing your missions and reaching your objectives. Seriously, it's mind boggling. I'd go halfway through a mission before I saw a place that a rat could fit through if I possessed it and would have made my whole journey that much easier if I just looked down.

During the mission I played at PAX, it took me a few minutes to get into the target's greenhouse on his roof. When I played it at home, I teleported to the roof, then just bypassed the guards on the ground and inside the house and was in and out with the target in a manner of seconds. Seriously, I was astonished at how the game changed now that I knew what I was doing.

Graphically, the game is fun to look at. "Dishonored" looks like City 17 from "Half-Life 2" had a baby with Albion from "Fable 3." Honestly, if anyone else can think of a better comparison than that, I demand to hear it.

Some of the textures leave a bit to be desired and you can often see the game trying to play catch-up while rendering, but nothing's perfect.

The facial expressions on the people are actually pretty impressive, but I've seen better looking character models.

Honestly, the game is good looking, but that's not the point. The game itself is more about the gameplay than how it looks.

I haven't run into any bugs, no crashes or anything, but often times you'll see someone's sword go through a wall when they turn or an NPC not know how to walk around something rather than in to it. Again, nothing's perfect.

This is just a really mean way to kill someone.

My biggest gripe with the game is one of the same ones that I had with "Deus Ex: Human Revolution." I often get a little overwhelmed by the amount of choice you'll have in regards to paths and stealth routes.

I sometimes spend an hour trying to do something a certain way, only to find on the way out that there was a freaking door just out of sight that would have taken me right where I wanted to go.

Also, the first-person perspective took some getting used to with all of the climbing and jumping. I often found myself trying to climb a ledge and be right under it and bump into it rather than climb it. Just a little frustrating.

Combat is simple for a first-person game with Bethesda's focus on precision when it comes to melee weapons. People who aren't familiar with "Fallout" or an "Elder Scrolls" title will struggle a little.

All-in-all, I give the game a 9 out of 10. It's not perfect, but I really, really like it. I think I was expecting more exploration and a little more "umph." It is also disappointingly short. I'm not sure if I expected such a long game because of what Bethesda produces so often, but about 9 missions is a little too few for my taste here. The game delivers well, but it just doesn't seem like it's gone the distance.