I know SH:SM came out first, but Alan Wake was in production for 4 years, and there was a good chunk of info on it as well as footage and images during that time. Of course this long production cycle shines through in what is inarguably a gorgeously designed game. Even though the levels are linear this fact is expertly disguised, and the game never feels limiting or repetitive. And where it may not be as scary as an SH game, it is as intense. Too bad it’s kinda short with little to no replay value.

I'm looking for my wife Mary- I mean Alice! Have you seen her?

Now don’t get me wrong: Alan Wake is well worth playing.  The story is told over 6 episodes  that play out like a TV serial (including episode recaps) kind of like  what Alone in the Dark tried to do, only, you know, successful. The story itself is practically a love letter to Stephen King, who is even mentioned by name a  few times, and takes obvious inspiration from his unique brand of horror. In this fashion the story is about a famous writer, Alan Wake, who has had writer’s block for 2 years and so he takes a vacation to an isolated mountain town called Bright Falls with his saccharine and wholly unremarkable wife. As you might have guessed: wife goes missing. The twist here is that after losing a week’s worth of memory Alan keeps finding pages of a manuscript he can’t recall writing that seems to be dictating the events of the game. He becomes convinced that if he can figure out the story he can save his wife.

When I say the wife is unremarkable, I mean it. Luckily there are other strong female characters in the game but she is just completely stock. She’s devoted and doting for sure but she doesn’t seem to have much of a personality (besides her intense phobia of the dark.) This makes her kind of lacking as a goal and I’d often forget about her while I was running around enjoying the rest of the story and finding the game’s various collectibles.

Like I said before the game is short, probably around 12 to 15 hours. It also doesn’t really hold much in the way of replay value save for achievement grinding. There are some manuscript pages you can only get on Nightmare mode but I can’t see much benefit in it. Sure the pages are short and interesting to read/hear Wake narrate but it isn’t quite compelling enough for a second playthrough in my eyes. Though these extra pages may explain the ending, which was a bit schmaltzy and very abrupt.

I also thought the voice acting in this game was quite good, and the characters were likable, even Alan with his grumpy artistic temperament. Though I found the stiff facial and mouth animations to be really distracting. I know most games with a more realistic style tend to dive right into the uncanny valley when it comes to mouth movements, but Alan Wake’s are especially bad.

As for the gameplay, you traverse dark environments with a flashlight solving practical puzzles, monsters attack you but only at certain times and you can fend them off with flares. Yeah okay, I’m still working this Climax ripped off Alan Wake angle, but unlike Silent Hill: Shattered Memories you’re actually allowed to fight the monsters in Alan Wake. Your monsters here are called the Taken, the darkness that seems to stem from the town’s lake takes over shells of the townspeople. What’s both amusing and frightening about them is that they say random, every day phrases in a monstrous voice, as if the darkness is just plucking familiar phrases from their mind. A Taken park ranger, for example, wailed about how you’re not allowed to feed the animals as he attacked me. Most Taken encounters seem to be triggered events, but there are times when you’re trying to find your way through the woods (and Alan spends alot of time in the woods) where they’ll just keep coming until you reach a checkpoint. A building noise coupled with the fog seemingly being sucked toward one spot hearkens the coming of the Taken, and it is quite a haunting effect. Checkpoints are mostly lamp posts where you’re completely safe from the Taken, though often you have to start a generator first in order for it to illuminate.

As for your weapons you can banish the darkness protecting the Taken with your flashlight and then cap them with a gun. You find a variety of weapons throughout the game such as shotguns and hunting rifles, and you can even use flare guns and flashbangs to destroy enemies quickly. I spent most of my time conserving those latter items for when I was really overwhelmed, but on Normal mode at least the game throws ammo at you often so it wasn’t entirely necessary. Alan also has this annoying habit of getting knocked out, falling off of things or getting arrested and subsequently losing everything he was carrying, leaving you to find a flashlight and weapons all over again, so don’t bother trying to stockpile anything.

I hate to call this game a weekend rental, since it’s a good game that everyone should play at least once, but it is short enough to be comfortably completed in two days or so.  The game does come with some DLC right off the bat that you can only get by purchasing, seeing as I did indeed rent it I don’t know what it is exactly. It’s been hinted that there are future episodes planned as DLC, but in that case you’d want to wait to purchase the game. Even though Alan Wake doesn’t offer much in the way of replay value if you want to enjoy a finely-crafted single player experience, you definitely need to play this game.

Related posts:

1. Silent Hill: Shattered Memories Follow-Up Rant
2. Silent Hill: Shattered Memories
3. Dear Politicians: No One Gives a Damn About Manhunt 2

I found the first Mass Effect pretty addictive too, which is strange because I don’t really like sci-fi, especially Star Trek-esque space operas. And that’s exactly what Mass Effect is. And yet these games suck me right in, it helps that you can design and direct your own Commander Shepard, getting to pretty much decide who this person is. And I have to say when I got to see my Shepard again (because you can import your ME1 character) I was elated. I guess I got pretty attached to her over the course of the first game, and she hasn’t changed. She’s still a Vanguard and still a crazily equal mix of Paragon and Renegade.

My Commander Shepard. You don't mess, bitches. ...Yes I took this with my digital camera.

That’s right, the primary system of deciding who your Commander Shepard is and how the people of the Mass Effect world react to him/her is still intact. Though I found I had dialog options based on my Paragon and Renegade rankings pretty early on. Besides responses and choices that determine these rankings you also get actions in the middle of dialogs you can preform, interrupting the character who is talking to you to by preforming a Paragon action with the left trigger or a Renegade action with the right trigger when the option flashes.

Those aren’t the only things that have changed. You can once again mine planets for precious materials, only this time you don’t have to land on the planet and wrestle with unwieldy Mako controls and the materials actually serve a purpose. At first I was a little put off that there were no level ups for gun skills or upgrades to attach to your weapons, but now you can use mined materials to research and create upgrade schematics you find, a better and much more interesting system. You also need to gain certain squad members to use features like this aboard the ship.  And this not only goes for weapons but areas of your ship, omni-tools, cybernetics and armor.

Speaking of armor, it’s modular this time around. You can swap around individual chest plates, helmets, leg guards, arms, etc. with various bonuses on them to create your own armor. You can also choose the pattern and colors, which is a welcome addition considering that in the last game you were often stuck in ugly yellow armor for 10 hours because it was the best one you could find. You can also choose Shepard’s casual outfit that he/she will wear aboard the Normandy.

What do the aliens want, Cancer Man!? Oh... oh right, they're on my ship. I should probably ask them myself.

Mass Effect 1 always struck me as cinematic, but Mass Effect 2 takes that to a different level. The aesthetics, the camera angles used during dialogs, everything has been amped up. Though like Tycho said over at Penny Arcade, the levels sometimes seem a bit too designed. From a gameplay angle this is a good thing as it’s much easier to take advantage of the cover system (and you’ll need to, they’ve really emphasized the “Shooter” in RPG Shooter this time), but it can be a bit distracting at times. The story structure also seems a bit more tight, more unified to me. You answer basically to the equivilant of an intergalactic Cancer Man, and he’s an interesting device to structure the story around, tie events together and inject a bit of mystery all in one.

You don’t get the same squad as in the first game (on account of everyone thinking Shepard was dead for 2 years, long story, play the damn game)  but familiar faces keep finding you which is a nice touch. Also it doesn’t bother me because, sliiight spoiler, my absolute favorite squad member Garrus returns. I won’t tell you where you find him, but I will say when I was hunting down a particular character and they mentioned he was a Turian I just kept saying “please be Garrus, please be Garrus” over and over until I found him.

So far I haven’t managed to relocate Liara, who was my Shepard’s lover (seeing as she was the only choice for lesbian!Sheps) and despite finding her to be insufferably dull in the first game (though, admittedly, more appealing than Ashley. Didn’t miss anything there, I let her blow up) I’m so attached to my Shepard that I’ve become eager to track her down by association. On  the other hand, lesbian!Sheps can at least romance a female human this time (albeit bisexual and… er… panaliensexual? Why do we only get chicks who swing both ways?) , though I’m a little perturbed that the mega-butch, full-body-tattooed female named Jack isn’t available for girl on girl.

Really? Straight?

I mean really? And once again I might note that you can’t have a gay male!Shep. Come on Bioware, stop pussing out. You let our male characters have a roll in the hay with a dude elf in Dragon Age. Though, again, a bisexual dude elf (is it really that hard to depict full-on gayness guys?) Though according to some it’s not gay if it’s an elf.

Anyway, enough about gay gamer issues, how does the game hold up? Very well, I think. Though I’ve heard some complaints about the ending I’ve yet to get there, I’m a sidequest junkie and would like to make my experience last. Not to mention the game is so massive it’s stored on two discs.

This isn’t a sequel you can dive into without playing the first one, though apparently when creating a new character you can check off key decisions from the first game and see the results in Mass Effect 2. And you can only import your Mass Effect 1 character if you beat the first game.  Going through this epic with a legacy character is very satisfying and I think with a character you’ve designed and characterized yourself you just get drawn in all the more intensely.

Related posts:

1. Mass Effect – Impression
2. The McCullough Mass Effect Debacle
3. Coloring Tutorial & Timelapse

On top of that it has the best action control scheme yet seen in a game. I’m serious. It’s not a God of War ripoff, it’s everything Devil May Cry 4 should have been except with hot chicks with guns on their shoes and a ludicrous sense of style. So, yeah, it’s pretty rad.

It seems it was more apt than I realized to mention Bayonetta in my discussion about Dante’s Inferno and Darksiders and how, like Hollywood, several games with similar themes keep coming out all at the same time. Although I begin to wonder if Dante’s and Darksiders were both developed as a response to Bayonetta.

Bayonetta also focuses on a heaven and hell theme, even using the terms Paradiso, Inferno and Purgatorio for different levels of reality. However its concepts of demons and angels are refreshingly imaginative and original, yet at the same time I can see so much in the angel designs that derive from actual descriptions of angels in ancient religious writings (namely that they have animal heads, multiple faces, etc.), as well as some that are designed straight after depictions in classical paintings (such as when you see angelic figures that are just heads with wings.) Also they’re your enemies. You’re a demon-summoning, dark magic using witch after all.

The opening of the game does give you an expositive narration about the witches and their downfall, but you get to engage in an action scene the entire time. After that a lot of the cutscenes are actually kind of long, however they are so entertainingly, and often times hilariously, over-the-top, cinematic and oozing with style that you can’t take your eyes from the screen. These scenes are skippable though, which is a good thing as the game’s scoring system and unlockables seem to suggest it’s intended for multiple playthroughs.

I can say without a doubt that the action in this game consists of the most incredible controls I have ever experienced. It’s really something that’s difficult to describe and you just have to feel to believe. Everything is so fast, so fluid, and there are so many different combinations and moves you can preform that the  game stats tell me I’ve yet to do them all. It isn’t a button masher either (at least not on Normal mode), Bayonetta will only flow from one move to the other if you time your button presses correctly and you’re rewarded with Witch Time, a brief spell of slow motion, when you deftly dodge an attack at the last moment. There’s also torture attacks that you can do when you’ve wracked up enough combo points, climax attacks to finish off boss enemies (where Bayonetta gets almost naked and her hair turns into a giant, roaring monster), and you can even pick up the various weapons of vanquished angels and use them against their comrades, and each of these also has their own unique attack animations. There’s so much going on and so much you can do that the battle system never gets old. And it doesn’t feel frantic, you feel in control the entire time and you feel like you’re actually accomplishing something, that you’re doing the wide variety of moves on purpose (and most of the time you are, most  moves have specific button and joystick combinations.)

Really so far the game has been fairly easy, but I think that’s the point. It’s supposed to be fun and you’re supposed to feel like an absolute, unstoppable badass. I have managed to die a few times, though, as healing items are far and few between (and you get points off your final level and chapter scores for using them, the gameplay expects you to time your movements intelligently and not get hit) but the game has a great checkpoint system that gets you back into the action right away and doesn’t waste your time.

The overall style and humor in this game is some weird hybrid of Japanese and American tropes, but granted alot of good can come out of Japanese tributes to American pop culture and media (Silent Hill and Cowboy Bebop come to mind.) It’s kind of like Kill Bill meets The Matrix with a bit of Bebop actually, it’s intentionally over the top and purposefully lampooning exploitation film styles but at the same time is seeped in non-stop action and impossible badassery that teeters perilously on that line between awesome and stupid. The music is pretty great too, full of fast jazz, sensual J-pop and several different versions of the song “Fly Me to the Moon”.

But underneath all of this high-flying so-unabashedly-silly-it’s-just-plain-awesome action there is a deeper story brewing about Bayonetta’s past. At first I was a little miffed to hear she has amnesia (an amnesiac hero? Again?) and really it is more for plot convenience than anything, but it isn’t really focused on much. Bayonetta isn’t brooding and emo about her lost memories, she’s always cool, confident and cheeky, she’s more aloofly curious about her past than anything but she doesn’t seem to be in much of a rush to remember.

Unless it’s something I know I’m really going to want (Sims 3,  Assassin’s Creed 2, Fable 2  etc.) I tend to rent games first and not buy them on day one. Well I bought Bayonetta on day 3 without renting it first. I noticed that almost every website and magazine has given it straight 9’s, that is an unprecedented amount of consistency from the reviewing sphere, don’t you think? It doesn’t happen too often. Well, granted, the clumsy PS3 port has gotten mostly 8’s, but that’s to be expected.

I’d have to say it was a good purchase, it’s so nice to see such a strange game be so high profile, many gamers today only seem interested in me-too first person shooters. No surprise that Bayonetta was developed by Platinum Games, which is made up of former members of Clover the people behind equally strange games like Okami and Viewtiful Joe. Gaming is in desperate need of an injection of variety, and even though they used the old “sex sells” tactic to boost this game to a high profile it’s mostly played for laughs and Bayonetta, in both design and personality, is a very unconventional game heroine.

Related posts:

1. Dante’s Vs Darksiders
2. Batman: Arkham Asylum
3. Warriors Orochi

Sure American companies have been making terrible Silent Hill games lately, but how can they screw up just taking Silent Hill 1’s gameplay and script and making the game again?

Well they could screw it up by deciding to make this a “re-imagining” rather than a remake, and by being developer Climax Studios the people behind Silent Hill Origins. Great. And like always, Climax has friggin’ missed the point of Silent Hill.

And the first point they fail on is the idea that “Silent Hill is psychological.”  True, Silent Hill games do have that reputation, however it was Silent Hill 2 that set that precedent. And their definition of “psychological” isn’t the subtle, nightmarish Freudian imagery of Silent Hills 2 and 3, no no, it’s making the player take a laughably rudimentary psych test at the beginning of the game. And to add to the fun every time you boot up the game you’re greeted by an obnoxious bright red screen that warns you that it will psychologically profile you and use this information against you. Woooo scary.

There’s a problem here though. This is not some open-ended game where the person you’re playing is a blank slate of an avatar for you to put yourself into. It’s a very linear game with a very specific story where you’re taking on the role of the legendary Harry Mason. And that’s a problem too, Harry Mason is not James Sunderland, he was never characterized as a mental train wreck, he was just a widower and a good father desperately searching for his daughter in the face of an occult nightmare summoned by a crazy cult. The monsters and atmosphere didn’t stem from his psyche, but Alessa’s, the girl lying in the basement of a hospital purposefully kept in alive in agony so that she would birth the cult’s god. In fact the entire Otherworld was an extension of her suffering. Silent Hill 2 kept the Otherworld theme but introduced the idea that people with painful secrets could now shape the town and see different things depending on what was in their own minds. Futhermore I don’t see how you’re supposed to notice the “psychology” aspect of Shattered Memories at work unless you play through at least twice and try to spot the differences. Which would be interesting if this were a stronger game.

And if you’re a Silent Hill nerdtard like me it gets worse: this Harry Mason’s catchphrase is now “I was in a car accident” rather than “have you seen a little girl”, tsk, unforgivable! Oh and he also has amnesia, but it doesn’t resemble amnesia as much as it does Alzheimer’s disease. Really, Climax? An amnesiac video game protagonist? You’re really pushing the envelope here, huh? So yeah, this character doesn’t sound like Harry Mason at all, so for the remainder of this review he will be referred to as Barry Lason.

Oh and not only is Silent Hill a normal occupied town, but Barry Lason is a citizen. Enjoy your nerd rage, SH fans.

Anyway we open with a very sinister and condescending therapist, later in the game he forces you to do degrading art therapy and some of his actions and things he says makes you wonder why the hell anyone would pay for his services. Therapist man is talking to someone, presumably it’s Barry Lason but I suspected immediately this could easily be a bait and switch. Barry Lason was driving around in some insane blizzard that has caused all the roads to be closed and convenient 3 story tall banks of snow to act as invisible walls. Just like in the original game he crashes his car, gets out, and starts desperately searching for his daughter Cheryl. Unlike in the original game you can clearly see Cheryl wasn’t even in the fucking car. So great, I could take a good guess at the ending within the first 15 minutes. Good jorb, guys.

Thrilling!

When the game isn’t being extraordinarily boring it’s incredibly frustrating. It’s hard, but not in any challenging way, mostly in unfair and cheap ways. First the boring parts: most of the time you’re just plodding around ridiculously dark rooms finding no clues, no mysteries, no monsters, just walking. The game attempts to creep you out in these sections with loud music at times but because you quickly become aware there are no monsters you know there’s no threat. Occasionally you’ll run into a locked door and Barry Lason will mutter the obvious that he needs a key. The key is always right around the corner hidden in some object like a can. In fact, one of the very first key puzzles gives you two blatant clues right in a row, the second of which is literally a sign that might as well have said “THE KEY IS OVER THERE.” Okay, sure, past Silent Hill games have had some pretty ludicrous puzzles (like finding four keys to unlock a box with a piece of hair in it that you can then use to fish another key out of a drain…) but the ones in Shattered Memories are just insultingly easy. There are other kinds of puzzles too, but the solution to them all is always in some obvious location in the same room, usually with an arrow pointing at it. Other times you take pictures of the ghostly residue of things that occurred, presumably, in the past with Barry Lason’s widely ridiculed iPhone. There are a few benefits to the cellphone, however, such as easy access to the map and being able to save any time you want.

This portion of the game operates like an old point and click adventure, including the common issue in that genre where you often can’t figure out what the hell the game wants from you. Many times it wants you to work locks on doors, open cupboards and pick up objects. This is fine, but it wants you to use meticulous Wiimote motion so the game can pretend it’s simulating what it would be like to be REALLY opening cupboards and such with your own hands. It took me almost 10 minutes to figure out how to turn a beer can upsidedown and shake it to get a key out, mostly banging it around the screen like a frustrated gorilla before I got it.

Then there are the “Nightmare” portions of the game. This is our Otherworld proxy. Unlike previous Silent Hills where you’d have sparse monsters in a foggy, almost entirely abandoned town and more dangerous monsters when the blood-and-rust-covered-everything Otherworld took hold, you only get monsters in the Nightmare portions. The transitions are pretty cool, but in the end ice is still boring and not scary.

The monsters as well are extremely underwhelming, they all look like faceless naked mole rat people and are more annoying than scary. Sure the monsters evolve slightly over time depending on what objects and signs you stare at the most, but there’s no rhyme or reason or clear motif here, there’s nothing “psychological” about it. Look at Silent Hill 2’s monsters: from monsters that are just two pairs of women’s legs on either end, to monsters that struggle against a straight jacket made of their own flesh, to a manifestation of one character’s molestation at the hands of her father we’re talking about some pretty mind-fuck level stuff.

And no, Climax, referencing drugs and mentioning sex every now and again doesn’t make a game “disturbing”, unless maybe your target demographic is Amish teenagers or something. In fact Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is such PG-13 horror movie fare it almost seems ludicrous that it has an M rating. It doesn’t help that most of the story pieces you get focus on obnoxious teenage stereotypes.

Anyway, Silent Hill: SM’s monsters are just screechy little bastards who never stop chasing or attacking and since they can jump, climb, and go through doors an entire horde of them could be following you at any given time.  I also found that they slow Barry Lason down before they’re even latched onto him and it’s nearly impossible to just run past them. When you do have these pests hanging on old Barry Lason seemingly humping him to death you have to use very specific waggle motions to get them off, which are kind of hard to remember when you’re struggling to get three of the things away from you before they drain your unseen health. You can get flares to scare them off for a short time, but this makes it even harder to see where you’re going considering the game is so retardedly dark. None of this would be a problem, however, if you were allowed to fight the monsters.

Yeah. No lead pipe. No gun. No rifle. Not even a board with a nail. Why? Who knows, Climax wills it?

Previous Silent Hill games let you decide whether to flee or fight, it was a big part of the gameplay, and many of the monsters would not actively attack you, and even if they did they were not impossibly fast. Here in Shattered Memories your only choice is to run around blindly until you find the exit of the “Nightmare”.  Barry Lason will at least automatically open doors as you run toward them, but this is ridiculous. Although the information on the GPS/map system in your phone states that when a waypoint is set you can see a “faint path” that leads in the right direction I’ll be damned if I’ve spotted it yet. Unless that meant they made all the ledges and doors glow blue for you. You can hide from the creatures, but they can find you anyway, you can throw stuff in their path but it requires a nunchuck waggle which is rather cumbersome since you’re using the joystick to move and holding the Z button to run. I died in these sections mostly because I ended up running in circles with no idea where to go, since everything beyond your flashlight is pitch black you have no peripheral vision and it’s hard to make snap decisions about which direction to go in, you also can’t slow down and think about it or even look around because you’re constantly pursued by screechy hump-monsters, and you can’t look at the map because that makes you stop running and the monsters will get you. The third Nightmare sequence even forces you to take pictures of things while there are monsters afoot. And since they can climb walls and you can’t kill them this is incredibly frustrating. Honestly, this game would have been ten times better if you could kill the friggin’ monsters, even temporarily. I can’t even begin to fathom what made them decide to make the game this way, were weapons too difficult to program in?

And I’ll say again none of this is even scary! These things are just stock jump-scare monsters, and they don’t even do that well.  What made the classic Silent Hill monsters scary was their corpse and insect-like undulating forms. It’s because those games weren’t afraid to truly disturb you and did so by creating creatures and a world based around what repulses the human psyche most. Alot of it was also in the sound design, the classic Silent Hills would feature a bevy of atmospheric sounds that would just crush you with their intensity. When you weren’t hearing disgusting, squishy noises you were hearing nauseatingly high pitched buzzing that made you feel like you just had to get out of there. The only notable atmospheric sound I’ve heard in Shattered Memories thus far is a repeated noise in a dark forest that sounded like someone eating potato chips.

Now, truthfully, this game could be a decent distraction on its own, if it was an original story. The graphics are nice, especially for a Wii game, with good character models and some pretty impressive character animation, especially in the facial expressions. But the fact that it has to castrate Silent Hill 1’s plot and bank itself on the namesake of a classic series is just annoying.  In fact it is so radically different from the plot of Silent Hill 1 I am baffled as to why they didn’t just make an original Silent Hill story, you know, like Homecoming did? I mean Homecoming wasn’t up to par with the original trilogy but it at least kept in the spirit of Silent Hill games and had some good ideas (especially with the bosses.)

Without spoiling too much I’ll tell you right now the ending of Shattered Memories is a plot twist, but it’s a plot twist that renders the whole game pointless and doesn’t make any sense. You can’t just subvert the predictable ending you seemed to be building toward with a random plot twist in the opposite direction, Climax, it doesn’t work that way. It isn’t deep, it isn’t shocking, it’s just bad writing. It doesn’t help that the mysteries are all spelled out for the audience with an ending speech instead of letting them draw their own conclusions and analyze it themselves. It’s like when you can tell a generic summer horror movie got a script rewrite halfway through and no one bothered to fix the plot holes. You are not Satoshi Kon, Climax. This game is worth a rental at least, just to experience it whether you’re looking to throw yourself into a fit of Silent Hill nerd rage like me or curious about it’s much lauded but ultimately shallow gameplay mechanics.

If you want to know more about the game’s story and ending click here to see my spoiler-ridden follow-up rant.

If you'd like to experience the original Silent Hill games without having to play them I highly recommend L0rd Vega's Let's Plays. You get all of the story as well as some hilarious commentary.

Related posts:

1. Silent Hill: Shattered Memories Follow-Up Rant
2. Alan Wake
3. Dante’s Vs Darksiders

So speaking less favorable aspects, the game begins with a prime-time TV-like recap of Assassin’s Creed 1 narrated in the first person by Desmond, the man in the Animus machine experiencing the lives of his ancestors through genetic memory. It works alright as a way to catch up people who didn’t play the first game but it starts to get a little embarrassing as it goes on.

Then you begin in the present-day setting in control of said Desmond. The sci-fi plot going on in the background of Assassin’s Creed is still weak. It still just serves as a glorified device to explain your health, invisible walls, the HUD, time skips, and other abstract gameplay and cinematic elements, and it shows. I was however pleased to see that events take place here that I had assumed would be the subject of the third game because at this point I don’t think I’d like to see the series go into the future as Ubisoft initially seemed to have planned. These events also serve as your primary tutorial, which is mercifully short and nothing like the first game which forced you to ass about in a nebulous purgatory listening to a voice drone on about every single little gameplay control before it would let you into the game. 

Bitch

Luckily your time playing as Desmond is also brief. Desmond has never been a compelling character, he’s a whiny bitch who just does what he’s told and seems very easily swayed. In fact, without giving away too much, in AC2 he’s reliving Ezio’s life from the point he is in order to make him less useless. Yeah. You kinda suck, Desmond. But like Altair, the real star of the game here is Ezio.

And unlike Altair, we get to learn alot more about Ezio. His personality, his life before he dons the classic assassin robes, we get to see him actually grow and develop as a character, and he even has an accent. We also see Ezio’s face quite a bit and he has robust body language and facial expressions, he feels much more alive and three-dimensional than his predecessor. Though it seems dicking around on rooftops may be a hereditary trait that Altair passed on, because I’m certain the people of Florence are accustomed to seeing Ezio and his brother crawling around on buildings and leaping from roof to roof like assholes.

Douche

Ezio gaining new weapons and learning new skills as he goes along also makes alot more sense in this game. He’s new to this assassin thing, it’s sort of thrust on him in a crisis and he has no idea what the hell he’s doing. He’s clumsy, desperate and naive at first. Altair was just a douche who botched an important mission to sate his swaggering ego and got all of his cool toys taken away as a result.

But all of that isn’t the only improvement in the game. For one, AC2 has a sense of humor, I can’t really remember AC1 having much. The characters often spout quick-witted and genuinely funny dialog  which makes the game all the more enjoyable in my view. That coupled with some sections focused on platforming and switch pulling it almost has a Sands-of-Time-era Prince of Persia feel. There is also, get this, an inventory system. You can upgrade your armor, change the color of Ezio’s clothes (though it seems like its just for kicks, not for disguising him), buy new weapons, buy throwing knives etc. There’s a quick travel system, there are collectibles too but unlike the flags in the previous game they seem to reap more reward than just achievement-whoring busy work, and you can also actually DO something with the home base you acquire early in the game, even turning it into a source of income.

There is only Ezio

I’m also happy to say that unlike AC1 this game is subtitled, in case you’re having trouble understanding the accents (or even the actual Italian that is spoken.) I’m however unhappy to say that the text is micro-sized unless you have an HD television. This game is one of many pushing me to finally track down a cheap HD TV after the holidays.

All in all I highly recommend Assassin’s Creed 2, and not just out of fangirl obligation. It completely blows the first game out of the water so if you even liked that one the littlest bit you need to check out the sequel. If you enjoy movie-like games with a compelling story, if you enjoy historical fiction, or if you just enjoy stabbing and platforming this game is definitely worth checking out. And really, you don’t even need to play the first one, because this is Ezio’s story, not Desmond’s. Go to hell, Desmond.

Related posts:

1. Assassin’s Creed
2. My 5 Top Year-End Games (With Bonus Rant)
3. No More Heroes

I talked about this series in my “6 Manga You’ve Never Read” post but I just wanted to gush about it, and the US release, s’more. Bear in mind this series is a tad raunchy, so don’t read on if your innocent mind can’t handle it.

Speaking of the first post I mentioned Ninja Girls in, let’s take a look at how I described it: “[It's a] harem manga that is genuinely funny. One that doesn’t rely on “walking in on the girls in the hot spring” gags and other cliches. One where the female characters aren’t tired, doe-eyed archetypes and have actual personalities. One where the male character isn’t a boring, plain, loathsome, dorky stand-in for sad otaku to inject themselves into… [I]ts also brimming with gorgeous art, badass action scenes, and ninjas.”

Yup, well, that’s about the size of it. And that’s what has kept me reading. I’ve been keeping up with scanlations of the series but the quality of translation these days is a tad… Engrishy, and sometimes hard to follow. This is why I was excited for it to finally have a commercial US release.

From what I’ve seen so far the story and characters are intact, the translation is great, they even use Japanese honorifics. Preferring honorifics to be there may seem weeabooish but they really can be important indicators of characters’ relationships to one another and how they view each other and help preserve the original spirit of the story and characterization. However they may have been a bit too overzealous, leaving attack/technique names untranslated and explaining them in the translation notes. But hey, it’s nice to see a company be so thorough.

I did notice they censored the cover of the comic, however:

Can you spot the difference?

But I haven’t noticed any other censors inside the book so far, so I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. There’s never been any overt full frontal nudity in this comic, though most of the female characters are drawn in a salacious manner. But it’s really not over the top, and the artwork is gorgeous, it’s not only demonstrates the artists’ amazing skills but it’s so expressive and the characters are full of life.

At any rate, I highly HIGHLY recommend this book if you’re looking for a new manga to get into. It’s funny, it’s sexy, and it’s well drawn. The story is simple and more of a device to move the characters around and promote character development (the female ninjas are trying to rebuild the fallen clan they serve by finding a princess of another clan for the male lead to marry, who is an illegitimate offpsring and only living heir), but it too is good and has some mysterious villains in there to boot. Check it out!

Related posts:

1. 6 Manga You’ve Never Heard Of (But Should Read)
2. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
3. Ninja Gaiden 2

But, despite my hatred of superhero comics and superheros in general, I am a Batman fangirl. And you kind of have to be a fan to enjoy this game. It’s good, but not great. So far it’s worth the rental to me.

Really though Mark Hamil makes this game. For those of you who don’t know, yes, Mark Hamil did have a career after Star Wars and is one of the most beloved animation voice actors today. And he did the voice of the Joker in the 90’s-era show Batman: The Animated Series, which is basically what I base all of my Bat-knowledge on as I never read the comics and only saw the Burton films recently.

This is NOT Harley Quinn.

THIS is Harley Quinn. You designed this outfit why didn't you USE it, you bastards!?

I like the style this game goes with, you basically get the faces of the Nicholson Joker and the Kilmer Batman mixed with the cartoon versions.

Of course I’m not happy with every design choice… I… I hate Harley Quinn’s costume. This almost made me not want to play the game at all. And it is not a petty gripe damnit! Her name is a pun. Harley Quinn. She should be dressed like a harlequinn. Not some psycho nurse loligoth ICP fangirl. And people have tried to tell me the outfit is “sexier” and is made to appeal to a wider audience but come now, what is sexier than a skin-tight bodysuit?  It works for Catwoman. Harley’s Arkham outfit is too ridiculous and uncomfortable looking to be sexy to me, and she doesn’t even have a jester hat, what the hell people? Maybe I’d buy it if this is when she first went crazy and she just cobbled that outfit together, but where did she get those precisely tailored, two-toned leather pieces from then?

Okay sure, maybe like most people who grew up with the cartoon I have a bit of a nerd-on for Harley Quinn but- … maybe you should just forget I said that. The point is, her outfit is stupid. And the most maddening part about it is in the character profile she’s depicted in a cool looking redesign of her classic jester outfit. So why couldn’t they use THAT!? AGH! They also made the mistake of saying she first appeared in her comic book series, no you bastards she was invented for the cartoon and then caught on as a character in the larger Batman canon! NYARGH! …Well moving on.

I played the game on Normal and so far it has been pretty easy. The key to the game is to make good use of the stealth elements, you really can’t just run in and beat up dudes carrying guns. The stealth bits are my favorite, I love harassing dudes with batarangs from atop gargoyles, then jumping down, taking out one of their companions and swooping away before they even know what the hell. But like I said before the hand-to-hand combat is just boring. I know I love Assassin’s Creed and that also was basically one-button combat, but you at least had to change stance and put some thought into it to do certain moves. Batman is just mash X and occasionally Y, maybe break it up from time to time with A or B but there’s really no point. You do get some upgrades as you go along but none of them really drastically change your moveset, it’s more things like armor and power upgrades and some more options with your batarangs and explosives.

I’ve also got a couple of boss battles under my belt but so far they’ve been unimpressive. It was cool (and terrifying) when Scarecrow showed up and used his hallucinatory drugs to briefly turn the game into goddamn Silent Hill, but the boss battle consisted of just running behind walls to avoid a beam of light and then triggering a cutscene. Similarly I was excited when Bane made an appearance, but you fought him exactly like you fought some boring, mutated tank of a grunt soldier the Joker threw at you earlier (namely beaning him with a batarang as he runs at you and making him smash into a wall.) Well sure you had to run up and punch him til it went to an automatic move of you ripping off his Venom supply but it was such a standard boss battle we’re all used to by now.

Even so I keep plugging away at it. The subtle references to Batman lore, the great dialog, and even the good voice acting make me want to see where this is going. And like I said, I can’t completely hate it because I love the stealth elements. There’s also many collectibles like the Riddler challenges and you can collect audio tapes in a Bioshock-esque manner that let you listen in on the various supervillains’ psychotherapy sessions. Very, very amusing.

All and all it may not stand up to many heavy hitting game titles and franchises but it is certainly the best and most ambitious superhero game to date. Probably owing to the fact that it isn’t a movie tie-in game and is its own entity that mixes together elements from all sorts of Batman media. I’d say rent this game first, and if you like it then buy it. Though I’ve heard it’s pretty short but I could see it having some replay value if only for the various collectibles and challenges.

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2. Mass Effect 2
3. Assassin’s Creed 2

In terms of  gameplay Muramasa is clearly a spritiual successor to Odin Sphere but with many notable improvements. In fact I think I’d love to see this team keep making games in this style using various mythological sources. However, Muramasa’s localization seems a rather lacking compared to Odin Sphere’s and even GrimGrimoire’s, but I’ll get to that later in the article.

Muramasa is truly a gamer’s game. Obsessive powerup and item collection, random fights galore, epic boss battles, hack and slash challenge areas with big rewards, special moves and combo rankings. I started the game as Momohime because, well, you know, she’s the hot one. I skipped the tutorial and found myself thrust straight into the action. Skipping the tutorial proved perfectly alright as the controls are very gamer-instinctive. Here’s what I mean: up to jump, A to attack, B for special move, Z for block, C to quickdraw/change weapons, and D-pad for cycling through and using items. It’s all very smooth and intuitive, and this is largely due to the fact that the game HAS NO WAGGLE. In fact there are control options for both the Gamecube and Classic Controller as well. At first I thought this game would just beg to be played with a standard controller, but the Wiimote/Nunchuck combo was just fine, especially since it doesn’t require you to wave your arms around like an idiot. Of course seeing as Muramasa completely ignores the Wii’s unique control capabilities it causes one to wonder why this game isn’t multi-platform.

Muramasa also has more boobs than Odin Sphere

The game plays very similarly to Odin Sphere but as I said before with several marked improvements. For one, eating food in restaurants doesn’t take for-fucking-ever. Eating food is actually key to not only recovering health but increasing your spirit which among other things allows you to forge more powerful blades (you can equip three unique blades with different special powers at a time, switching between them at will or when one of them temporarily breaks.) I do sort of miss obtaining healing items by planting flora that produces strange fruit or living sheep like in Odin Sphere though.

You also don’t have to sit there sucking up spiritual energy from your vanquished foes post-battle as in Odin Sphere, it automatically flies to you in Muramasa. The levels in Odin Sphere were also one big looping circle and you simply exited to the next big looping circle, Muramasa on the other hand is a series of linear areas. You can also toggle your minimap to either appear at the top of the screen, overlay the entire screen, or disappear entirely. It’s so nice to see a video game developer that doesn’t shun minimaps, I don’t care about your goddamn “clean” HUDs people, I want to be able to figure out where the hell I’m going without pausing constantly.

Like I said before, the game dumped me right into the action immediately. In fact there was no speech for the longest time, so by the time I did finally arrive at a cutscene I was shocked to find that the game is only in Japanese, subtitled, with no English voice cast to be found. This is just a tad unprecedented in gaming today, though I suppose it lends itself to the atmosphere of a game seeped in Japanese mythology and I probably would have put it in Japanese anyway.

But at the same time… it might be a little too Japanese. Now I can only speak for Momohime’s story (you can also play a different tale as an amnesiac ninja named Kisuke), maybe this game is attempting non-linear storytelling but I was so confused. I thought by skipping the tutorial I had missed some vital story information, and went back to confirm that no I had not.

The characters just immediately start throwing names of off-screen characters and heretofore unseen events and techniques in what appears to be very literally translated dialog. I eventually figured out through the dialog that an evil swordsman had attempted to transfer his soul into another man’s body with some soul transferring sword technique, but he had accidentally hit Momohime as she tried to stop him and ended up in her body by accident (the instruction booklet only says she’s posessed by a demon.) Now this is quite funny, but would it have killed them to have actually shown this part?

In just the roughly hour and a half I played the story was constantly throwing plot points and characters at me with little to no context. Some of them may be obscure mythology references that Japanese audiences would inherently recognize (just as American audiences would recognize allusions to say Paul Bunyan or something.) Okami had kind of the same thing going, but for some reason those references seemed clearer to me (alot of it had to do with good localization as well.) There is some sort of humorous things going on that only work in Japanese though, such as how the beautiful and delicate Momohime uses mannish variations of language while possessed. And of course you get hints along the way why some people are either partnering with or trying to stop the evil soul possessing her, but an opening sequence showing these hinted-at events would have helped a whole hell of alot. Although a review at IGN says the story plays out somewhat like Kabuki, which would explain alot but again what Westerner is really familiar with this style of storytelling? It begs for transliteration and localization.

The game plays great, is undeniably gorgeous to look at, but so far judging by the haphazard and cryptic story presentation it just feels kind of mindless. There’s also a drawback that at times the game has you backtracking through screens devoid of enemies. But really, most people were interested in this game for the art and the gameplay in the first place, so if you’ve been desperate for good games to justify your Wii’s existence consider that Muramasa now enjoys a spot on my top list of must-have Wii games right along side Mario Galaxy, Okami and De Blob.

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Well you get a pretty nifty little Playstation 2 game called Kya: Dark Lineage that I picked up some time ago for five bucks. I’ve been playing alot of PS2 lately and between bouts of Katamari Damacy I’ve mostly been checking out games I missed (like Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. Yes. I hadn’t played it til recently.)

I heard about Kya from a Games Radar aritcle and it piqued my interest. I’ve only played about 4 or 5 hours of it total (and I’m currently stuck actually) so consider this a first impression.

There's that vine surfing I told you about.

The game begins with the titular Kya, a young girl (woman? Her age is a little unclear) with blue dreadlocks and a midriff shirt. Despite being obviously designed with some Disneyesque sex appeal in mind she is a likable character. One night her half-brother finds a secret work area behind a wall in their house, it turns out to be the study of Kya’s father who left her years ago. While Kya is being all angsty about that her brother, now seemingly posessed, opens a portal to an alternate dimension where, surprise! Daddy has been ruling as tyrannical dark wizard.

You get all that?

Although it’s pretty clear Kya was doomed to one-shot obscurity the game shows genuine effort. Although the character design is a bit lackluster and could use some work the illustrative graphical style of the game is undeniably gorgeous. I normally hate excessively comparing games to other games when I describe them but the smooth, cartoony, colorful backgrounds really are akin to Alice. Except, you know, without all the blood and trauma and creepiness obviously.

The world Kya finds herself in is home to a battle between the Nativs and the evil Wolfen, however it turns out the Wolfen are just Nativs who were altered by dark wizard daddy. You’re given a basic goal in each level and along the way you need to beat up and exorcise Wolfen you encounter. As you do this the Nativ village fills up and expands and you can buy more items and such. There are a couple of other animals like a piggie you can use as a springboard and some flying fish that electrocute you, and some screenshots I’ve seen suggest you later get to ride some variety of creature. Although sparse in enemies and critters the levels are still rich in detail.

The combat system is surprisingly deep and very well done, it’s real-time and you use button combos for different punching and kicking moves. Sometimes you’re even treated to an artsy slow-motion angle when you K.O. a baddie. You can also purchase a boomerang for Kya which she adorably keeps hooked to her ponytail when not in use. You can also get a variety of items such as bombs, a magic surfboard for the aforementioned vine surfing sections and special gloves that allow you to climb vines. The levels are full of all sorts of switches, mini-puzzles, coins, spring piggies and wind cannons so the platforming aspect is actually uniquely varied and quite fun.

Ah yes, wind cannons. It seems the Natvis use wind as a major form as transportation (aside from magic vine surfing of course) and thats where the rather NiGHTSy aspects come in. In several areas you’re tasked with navigating Kya through thorny caves and outcroppings as she basically flies using powerful gusts of wind.

The voice acting in the game is surprisingly pretty good as well, although a tad cheesey as if the actors were sure they were recording for a game aimed at little kids.

I have become a bit frustrated with a few game aspects though. There was a particularly long surfing section in one level and it was really easy to fall of the sides. So every time I did I had to start from the beginning. The map is also a little frustrating and there is no mini-map. I eventually opened these wind elevators that allowed me to quick travel to different areas, but each elevator has four options and they only have a picture of the area without a written name, so if I’m supposed to be in a certain section in order to reach a certain goal I can’t always remember which picture is what area.

But, if you’ve been looking for some cheap-ass Ps2 games to buy you can’t really go wrong with this one. For five measly bucks it’s worth checking out.

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The first full expansion pack (Creepy and Cute was more of an item pack) is well… interesting.

In keeping with the customization, web 2.0, “let the players make our content” tradition Galactic Adventures focuses on expanding the final sandbox Space portion of the Spore gameplay by allowing players to create their own levels/mission.

You can use creatures, buildings, a number of props, actual game elements (teleporters, jump pads, power ups etc.) as well as special effects and a large selection of music and sounds to create multi-part missions. You can trigger events, set a number of actions and goals to characters, creatures and objects, and even program some rudimentry AI into the NPCs and creatures on your Adventure planet.

Then other players can download these and they will pop up in normal gameplay. You can tell the old style of missions from the new because the keyword “Adventure” will always pop up. I removed my mods and began to play as a less developed space race I had made and so now when I run into a new empire I tend to dart from planet to planet until one of those bastards gives me an Adventure mission as opposed to one of the old “go here and get this” or “shoot anything glowing yellow” ones.

As I said before, the mission creation is actually pretty sophisticated, however it can be bloody frustrating. At least in something like The Sims everything is on a grid. Not so in Spore. Sure you can place things wherever you want, resize them, set how far off the ground they are, and have several options to sculpt the terrain, but I’ve yet to find a way to rotate the camera. Part of the Mad Morlax mission (first picture in this article) I created takes place inside a makeshift building (you can’t actually enter a single building, you need to create one using buildings that look like individual walls and rooftops) and it was really difficult to see what the hell I was doing when I was trying to place the walls.

However, as part of gameplay these missions are great. Completing them gets you weapon and gear upgrades to help you survive in future Adventures. Of course since they’re made by other players they’re going to be a little hit or miss, but you can rate them when you’re through. Still, I’m amazed at how creative some people get with Galatic Adventures, especially the ones that design buildings to look like other objects (with the resize ability you can make a building look like a chair, a bowl of food, a computer, whatever prop you need and just shrink it down.) I really do want to learn more of the little details of what you can do with it and have already been working on a new, much bigger Adeventure myself.

And although I said the missions are a little hit or miss you can also get around running into crappy missions by subscribing to reputable Adventure sporecasts.

All and all, though it strays from the whole evolution part of the game Galactic Adventures is a good offering, especially for 30 bucks.

You can see me on Spore under MPSai.

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