PS3

Assassin’s Creed 2

January 31, 2010

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

The shortcomings of the first Assassin’s Creed are well-known and well-publicized. It was too repetitive; the free-running was too awkward sometimes; and there was way too much pointless backtracking and traveling. Much to everyone’s delight, Assassin’s Creed 2 takes everything that was wrong with the first, fixes them, and then improves on everything it did right. 

The story of Assassin’s Creed 2 begins pretty much immediately after the end of the first, waking up in your room with all the glowing symbols and writing etched on the wall of your room. After this you’ll soon escape from Abstergo with the help of an old friend. Upon escaping, you’ll quickly be sent back into the animus to live through the life of another ancestor of yours, Ezio de Auditore.

The introduction to Assassin’s Creed 2 is longer than the intro to the first, but it is much more intriguing and enjoyable. It also gets you more interested in the story because of how you live Ezio’s life alongside him. If you’ve never played the first Assassin’s Creed, there is also a short cinematic that walks you through the story of the first so that you aren’t completely lost when you start playing. This is a nice feature that I wish more sequels employed.

Pretty much every mechanic from the first has been improved, from hiding to free-running to assassinations; everything is much more fluid and realistic-feeling. Obviously none of it is really possible, but it looks more natural, as if it really was possible. While there is still lots of backtracking and traveling to do in Assassin’s Creed 2, there is much less of it than there was in the first, which is a huge relief. Some new mechanics are the addition of looting of bodies and the pick-pocketing of just about anyone you want. After a fight, you can loot the bodies for florins, and when walking around the cities you can pick pocket anyone you want to for more florins. What do you need florins for, you ask? Well, you no longer rejuvenate health simply by being anonymous so you have to buy medicine to heal yourself, but you can also buy maps to treasures, improve your equipment, and even buy art to display in your home. Careful with the pick pocketing though, doing it too much or too conspicuously and you’ll be targeted by guards who will make life difficult for you.

The graphics and the setting are gorgeous; Ubisoft did an amazing job of reproducing Renaissance Italy and making it feel like you are actually there. The sound design is high quality as well, with the ambient sounds contributing to the feel of Italy almost as much as the graphics.

The controls are the same as the first game, which is great because they were really intuitive and responsive to begin with. All the intangibles of a well-made game are present as well. The entire feel of the game is that it was a labor of love, an attempt to not just overcome all the shortfalls of the first game, but to wipe them from the memory of anyone who has played the series.

I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that this might just be the most improved sequel of all time because if it isn’t, it definitely ranks up there with the best sequels we’ve ever played.

Plays like: Assassin’s Creed meets GTA

Pros: Controls are same; Combat is enjoyable; Graphics are spectacular; Sound design is great; Story draws you in; Open world Renaissance Italy

Cons: Combat can be too easy

 

Demon’s Souls

November 24, 2009

PS3 / Reviews / by Paul Bishop Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Can a brutally hard game that relies upon nuance capture the attention of the average gamer? Demon’s Souls asks this question by presenting a visually stunning game that is unforgiving but fair, while putting the sense of accomplishment back into video games.

In the kingdom of Boletaria an ancient evil has been awakened by a greedy king. The Old One has returned bringing a dense fog full of demons bent on harvesting the souls of the living. As an adventurer you journey to this cursed land, attempting to take these souls back; working with the powers in the Nexus you attempt to reseal the evil and bring peace to the land.

The story behind Demon’s Souls is really a façade to present a remarkable game. It may not sound like much but in the game it feels grander due to the set pieces and presentation of the levels. It brings to mind Shadow of the Colossus, which had a brief story but was presented with such style you forgave it. Voice acting is hit-or-miss and does become cliché at times, but overall it helps fill out the overarching world.

The true brunt of the game lies in its amazing gameplay that is extremely tough at the same time. Not just tough, but frustratingly hard, especially for the average gamer. Hearkening back to the old side scrollers where you died and had to start the entire level over, this game is brutal in that you eventually memorize complete levels and enemy locations as you are constantly are forced to replay them. Every enemy presents a challenge until you fully explore how they act and figure out the trick to getting past them. And while this may sound relentless and not fun, the game kills you because you deserved it; death is really treated like a learning experience, at first you may feel cheated but soon you realize you died because you did something stupid or just plain let your guard down. But the closer you get to the end of a level the more of a sense of accomplishment you get, similar to finally figuring out one of the Colossus’s weakness in the already mentioned Shadow of the Colossus.

The real time action fighting varies because of so many characteristics; are you using your sword two handed or one handed? Are you using a piercing attack or a slashing motion? How much does your weapon weigh, and how is your agility compared to it? For each of these scenarios just swinging a weapon has different results, and to truly take out an enemy you need to use all of the tools available to you to accomplish it. Can you dodge in enough time? Or is your armor making you slower? Can you time their attack so you can parry it? Unfortunately the fighting is hampered by a lackluster lock-on system that has a short reach and is down-right frustrating in confined spaces; many times I died strictly because of this feature not being as responsive as I would have liked.

Luckily by killing demons you can harvest souls to improve your character and buy better weapons or magic. These souls are a valuable commodity since you lose them if you die during a level. When you start the level over all enemies respawn and you can attempt to make it back to your blood stain to regain these lost souls, but if you don’t make it they are gone permanently. The customization of your character is a very nice system as you choose specific stats to improve with souls, making initial classes superfluous as you build your character the way you feel is best. In addition if you don’t like the investment in a particular stat you can refund it to try another.

Usually for an action RPG multiplayer isn’t an option, but Atlus threw in a very interesting attempt to link gamers together. When you play a level, you see the silhouettes and blood stains of other players as well as read messages left by them. For a noble concept, the actual implementation is either hit-or-miss; by touching their blood stains you can be clued in to enemy locations or see what not to do in an encounter, but as mentioned earlier, you probably have already been around that corner at least once. Similarly messages left by other players are meant to be helpful, such as warnings or tips, but the more I played the more I got bad advice and messages begging for help. Each message can be rated, and if it gets a positive response then the person who left it gets a health bonus; so I ended up seeing too many “recommend my message” messages, which defeated the point. It is possible to invite gamers into your session and fight together, besides gaining possible help this doesn’t offer much more of a benefit. Once you get to higher levels, other players can forcibly enter your world and attack you. This proves to be one of the best implementations of the multiplayer as you are constantly on the lookout for real world enemies.

Put frankly, Demon’s Souls is not a game for everyone. It is as difficult as it is rewarding, but only for those who are willing to devote time in acknowledging their mistakes and pushing on. It is a beautiful game that is unique in so many regards, but it probably is not accessible to the average gamer looking to play a straight-forward RPG. For all others the nuances, presentation, and customizable gameplay will be a welcome breath of fresh air… when they aren’t screaming at the screen.
 

ESRB: M for disturbing visuals and visceral action

Plays Like: Action RPGs

Pros: Beautiful, rewarding gameplay for dedicated players

Cons: Tough

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

November 5, 2009

PS3 / Reviews / by Justin Last Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune is one of the finest PlayStation 3 games available on the system. The writing is great, the characters are likeable and well-developed (well, the heroes are likeable anyhow), the shooting feels great, and the set piece battles felt like scenes ripped straight from a movie. Uncharted 2 managed to take all of those positives, polish them just a little bit more, and add in two excellent multiplayer modes. The single-player experience is wonderful and worth replaying on higher difficulties, and the multiplayer – particularly Uncharted’s take on Gears of War 2’s Horde Mode and Halo 3: ODST’s Firefight – is great.

Uncharted 2 has a bit more focus on platforming than its predecessor did, and it all manages to feel organic. You’ll explore a museum in Istanbul, ancient ruins in Borneo, run-down and crumbling buildings in Nepal, and ice caves in the Himalayas. Naughty Dog has clearly been watching and paying attention to their Indiana Jones movies as the locales are larger than life and areas are clearly designed with blockbuster moments in mind.

As you globetrot from place to place you’ll undoubtedly need to shoot some of the big bad’s hired mercenary’s as you try to catch up with him. All of the weapons from Uncharted 1 make a return for the sequel, and there are even a couple new ones to play around with. Nate can still only hold one pistol and one rifle (or shotgun), but the way grenades are handled has been changed. You won’t need to select them anymore. Simply aim your gun and press L2 to lob a grenade at your crosshairs. Or hold down L2 for the familiar throw arc and release the throw. The change is a small one, but it really made me consider using grenades much more often. And there are plenty of baddies to use them on – I recommend using them on those that carry riot shields personally, but they work well on everyone if you can aim your throw properly.

The story, which I won’t spoil for you, features a lot of boss encounters. The jet ski sections have been replaced with epic fights that are more fun than frustrating, and while you will almost assuredly die on your first time through it will always feel like it was your fault and not the game’s. Naughty Dog has retained the challenge of the original Uncharted while removing the frustration that comes with clearing a room only to have more baddies spawn behind you for no reason. This time around when you clear a room it stays cleared, but it’s more difficult to take care of everybody in the first place. To help with that Drake has easier access to more powerful weapons. I was picking up Desert Eagles and Moss-12 shotguns shortly after the tutorial was over. And when you run out of ammo for those it feels perfectly natural to fall back on the AK-47 and pray and spray until a better gun comes along.

The medal system is back as well, and earning medals in single player and multiplayer earns you money to spend in the store. This is where you’ll buy things like character skins, weapon upgrades for multiplayer and infinite ammo weapons for single player. Even more than tying many of them to PSN trophies, having and in-game reward scheme really makes it fun to unlock the game’s various medals.

Multiplayer is a new addition from Drake’s Fortune, and whether you prefer competitive or cooperative multiplayer, Uncharted 2 has you covered. Cooperative multiplayer has you beating back wave after wave of villains while using your platforming skills from the single player to collect treasures and complete other objectives. Competitive multiplayer takes the core single player gameplay elements – the excellent shooting and platforming – and turns you loose in team deathmatch, plunder, elimination, and chain reaction. Team deathmatch is exactly what it sounds like – one team is heroes and the other villains; the first team to 50 points wins. Plunder is the Uncharted 2 version of capture the flag where each team tries to grab the treasure in the middle of the map and return it to their base. Elimination is team deathmatch with no respawns; the first team dead loses. Your team wins the match if you manage to take the other team completely out three out of five times. Chain Reaction is interesting because each team has a different objective, or at least a different objective order. There are five flags on the field. One team works from flag 1 to flag 5 while the other team works from flag 5 to flag 1. It’s still in your best interest to take the other team out, but a high kill count is not required to win the match. Split-screen is not available in any mode, but you really want to be watching Uncharted 2 in full-screen. It’s too gorgeous to share.

Uncharted 2 is everything that I want in a game: great gunplay, fun characters and dialog, and a wide variety of multiplayer options. The single player is fair – even on its highest difficulty, the set piece battles make me feel great when I get past them, and it feels like an action movie. Too often video game sequences feel like they were designed only with the player in mind – Uncharted 2 feels like it was designed to be fun for me playing it and to be entertaining for my wife to be watching it. If you own a PS3 and can only pick up one game this holiday season it really ought to be Uncharted 2.

Pros: great medal system, wide variety of multiplayer options, access to good weapons early in story
Cons: no split-screen multiplayer
Plays Like: Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, Tomb Raider: Legend, Gears of War 2
ESRB: T for blood, language, suggestive themes, and violence

Katamari Forever

October 15, 2009

PS3 / Reviews / by Chris Rasco Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Katamari Damacy snuck onto the gaming scene as a huge sleeper hit and many questioned the longevity of a game that was completely based around rolling up objects into a giant ball. Katamari Forever is the 5th title in the Katamari franchise to hit North America, and the game is still very similar to its original incarnation. So is it still worth the full price?

Katamari Forever is currently a Playstation 3 exclusive with no releases planned for other consoles. It features everyone’s favorite King of All Cosmos, the Prince, and a whole bevy of additional Cousins that are fully playable. When the King of All Cosmos gets hit in the head and develops a case of amnesia, the cousins build a robotic version named RoboKing to fill in for him. RoboKing goes on a rampage and destroys all the stars in the sky so it’s up to The Prince and Cousins and roll up and create new stars for the sky.

Katamari Forever contains 34 levels that are a mix of new levels and some seen in previous versions of the game. Older levels take place in the mind of King of All Cosmos while the new ones take place in the present. Older levels feature a black and white color scheme with the goal of returning color to the world as you grow your katamari. New levels feature the classic goal of building stars. In addition to building stars, some levels have additional goals that you must satisfy to appease RoboKing. At the conclusion of each level, your katamari is rated on a scale of 0-100 with 100 being a perfect star. Failure to get a high enough score results in your star being destroyed and you failing the level completely.

Some new gameplay additions to Katamari Forever are the Prince Hop and the King Shock. The Prince Hop actually allows the Prince and his katamari to leap into the area to reach higher areas. Previous versions of the game forced you to find ramps or other ways to reach higher sections of the game. King Shock allows you to rapidly grow your katamari by sucking any nearby object that you are large enough to roll up onto your katamari like a magnet. These 2 new features are definitely integral parts to successfully completing some of the RoboKing goals. I had a little difficulty triggering the Prince Hop right when I wanted to and sometimes gave up when I couldn’t make the Prince actually hop despite flicking the controller. Luckily you can also press R2 to trigger this action.

With the basic gameplay being so similar, is Katamari Forever worth paying full price for yet another Katamari game? After playing through it for quite a few hours, I can safely say that I would have no problem paying full price for this title, especially given the $50 pricetag. I don’t expect everyone will share similar sentiments, but it was definitely a title the entire family had fun playing and watching as we passed the controller around. Some levels were a little difficult for the kids, but they still had fun playing. Katamari Forever is a classic Katamari game with a few new features and a whole lot of levels and it provides a fun experience for the whole family. It’s a niche title for sure, but one that will definitely appease fans of previous Katamari titles.

Plays Like: Previous Katamari titles
Pros: New features like Prince Hop; Lots of levels
Cons: It’s the same game you’ve played before
ESRB: E for Everyone – Alcohol and Tobacco Reference, Comic Mischief, Mild Fantasy Violence, Mild Language

Shatter

August 7, 2009

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

Shatter is a newly released update to a classic, developed by the rather unknown Sidhe Interactive, and it may be one of the surprise downloadable titles of the year. It’s an update of the classic arcade title, Breakout. For those unaware of Breakout, it had a basic gameplay pattern: move the paddle to hit the ball towards the blocks at the top of the screen until you destroy them all. It spawned many sequels and spin-offs, but Shatter is one of the better ones.

The game’s look (as well as the music) feels like a more “futuristic” version of Breakout, which is what the game is trying to be. But aside from the act of breaking blocks and trying to continue to hit the ball, there are plenty of other things added to the game to make it a brand new experience.

As you hit the ball towards the multi-colored and multi-shaped blocks, they create blue shards, which you can absorb to add to your score and fill up a bar to unleash a special attack. You absorb the blue bits with a suck function, which is done by pressing the L1 button on the controller. This, as well as the blow function, can be used to also pull and push the ball towards or away from you, and allows you to maneuver it more outside of simply hitting it with the paddle. You can also release multiple balls onto the playfield at once, but once your lives hit zero and you lose all of the balls, it’s game over. 

With the addition of boss fights and different kinds of blocks that can almost “attack” your paddle, there is an added level of depth and challenge to the classic formula. The boss fights seem simple at first, but as you progress through the game’s ten levels, you find that some require many different strategies to defeat them. It turns Breakout into something much more; an action game that plays less like the original and more like a classic shoot ‘em up. There is even a boss rush mode that allows you to face all ten of the bosses in a row, which is a nice addition to the game.

Outside of the main game, the boss rush mode, and a very basic but addictive bonus mode, there isn’t much to the game. No options for any kind of multiplayer, and no reason to replay the game once it is finished. Trophy support adds some replayability, but it’s nothing that will have you coming back to the game as often as other downloadable titles. It’s a bit disappointing, but I guess it’s what you can expect from such a cheap title. At only $8, you don’t get a lot, but what you do get is well worth the cheap price point. 

Shatter is well worth the money, but outside of a few challenging areas and boss fights, there isn’t any reason you’ll get more than 2-3 hours out of the experience. It’s a shame the developers didn’t take it any further with any kind of multiplayer support, even for a higher price. But for the price it is offered, and for the basic, yet addictive formula that is still successful even today, Shatter is a success. 

ESRB: E for everyone; it’s just a simple, fun Breakout update, with nothing objectionable. 

Pros: Basic, yet very addictive gameplay; new mechanics that add a lot to a classic game; bosses add even more challenge to the game; cheap price point; the game’s look is fantastic, and the music adds a lot to the experience

Cons: Not much else to do once you finish the main game

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