March 2010

Heavy Rain

March 21, 2010

PS3 / Reviews / by Andrew Passafiume Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Heavy Rain is a game unlike any other, if it can even be called a game. It does so many unusual things and follows a narrative that is found in the likes of a film more so than any game, so it is unusual, to say the least. However, what it does do, it does incredibly well. 

The story here focuses on four main characters, each tracking down the mysterious Origami Killer who has been responsible for the deaths of several kids and has left a calling card, an origami figure, on each body. All four characters have their own reasons for wanting to track down the killer, and soon enough, you find yourself caring about each and every one of them. 

The story has many twists and turns, and although the outcome of all of these events may change completely based on your actions and your decisions, the killer’s identity remains the same in every game. This big reveal will surprise most people, and the story in general will keep you hooked from beginning to end. 

This game is technically very impressive. Although there were some occasional clipping issues and a few glitches, the game is being patched, and even so, those problems do not ruin the game’s incredible atmosphere. The voice acting is fantastic at times, and pretty awful at others. Overall, it is great, but some of the actors (mainly the kids) are just plain bad. And finally, there is the excellent musical score, which completes the cinematic experience. 

The controls are one of the most important elements of a game like this, and they are generally great, but sometimes problematic. When it comes down to the quick time events that happen during the major action sequences, they work perfectly fine, but the walking controls (which require you to hold down R2 and use the left analog stick to direct which direction the character walks in) are a bit odd. On the whole, they are fine, and the game uses the Sixaxis controls better than most games.

Heavy Rain is full of plenty of intense action sequences that will have you on the edge of your seat the entire time. These sequences, like a section early on where you are driving into oncoming traffic, are well executed and make you feel like you really are in that situation. This game does a fantastic job of making you feel like you are doing all of the actions, with button prompts that appear near where the main action is taking place, and how they simulate the real action. 

Fair warning though, this game does start out incredibly slow. I understand why the developers went this way, it gives gamers an opportunity to not only try out the controls, but also to introduce us to the story and characters more properly. Once you get past the first hour, things will really begin to pick up, and it becomes quite hard to put down. 

Heavy Rain is trying to be more than a game, and according to the developers, it fits the role of an “interactive drama.” In this regard, we have a game that relies entirely on quick time events and scripted sequences, but also a game that can have a completely different outcome depending on how you play it. Heavy Rain is an adventure every gamer should experience, and one that will not be forgotten for quite some time. 

Pros: Truly enjoyable story from start to finish; great cast of characters; innovative uses of the Sixaxis controls; some incredibly intense gameplay segments; high replayability

Cons: Some control issues; some spotty voice acting; occasional clipping issue and glitch

 

Star Ocean: The Last Hope International

March 21, 2010

PS3 / Reviews / by Shawn Vermette Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Nearly a year after it was released on the Xbox 360, Star Ocean: The Last Hope International finally makes its debut on the PlayStation 3. It was received fairly well on the 360, but how does the new version stack up?

For those unfamiliar with the Star Ocean games, The Last Hope is a prequel to the entire series, so there’s no need to have played any of the other games to enjoy this one. The game begins after a nuclear war has destroyed much of the habitable areas of Earth and humanity begins looking to space for survival. Upon developing a warp drive that will let them explore space at speeds faster than light, mankind embarks on an exploratory mission for new worlds to colonize, hopefully ensuring the survival of our race. You are Edge Maverick, a crewman on the Calnus, one of the ships set to begin the first manned exploration of planets outside our solar system. Unfortunately, things go wrong from the very beginning, resulting in your armada crash-landing on a planet inhabited by big, ferocious bugs. From here you’ll embark on a journey across the cosmos, attempting to make the galaxy a safer place for humanity to expand. 

The story of Star Ocean is interesting and fairly unconventional for the JRPG genre. This adds to the game’s appeal, but the main reason to play Star Ocean: The Last Hope is the complex and enjoyable battle system that it employs.

Upon encountering an enemy, you will enter the battle screen with your party mixed in amongst the enemy’s party. All battles play out in real time, similar to the way Tales games work. It would seem at first that the way to victory is to simply mash the attack button until you beat the enemy. However, if you do this, you will die…a lot. I did this at first during the beginning of the game and I rarely survived for more than 9 or 10 battles before dying. The key to victory is to take advantage of two aspects of the battle system that will take time to utilize properly- Blindsides and Rush Mode. A blindside is performed by allowing an enemy to lock onto your character, then hitting the jump button to quickly move out of the line-of-sight of the enemy. This will allow you to perform a few critical hits on an enemy, greatly increasing the amount of damage you can do along with avoiding taking damage yourself. Rush Mode, on the other hand, is a result of taking and giving a lot of damage in battle. After giving and taking enough damage to fill up your Rush Mode meter, you’ll need to hit the square button to activate Rush Mode. Once you do, you’ll be immune to knockbacks from being attacked, benefit from increased critical hit chances, and you’ll also be able to chain together your special attacks and even combine your attacks with those of your other party members for even more damage. Learning to employ and take advantage of these benefits will make combat easier and more enjoyable.

In addition to Blindsides and Rush Mode, you’ll have a bonus board that you can fill with tiles by performing different action in battle, thus giving you bonuses to various areas. For instance, killing an enemy with a critical hit will net you a bonus of +10% to your experience and killing multiple enemies with a single attack will give you a bonus of +10% to the money you earn at the end of battles. These bonuses carry over from battle to battle, so it is possible to amass huge bonuses and keep them for long periods of time.

Unfortunately, the difficulty in The Last Hope International is very uneven. It starts off almost impossibly difficult, then becomes almost too easy for awhile, then gets impossibly difficult again. Additionally, in order for your party’s strength to keep pace with the increase in difficulty you’ll need to keep your bonus board almost entirely full of experience bonuses, doubling or more the amount of experience you get for each victory.

Graphically, The Last Hope International is a mixed bag. The environments and enemies all look great, but the characters look wooden and almost doll-like. They show almost no emotion and the character models just feel a little off.

As far as the audio is concerned, again the problem is with the characters. The sound effects and music sound great, but the voice-overs for the characters just don’t match with the rest of the game. They aren’t horrible, they just feel off.

Overall, Star Ocean: The Last Hope International is a worthwhile game for PS3 owners to pick up. If you’ve been waiting for a good action JRPG to play, this will definitely fit the bill. It does have some rough spots, but it is well worth a purchase for fans of the genre.

Plays Like: Tales games, previous Star Ocean games

Pros: Combat system is enjoyable, once you get the hang of it; Story is interesting and unconventional; Environments look great

Cons: Characters look like emotionless dolls; Voice over work needs some improvement; Difficulty needs smoothing out; Save points are few and far between

 

MLB 2K10

March 21, 2010

PS3 / Reviews / by Shawn Vermette Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Last year’s baseball offering from 2K Sports was disappointing, to say the least. However, since then Take Two brought in some of the people who worked on the MVP series for EA and promised to revamp the next iteration of the 2K baseball series to make it more enjoyable. Unfortunately, their improvements don’t deal with the biggest problems from last year, making MLB 2K10 feel like just another cash-in.

To be fair, 2K Sports did fix many of the gameplay imbalances rom last year. It is now easier to pitch and to hit than it was in years past, and games no longer devolve into either pitchers’ duels or home run derbies as regularly as they did last year. Unfortunately, there is no way to change the way you hit or pitch the ball- you are required to move the thumbsticks in specific ways and at specific speeds to pitch and hit this year. The lack of an option to use the easiest and simplest control method- hitting a button- is a huge oversight because it would make the game much more enjoyable. The thumbstick control has never been precise enough, and this year is no exception. Even upon completing a difficult maneuver with the thumbsticks perfectly fine, I often found it telling me I either did so too quickly or that I wasn’t precise enough. Perhaps the trouble with the controls isn’t imprecision, but too much precision. Either way, pitching is not very enjoyable when you are told pitch after pitch that you are doing it wrong. Eventually I simply threw fastballs, but even those I was told I did incorrectly fairly often.

The biggest addition to the 2K series is the My Player mode. This mode was present in NBA 2K10, and greatly enhanced the enjoyment of that game, and it does the same for MLB 2K10. While the franchise mode wasn’t much fun because of the controls, My Player mode added a new dimension to the game, making it a little more enjoyable to play the game. It adds a little RPG flavor to the otherwise frustrating game. Every time your created player does something good, he gets experience points in baserunning, fielding, or batting. It is then up to you how you allocate those points. You can turn your double-AA batter into the next Babe Ruth, or make him the next Rickie Henderson. You could even swing for the fences and try to become a combination of the two. Want to be the next Nolan Ryan or Greg Maddux? You can customize your pitcher’s improvement just as much as you can your batter. The only down side to the My Player mode is again the controls. The My Player mode could be an addictive addition to the game, but the controls drag it down like they do everything else in MLB 2K10.

The final mode in MLB 2K10 is the online mode. In this, you can play ranked or quick games against anyone else who likewise picked 2K10 instead of MLB ’10. This time the controls aren’t a hindrance because your opponent has the same problem you do with the controls. This mode is done in by lag. In order to reliably hit the ball when batting, you have to swing almost as soon as the pitcher throws the ball. This means you have no chance of deciding whether it will be a ball or strike and you simply have to swing at everything. When pitching, the lag effects the timing of your pitching as well, so you’ll never throw that perfect put-away pitch. You’ll be lucky to throw anything other than a fastball near the plate, even with the best pitchers.

Graphically, 2K10 is ugly. Everything looks like it could have been done as a first-gen Xbox 360 title or a last-gen Xbox game. The character models are blocky and unrealistic which is a huge contrast to even last year’s MLB ’09 game.

The one redeeming quality of MLB 2K10 is the wonderful commentators. Yes, I said they were wonderful. They have a large repertoire of comments to make, and all of them are placed correctly and timed well enough that the commentary almost felt like it was covering a real baseball game. Unfortunately the soundtrack is more of the same, annoying music that 2K has licensed for the last decade. 

If you want a baseball game but don’t want to spend $60 for it, you can grab MLB ’09 for less than thirty bucks. If you want a new one with updated rosters and modes, pick up MLB ’10. It is light-years ahead of 2K10.

Pros: The gameplay is much improved over last year; The balance is much better; My Player mode is fun

Cons: The graphics are subpar; Soundtrack is annoying; Batting and pitching controls are imprecise and frustrating; Online play is laggy

Plays Like: MLB 2K9

ESRB: Rated E for everyone

 

Pokemon HeartGold Version

March 19, 2010

DS / Reviews / by Eric Schabel Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Pokemon is back, and this time it’s in the form of a remake of what many people consider to be the best installment in the core series, Pokemon Gold and Silver. 

Even if you have never played the original Gold or Silver on Game Boy Color, HeartGold will still feel very familiar if you have ever played through any other titles in the series. You still start off your adventure in a small lazy town with one of three starter Pokemon, you still battle your way from city to city collecting gym badges, and you still cut, surf, and fly your way through numerous locales. The battle system in HeartGold is the same glorified turn-based game of rock-paper-scissors (perhaps I should say fire-grass-water) of the previous Pokemon titles as well. In other words, HeartGold follows the same addicting formula that GameFreak has been using since 1996. That said, even if you have never picked up a Pokemon title before in your life, HeartGold will still do a great job of easing you into the experience gently. 

Okay, HeartGold is similar to every other game in the core series, so what’s new? Game Freak usually does a good job of revising their Pokemon formula with every new installment, and HeartGold is no exception. Perhaps the most helpful improvement in HeartGold is the revised menu interface; everything is located completely on the bottom screen of the DS, meaning that pretty much every menu in the game utilizes touch controls. Navigating your inventory or trading with a friend online has never been quicker. In the same vein, battles in HeartGold also unfold at a quicker pace, with less lag between button presses and action than we saw in Diamond and Pearl. These small quality of life revisions may not sound like much, but they definitely add up when you’re playing a massive game like this one.

If there’s one obvious new addition to HeartGold, it’s the PokeWalker. The PokeWalker is a device that comes bundled with HeartGold and SoulSilver that is designed to allow you to take one of your pocket monsters with you wherever you go in…what else…your pocket! The PokeWalker communicates with the game via a small infrared strip on the top of the HeartGold cartridge, and it is quite simple to transfer one of your Pokemon over from the main game into the little Pokeball-shaped pedometer. For the most part, the PokeWalker is just a simple way to level up one of your monsters while you are too busy to actually play the main game; you simply walk around with the device in your pocket and it does the rest for you. However, you can also play some simple mini games on the PokeWalker that might score you some useful items or even allow you to catch a new Pokemon that you can then transfer back to HeartGold. The PokeWalker is a neat but largely inconsequential addition to HeartGold, but it does, along with the fact that your lead Pokemon follows you around as a sprite in-game, help you feel a little more attached to your creatures, as nerdy as that might sound.

Pokemon HeartGold is a huge game; most Pokemon titles feature eight gym badges to collect, a few rare legendary Pokemon, and then a battle with the “Elite Four,” a group of bosses that stand between you and becoming the next Pokemon Champion. Usually, all of this takes place in one large region. In HeartGold, there are two regions, Johto and Kanto. That means that there are 16 badges to collect in all, and a staggeringly huge number of Pokemon and trainers to encounter. When all is said and done, most people will probably spend at least 60 hours completing HeartGold, and that is not including any time devoted to online trading or battles and a host of other side activities such as the new “Pokeathlon” mini games, which happen to be quite fun on their own.

There is no getting around the fact that HeartGold is an epic game, even compared to the other lengthy Pokemon titles. When all is said and done, HeartGold doesn’t do much to change the core Pokemon experience, but that’s not what the game was made to do. Since the beginning, Pokemon has been a fun and addicting series, and HeartGold exists just to provide more for people who love it. HeartGold is the most refined and epic Pokemon game to date, and a wonderful way to either revisit the series or take your first step into the world of Pokemon. 

Plays Like: Every other core Pokemon title

Pros: Huge, lengthy game; menu interface improvements; PokeWalker implementation

Cons: Wasting move slots on your Pokemon for those annoying HM moves

 

Pokemon SoulSilver Version

March 19, 2010

DS / Reviews / by Eric Schabel Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Pokemon is back, and this time it’s in the form of a remake of what many people consider to be the best installment in the core series, Pokemon Gold and Silver. 

Even if you have never played the original Gold or Silver on Game Boy Color, SoulSilver will still feel very familiar if you have ever played through any other titles in the series. You still start off your adventure in a small lazy town with one of three starter Pokemon, you still battle your way from city to city collecting gym badges, and you still cut, surf, and fly your way through numerous locales. The battle system in SoulSilver is the same glorified turn-based game of rock-paper-scissors (perhaps I should say fire-grass-water) of the previous Pokemon titles as well. In other words, SoulSilver follows the same addicting formula that GameFreak has been using since 1996. That said, even if you have never picked up a Pokemon title before in your life, SoulSilver will still do a great job of easing you into the experience gently. 

Okay, SoulSilver is similar to every other game in the core series, so what’s new? Game Freak usually does a good job of revising their Pokemon formula with every new installment, and SoulSilver is no exception. Perhaps the most helpful improvement in SoulSilver is the revised menu interface; everything is located completely on the bottom screen of the DS, meaning that pretty much every menu in the game utilizes touch controls. Navigating your inventory or trading with a friend online has never been quicker. In the same vein, battles in SoulSilver also unfold at a quicker pace, with less lag between button presses and action than we saw in Diamond and Pearl. These small quality of life revisions may not sound like much, but they definitely add up when you’re playing a massive game like this one.

If there’s one obvious new addition to SoulSilver, it’s the PokeWalker. The PokeWalker is a device that comes bundled with HeartGold and SoulSilver that is designed to allow you to take one of your pocket monsters with you wherever you go in…what else…your pocket! The PokeWalker communicates with the game via a small infrared strip on the top of the SoulSilver cartridge, and it is quite simple to transfer one of your Pokemon over from the main game into the little Pokeball-shaped pedometer. For the most part, the PokeWalker is just a simple way to level up one of your monsters while you are too busy to actually play the main game; you simply walk around with the device in your pocket and it does the rest for you. However, you can also play some simple mini games on the PokeWalker that might score you some useful items or even allow you to catch a new Pokemon that you can then transfer back to SoulSilver. The PokeWalker is a neat but largely inconsequential addition to SoulSilver, but it does, along with the fact that your lead Pokemon follows you around as a sprite in-game, help you feel a little more attached to your creatures, as nerdy as that might sound.

Pokemon SoulSilver is a huge game; most Pokemon titles feature eight gym badges to collect, a few rare legendary Pokemon, and then a battle with the “Elite Four,” a group of bosses that stand between you and becoming the next Pokemon Champion. Usually, all of this takes place in one large region. In SoulSilver, there are two regions, Johto and Kanto. That means that there are 16 badges to collect in all, and a staggeringly huge number of Pokemon and trainers to encounter. When all is said and done, most people will probably spend at least 60 hours completing SoulSilver, and that is not including any time devoted to online trading or battles and a host of other side activities such as the new “Pokeathlon” mini games, which happen to be quite fun on their own.

There is no getting around the fact that SoulSilver is an epic game, even compared to the other lengthy Pokemon titles. When all is said and done, SoulSilver doesn’t do much to change the core Pokemon experience, but that’s not what the game was made to do. Since the beginning, Pokemon has been a fun and addicting series, and SoulSilver exists just to provide more for people who love it. SoulSilver is the most refined and epic Pokemon game to date, and a wonderful way to either revisit the series or take your first step into the world of Pokemon. 

Plays Like: Every other core Pokemon title

Pros: Huge, lengthy game; menu interface improvements; PokeWalker implementation

Cons: Wasting move slots on your Pokemon for those annoying HM moves

 

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