Now Playing: War Gods

 Not related to God of War, thank god.

 War Gods is a game I've a bit of Nostalgia for. I remember renting it one day, for the N64, and... liking it. Well, I've always enjoyed fighting games and it's not like the N64 had a lot to choose from! This translates into me having undeserved fuzzy feelings for the game, even though it's pretty much terrible!

 You pop in the disc on the tray, go through the mandatory publisher and developer slides an then... you either Start the game or go to options, because a fighting game doesn't need any other modes. Right? Right?.... Anybody? And, you do start the game, and you quickly learn that everything looks as stilted as it feels. The movement is so unnaturally stiff that it makes for an odd looking game. As a whole, everything feels wonky. It's incredible to think that this served as a proving grounds for Mortal Kombat 4, because it feels nothing like it.... which probably makes sense considering how bad War Gods is.

 Oh well, only 9 characters to go....

Review #448: Marvel Ultimate Alliance(PS2)

 Not the marvel I remembered.

 Raven Software had a pretty neat thing going with their Marvel-infused Diablo-clone X-Men Legends franchise, and Legends II took a lot of steps in the right direction, so one would expect that they'd follow the same trend with their next enterprise, the much more ambitious Marvel Ultimate Alliance, right? Well, they took some steps in the right direction alright, but they also took a few backwards.

 Dr. Doom, Loki, the Enchantress, Ultron and Baron Mordo have teamed up, probably due to their affinity with the color green, as the Masters of Evil, and their first order of business was taking down SHIELD. Nick Fury issues a call to arms, and over 20 heroes of the Marvel Universe heed the call, teaming up on a 5-act romp to stop the evil doers. The story is pretty tame and bland, but it's alright as an excuse to gather all these villains and heroes from the Marvel universe. The game has more sidequests than before, but the game, as a whole, is about as long as Legends 2(13-15 hours). And if you intend to play it, the sixth generation home consolse and PC versions are the worst, since they have the least amount of characters. PS3 gets Colossus and Moon Knight, X360 has those two as well as other six(Including Dr. Doom and Hulk), PSP gets Ronin, Hawkeye, Captain Marvel and Black Widow, while the newest PS4/XOne ports get all 8 X360 characters

 Plenty has changed since Legends II, I assume in an attempt to streamline the game, but not everything worked as intended. You still take control of a 4-man unit, going from 'dungeon' to 'dungeon', beating enemies, leveling up, learning new abilities and getting loot, and the controls are more or less the same, but a few key elements have been tweaked or removed entirely. Shops are a thing of the past, what little equipment there is you'll find on chests or dropped from bosses, and you can sell them on the spot while on the equip menu. The equipment variety is very small, I'd say even smaller than Legends I's paltry selection, and now characters can only equip a single item, for whatever reason.

 For whatever reason, Auto-leveling and Auto-equipping is set On by default, so unless you turn it off one by one on every single character the moment you start the game, you'll have to deal with

the CPU distributing all skill points when you switch to a new character, which sucks. A lot. Skill points are gone, kinda, stats still increase upon leveling up, but you no longer get bonus points to spend on each. Probably for the best, since let's be real for a minute, in both Legends 1 and 2, 'Body' and 'Focus' were the only stats worth a damn. Still, I would've liked for them to make melee worth it rather than can the stat distribution entirely. Passive Abilities are now tied to costumes, every character gets 4 different costume and each costume has 3 different passive abilities each, these abilities are upgraded with.... money. And if you want to level up a special move but lack the points(you get one on each level up), fret not, you can spend in-game money to level it up, which is kinda odd.

 I'm not done. Health and Mana Potions have been given the axe, instead, now enemies may drop health and mana orbs upon defeat, which can be picked up to restore either. Melee combo strings have been reduced to strictly 3-hit minicombos which is baffling. You can block attacks now though, for whatever that's worth. Reviving characters no longer costs money, but rather.... Time? What the hell? You have to wait four minutes before you can revive a character, which is a very dumbfounding. Since when is wasting a player's time a good idea? But the cherry on top? QTEs made it into the game, because why not?

 Not everything's gone down the crapper though, the core of the game remains the same, so it's still a fun game, just not as fun as it could be nor as fun as Legends II could get. There were a few improvements too, abilities such as Flight and Might no longer cost precious ability points and come by default on characters, and the obstacles requiring specific powers are almost entirely gone, save for a very few optional roads. Xtreme Moves(I guess they are 'Extreme' now since it's no longer an X-Men game?) no longer share an energy pool, which makes it so that you'll want all your characters to learn theirs'.

 I know I've been very critical of the game, but I can't stress this enough: The game is fun to play. It is, there's no denying that. But a lot of the streamlining really hurt the game. Customization is too shallow for my taste, it's a shame they gave up on stat distribution rather than making other stats useful, and making equipment so banal was a bad choice. QTEs were a terrible idea, but they are not too pervasive, luckily, but why they reduced melee combo strings is beyond me.

 Marvel Ultimate Alliance could've been a great thing. The concept is pure genius, and the fact that the game is still fun despite how many steps back it took from X-Men Legends II speaks leagues for the potential behind it and how well they executed the core mechanics.

 7.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Marvel Ultimate Alliance(PS2)

 Some memories are better off left untouched.

 I Loved this game, with capital L. So much so that after I found out it was actually the third game in the franchise I had to delve into the previous games, well, the one with a PC port anyways. And I still liked this one the best, heck, I've been comparing Legends I and II to what I remembered about this game. And I've been reading through forums and was surprised at how much people preferred Legends II to this one. After giving it a try, I can't blame them.

 Let's start with the good, skills such as Flight and Might now come by default and you no longer need to waste ability points in them. The character roster is pretty good, with four costumes for everyone(except the Silver Surfer).

 Then the mixed, there're no more stat points, stats increase automatically when you level up. I kinda dislike having lost the customization, but let's be real here, there pretty much was a 'correct' way to build characters, Strike was almost useless, Speed didn't matter all that much, so you had to decide how much points to invest in Body and Focus. Potions are a thing of the past, enemies drop health orbs an mana orbs when they die.

 As for the bad... holy framerates. At least it got better once I entered the ship, but what a poor first impression. The combo repertoire has been reduced to 3-hit mini-combos exclusively. Passive abilities have been scrapped, but now every costume has an exclusive 3-passive abilities each. Why the **** is everything set on 'auto' by default? I will equip the equipment and I will distribute ability-points.

 Bottom-line is.... The game is not as good as I remembered it to be, and maybe, just maybe... I might like X-Men Legends 2 a bit better than this one.

Review #447: Dead to Rights - Retribution

 Police brutality at its finest.

 And so came the advent of the PS3 and the X360, and with them a whole slew of HD revivals and reboots, so Namco took their mismanaged franchise Dead to Rights and rebooted it into the world of HD. This era had no room for arcade shooters, so it turned into a slower, cover-based over-the-shoulder shooter while retaining some of the things that made Dead to Rights Dead to Rights. And that sentence sounds amazing.

 Being a reboot of the first game, it also follows the same framing narrative: Jack's, Frank dad gets killed and there'll be hell to pay as cop Jack Slate and his faithful canine companion, Shadow, scourge the city to find the culprit. The game touches upon many of the first games plot devices, but it's made up of 80% new story. And it's a better story, we finally have a female who is more than eye candy, and they added depth to Shadow and Jack's relationship, making it very endearing. Jack is still a prick though, but it's not as bad as he was in Dead to Rights II. But as entertaining as I found the story, it's still a very cheesy, predictable action-cop tropefest, but a fun one.

 The town is filled with crime and evildoers, so it's a pretty good thing that Jack's a pretty good shot. Everything you'd expect out of a post-Resident Evil 4 third person shooter is here, an over the shoulder camera and precision shooting. The health system has been removed, in favor of the era's standard regenerating health. Pressing X will make Jack sprint or stick to the closest surface he can find... which is a bit wonky, since X is usually a context-sensitive button, so dashing straight out of cover will result in Jack sticking right back to the surface, or trying to spring after letting go off a NPC will result in Jack picking him or her right back up. After playing for a while you'll learn to make do, and as far as gameplay goes, it was my only concern.

 Now then, it has the name 'Dead to Rights', so a ton of staples of the franchise you'd expect to be in made it into the game. Jack can disarm enemies, but instead of being an autokill, you'll have to time your shot right, else they counterattack or run away... and enemies can disarm you too, so be careful! You can also grab enemies as meatshields, and while the slo-mo dives are gone, you can now use L1 to use Focus in order to slow down time and maximize your damage output. Focus is increased by many different actions, mostly having to do with how you take down enemies.

 Shadow is more than a tool this time around. Dead to Rights II was pretty bad about it since Shadow would just disappear after you called him in, but now he'll stay by Jack's side at all times. Shadow can be called upon an enemy, to kill him or distract him while Jack deals damage, as a matter of fact, some enemies must be defeated by joint efforts between both. And just as before, Shadow can be sent to retrieve weapons from fallen enemies. But do be careful, as Shadow can be wounded and eventually knocked out, in which case you must get close to him and hold X to revive him. You'll also get to control him directly during various, fun, stealth sections. Most enemies will go down in a single bite, and you'll have to drag bodies in order to make your way through. These sections were surprisingly well made and served for amusing breaks from all the shooting.

 But as faithful as Shadow is, retrieving weapons for Jack, our hero can only carry up to two different guns and you'll eventually run out of ammo... but that's fine, because Jack is one tough mo-fo. Square and Triangle perform weak and strong attacks respectively, while Square is used for blocking or dodging, you can even grapple with enemies. The melee system is well integrated into the game, and it's a reliable way to take down enemies, since Jack's a beefcake that can take a lot of punishment before you need to go back behind cover and regenerate your health. Landing punches feels crunchy and hurtful, which makes engaging in fisticuffs rather fun. Dealing a lot of damage in quick succession will allow Jack to perform a brutal takedown, but there's about 8 of them, so they get repetitive rather quickly.

 I did some researching, since I didn't understand how this game failed to revive the franchise. The word 'generic' was the one that surfaced the most. And how? What other third-person shooter has a competent melee system? No, seriously, as a fighting game enthusiast I love taking things up close and personal, and few third person shooters offer melee options, and those that do, are often throwaway punches or gun-whips, not a full-blown combat system with different combos, grappling, dodging and guard breakers. This is most definitely not your average third person shooter. Plus, what other third person shooter, outside the franchise, has a loyal dog at your side, chewing on throats and retrieving ammo for the hero?

 Before wrapping up, there was a silly little hiccup, that also affected other players(At least on the PS3) when it came to the game's performance. Y'see, every now and then, the game will have micro-freezes. I don't know what caused them, since the game didn't appear to be loading or saving anything, and they last less than a second, but they are quite noticeable. But don't worry, your PS3 isn't about to explode.

 Dead to Rising - Retribution has a reputation that it doesn't deserve. The game is good. Like really, REALLY good. The fighting is fun, the shooting is fun, even the unnecessary dog stealth missions are fun. And I won't hesitate to call it the best in the franchise.
 8.5 out of 10

Now Playing: Dead to Rights - Retribution

 I'll take that retribution for Dead to Rights II alright.

 I fail to understand why Retribution didn't revive the franchise. I'm three chapters in, and the game is a blast. The melee is satisfying and it's also a viable option in combat, the shooting feels satisfying and it works relatively well. Sure, a few things are a bit less than ideal, like dashing and sticking to surfaces being the same button, so that it's hard to start dashing as soon as you stick out of it, but as a whole it works well.

 The story is already leagues and bounds above the first game, I liked how we got to meet Frank before he is killed, I like how it already feels like a cheesy action cop movie, like the first game! The visual style is also fairly neat, I love how most characters are top-heavy beefcakes.

 I mean, I know I've played 20 percent of the game at most, but it's still pretty darn fun. It's a bit less arcadey than before, but it lives up to the original game's premise

Review #446: X-Men Legends II - Rise of Apocalypse

 I'm cool with Iceman now.

 X-Men Legends married the dungeon-crawling action RPG antics of Diablo with the X-Men franchise with a mostly good execution, albeit a few too many time wasting design choices that took a toll on my enjoyment with the game. Legends 2 is a major improvement on almost every single area.

 Apocalypse has risen and he is kidnapping a few key people for his evil purposes. Now, X-Men and The Brotherhood must team up to take down this new villain that threatens to destroy the world. The narrative is a bit simpler than before, and it doesn't have as many interesting turns, but honestly, story is not really what you play this game for. The new draw for the game is that you can play as Brotherhood mutants, but... there's what, four of them? Magneto, Toad, Juggernaut and... Scarlet Witch? Did she count as a Brotherhood member when the game released? It's a bit of a missed opportunity. There's a bunch of characters missing from the previous game(Magma, Jubilee, Emma Frost, Beast, Psylocke...) so the character count is more or less the same as before. To add insult to injury, the console version gets the least amount of characters, PC gets Sabertooth and Pyro(More Brotherhood mutants! What this game needed.) while the PSP gets Cable(Yay), X-Man(OMGDOWANT), Cannonball(Meh) and Dark Phoenix(Why was she necessary?). It's a bit disappointing considering the PSP is a weaker platform and the PC gets what the console game could've used to bolster its diversity.

 Being a dungeon crawler RPG, two things are a must: XP an Loot. The leveling system has been tweaked a bit, so that Focus and Body are no longer the only go-to stats you want to increase as you level up. Strike enhances your melee attacks and Speed your chances to land an attack or dodge one.... but it's still a bit problematic. My 160+ strike character was still dealing poor damage with his fists, so his special attacks were still the best ways to go, which meant... focusing on Focus. I had him learn passive attack-buffing abilities, and it was still not enough. There're more than four special moves for each character, and while holding the R2 button only grants you quick access to four of them, it's pretty easy to swap them on the fly with the directional pad. Previous game only gave you 1 extreme move, two specials(which usually meant a Single Target and AoE for every character) and a buff, but now there's a wide variety of different buffs, team buffs and special moves for each character, which differentiates them even more and allows for more creativity when devising your four-man teams.

 Defeating enemies or destroying object on the environment will sometimes reward you with loot. Every character can equip three different pieces of equipment, and there's a wide slew of it. They come in different rarity and modifiers so that no two pieces of equipment are the same. And it really helps customization, there're armor pieces that grant you things like radiation damage over time on enemies or brand-equipment that buffs a particular characters special moves. It even extends to cosmetics, characters have a ton of different unlockable costumes, albeit not every character has the same amount of costumes. One tiny gripe I had with the inventory though was that it's too easy to accidentally sell an equipped piece of equipment, since the store menu haphazardly throws equipped and non-equipped items on a list, and failure to see the green frame over the item's symbol means accidentally selling that unique item.

 What ruined the previous game for me were the character-specific obstacles(Which turns out weren't so specific, but still, few alternatives) and they are back... but much better implemented. Y'see, this time around, these obstacles usually lead to optional stuff. The obstacles that do stand in the way of your progress, however, usually feature more than one way to deal with them, like pushing heavy object telepathically... an also be done with Magneto's magnetism or any character that has the Might passive ability. In my case, I just brought Jean Grey along and never had any issue, but I heard Magneto works just as well as your obstacle-slave. And even then, assuming you're missing the critical ability needed to progress, you can now call in 4-minute cooldown Blink portals, which let you go back to the HUB, change your team, and return exactly where you first called the portal, easily alleviating the need to go three maps back just to put friggin' Iceman on your team again.

 The game's structure has changed quite a bit too, mimicking Diablo even more. The game is divided into 5 acts, each with its own HUB, missions and submissions. Different areas have portals(Gates) that let you instantly teleport to any other previously discovered portal, even travelling through acts. Finishing the game unlocks new game plus, so you can take your beefed up characters into even higher difficulties for more loot and more experience points. And while 5 acts sounds like a lot, the game feels a bit shorter than the previous one.

 One thing I noticed in the previous game was that AI characters wouldn't use their buff special moves. I didn't care too much, since I only learned Magma's and didn't care much about it... but this game is an entirely different beast, allowing characters to be built exclusively as support, if you so will it, but not once did I notice Scarlet Witch casting her support spells, which kinda sucks since that means that support characters must be played by the player if you want to get the most of them. And a word of warning, apparently there's a nasty no-drop glitch that can happen if you forget to pick up a boss' dropped loot, and another one that causes your game to crash if you over-encumber your stash on the HUB. I didn't come across either, but still.

 While there's a bit more work left before the formula reaches its full potential, X-Men Legends II is a large step-up from the first game. It's a much more enjoyable game since, this time around, it respected the player's time.
 7.5 out of 10

Now Playing: X-Men Legends II - Rise of Apocalypse

 Much better.

 Now this, THIS is what I'm talkin' about! Thanks to the addition of Villains, the character roster has seen some much needed variety, and there're also three bonus characters, one of them being an Avenger cameo. Since I've beaten the game already, I just used the unlock all cheat and had the party I wanted from the get-go. That said, it's a bit sad seeing some characters go, specially since this game could've used more females and Magma was particularly fun to play as.

 About 80% of the game remains the same, except that now it's even more of a Diablo clone, with 5 different acts, savepoints that let you teleport to previously accessed locations and loot with different stats. Characters have more than four abilities, and the specific-character-obstacle-'puzzles' seem, SEEM to be optional now, which is a HUGE plus.

 Bottom line: I've played about an hour already and I'm pretty sure it's a better game. They knew what worked and what didn't, and seem to have souped up what worked and tweaked what didn't.