Dead To Rights: Retribution

The Short


Pros
- Lots of totally over the top kills
- Stealth sections where you play as the dog, Shadow
- Can command your dog to go all feral on dudes
- Cover based shooting is satisfying, slow-mos for headshots
- Story is so completely stupid it's hilarious

Cons
- Looks terrible
- Controls are just barely passable; Gears of War this ain't
- Voice acting and story are awful, so if you hate B-Movies you will hate this
- Single player is short but feels way too long
- Kills are awesome but there are only about six of them
- Not enough sections where you play as Shadow
- Gets boring really fast
- Gratuitous cursing isn't "edgy," it's just obnoxious
- No multiplayer (not like anybody would be on it...)

Have a nice trip! See you next...you know what? I can't do this. 

The Long

Dead to Right: Retribution feels like a game stuck in a time bubble. Way back on the PS2 games, two Dead to Rights games were released. They were pretty decent, where the biggest hook was the fact you had a big, angry dog to run around and kill people and that was pretty brutal. The series then fell off the face for a long while, and now it's back on this generation and is ready to kick butt and be all up in your face with its bad attitude in a "gritty" reboot. Too bad stuff that passed off as "decent" on the PS2 is not acceptable nowadays, because Dead To Rights: Retribution is an ok ride, it just wears out its welcome super fast.

The story is so completely horrible I really have to mention it. You know this is good stuff when the very first scene is the main character (a hard-boiled cop who plays by his own rules!) literally sticks his badge in the face of his superior officer, then slams it and his gun down on a cop car before snarling and stalking into some skyscraper where a hostage situation is going on. Jack Slate plays by his own rules, son, and he dont' take no crap from some paper-pushing wash-up! It only gets more absurd from there, with (spoiler?) Jack's father being offed by some gang leader (right before a convenient rainstorm), Jack kneeling above him as his girlfriend/paramedic tries to bring him back to life, and Jack looking up at the sky and screaming he'll get revenge. Seriously, this game's story is completely, unbelievably awful. Which is why I sort of enjoyed it. Sort of. It's so stupid I can't help but cringe and laugh at the same time, which means I actually gleaned some sort of enjoyment out of it. I guess? 

"I AM THE LAW!" Ok, no more Judge Dredd jokes this review, I promise. 

The amount of swearing, however, should be noted, because I'm fairly certain 50% of this game consists of the word "f***" (or some variation on it). I don't really care either way when it comes to swearing if it is used as an effective storytelling device, but considering the story is butt-freaking awful, the cursing got obnoxious for me really fast. It was just cursing for the sake of cursing, so any impact it might have had was quickly swept away for general annoyance.

That describes the game itself pretty good, actually: starts off impactful and with a lot of punch, quickly degenerates into something totally uninteresting and obnoxious. It's a traditional third-person, cover based shooter, with a few stealth elements mixed in (that's your dog; I'll cover that more later). Enemies start off easy and quickly get cheap, though you can basically cheat by shooting them, staggering them, and then running up for a free and easy instant kill. In fact, it was actually way easier during most of the game to just completely ignore taking cover, bum rush the nearest enemy, punch him once and get a free finisher. You can even have finishers where you steal their weapons if you really need them, so this one-two combo is essentially the easiest way through generic thugs. The fact that your character has a pretty robust melee system actually makes the game easier, since I can combo thugs into oblivion if needs be.

Which is nice, I guess, if you like doing the same thing over and over, and watching the same half-dozen kill animations over and over. They are hilariously over the top the first couple times (like the swearing. And the story. And basically this whole game), and then they - you guessed it - get repetitive and annoying. This tends to happen with just about any game that uses a "kill animation" liberally, which makes me wonder why developers just don't add more animations. It's like in JRPGs and the battle songs;  you know they are going to be playing your game for 60+ hours, why don't you have like six different battle themes? Legend of Dragoon freaking did that, and it was perhaps the only good thing about that game! Come on, SquareEnix! This isn't hard.

I really need to stop going off on tangents during my reviews

Anyway, the game also quickly goes from "too easy" to "stupidly hard" fast. Regular thugs, as mentioned, go down easy but pretty soon they send a billion dudes at you (and those freaking snipers, like in that picture above) and on hard (which is what I played on) it gets obnoxious. Checkpoints are liberal and all, but I hate dying in games in general, so frustration hit pretty hard. I almost didn't finish it I got so pissed off, but like Viking: Battle for Asgard I persevered, and was rewarded with...well, a stupid ending. What a surprise.

There honestly isn't much to say about playing as Jack. Headshots come easy, and the fact it gives you a more precise reticle when blind firing from cover (with the pistol, anyway) than when you actually aim is pretty stupid (and hilarious when I headshot people from behind some box without even looking). The fact that it slo-mos every time I headshot is rewarding, but again...gets old fast. 

Shadow, which reminds me of Shadow from Final Fantasy VI, who also had a killer dog. COINCIDENCE?!?!

My favorite parts in the game were (again, like Viking...this is sort of uncanny, actually) the tacked-on stealth sections where you played as Jack's kick-ass dog, Shadow. Shadow can only take a few hits and (obviously) can't use guns, but he can use "dog senses" to see through walls, insta-kill enemies that don't see him, drag bodies to keep from getting found out, and sneak through small areas. These sections are actually really fun to play, because Shadow's insta-killing (one of which involves biting a dude in the nuts...ouch...and it give an achievement for that) keeps things fast, though the graphics are so bad that when he's dragging and enemy nine times out of ten his mouth isn't actually on the arm, just sort of...floating near it. Oh well.

Anyway, these sections are a good break up from the monotonous shooting and executions as Jack, which is why it sucks that they are both few and far between as well as super short. I don't think the concept of playing as Shadow could support an entire game to itself, but it was certainly a good enough diversion that they should have put more of it in. 

That isn't motion blur. The game actually looks this fugly. Ok, maybe it is motion blur, but the game still looks bad. 

The graphics look...just passable. Locations are bland and uninspired, the guns all look like boring old guns, you fight the same batches of enemies over and over, and everybody looks like they are made out of plastic or something. Faces are particularly horrifying, and Shadow doesn't look like he had any hair, just one big texture. Lighting is boring, costumes are boring...has my point been made? This game looks like an up-resed PS2 game, which sort of fits the fact that it plays like...an up-resed PS2 game. Seriously, all those years you put Dead to Rights on the backburner, and you picked the laziest way to reboot it? For shame.

Not to mention it's made in the Unreal Engine (like every game this generation), so you get texture popin up the wazoo, even when the game is installed on the 360s HDD. You thought the game couldn't look worse? Oh, think again, silly consumer!

Hooray for graphics. 

This game really drags. With no multiplayer and a single player that feels too long, I see no reason for anybody to pick it up unless they are really hurting for a violent, third person shooter that isn't Gears of War. While some parts of it are decent, and the hilariously awful story makes up for a lot, there is just too much here that feels half-baked to give it a hearty recommendation. If you can find it for $10 or under, and again...are really hurting for a third-person shooter that isn't, you know, good, then I have got the game for you. 

And, continuing the similarites between this review and my Viking: Battle for Asgard review, I'm "rewarding" Dead to Rights: Retribution with two out of five stars. Why two instead of one? Because despite myself, I did have a pretty decent time the first couple of hours, and all the Shadow parts were enjoyable. It's a guilty pleasure (my brain was protesting against my having fun the entire time), but one that only lasts a short amount of time. 

And since seeing the takedowns for the first time is one of the best things about the game, I will now ruin it for you by embedding this video with all the takedowns. What? Now you don't have to play the game! You'll thank me later. 

Roller Coaster Tycoon (Deluxe)

The Short


Pros
- An expansive theme park sim
- Build shops and rides, hire entertainers and handymen, and much more
- Actually build your own coasters in "design" mode
- Dozens of missions (more with expansions)
- Loads of coaster types and rides
- Insanely addicting

Cons
- The formula for building a good coaster can be difficult to figure out
- Easy to "cheat" your way through the game with cheap exploits
- Ride depreciation is a bit unrealistic
- Micromanagement eventually gets to insane levels on the bigger maps
- No true "sandbox" mode (though an expansion has a map with unlimited money)

Just looking at this screen shot makes me want to boot the game up again

The Long

Not going to lie: Roller Coaster Tycoon is one of my favorite old PC games. If you'll allow a moment of personal indulgence: Roller Coaster Tycoon was the game that headed off my "second wave" of PC gaming love (the first starting with The Incredible Machine 2, and the third with Warcraft III). I spent hours playing this game with my brothers, trying to design the perfect park, and salivating as we awaited for the next expansion pack to come out. Now, thanks to Good Old Games, you can pick up this game on the cheap (as well as it's ok-but-not-vastly-improved sequel), and so last Christmas I jumped on it. I was curious to see if it had held up after all these years.

Guess what? It totally did. This game is awesome.

Things are gettin' crazy

The game is basically like that really old game Theme Park, but improved in nearly every way. Essentially the game has a plethora of missions for you, staring with simple ones (here's a blank park and some money: have fun!) and getting to harder ones (get a certain park rating and guest # in this extremely limited space, etc.). Each park layout is unique and since you can't change where your park entrance is (which is too bad), you have to work around the landscape. You can always use your shovel to raise and lower land, add water, and do all sorts of crazy stuff, but since everything in this game costs a bit of money you'll nickle and dime yourself to death if you are a perfectionist.

It's a pretty simple set up at first: keep your guests happy. You start with the basics: food, drinks, and bathrooms. You can then build simple rides: bumper cars, a ferris wheel, some go-karts (those go-karts are money makers) . Once you've earned enough you can then start constructing roller coasters (beginning with basic steel ones with no loops, and eventually getting to crazy, twisting monstrosities) and that is when the game gets crazy. 

Even the main menu screen is exciting

The game comes with a handful of pre-build tracks (not enough, honestly, but if you have the expansions it adds a lot), but the real joy comes in making your own coasters. The sky is essentially the limit as you can build banks, curves, loops, corkscrews, and anything else. You can even add in-ride photos (and the price gouge the heck out of them) in an attempt to generate more revenue. If you make a mistake on coaster construction, the game refunds you completely (unlike paths, where if you mess up you are out the $2 difference), and you can make coasters that go really high, twist around other rides, go underground; seriously, you can do anything if you can afford it. Creating some wacky (and stupid) roller coasters is a blast. They don't even have to be complete; you can have those ones that just sort of shoot you forward and then let you fall back.

And you aren't just limited to coasters. Want a steam train that encircles you park like in Disneyland? That's there. How about a monorail? Got that. What about some simpler, smaller rides that just fill up the extra space? Can do that too (even if it's a cheap way to earn money). The number of coasters, concessions, rides, and options is staggering, especially with the expansions installed. It's never overwhelming, because the game unlocks things in increments (you have to "research" new ride types in each scenario, and the rate you get new stuff is equal to how much you fund research), giving you time to figure out what you want. You can even focus your research on different things, so if your park is too full of coasters you can instead research food or smaller rides (like slides or hedge mazes) instead. 

"The Purple Puker"

There are some issues with designing your own coasters, though. While the pregenerated rides are somehow immaculate with their ratings (each is given an excitement, intensity, and nausea rating. You want to raise the first one without raising the other two), whenever you build your own you seem to fall flat. Mine always are too intense, even if they seem tamer than the prebuilt ones. This can be frustrating, but it also can be very satisfying when you finally make the perfect steel coaster. You can also save the rides you make so you can build them again in later scenarios, which means your "Rat Race Armageddon" ride can grace every single park you build.

The goal of the game is to get rich and keep your guests happy, which (as stated above) starts simple and gets hard. You have to provide them with benches and trash cans, or else they'll just throw their garbage on the ground and puke everywhere. You have to hire handymen to take out the trash, clean up the puke, and generally keep things looking good. You need mechanics to make sure your rides don't break down or randomly blow up. You need security guards to prevent your stuff from getting vandalized. And you need entertainers to keep people happy while they wait for hours in line for your latest coaster abomination. 

Despite your best efforts, stuff can quickly get overwhelming.

And that is where the game gets tricky. After a while your park gets so big that micromanaging everything becomes a near impossible task. Guests tire of rides after a while, meaning you'll need to drop the prices in order to keep them coming. It's easy to box yourself in if you aren't careful, as you need pathways in order to get to other rides (and you have to keep it somewhat organized or your guests will get lost). You have to keep on hiring people proportional to how much you are expanding, and make certain you have enough freaking bathrooms and food. It gets crazy, and when all you really want to do is design wacky coasters, sometimes the financial micromanaging (especially when advertising gets into the mix) can get in the way of just enjoying the game.

Luckily there are ways to "break" the game. Since you can sell stuff back for almost as much as you paid for it, if guests are starting to get super cheap (like thinking ten cents is still too much to pay for freaking bumper cars!) then you can simply bulldoze a pre-made attraction and put the exact same one in its place. They'll all think it's a new ride, and you'll profit. This kind of feels like cheating, but the fact that rides depreciate in value so quickly (though the coasters tend to work better) makes it seem like that's what the game wants you to do. 

Once you figure out the specifics of the mechanics, you can essentially "break" the game in terms of earning money. Aside from bulldozing rides and replacing them with the same ones to regain interest, you can also make short, crappy, custom coasters (that only last 10 seconds) with reasonably low stats and still make mad bank off of them (when your down payment was substantially lower than the amount people value the ride at). It's unrealistic - who would want to ride a coaster that just goes around in a circle and stops - but it is totally feasible. You can also make pretty much any go-kart coarse and people will line up for miles to ride it, even if it is total crap.  

The game also lacks a "sandbox" mode, where it would basically just give you a huge lot of your choosing, unlimited money, and all the rides upfront. It does have "Arid Heights" in one of the expansions, which gives you a big desert and tons of money (and the charge to never let your park rating drop below 650), but that's just one scenario. It would have been great to have had a "custom map" option with your own rules and details, but it isn't that big of a loss.

You can even color each coaster segment different parts...if you are a total lunatic

I've played every Roller Coaster Tycoon game, and despite the later ones having better graphics (and the ability to "ride" your own creations), I still think the original is the best. With the expansions installed it has way more than enough options for even the craziest park manager, and the massive number of scenarios ensures dozens of hours of gameplay. If you have any interest in simulation games, you should really check this game out. It's one of the best. 

You can buy this game right now on Good Old Games for $5. I picked it up during the Christmas sale for $2.50, and they have the second game (which is essentially the same game but with slightly better UI and a few more rides) on there for $10. Good Old Games makes it so even these ancient games will run smoothly on modern machines (runs great on my Windows 7 64 bit), so you don't have anything to worry about if you get it from them. It also comes with all the expansions, which is the way the game should be played. 

If I were to give it a star rating, it would certainly be five out of five. Now would somebody please turn the sound off on the ferris wheels? I hate that music. 

And as a bonus, you can make deathtraps! WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?!

Halo 3: ODST

The Short

Pros
-  All new single player set during Halo 2 but on earth
- Play as somebody other than Master Chief (finally)
- Handful of new weapons
- New Firefight mode
- Story is a very different approach than the other Halo games
- Nathan Fillion does a voice in it
- Includes a disc for the complete Halo 3 multiplayer experience

Cons
- Story is stale and doesn't pack promised emotional punch
- Firefight is friends only; no open matchmaking
- Not much different from Halo 3
- While it's nice to have a Halo 3 multiplayer disc with all the maps, it's still the same old multiplayer
 - Doesn't do much to expand the Halo mythology or improve the Halo formula
- Short; only a few hours long
- Graphics are in the Halo 3 engine and look dated
- Halo Reach basically made this entire game obsolete

Welcome to New Mombasa

The Long

Halo 3: ODST sparked a lot of talk leading up to it's release. Originally titled Halo 3: Recon, it was slated as a sort of discounted expansion pack to the original Halo 3. As it came closer to its release, however, Bungee announced they had added a significant amount to the game, and therefore would be charging full price for it. People were pissed, even though nobody had actually played the game yet. So, in the end, is Halo 3: ODST worth it, or is it just as we all thought: a glorified expansion pack?

Halo 3: ODST takes place during the events of Halo 2. While Master Chief and the Arbitor were off blasting aliens on other planets, back on Earth stuff was getting crappy. The Covenant showed up and started off an invasion, leading to most of the Earth getting blown up and Master Chief having to come back and save the day again (which is how Halo 3 starts). You assume the role of an unnamed rookie soldier who is a member of the ODST squad (which stands for Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, basically marines that drop in from orbit to kick butt), whose drop pod has a malfunction and results in him being knocked unconscious for most of the battle. The game is evenly split between playing as the rookie and as other members of your squad who, unlike you, actually landed and did useful stuff rather than sleep in their pod for several hours.

And your captain is Nathan Fillion. That's not the character's name, but I never bothered to learn it. 

As the rookie the game sort of turns into a weird, pseudo-open world experience, where you explore the ruins of the now-overrun New Mombasa and find objects relevant to the battles that your squadmates experienced a few hours previous. You then relive those experiences (which usually involve the standard Halo fare of riding vehicles, blasting dudes, and pressing "B" to melee) before jumping back into the rookie. Near the end of the story, it makes a (rather jarring) jump from the past to the present, where the squad reunites for the final battle and the game ends with the Covenant still blowing up the planet, but Master Chief about to show up. Yay; everything we did was for nothing!

Bungee pushed that this story was better than any of their others, and I can at least agree that it is different than the other Halo games. Halo has always been a power fantasy: you play a super-soldier who can jump ten feet in the air, duel-wield impossibly large guns and base enemies in the face or run them over in purple space jets. Because of this, the set-pieces have always been appropriately over-the-top and goofy. Compare the end of ODST, where you are essentially driving down a freeway (wee?) to the end of Halo 3, where you are driving across the surface of a crumbling planet as it explodes around you, making sweet jumps and finally launching your Warthog off the side of a ruined planet into the hanger bay of a spaceship. 

Yeah, I can make that jump, no sweat. 

This is what Halo is, and it's what Bungee is good at. They aren't good at hamfisted "emotional" stories or slow, plodding exposition. This is also evidenced in Halo Reach, which should have been the best Halo story ever, but instead ended up being incredibly boring and shallow, but this isn't a review of Halo Reach it's a review of Halo 3: ODST, so I'll shut up about that now. Point being: Halo 3: ODST plods along for most of the game, with the flashback action sequences a decent saving grace but still dwarfed by anything that happened in Halo 3. Because Bungee isn't that great at actual writing (especially dialogue), I never felt attached to any of the characters (besides the fact the main character was Nathan Fillion, and I kept pretending he was Mal from Firefly), and so I was never motivated to see what happened. The fact that the single-player is incredible short just seals the deal, leaving it as an interesting experiment but a failed one never-the-less.

So the single-player is unique but uninspired; what about the multiplayer modes? Halo has always been about it's super-hardcore multiplayer following, and on the surface ODST is everything you ever wanted. It comes with two basic modes: Firefight (which is on the ODST disc) and the complete Halo 3 multiplayer (which is on its own disc). Let's talk about Firefight first. 

Suffer not a beastie to live...wait, I said that in my Metro 2033 review. Oops. 

Firefight is basically Halo's answer to Gears of War's "Horde Mode." Basically you grab four human players, and you try and hold off wave after wave of computer-spawned baddies. Every few waves "skulls" are added, basically difficulty modifiers (giving enemies better grenade throws, better aim, more health, etc) to keep the whole thing from becoming a cakewalk. You have to stick together to survive, sharing health and weapons and ammo. It can get very difficult very fast, and it works like it did in Gears with the whole "frantic desperation to survive" once the battles really get heated.

It still has problems, though, first and foremost being there is no public matchmaking. At all. And since you are inexplicably limited to two people split-screen per box (unlike regular multiplayer, where you can have four people at once), you have to play online in order to get a full four player-team, meaning you need at least two actual friends to play with. Yeah, you could tell me to "go find some friends, loser" but having to get the crew together whenever we want to play is inconvenient and annoying. The fact they took this out for Halo Reach only proves they knew it was a bad idea, and makes this mode feel like some weird beta for that new, better version. 

The other problem is that it...just isn't particularly engrossing. I really got sucked into Gears of War 2's horde mode; I probably played it more than any other online shooter's multiplayer up to that point. But Halo 3: ODST's Firefight mode just seemed...basic. It was like they knew they should make a "Horde" mode (around this time everybody was doing it) but the only put the bare minimum into it. It's still decent, and if you have four people on system-link where you can scream at each other it's a hilarious blast, but when you tear it down to its core, Firefight on ODST is a really shoddy attempt. This is only further exacerbated by the fact that the Firefight mode in Halo Reach is really good, which again makes me think the whole Halo 3: ODST experience was Bungee experimenting before releasing their actual finished product a few years later.

I suck at Halo 3 multiplayer, but I still enjoyed playing it for some inexplicable reason

The other multiplayer experience is "The Complete Halo 3 Multiplayer Experience," which essentially means they took the same Halo 3 multiplayer you've been playing for years, throwing all the expansion maps on a disc, and calling it good. There is no actual new multiplayer with Halo 3: ODST. At the time it was released I had no problem with this; I owned Halo 3 but hadn't played the multiplayer much, and something I hate about console FPSes is the fact there never seem to be enough maps (unless you shell out like $50 for the expansions). So this disc was actually pretty awesome, if a bit basic. But if you were somebody who loved Halo 3 (which I'm pretty sure that's who Bungee was marketing this game to), then you probably owned the expansions already, meaning the whole "multiplayer" aspect of ODST was wasted on you.

I can't say much about Halo 3's multiplayer: either you love it or hate it. It's heavily weapons based with a hint of vehicular combat, allows for some totally nuts game modes and maps, and everybody on it is way the crap better than me. Regardless, if its your cup of tea then this is the best place to get it, though I'm going to tell you right now that Halo Reach's multiplayer is basically a billion times better.

Bungee still knows how to make a hell of a trailer, though

So...the verdict? Despite what I've said Halo 3: ODST isn't a bad FPS, it's just a bad Halo game. The standard of quality set by the series demanded better than what was given, and the lack of anything new in the multiplayer department (save a mediocre Firefight) really makes this package seem incomplete. Add to the fact that now, years later, I can look back and say Halo Reach did literally everything that Halo 3: ODST did but better, and I see no reason to pick this game up instead of that one. 

That being said, it is still an extremely solid shooter, because while the extra bits may fall short, the core of these Halo games is the shooting, and that holds up. Because of that, I'm going to tack on an extra point to my original two out of five score, giving it a final score of three out of five.

However, I really can't recommend buying it at this point in time unless you really love the Halo universe, have to own every game in the series, or think the Halo 3 multiplayer is somehow better than the Halo Reach multiplayer (it isn't). You can get the game pre-owned for $10, though if you love Halo you could probably go as far as $20. Just know that you are looking at the weakest entry in the Halo franchise. 

Oh look, now I've gone and made Mal sad. :(

Earthworm Jim

The Short


Pros
- Goofy, zany platformer
- Excellent animations and art design
- Lots of crazy levels with tons of variety
- Launch cows

Cons
- Some spotty and floaty controls
- Water level is stupid difficult
- SNES version is missing a level that was in the Genesis version

COW LAUNCHED

The Long

Earthworm Jim is the 90s. Spawned from a generation infatuated with Animaniacs and The Tick, Earthworm Jim is a goofy, weird take on the platforming genre that sports excellent animations, a bizarre sense of humor, and a boss that burps fish at you. Yep, burping fish. This is that kind of a game. 

On its most basic level, Earthworm Jim is a platformer that quickly goes from "cakewalk" to "tough as nails" in just a few levels. You are given two attacks: a gun dependent on ammo and a whip (which is actually your suit whipping your earthworm body). The whip can be used to latch on to various hooks to reach secret areas (or just progress the game) or to kill enemies. Simple stuff.

Groovy!

This game got a lot of praise when it was released, if only for its great art design and animations. Made by professional animators, all the characters and enemies look really good for an SNES game. It's colorful and would fit right in with the Saturday morning cartoons of the 90s. In fact, it did, because they made an animated series based off it (with Jim being voiced by the same guy who does Homer Simpson. Who would have thought). 

Coming soon to a TV near you. In the 90s. 

The weirdness of this game is just...way out there. The first level is a junkyard full of crows, mutant dogs, and you jumping on tires and climbing on conveyor belts to avoid fishtanks and...more tires? It is then followed by the boss that burps fish while dropping tubas on you. Yeah.

You then race a crow through space, dodging asteroids in some attempt to not have to fight him. After that, you go to hell.

Yep

Or "Heck," rather. Fight demons, lawyers, snowmen, and some totally loony cat. And then you go underwater, where you ride a giant hamster to eat cats. And the boss is a fish in a bowl. And then you have a bungee-jumping competition against a sentient ball of snot. And you have to save a little dog who walks forward from ramming into anything for a whole level, or he turns into a massive dog and eats you.

Yep. Bungee jumping snot. Quality. 

 The game keeps mixing stuff up so often you'll probably not notice the fact the game is actually pretty short. The Genesis version had an entire extra level (which was super difficult) that the SNES version didn't have, which is too bad for us Nintendo enthusiasts. We did however, keep the horrible water level, where you have to drive a poorly-controlled pod through hairpin turns, where you only get something like five hits and are on a timer. And then it makes you do it again. And again. And again. 

This is seriously not fun anymore

Eventually, the humor can't stave off the frustration. The bungee-jumping snot is funny, but it just throws you into it with no instruction and you hope for the best. The "save the dog" level is cool in concept but awful in execution: it pretty much requires you to completely memorize the dog's path and when to force it to jump, etc. The fact the regular controls, while serviceable, are not as precise as they should be adds another layer of difficulty and frustration.

You'd better duck, dog, because I am not doing this level again

This game has also been re-released in HD on the Xbox Live marketplace for $10, which is a good deal if you have memories for it, but its difficulty and controls mean it hasn't aged well. While I still think this game is a really fun, unique experience, there is only so much the weirdness can account for. I'd suggest picking it up for your SNES or Genesis for your collection, but not for more than the $10 also asked for on XBLA (get the demo).

If I were to give it a score rating, it would be a close four out of five. Despite it's flaws, I personally think this game is great (and years of playing it have put most of the difficult segments into the "muscle memory" area of my brain), but if you don't have any history with it feel free to knock a point off the final score. 

A face only a mother could love

Week in Review 1/22/2012 - It Starts

Welcome to "Week in Review," where I summarize what went down this last week on Nathan Vs. Video Games, my attempt to review every single game I've ever played. Yeah. It's gonna take a while (especially since I'm still playing games currently).

I started off by trying to just do one game a day, but soon realized that would mean I'd be somewhere around the age of 50 by the time I finished. So now I'm doing two a day, with the possibility of speeding it up once I finish with the current novel I'm writing. I'm going to try and do one retro game and one modern game a day, though I make no promises to me following this system with exactness.

This week I reviewed 16 games, putting the total reviewed at 21. Not a bad start, all things considered.

Here are the links to these reviews with my blurb scores following.

Viking: Battle for Asgard - 2 / 5 Stars
Rayman: Origins - 5 / 5 Stars
Limbo - 4 / 5 Stars
3-D World Runner - 4 / 5 Stars 
Lost Odyssey - 4 / 5 Stars
Legendary Wings - 4 / 5 Stars
The Binding of Isaac - 5 / 5 Stars
Parasite Eve - 4 / 5 Stars
Metro 2033 - 3 / 5 Stars
Protect Me Knight - 5 / 5 Stars
Resident Evil 5 - 3 / 5 Stars
Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock - 1 / 5 Stars
PowerGig: Rise of the SixString - 0 / 5 Stars
The Rise of the Argonauts - 4 / 5 Stars
To The Moon - 3 / 5 Stars
Dead Space - 5 / 5 Stars

So far I've been mostly reviewing either Xbox 360 or PC games, which makes sense since those are probably the systems I've played the most on (except I should probably add the PS2 and SNES as close runners-up). This week I will try to get more SNES and PS2 reviews for you, with plans for Earthworm Jim, Persona 3: FES, and others already in the works.

Also expect a massive review of Nier one of these days, though it might get an entire day to itself considering how long it will end up being.

Thanks for reading, and please share! I might also try to compile a list of every game I plan to review for next week (hint: it'll be massive) so I can directly tick off reviews and you can watch my slow progress to the end.

Have a great week!

Dead Space

The Short


Pros
- Perfect blend of action/horror
- Grisly violence and gore ramp the tension up to insane levels
- Fantastic UI; everything is displayed in the game world. No HUD.
- Sound design is exceptional
- Unique method of dispatching enemies; "strategic dismemberment" rather than headshots
- Graphics are gorgeous and the steller art design leads to some true monstrosities
- Story is interesting and reminded me of Alien
- Perfect length single-player
- Controls on 360 work like a dream

Cons
- Lots of the game consists of people bossing you around to do things
- The end turns more "action" than "horror"
- The "baby" enemies are pretty tasteless
- Limited enemy variety
- Plot kind of goes a bit loco near the end
- Gave me actual nightmares. That's not allowed.

Word of warning: the game very much earns its "M" rating

A warning: This review contains screenshots and video that some might find disturbing. Trust me, the one above is just the beginning. 

The Long

People don't really make horror games anymore. The genre saw a complete shift since Resident Evil 4 showed up and turned it all on it's head, essentially turning "horror" games into "action games with scary elements." Which was probably for the best, considering the reason most horror games were actually, well, scary was the fact that they'd limit your ability to control your character, ramp up the gore, and limit your methods for fighting back. The game was scary because your character was underpowered, the game was intentionally designed for you to die, which meant it just generally felt unfair. Resident Evil 4 clearly saw this as a problem and switched it up, which was good from a gameplay standpoint but bad from a horror standpoint. Who is scared when you can blast zombies with a sniper rifle from three-hundred yards away?

Or rocket launchers. Real scary, guys. 

Dead Space literally came out of nowhere. It was designed by EA Redwood (which has since been rebranded Visceral Studios), saw little to no advertising, and released quietly onto the market. It didn't sell many copies initially, but it did see a massive spike in used sales (which prompted gamers to pick up Dead Space 2 when it came out...see EA? Used game sales help you) as well as extremely favorable review scores. Well, add this review to the mix, because I'm telling you right now this game is amazing.

The premise behind Dead Space is pretty much the same as the movie Alien. Isaac Clark, an engineer, is sent on a mission to investigate what is going on the U.S.G. Ishimura, a massive mining ship designed to "crack" a planet from orbit and extract it's precious minerals. Apparently everything on the Ishimura just went dark, so a small team of an engineer (you), two pilots, a military leader, and another engineer head down to try and figure out what is going on. After crash landing and finding the place completely deserted, things get...nasty.

Seriously, you should have just turned around and left

It turns out the hundreds of thousands of people on-board have been transformed into horrifying monsters called "Necromorphs," essentially re-animated corpses that have been twisted into really nasty things. They are fast, they are brutal, and they don't lumber about like idiots (hey there, Resident Evil 5!). They want you dead, and they will not hesitate to completely dismember you at a moment's notice.

Isaac (aka you) is separated from his team, and thus begins a long and dangerous journey to both restore power to the ship, find out what the heck happened, stop it from continuing, and get out safely. It's a bloody, violent story, filled with betrayals, deaths, and plenty of twists to keep you on your toes. While there are a few parts that are unbelievable (one Necromorph manages to infect an entire ship in like fifteen minutes? Really?), the tension just keeps ramping up until it reaches a near-unbearable level, closing out with an insane sequence and reveal that (while predictable) is still pretty shocking. Combined with fantastic voice acting (Isaac is silent but the rest of the crew, as well as the audio logs you find, can be quite chatty), the story is as compelling as it is shocking. It fits the genre well, and leaves you wanting more.

And there are some of these things. Gross. 

Aside from the story...where to begin? Well, I suppose I can start with the graphics. Dead Space looks amazing. The animations of the enemies are completely disturbing and fantastically executed. Isaac has a sort of heavy, thumping side to his movements that fits with all the mining equipment he's wearing/hauling around. The blood and other fluids the nasty creatures spew is particularly well rendered, making the disgusting enemies and environment even more horrific. I have literally no nitpicks with the graphics, and I will say the lighting in this game is something particularly worth mentioning. Lighting in games (especially horror games) is a delicate thing that has to be done completely right or else the player will just not notice it. Dead Space does it all better than any other game I've seen (with the exception of its own sequel, Dead Space 2) and it just proceeds as a fantastic compliment to the graphics. Incredible stuff.

Perhaps my favorite feature, however, is the HUD. Or rather, the lack of one. See, Dead Space has NO onscreen HUD. Everything you need to know is displayed directly in the game world, meaning no arbitrary menues ever (unless you do a complete, hard pause with "Start"). See that bar on Isaac's back? That's your health. See the blue half-circle next to it? That's your statis gauge. When you raise a weapon to fire it projects a small hologram with the ammo you have left. Menues such as inventory, shops, workbenches for upgrades, elevators; everything is displayed in-game via the world's holographic technologies. It's something you really wouldn't think much of, but it really provides an unparalleled level of immersion. Remember Metro 2033? Where the entire UI is set in-game? They took it from this, and guess what? It works great in both of those games. The best part in Dead Space is the fact that going to a store doesn't pause the game (even though it locks your character in place). So if there are still enemies nearby quickly trying to "hide" in a store to pause the game will only result in you getting your face gnawed off. 

I really suggest blasting that thing. 

This level of dedication to its mythology also shows in the weapons. As an engineer, Isaac doesn't really pick up guns or other weapons, and the Ishimura is a mining ship so it isn't exactly stocked with heavy artillery. Instead, Isaac has to make do with the various mining tools left onboard the ship to mow down the monsters. Your first weapon is a plasma cutter (which is also probably the best weapon in the game), a "gun" used for mining that can fire in either a horizontal or vertical line. You pick up other stuff too: a line gun that cuts a straight arch forward, a buzzsaw that holds a spinning blade out a distance and can be directed about (this is a particularly nasty weapon to use on your enemies), an industrial flamethrower, and others. You do get a "gun" at one point, but it's vastly inferior to the mining tools you find, as I will now explain.

The idea behind Dead Space's shooting is also unique. In most games (including horror games) your goal is to aim for the head. Not so in Dead Space. Shooting off an enemies head usually just pisses them off, making them a harder foe. Dead Space's system (which they coined the lovely term "strategic dismemberment") is to shoot arms and legs off the horrors until they stop moving. Which is exactly why the plasma cutter is the best gun in the game: you can shoot horizontally or vertically on a whim (and there's an achievement for beating the whole game using only it, which is actually pretty easy). This system really mixes stuff up, but it also forces harder decisions than just "aim for the head:" do you go for legs which are harder but slow enemies slightly, or the arms which are their main means of attack? 

But always aim for the glowing weak point

All this is combined with controls that are both tight and somewhat hindering, but intentionally so. Remember what I said above? About how the genre's staple is intentionally weakening your character (usually through poor controls) in order to cheaply "ramp up the tension?" Dead Space's only real way that it does this is with it's UI: not being able to pause can prove difficult, it's totally possible to get into some camera angles where you can't see Isaac's health, he move a little clunkier than a more agile person would (but it's totally believable), and you can't see ammo unless you either go into a menu or raise a weapon. But as for the shooting, it's spot on. You can move and shoot (again, suck on it Resident Evil 5), strafe, and make pretty precise shots. They manage to do this and keep the game difficult and intense by cranking the enemies up to eleven. Like I said: they are extremely fast, very deadly (at the beginning you have two hits, tops, before you are dead) and come out of nowhere. Rather than having to gimp its enemies due to hindering gameplay (just look at how slow the zombies or enemies are in the original Resident Evil or Silent Hill games) it catered the enemies to work with the tight controls. That, my friends, is called being a good game developer. 

I forgot to mention that in space there is no sound save your breathing. And since your enemies don't breath...you won't hear them sneaking up on you. At all. 

So it has beautiful graphics, steller art design, awesome sound, great controls, and is a most excellent action game. So here is the real clincher: is it actually scary? With all this action and fast paced shooting, is it possible to be legitimately scared in this game? Resident Evil 4 was white-knuckle tension at its finest, but it really wasn't scary enough to stick with you. The old Silent Hill games (especially 2 and 3) gave me some serious heeby-jeebies, but they did it at the cost of clunky tank controls and poor combat. How does Dead Space fare?

You've been warned: this video is pure nightmare fuel. Even at poor quality. I saw 5:50 in game and had to turn it off afterwards.

Dead Space is both tense and scary. The beginning parts especially, where you are unarmed and have no idea what is going on, is particularly nerve-wracking. The game knows when to quiet down, cut back on the enemies, and throw you into scenes of total creepiness. It's these quite parts of Dead Space that are truly horrific, often coupled with witnessing the aftermath of things better left unsaid. Even near the end, where you get equipped enough to blow through most enemies without too much trouble, there is one particular part of the game where you visit an area you've never been before, and what you see there is just...brrrr. Creepy. 

The horrible looking monsters help, too. 

So...problems? What don't I like about this game? Well, the story is interesting but it usually consists of one of the two remaining members of your team radioing you and saying "Oh crap! This thing just broke! Quick, you go fix it while I wait here to turn it on!" And after you fix it they say "Oh no! It still isn't working! Now go here and fix this next!" Which gets old real fast.

The enemies also don't show much variety. You have your standard running guys, ones that crawl on the ground and have tails, these weird mutant baby things (which are super tasteless, by the way, and they get worse in Dead Space 2), some big fat ones like the one above, the wall guys, and a few others. By the end of the game they basically recycle the enemies but instead color them a sort of gangrene-looking black (meaning they are harder) which is nice they are more difficult but you use pretty much the same tactics to take them down. 

Aside from that, I really have little to say bad about Dead Space. I've had friends try it on my recommendation and then quit (the tension and violence is certainly too much for some, if not many), but if you can handle the extreme violence and horror you are looking at simply the best in modern horror/action games (and yes, I think it's a better game than its sequel, but you'll have to read that game's review to find out more about that). Anything I can complain about is nitpicking, because as a whole every part of this game fits together wonderfully to create one of the best games I've ever played. 

Oh, and one more thing: the game only has single player and is about 6-8 hours long, but beating it gives the option to play on "Insane." Let me tell you: this is the single most nerve-wracking thing I've ever done (except Dead Space 2's "Hardcore" mode, which gives you only two saves to beat the entire game with). You die in single hits at the beginning, even with the best armor. By the end you've upped it to about three hits, but enemies are significantly tougher and more aggressive. I takes an already tense game and turns it insane (hence the name of the difficulty) and is like playing a totally new game. The game also has a New Game + mode for those who like that, though you are limited to replaying on the same difficulty. 

Falcon...PUNCH!

I'm pretty sure you can get the game new for $20. It is worth the full $60. I've played it both on Xbox 360 and PC (the PC version released with some issues that have since been fixed) and suggest playing it with a gamepad either way. If I were to give it a star rating, it would be five out of five. 

And since I promised in my warning to show you something that would give you nightmares, here's a design illustration for the standard Necromorph.

This picture still freaks me out. 

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.