To The Moon

The Short


Pros
- Absolutely beautiful soundtrack
- Charming 16-bit "RPG" style graphics
- Fantastic, emotionally riveting story
- Lots of interesting plot twists

Cons
- Gameplay elements seem unnecessarily tacked on
- Walking from place to place can be boring and uninteresting
- Very short (3-4 hours, no replay value)
- Story is good but seems to back off just short of being magnificent
- I can't decide if the ending is perfect or just mediocre

To The Moon is an extremely story driven experience

The Long


To The Moon is not really a video game, at least not by standard conventions. Yes, it's an interactive piece of computer software designed for pleasure. Yes, it looks very much like an SNES (or PS1) era pixelated JRPG. And yes, it does have some puzzles, adventure game elements, and even a weird duel-joystick shooter-esque part (which is thankfully very short). But in reality, To The Moon is simply "game as story." It's a tale that chooses to use, instead of words on paper or actors on screen, video games as its medium of choice. It's probably the closest thing to an "art game" I've reviewed on this blog, and might actually be the first "art game" I've actually played all the way to completion.

It's a not-so-distant future. Through technology, we are able to grant a person on their deathbed one final wish, by going into their minds and altering their memories to add the thing they want most. You assume the role of two scientists tasked with fulfilling a dying man's final wish: he wants to go to the moon, but he doesn't know why. Thus begins a journey starting at but a few hours before his death, and spanning all the way back through an entire life of love, loss, mysteries and mistakes. All with the hope of finding the reason why he wanted to go to the moon, and making his final dream possible.

If this sounds a bit like the plot of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind meets Inception, you aren't far off. The game is very similar in these regards, almost uncannily so. Luckily it forges its own path relatively quickly, providing a story that is both unique, touching, and very much relevant to everyone.

Even though it has an "RPG Maker" vibe, I can't knock the impressive visuals

In terms of actual gameplay, To the Moon is a hybrid adventure/puzzle game. Without spoiling the story, the general gist is that in each block of memories you experience there are five objects that are especially pertinent to the patient (Johnny's) past. Once you find these five object (usually accompanied by short scenes explaining their importance), you apply them to a final object that will allow you to warp to a different memory. In order to warp you have solve a simple block-turning puzzle, which is usually not easy enough to cakewalk through and not hard enough to actually provide any mental stimulation. You have to do about a dozen or so of these puzzles across the course of the game, and by the end they feel more like unnecessary roadblocks to continuing the adventure rather than actual important parts of the story.

There is another weird moment where the game sort of turns into a duel-stick shooter mixed with...I don't know, dodging stuff? Is that a genre? It feels extremely out of place and while I can understand it was perhaps put there to lighten a particularly dark series of events, it's contrived.

Seriously, this game is very pretty

Speaking of contrived, let's talk about the story. Now don't get me wrong: I really enjoyed the vast majority of the story here. Seeing Johnny's relationship with his wife River play out in total reverse, from her death all the way back to when they first met was absolutely beautiful, and even though I knew (generally) what was going to happen next, it was carried out with such care and craft I didn't mind being proven right.

That being said, the story still has a few hang-ups. The two scientists - who are essentially silent watchers of this man's past - are extremely dry, insensitive, and off-putting. I understand that as a part of their job they'd have to distance themselves from their clients, but some of the remarks they make are downright spiteful, and it really pulled me from the story. The attempts at humor, as well, were low-brow or just simply uninspired, and they were a sharp contrast to the soft drama that was taking place throughout the rest of the game. Again, I can understand the need for humor to help keep things from getting too dark, but I really think their lines could have gone with another edit. 

My other issue was with the ending, which I will not spoil here. Needless to say, I'm glad an issue that I thought wasn't going to be addressed was, and the final scene is absolutely jaw-dropping. However, the events that play up to it don't seem in line with the rest of the story. When you are talking about someone's life, you are talking about an extremely complex and deep event. There are millions of threads, all knit together, and there is no easy way to take it all apart and then put it back together again (which the ending somewhat attempts to do). The ending presented just seemed...shallow. Like we'd had this massive amount of buildup over the previous two and a half acts, and now they chose the easiest way to end it. It wasn't bad, and again the ending scene was beautiful, but it did seem a little too...safe. After such an elaborate, excellent story, I was really hoping for an ending that matched. I didn't feel like I got it. 

The soundtrack is downright beautiful

The music in the game is mellow, slow, and absolutely perfect. It kicks in at just the right time, using only a few unique tunes and then variating on them throughout. It works, and works very well. The graphics also, despite looking like they should be in a JRPG, are well drawn and animated and work well to put this haunting, somber story together. All the pieces fit, making the experience an excellent one.

There are very few games like To The Moon, and again that is mostly because it isn't really a game. As an interactive story it is quite good, though it does falter a bit in spots. As it stands, the game is $12 from Freebird's website, but you can play an hour of the game for free to decide if you like their style of storytelling. The game is only 3-4 hours long at the very most, which makes that asking price seem...a bit high (though $12 really isn't a lot of money, I think dropping $5 from the price would be more reasonable). 

This is also an extremely difficult game to score, as it doesn't follow any other gaming conventions. I'd probably give it two stars as a game, but four stars as an overall experience. Considering the puzzles sort of messed up the flow of pacing and probably should have been kept out, I'm going to go for an overall  three out of five. 

Rise of the Argonauts

The Short

Pros
- Compelling storyline
- Superb soundtrack
- Mix of Mass Effect and Greek mythology
- Leveling up / skill trees proceed in a very unique way
- Dedicate yourself to three gods, in both dialogue and fighting, and be rewarded appropriately
- Fun combat; multiple weapon types to use
- Voice acting is excellent

Cons
- Very, very glitchy
- Not as much combat as you'd think; mostly lots of dialogue
- Not really any bosses to speak of
- Can drag on at times
- Feels like with just a little more polish it could have been something exceptional

BOOM. There goes the head.

The Long


The Rise of the Argonauts is a game from Codemasters, the guys mostly famous for making racing games like Dirt and Grid, and Liquid Entertainment, who have made no notable games as of yet. It sort of came out of nowhere in 2008, sold a meager amount of copies, and silently slipped away. This isn't Codemasters' first attempt into something besides racers; they created the Overlord games as well. While their non-racing games all seem to share some common theme (read: they are all super buggy), Rise of the Argonauts is actually an exceptional title from beginning to end, blending the best parts of other games while adding enough unique touches to provide a captivating experience.

The plot is a loose version of the Greek mythological tale "Jason and the Argonauts." Essentially, Jason's wife gets axed on their wedding day, and so he goes off on a quest both for revenge and to try and persuade the gods to bring her back to life. After a quick trip to the local oracle for guidance, the game lets you pick from a variety of islands to tackle at your leisure, finally throwing you in the Underworld (not a huge spoiler; literally every game set in ancient Greece puts you in the Underworld at some point) and off to an epic-ish final battle. On the way you'll run into plenty of ancient Greek staples (Hercules, minotaurs, cyclopses, the works) though it doesn't mine it's mythology quite as heavy as the God of War series. Actually, at first glance people might think this game is just some God of War knock-off. They couldn't be more wrong.

Does this look familiar? Like...I don't know...MASS EFFECT?

Rise of the Argonauts is an action RPG, and a very unique one. You still go out and bash stuff with a trio of weapons (you have spears for quick strikes, maces to break shields and amor, and swords are just all-around good), knock dudes'  heads off with spears, and generally just wreck shop if somebody tries to get up in your face. But what is interesting is how little combat the game has relative to its dialogue choices.

One of the islands, for example, is pretty much 90% talking. The island you start on, also, is primarily you conversing with people in order to get to know them better. Sounds boring, right? Well, luckily the game has an excellent script and superb voice acting, but there's another bonus. 

Each dialogue choice puts points in one of four gods. For example, pick the war-like, aggressive response and you please the god Hades. Be witty and clever and Hermes will benefit, and so on. Each of these four gods have a tech tree (and are tied to one of the three weapons or the shield) and so how you choose to play your character (brutal, clever, compassionate, or lawful) changes what abilities you'll be able to spend your points in. It's a really cool system, and one that actually makes your dialogue choices important in more than just "I want to play this character as a massive jerk."

The graphics and art ain't half bad, either 

The leveling is also really, really unique. You don't get experience points at all in this game. Rather, the game has a "constellations" system, where basically each star is a different goal (example: behead 10 enemies, complete a quest objective, kill 1000 enemies, etc). These "achievements," if you will, progress naturally throughout the game, so you don't ever feel like you have to grind, but you will have to try some tricky stuff during combat in order to get them all. They even have ones for talking to all your companions you pick up along the way, which is pretty cool. 

Getting stars gives you points, when you can then use on the God trees you've unlocked. Basically you are "dedicating" your achievements to a certain god, who in turn grants you the boon you've requested. It's a really clever system, especially considering we've been pretty much doing the XP thing forever and Rise of the Argonauts essentially invented an entirely new (and workable!) way around it that also fits wonderfully into the game's mythology. Really, really clever stuff.

The combat itself is pretty basic (play on hard) but never too overwhelming. I actually didn't spend any skill points for about half of the game (was saving them up to blitz a tree when it finished unlocking), and with some skill I never really had too many problems. The fact it requires you to switch up your weapons (maces on shields, spears on fast enemies, swords on...everything else) keeps things fast and fresh, and while it isn't God of War, it was never unfair or clunky. I was a bit disappointed by the lack of bosses (it's not like Greek mythology is lacking for big nasties to take down), but the experienced still felt complete regardless.

The soundtrack really needs to be mentioned. It's by Tylor Bates, the composer behind the 300 soundtrack, and it is really really good. The music is appropriately haunting, with plenty of backing vocals singing in...greek, I'd assume. One of the best songs in the game happens when your health is low (you have regenerating health in this game). The screen pales to a muted color, all other sounds and music cut out, and you hear this.

Really haunting

Other points of note are just the continued similarities to Mass Effect. You get more and more companions that you haul around on a ship, taking two of them with you on missions. They bicker and comment based on who you've brought, though you can't equip or level them. The dialogue wheels, as I said above, are straight out of that game, and the super-cinematic camera angles that pop up during conversations and cutscenes are ripped straight from that game. This isn't a bad thing - Mass Effect did all these things right, and so does Argonauts - it just can seem a little familiar at times.

Lastly, this game is really, really glitchy. This is especially the case if you install it to the Xbox 360 hard drive; for some reason this seriously increases full system freezes (no good). I don't know if the PC or PS3 versions have the same issues, but from what I hear they are still pretty glitchy. I never hit anything that erased my progress or made it so I couldn't continue, but I did have to do a few manual reboots because of freezes, odd geometry catching, or other weirdness. It's a fragile game, and was never patched, which is too bad because it could very well have been a masterpiece had they just taken the time to polish it up a bit further.

Rise of the Argonauts is the very definition of a lost gem, if one still in the rough. It's beautiful, has great voice acting and storytelling, and while it might be Mass Effect meets Greek mythology, it brings enough on its own to the table to make it a completely enthralling experience. The unique leveling system alone makes this game worth checking out, and also it being a game that can focus almost an entire section completely on dialogue choices with no combat and still stay entertaining. It's just a pity they didn't squash all the bugs or put a little more effort into marketing it; I'd love to see more games like this come out of Codemasters.

You can get the game new for $20, and even less used. This is absolutely worth it at that price. If I were to give it a star rating, it would be four out of five, if only because the lingering issues prevent it from being completely perfect. 

And it's also an easy 1000/1000 for achievement hunters. So there you go. 

Power Gig: Rise of the SixString

The Short


Pros
- Has that "Breathe" song from Breaking Benjamin that I like...oh wait, it's already on Rock Band.
- Has "Head Up High" by Firewind...crap, that's on Rock Band too?
- Well at least it has "Cherub Rock" by...dang it Rock Band!
- You can sing into it and it will give you points


Cons
- Freaking everything.
- Graphics and animations would look bad on the PS2
- System for displaying notes is the worst ever
- Four characters, each locked to an instrument. Why...?
- No auto calibration; you have to do it manually (even if you take your #s from Rock Band or Guitar Hero it still doesn't work)
- Seriously, the way the drums work is impossible to read
- Story about "fighting 'The Man' with rock" is almost as dumb as Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock's story
- Load times are awful, even installed
- Makes you play the same awful songs over and over and over again

Oh, it only gets worse

The Long


Let me just get this out there from the start: Power Gig: Rise of the SixString is total garbage. There is literally no reason to purchase, borrow, or even look at this game in a world where Guitar Hero and Rock Band exist. It plays horrible, has a mediocre selection of music at best, is graphically an abomination, and has even less features than the original Guitar Hero. This is the worst music game I have ever played, and I've played plenty.

Power Gig's big push was the "Rock it Real" idea, where they basically promised that you could learn to play a guitar with their game (something Rock Band 3 tried and Rocksmith perfected). The bundle packages even came with a REAL SIX STRING GUITAR! which you could plug into the game (or an amp) and ROCK OUT MAN. The Six-String guys even flew over some volcano in Iceland and threw a big bag of plastic guitars into the lava to prove their point, and to also prove they should have used that money on a better graphics.

You sure are showing those Rock Band/Guitar Hero types, Power Gig

That's pretty awesome, I guess, except for one problem: this game does not teach you how to play real guitar. The guitar they ship is too short and is made of crappy plastic. In the game, you don't actually learn chords; they just designated the standard Guitar Hero/Rock Band colors (green, red, yellow, blue, orange) to different spots on the neck, so you can literally press ANY strings down (making ANY chords) and it'll still take. It DOES NOT TEACH YOU GUITAR AT ALL. So them dumping all those things in the volcano was basically them saying, "These plastic toys have better user interface than our sucky guitars with uncomfortable strings! Quick, BURN THE EVIDENCE!"

So you can't learn real guitar with it, whatever. Rock Band 3 has the actual option to teach me guitar and I've never touched it, and I love Rock Band 3. So...what about that gameplay? And it's much-proclaimed Kid Rock exclusivity? Can it compete in a world where Rock Band 3 and Guitar Hero 5 exist?

No. It can't. Because it is crap.

Some "quality" gameplay

Everything about Power Gig screams low budget. First off: graphics. the game looks straight up horrible. I'm surprised this game even shipped with HD options. The characters would look bad in an early PS2 era game. Their animations are especially awful, being static and jerky and worse than Guitar Hero 3's drummer (my standard for bad music game animations). The characters are completely uninteresting, and the worst part is you can't switch them out. You have one guy who is the singer, one who is the drummer, one the bassist and one the guitarist. That's it. Customization? Character creation? Freaking anything? Nope, don't need it.

After you've been assaulted by this horrible blight upon your eyeballs, you suddenly realize something. "Hey! I'm playing these notes with this awful interface, but they aren't registering? What gives?" Maybe this is just a personal problem I had, but I could never  get this game to calibrate properly. I have an HDTV with a little delay, and a sound system with a rather significant delay (something like -43 MS) which means if my game isn't calibrated, I can't play it. Guitar Hero and Rock Band offer automatic or "strum when you see a line" calibration which helps set it up for you. Power Gig gives you a bunch of numbers and says "good luck!"

So I booted up Rock Band 3 and checked my lag specs, wrote them down, booted up awful Power Gig again and punched them in, determined to glean some sort of enjoyment from this abomination of a product. Guess what. It still was off. And let me remind you: I am pretty damn good at these kinds of games. I play everything on Expert (including Pro Drums on Rock Band 3 and harmonies) so it wasn't for lack of skill. Even on medium I was missing more notes than not. I tried different guitars just to be certain...nothing. It never worked properly. Not that I'd want it to, given how awful their notes were (and their charting...horrible).

ROCKIN' IT REAL MAN!!!

So I gave up and sang, which actually...worked. Believe it or not, their singing system is pretty dang decent. It basically gives you three ratings on your pitch: perfect, passing, and miss. It does it for every single part of the song, meaning that rather than being a strict "pass fail" system (like Rock Band uses) it grades you during your singing on your pitch. I thought it was pretty neat and actually made it so I couldn't half-way do things like I can sometimes in Rock Band (though I sing on expert, so my pitch is pretty decent already). It's "talky" parts were also better in that regard, actually picking up syllables so if I just sputtered nonsense it would sometimes bump me from "perfect" to "passing." 

Unfortunately, my joy was short lived, because the career mode in this game is an abomination. Remember how I whined about Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock? I'd rather play that ten times over than play half of this again. Basically, every song has an associated symbol. Your goal is to go to various venues (which each have their own symbol) and sing the right symboled song in order to "level up" the area. So you grind the same three songs ten times until the area unlocks.

Then it gets worse.

They make it so (essentially) you get more songs, but each song counts half, except a few that count full. So you either play a bunch of half-pointers (which is a waste of time) or just sing the double-pointers a billion times in a row. 

Then it does it again. 

I didn't finish the game. I couldn't. Which means I didn't unlock all the songs (yes, song unlocking! That's always awesome, not being able to play the songs I want upfront!) and never got to the Firewind song I really wanted to. Then I remembered I got it off Rock Band Network like a year ago (and a much better version, too), so I loaded it up and played that instead. That song is AWESOME.

KEEEEP YOOOURRRR HEAD UP HIIIGGGGHHHH

I can't believe I'm wasting so many words on this review when I have better things to do (like write novels). Here's the thing: I bought this game for $5. That was about $10 too much. Don't even pick this game up off the ground if you find it lost and alone on a cold winter's night in the street. Let it freeze to death, cold and friendless. It's all it deserves. 

If I had a "buying price" it would be $-20. With that $20 you could buy 10 Rock Band songs, which would give you about 10x more fun than this game. If I gave a star rating, it would be zero out of five. Don't encourage this kind of behavior. Just...don't. 

Maybe they should have thrown all their PowerGig discs in the volcano. 

Guitar Hero Warriors of Rock

The Short


Pros
- Has "2112" by Rush in its entirety
- Has "Wish" by Nine Inch Nails
- Has "Uprising" by Muse
- Returns to Guitar Hero "roots" with harder guitar parts

Cons
- Does nothing to improve the Guitar Hero/Rock Band formula
- No harmonies
- Career mode where rockers turn to "beasts" is unbelievably stupid
- Weak setlist that is completely all over the place
 - Good batch of discs shipped with unreadable errors; buying this game used is dangerous
- Still has a poor selection of DLC
- Incompatible with wireless "Lips" mics on Xbox 360
- Lack of innovation has staled the formula
- Charting of the notes is really poor; sometimes what you play doesn't even match the song
- Character customization and unlocks are poorly implemented and paced
- UI for star power/multiplayer is still inferior to Rock Band

The Guitar Hero characters are back and stupider than ever before

The Long


Let me get this off my chest first: I really like Rock Band. So if you think this review is just a huge biased mess I suppose I will admit there is some truth to that. That being said, I really like the Guitar Hero/Rock Band types of games. Something in me clicks with strumming plastic guitars, pounding on toy drums, and singing my lungs out for points. I don't really prefer the Guitar Hero circles over the Rock Band bars; I can read both and play both with about the same level of consistency. So when a new plastic band game comes out it really boils down to two things: the setlist and the improvements over the previous iteration.

Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock fails on both these notes, taking everything that was innovative about Guitar Hero 5 in a lazy, weird turn.

I've been playing the series since Guitar Hero, and have played every single iteration of both the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games (except Guitar Hero: Van Halen. Screw that hunk of crap). From my standpoint, it's been interesting to see where each series diverged. Rock Band took a risky jump with the whole "band" thing, while Guitar Hero played it safe. Of course, Guitar Hero quickly followed Rock Band' s band style of gameplay, with the not-very-innovative Guitar Hero: World Tour. They really picked up the pace, however, with Guitar Hero 5. They added challenges for each song, an easier way to get directly to the game, improvements in the UI, and lots of other features. It was hardly as innovative as, say, Rock Band or Rock Band 3, but it was certainly welcome improvements.

Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock drops most of these improvements for no reason other than to push it's stupid, Brutal Legend-knockoff career mode.

When all else fails, add Night Elves

Warriors of Rock is basically like Guitar Hero 5 only stripped down. The challenges are technically still there in quickplay, but they are less extensive and less important. They also return to having you "unlock" songs, which was the bane of last gen's music games. You unlock these songs (like Rush's "2112," which is awesome) by playing through their stupid career mode. Here, I'll break it down for you.

Basically every Guitar Hero character (who were, ironically, created by Harmonix as parodies of stereotypical genre rockers) has their own setlist. You have your typical punk rocker, your classic rocker, your nu-metal guy, your classic rock guy, etc. They also each have specific "powers" that are pretty much stupid: some people have higher multipliers, others get more starpower, etc. Once you play through that one song on their setlist you like and the other six you don't, you play an "encore." This is where you rocker turns into their "TRUE ROCKER FORM," which is basically the stupidest...you know what? How about you just watch it. I paired it with one of the few good songs in the game (Muse's "Uprising") to help dull the pain.

I will admit, I wish this song was on Rock Band. MOAR MUSE

That's it. Then they become stupider looking than they did before, and you repeat this like twenty times to unlock all your rockers. Luckily, they give you a break to play through 2112 back to back (which is cool...except it's on Rock Band now with harmonies and keys so...) which is pretty sweet. 

The story itself is just straight stupid. That's what I'm getting at. Some demigod of rock was imprisoned? Need the "holy axe" to defeat the "beast?" Really? This is only more funny given the history of what happened with Brutal Legend, a game that also took the idea of making a story based on the concept of heavy metal (except Brutal Legend was actually clever and hilarious) and Activision (Guitar Hero's company) first cut funding to the project and then, when Double-Fine (the makers of Brutal Legend) took it to a different company and then got killer reception at that years E3, Activision tried to turn around and sue them in some attempt to prevent the game from getting released. Sour grapes much? And then you have this, a poor-man's knockoff, and the whole thing comes full circle.

But hey, Rush. 

I'd talk more, but there really isn't much more. It's still the same Guitar Hero game they've been pumping out for years. Yeah, it has Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody," but why would you play it on this when the Rock Band 3 version has harmonies and keys? Sure, if you are a metal-head (or a nu-metal head, rather) you'll find a lot to like in this setlist, but a vast majority of the songs were already available for download on the Rock Band platform. I'd much rather pick and choose the songs I want to play than throwing down full price for a disc that only has 7-8 songs I actually care about. 

But hey, it has this heavily censored version of NiN's "Wish," which Rock Band doesn't have (yet)

And that's where this game falls flat. They pushed their stupid "Warriors of Rock" part while completely ignoring the rest of the gameplay. There is nothing here that improves on the previous iterations, and in truth it's more of a step back than anything. This was further evidence by the fact Activision retired the brand shortly after this game was released. 

I really wanted to like Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock. Like I've said, I get a lot of satisfaction out of these types of games, either alone or with friends. But nearly everything in this game was a misstep, and looking at Rock Band 3 there is really no competition anymore. You can't even export the Warriors of Rock songs to play on the better platform that is Guitar Hero 5. So unless you really dig this game's setlist, you'd be better off avoiding it completely.

And as an added bonus, lots of the first-run press of discs give unreadable errors on the Xbox 360 version. So I went through four discs before finding one that sort of ran, and then the game still ended up being horrible. Awesome. 

I got this game for free as part of a "buy one, get two free" music game deal on Gamestop, and I still traded it away on Goozex because I didn't want it in my game library anymore. If you really, really want to play the songs in the setlist I'd say borrow it from a friend or rent it. If you have to own it, don't pay more than $5. If I were to give it a star rating, it would be one out of five. This isn't the absolute worst in the Guitar Hero series, but it certainly isn't for lack of trying. 

Resident Evil 5

The Short


Pros
- Gorgeous graphics
- Dark continuation of the Resident Evil franchise story
- Co-op for the first time in the series
- Option for duel-stick aiming
- Roller-coaster of awesome setpieces and scenes
- The perfect length: not too long or too short
- Mercenaries mode has been improved and also has co-op

Cons
- Co-op with AI is atrociously unfun
- Takes all the "B-Movie" greatness of Resident Evil 4 and decides to be serious. Doesn't work.
- Sparked a bunch of racial controversy
- Everything that was even remotely hinting at scary is completely gone and replaced by straight action
- Some of the bosses are stupidly unfair on the hardest difficulty
- Breaking the game up into individual, selectable chapters (ala Devil May Cry) breaks the fluidity of the game
- None of the characters are particularly interesting like they were in Resident Evil 4
- Fixes a lot of control problems, but still keeps arcane ones for no apparent reason
- Violence and gore are considerably toned down, especially for character deaths
- Quick time events aren't as novel as they were in Resident Evil 4
- Zombies on motorbikes? Really?

Grab a buddy and shoot some not-zombies

The Long


In celebration of the Resident Evil 6 trailer that just came out today, I've decided to take a jump back into two years ago and review the previous game in the series: Resident Evil 5. I went into this game with lots of high hopes, and in all honesty I probably should have reviewed Resident Evil 4 before this one (all you need to know: one of the best games from last generation of hardware) since I'm going to probably be making comparisons between the two, but since pretty much 90% of the gaming population has at least heard of that game, I'm sure you'll somehow manage.

Resident Evil 4 changed both survival horror and the market for third-person shooters. Releasing at the end of both the Gamecube and the PS2's lifespan, Resident Evil 4 was graphically impressive, controlled fantastically, and ramped up the action to an unheard of level. Resident Evil had always been known for two things: it's B-Movie zombie horror and awful controls. Resident Evil 4 fixed almost everything by making the game better to control but still not superhuman, while jacking up the tension to white-knuckle level. It still plays quite well to this day, the HD remake popping up on most modern consoles (which you can bet I bought...which means I've now bought Resident Evil 4 on every system, and twice on the PS2). It paved the way for other amazing games like Gears of War, and changed the face of survival horror.

Also: extreme, gritty gore. Thanks, Resident Evil 4

So when I heard about Resident Evil 5 I was BEYOND PUMPED. When I heard it was going to have co-op for the first time in the series I was also totally floored. Co-op? Like...Resident Evil 4 but with two players? That would be awesome! I literally could not wait, and actually bought Resident Evil 5 on release day (something I don't do very often) and managed to convince my friend to as well, and we both ditched school to get on Xbox Live and play through the game together.

It was after a couple hours that I realized...Resident Evil 5 really isn't that great.

This guy begs to differ

It wasn't that it was bad per say, it just wasn't...exceptional. Following up Resident Evil 4 wasn't going to be easy and I knew that, but they had changed so much that I found myself no longer enjoying it as an experience. There are a few key issues I had with it, which I'll now address.

First, however, let's get something clear: this game plays pretty much exactly like Resident Evil 4. The over the shoulder shooting, the limited ammo, even the enemy animations when the not-zombies are hit is exactly the same. You have the same chainsaw guys that are tougher than regular guys. You still use herbs to heal and mix yellow with green herbs to up your max life. So I don't really have to go into much detail about the gameplay except it's a third person shooter that punishes you a lot if you get hit. Easy? Alright.

So here's my problem with Resident Evil 5: it wants really hard to be an action game without actually being an action game. What do I mean by this? Well, let's first see what the changed to make it an action game:
- The "tetris" inventory from Resident Evil 4 has been replaced with a more traditional, "four slot" weapon system
- The creepy shopkeeper is completely gone, replaced with a bland menu between chapters
- The chapters aren't really streamlined into the game like they were in RE4, instead they are deliberately broken apart like Devil May Cry. This really kills the flow of the story and the horror experience; how can I be scared if you keep jerking me out of scene?
- You man turrets to gun down zombies on motorcycles. What.
- Near the end of the game you have zombies with guns and you actually have to take cover (badly) in order to shoot them back. With awful, tacked on controls.
- All the cornyness and sillyness from Resident Evil 4 is replaced by "super serious action military shooter using words like 'extraction point' and other such nonsense."
- There is nothing scary at all in this entire game. Nothing. And if you are playing with a human partner with a headset, it's even less scary.

Pictured: Stupid

So that's some basic issues, but the ramifications from these design decisions run deep. I'm going to now complain about something that everybody who has played this game complained about, and I know it's overused but I've got to mention it anyway: you can't move and shoot. In an action game.


Now, RE4 didn't let you move and shoot and it turned out just fine. The reason this doesn't fly for Resident Evil 5 is the fact that your immobility means they had to essentially gimp every single enemy in the game to accommodate for you having to stand rooted to the spot everytime you wanted to fire a weapon or use your knife. So you have a game that really wants to be a fast-paced action game ala Gears of War, but your enemies (and character) lumber about like morons. It really kills both the "nonstop action!" bit as well as the "survival horror!" bit.

But I think the real problem with Resident Evil 5 is that it came out after Dead Space.

Not going to lie, Dead Space is one of my most favorite games ever. 

Dead Space was a game made by pretty much a bunch of no-names employed at EA who saw Resident Evil 4 and thought "dude, this game rocks, but what if we set it in space? With some of the scariest and most messed up enemies ever?" Then somebody was like "but what about moving and shooting? If it's an action game, wouldn't being immobile mean all our enemies would suck?" So guess what they did? They made their enemies insanely fast and horrifying and let you move and shoot. And made it so headshots didn't count for nothing. And about a hundred other fantastic things that really make Dead Space one of the best action-horror games ever made.

Anyway, getting away from Dead Space, this ball-busting masterpiece showed up the year before Resident Evil 5 came out. I'm guessing it was too late in development for anybody at Capcom to change their minds, but after playing through Dead Space (which really is almost a "spiritual successor" to Resident Evil 4 in terms of both scares and gameplay), everything in Resident Evil 5 seemed clunky and dated.

Pictured: A brilliant analogy. Chris is Resident Evil 5. The big badass is Dead Space. You can figure out the rest. 

One thing Resident Evil 5 DID have that Dead Space didn't, however, is co-op. You can play through the entire game online with a friend, or split-screen on the couch. It really is the only way to play and is loads of fun, especially since playing with an AI partner is the worst experience ever. She takes your ammo. She wastes all of her ammo instead of conserving or planning ahead. She wastes healing items. She dies constantly and for stupid reasons. She can't do anything on her own. The majority of Resident Evil 4 was essentially a huge escort mission (Ashley, the president's apparently helpless daughter, follows you around and complains) but it was never that annoying because she didn't steal your ammo or eat your herbs. This is not the case in Resident Evil 5. So if you play this game, you really need to get a buddy.

...except if you really want to play a co-op game, you could have just picked up Gears of War 2, which had come out the previous November and was not only a better action game, but played better in co-op. Yeah, it wasn't exactly horror, but to be completely honest Gears of War 1 had scarier scenes than anything I saw in Resident Evil 5. And hey, guess what, that had co-op too. And chainsaw guns.

This is why video games exist. So we can do stupid crap like this. 

So now that I've whined about how mediocre this game was, I'm going to back up and defend some points. The graphics are gorgeous. It was a good call to set this game in the light; you get to see all the nasty monster designs in their full glory and appreciate exactly how fantastic the art direction is in this game. The sound is also all great, as is expected from the franchise, though the voice actors sort of seem to sleepwalk through most of their lines. The story, while "super serious," does finally answer a bunch of lore questions that have been persistant throughout the Resident Evil fiction, and closes a pretty massive plot arc that has been around since the very first Resident Evil. It also loves to throw characters from previous Resident Evil games just to explain how it all fits together, and there are nods to nearly every game in the franchise, which makes a Resident Evil fan like myself very happy.

The game looks pretty dang sharp

The game also boasts a host of DLC, including competitive verses (why would you ever play this...?) and some other story elements that I unfortunately haven't played. Capcom does it's usual (and now apparently industry-wide) "release a game again with all the DLC at a cheaper price to screw over early adapters" thing, which I suppose is ok since I wasn't that invested in the game anyway, but if you were to pick it up I'm guessing you'd want that version (Resident Evil 5 GOLD) since it has all the extra stuff.

So...here is the hard part. The score and price. Because despite all my complaining, I actually beat the game like three times, and once by myself and twice with a buddy. I finished every chapter except two on the hardest setting (stupid bosses messing me up) and got every achievement except the one for beating the game on the hardest difficulty (so close!). So I certainly invested a hefty amount of time in it, even if I never really thought it was that great.

Probably my biggest hang up was it wasn't as good as Resident Evil 4, which really isn't a fair way to judge it. Still, they could have done better regardless, so my criticisms stay.

Anyway, score. You can get Resident Evil 5 Gold new right now for $20, which I think is a totally fair price. The game hasn't aged well thanks to not being able to move and shoot, but if you have any investment in Resident Evil as a series you you'd for sure pick it up (if anything to know how it ties into the forthcoming Resident Evil 6). I don't give half-stars in some attempt to keep myself from nit-picking the star rating, but I'm really hung up on whether to give this game two or three stars. So I think I'll give the game the benefit of the doubt and give it three out of five, if only because I had a fun time in co-op, and making my character shout "CHRIS!" over and over just to annoy my friend was kind of awesome.

Oh yeah, and this is still really stupid.

Zombies on motorbikes. Just...urrrrrrgh. 

Protect Me Knight (まもって騎士)

The Short
Pros
- Fast, fun four player defense game
- Four unique classes with differing abilities
- 8-Bit throwback style
- Sticks to the retro theme with awful Engrish translations
- Multiple levels of difficulty, including a survival mode
- More goblins than you can shake a stick at
- Only $3 on Xbox Live Indie Games

Cons
- Not a whole lot of depth
- For the best experience you need four players
- Harder difficulties are super tough

The Pig-ship cometh

The Long


Protect Me Knight is a game dedicated to being retro. From the opening screen where you literally press A to "blow on a cartridge" until the game boots up, it just oozes charm. It is clearly billing itself as some "forgotten NES gem," even though I'm pretty sure the NES would crumble under the amount of stuff that happens on screen at the same time in Protect Me Knight.

The premise of the game is simple, like most other "defense" style games: you have a princess in the center of the map you are trying to defend. Waves of monsters keep showing up, getting progressively harder, until you win a level. After you win you can spend your "hearts" (rewarded by the princess for killing stuff) in four trees of upgrades. Next level, rinse and repeat, until you kill the final boss and the game ends.

There are a few other additions that have shown up in more modern defense games that appear here. You can spend your hearts in-battle to build or upgrade barricades, essential in some levels where the monsters will just walk in and start bashing your princess over the head. You can move the princess (slowly) out of danger if necessary (or on accident if you aren't paying attention). You can upgrade your barricades into catapults and launch enemy crushing, friendly-fire causing rocks. And you can spend your extra hearts for a burst of AOE smash damage that murders all enemies around you.

Title screen. I couldn't think of anything witty to say about it.

The idea is simple, but surprisingly fun. You have four classes: a warrior tank, a DPS ninja, a carry Amazon, and a mage....mage. Each of them have four unique areas to dump their points in which, especially in the case of the mage, can completely change how you play the character. They also have a basic attack and a special attack (the mage's being magic) and each has unique combos for both. While playing as a different melee character isn't a completely new experience, playing as a mage is totally different. Trying to beat the game with a party of four fire-spewing mages is a new level of total insanity.

And four players is where the game shines. The difficulty ramps up the more players there are, making some of the later levels literally teeming with hordes of enemies. Death's only punishment is a few seconds of respawn (and a hit to your hearts),when the only real way to lose is if your princess takes too many hits. There are also a few bosses that can insta-kill her, meaning someone has to be on "princess duty" to make sure she doesn't get caught in the line of fire.

The total 8-bit chaos is a complete blast to play, even if the co-op is only local (it's an Xbox indie game; I don't know if those are online compatible aside from leaderboards). The harder difficulties only further force you to work together, the aptly named "Hell" difficulty near-impossible.

They even made a "crappy US version box art" for it. Awesome. 

On normal, you can plow through the game is maybe an hour and a half with four people. On the harder difficulties it'll take longer, and you'll want to replay it to experiment with different character combinations. Four mages? What about four glass-cannon ninjas? Or four tanks (boring!)? Or one of each? What about on hard? Since nothing carries over between sessions you start out fresh every time, meaning you can build your character different based on your preferences.

The game is $3 on the Xbox Indie channel, which is certainly worth it. All Xbox Indie games have six minute demos, so you can grab a friend (or three) and see if it is your cup of tea. For me, this game is a hilarious four-player romp, and well worth the price. As a fan of couch co-op games, it was an easy sell. 

If I were to give it a star rating, it would be five out of five. 

It is also worth noting it might not be under the title "Protect Me Knight." It's on the top rated, though, under "まもって騎士." 

Metro 2033

The Short


Pros
- Gritty, dark survival/shooting game set in Russia's subway system
- Guns look appropriately makeshift and old based on the theme
- Monsters are creepy
- Lots of really cool ideas
- Really plays the whole "struggling to survive" aspect better than most other games in the genre
- Fantastic UI
- Superb sound design, particularly in ambiant noises and voices
- Visual theme is uniform and fantastic throughout

Cons
- Console versions are extremely glitchy, PC version is a little better but still has issues
- PC version is poorly optimized; expect to play it on lower settings than other games
- Ghetto guns that have poor aim fit the theme, but make the game seem unfair
- Easy to get lost or stuck on glitches
- Shooting monsters is fun. Shooting dudes is bland.
- Game ends abruptly and with little explanation

The aesthetics in Metro 2033 are perhaps its biggest strength

The Long


Metro 2033 is an interesting game to review. At its most basic, it's a "modern" survival horror game, meaning you are given a large arsenal of weapons with limited ammo and are thrown into dark corridors with lots of beasties to shoot. If I reviewed Metro 2033 based solely off these qualities, I'd say it was a pretty generic, very glitchy, extremely Russian brand of that type of game, and really only for those really into the genre. Where Metro 2033 sold me, however, was it's incredible attention to detail and complete, unabashed dedication to making it a "survival" sim, even if that meant inconveniencing the player gameplaywise.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me give you the general gist.

Metro 2033 is set in...2033 deep down in...the Russian metro. Yeah, you saw that coming. Following tradition the world has been nuked to the point of total nuclear winter, so everybody has to live underground in the broken metro tunnels to avoid the dangerous radiation, cold, and mutant monsters that reside on Moscow's surface. Pretty much par for the course, right? If you are getting Fallout 3 vibes, you aren't far off.

Well, something starts happening that nobody can control. These weird, shadow-looking monsters start popping up out of the woodwork and massacring entire settlements. Your home settlement is under siege by these believed "unkillable" monsters, so you are sent out to try and enlist aid from the main city in the area. Again, hardly anything particularly new in terms of plot.

There are also some of these guys. 

The game plays like a straightforward shooter. You are given a knife, one sidearm, one rifle, and one shotgun. You are free to buy alternate versions of the weapons that sport different upgrades and perks, though generally there are two types of rifles (one automatic, one pump-powered) and two types of shotguns (a high damage double barrel, and a lower damage but bigger clip battle shotgun). The guns start out completely horrible (fitting with the "we are living off the remnants of society" theme), and you'll be desperately scrounging for ammo and praying they actually aim where you point them. By the end, however, it's pretty much a traditional shooter, with all your weapons tricked out and actually functioning properly. The bad weapons at the beginning are a minor annoyance gameplay-wise, but they do a lot to fit into the game's theme and aesthetic.

Which brings me to the biggest part of the review: Metro 2033 reeks with style. It practically oozes it. The game is very Russian, with people speaking in heavy russian accents and referencing some things we Americans might get. But the biggest attachment to form is the whole "you have to fight to survive" aspect, which really sets this game apart (both for good and ill). 

Suffer not a beastie to live

Let's first address the basics: a light. In survival horror games, your light is really important. Often they throw you into pitch black places, letting you reveal whatever scary things they have hidden with the flashlight/candle/etc. they gave you. In every other game I've played, lights either have infinite batteries or magical recharging ones that fill up after you turn them off. Keeps the tension, but without breaking the gameplay. 

In Metro 2033, your light is constantly running out of juice. But in order to recharge it, you have to hit a special button and manually crank the charge. You don't even know what your current juice level is unless you hit this button and pull up the crank, which has a fogged-over meter attached. You can sort of tell because it'll start going dim at about half-empty, but having to pull out your light and manually crank it in the middle of battles (or walking around) is both annoying and incredibly immersive. 

IMMERSION.

Same goes for the gas mask. When you go to the surface on several instance, you have to bust out the gas mask or die. They make a note that your filters will run out after several minutes of use (and I think they run out faster if you get in a lot of fights/run a lot/ do stuff that would increase your breathing rate). Rather than throw a timer at you, however, your dude literally winds up an analog timer on his watch which you have to press a special button for him to check his wrist to know if the filter is running out. Also as it starts to die your mask will fog up, making it harder and harder to see. So then you have to make a choice: do I swap a filter early and risk running out, or wait until it runs out of time but risk losing all peripheral vision? 

IMMERSION. 

You can't even check your objectives (which your dude writes down in a notebook and has to pull up) if it is dark. You have to bust out a lighter, click to light it, and then hold your notebook up to see it. Also, if you do this while trying to hide in the dark/be stealthy, people will see you. So you are essentially being punished to check your notes (like you would in real life).

IMMERSION. 

I've already made a point about the guns starting off totally awful (and they all look like they were put together with spare parts; the gun design in this game is sweet), but did you know that in this game bullets are money? Yes, the normal bullets you shoot from your guns are crappy, "refurbed" bullets (much like my "refurbed" Xbox), but you can find special "good" bullets. These do loads more damage, but they also count as the only currency in the game. So you have to decide whether they are worth shooting at the boss or saving just in case you want to buy a new gun (protip: save them. This aspect of the game is clever, but poorly executed; there is literally no reason not to just use the crap bullets the whole game). But still...

IMMERSION.

This dude is totally immersed. Also, screwed. 

And that is where Metro 2033 sold me. The shooting isn't great. The story is interesting but quickly putters out. The game is glitchy and makes you shoot too many humans at the end rather than fighting against crazy subway monsters. It also gimped my computer and would only run at crap settings even though I could play Starcraft II at way better graphics, so I knew it was Metro's fault. But despite all of this, once I started it really sunk its claws into me. I just put on some headphones, dimmed the lights, and let myself be totally taken in by the game's style. It wasn't that scary of a game, and it was extremely linear and pretty short (six hours, maybe?), but I got so sucked in I didn't care.

Though that does mean that whenever some enemy started glitching out or I got trapped in the geometry, I was totally ripped away from the main reason I was playing the game, which sucked. Also, this game has a huge problem not telling you what to do, even with your stupid objectives list that you have to use a lighter to see. I got stuck in rooms simply because I was confused, or wandered around areas (that damned library still bugs me) for quite a while before figuring out where to go next. Obnoxious.

Cranking the light! ARE YOU IMMERSED YET?!?

It is also worth noting that, unlike most multi-platform next gen games, I didn't play this one on the Xbox 360. I've heard plenty of people say it's even more glitchy than the PC version, which would be pretty rough of that's the case. I actually started this game on PC, got mad because my specs were bad, and then ended up playing it on OnLive instead. Which technically had worse graphics than my PC, but I was so fed up with settings twieking that I really didn't care at that point. I played it on mouse and keyboard, which I honestly would imagine is the best way to play it, because there are so many stupid buttons for "checking watch" or "replacing filter" or "cranking flashlight" that it would be tough to map all that crap to a controller.

So that means I actually own the game both on Steam and Onlive, which also means I've technically bought it twice. Well, whatever. I paid something like $5 for the Steam version, but the $20 I paid on OnLive I would say is a fair price, if you have a PC that can run it decently. If you are into games that really suck you in, then plug in some headphones, dim the lights, and enter the (immersive) world of Metro 2033.

If I were to give a star rating, it would be three out of five, but I will certainly be picking up the sequel, Metro: Last Light when it comes out. It's a flawed game, to be certain, but a fantastic one if you are in the right mood.